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replay of my original interview with Leslie August 18, 2016 Leslie Fowler is a master gardener who has been growing food organically for her family for over 30 years. Today she shares her successes, failures, challenges and valuable tips for gardeners to learn from. Tell us a little about yourself. I’ve lived in this valley for 34 years, I have 3 kids and 4 grandkids. I have an acre of land on a beautiful lake. I have a 30 x50 organic garden. And a  pretty large orchard there’s like 17 trees, maybe it seems big because it’s just me here, so that seems like a lot for one person! That’s a pretty substantial size! They’re fully producing. We’ve had the orchard in for like 20 years now. What kind of trees? Primarily apple, different varieties. I do have a pear tree. We had some cherries and some plums one thing or another happened and they just didn’t survive. We did plant a peach tree one time, people around here were like you can’t grow peaches  around here. It was an Alberta Peach, we planted it, babied it, every fall we wrapped insulation around the trunk, and protected it, and finally on it’s 8th year, first year it produced, it was loaded with fruit … Unfortunately there were four main branches, they were so loaded down with fruit, it started to split in the trunk. As soon as we noticed we propped each branch up with a 2×4 and try to support the trunk and we had a wonderful harvest but unfortunately we lost it.  I also have numerous flower beds raspberry patch root cellar to store my crops I work at a therapeutic therapeutic boarding school and I teach horticulture there! That’s a grat thing for them to learn, It’s so beautiful out there. So I’m a little bit curious does it make a difference being by the lake.  Well comparatively to town, town will often get a frost about 3 weeks before I do, I tend to have about a month long Is that because of the lake or is boarding that because your north of town? IDK, I’m only five miles from town, we are kind of down from town, we’re down, we’re kind of down in the hole, Im not sure if it’s cause of the lake, ponderosa dry area… of course with Montana I’ve seen it snow in July so you never know.  I know right? It’s interesting I’m actually working around the corner form you at the Wilderness Club this summer and just you know after living here for 25 years almost, you know we’re south of town and up against the mountains to see the different views out there, the views are breathtaking, it’s a little bit of a different summer climate and the different microclimates around here amaze me, we’re like the opposite of you because we’ere south of town, we’re like 3 weeks behind town. Tell me about your first gardening experience? Actually I grew up in LA, in the suburbs of LA, we did in the residential area where I lived there were a lot of orange and lemon groves unfortunately they’re not there anymore but I remember as a kid being fascinated by those trees I would go make little forts and play in there. My real first gardening experience was with my great grandmother.  She gardened her whole life so that was when I was introduced to it. I was pretty young  … I just adored her… I remember growing the pumpkins, all those fun things kids like to grow and  carrots…. I quickly realized her food always tasted better… So that sparked my interest … in my teen years, I didn’t garden a lot. I actually went to high school in Colorado. I went to an alternative school there. We had a green house and a garden. Our cafeteria was called “Munchies Central” … you could take a class and get a Home EC credit and feed the school. They would have you  create your own menus. You’d go out to the garden and see what was ready.  Try to create a menu around that, that’s So that’s when... Support this podcast