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Want to grow your own food but need creative ideas so you can get the most from your space and your growing zone? Our passion is the edible garden.
We help people grow food on balconies, in backyards, and beyond—whether it’s edible landscaping, a vegetable garden, container gardens, or a home orchard.
There are many ways to approach edible landscaping. Find out how to harvest enough fruit, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. Get top tips for exotic crops. And learn how to garden in a way that suits any situation.
Since they collaborated to write their 2011 book No Guff Vegetable Gardening, hosts Donna Balzer and Steven Biggs have put a practical and fun spin on food gardening and edible landscaping. Donna is a horticulturist, educator, former CBC Radio host, and award-winning TV host. Her passion is growing and cooking food. Steven was recognized by Garden Making magazine as one of the “green gang” making a difference in horticulture. His home-garden experiments span driveway straw-bale gardens, a rooftop kitchen garden, fruit plantings, and an edible-themed front yard.
Get started with one of our fan favourites. Season 6, Episode 10: Big Harvests from a Small Space with a Vertical Vegetable Garden.
The podcast Food Garden Life: Helping You Harvest More from Your Edible Garden, Vegetable Garden, and Edible Landscaping is created by Steven Biggs & Donna Balzer: Horticulturists and edible landscaping experts.. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
Think your climate is too cold to grow tender fruit?
Find out how this grower harvests peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, and more…despite winter temperatures that can dip to -38°C (-36°F) and a short summer.
In this episode, Donna and Steven chat with Saskatchewan fruit grower Dean Kreutzer.
We talk about:
Kreutzer and his wife run Over the Hill Orchards in Saskatchewan.
If you’re looking for more on cold-hardy fruit, check out this post on Saskatoon Berries.
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-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Do you have more seeds and plants than you can fit into your garden?
It’s a common problem for the enthusiastic food gardener!
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about finding more growing space so that you can fit more crops into the same space.
Get ideas for:
If you’re looking for more on garden planning, check out these 7 vegetable garden layout ideas.
***
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Want to grow great tomatoes?
With the right transplanting and care, your tomatoes will be off to a great start.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about:
If you’re looking for more on how to support tomato plants, check out this article.
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Wondering when to plant vegetables? Not sure what to plant first?
You don’t need to plant everything at once.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about when to plant vegetables, and the Canadian tradition of planting the garden over the Victoria Day (May 24) weekend.
(Sometimes it makes sense…though not for all crops in all zones.)
If you’re looking for more on planting vegetables, check out this article on direct seeding.
***
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Your vegetable seedlings can look great indoors. Then fall like dominoes in the garden.
If they’re not hardened off.
But if you harden off seedlings, they stand a much better chance once you plant them in the garden.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about:
If you’re looking for more on growing vegetables from seed, check out post on how to direct seed vegetables.
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Wondering about fruit to grow in a cold climate?
Today we head to Alberta, to find out how to grow saskatoon bushes. Arden Delidais grows in Zone 2—and doesn’t get any winter dieback on her saskatoon berries.
Delidais’ orchard and winery, DNA Gardens, has a number of cold hardy crops including saskatoon berries, apples, plums, rhubarb, currants, and haskaps.
Saskatoon bushes (Amelanchier alnifolia) are native to North America. (South of the border you might hear them referred to as juneberry or shadbush.)
Delidais tells Steve and Donna about:
If you’re looking for more on saskatoons, here’s a guide to growing them.
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Have you tried direct sowing but didn’t get good results? Wondering how to direct sow seeds?
Direct sowing—a.k.a. direct seeding or direct planting—is when we sow seeds straight into the garden. We skip starting transplants indoors.
It gives better results for some crops—because there’s no transplanting shock. And that’s great, because it saves you the hassle of growing transplants.
But some crops need extra growing time…and that’s where transplants make sense. Or sometimes, hot summer weather causes spotty germination outdoors, meaning transplants are a better option.
To ace your direct seeding, you need to know which crops it works with—and how to do it.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about:
If you’re looking for more ideas for planting your vegetable garden, here’s an article with 7 Vegetable Garden Layout ideas.
-->Join the 5,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang who stay on top of home food-growing ideas with our weekly e-mail. We’re making the world a better place one garden at a time!
-->Grab the free e-books: Small-Space Food-Gardening Hacks and Growing Figs in Cold Climates.
Want to harvest more veg from the same amount of space? You can get lots more from a small space by growing in containers. (If you get it right…but that’s not difficult!)
If you get these 4 things right, you’re on the road to container gardening success:
In this episode, Donna and Steven share top tips for container gardening success, including choosing pots, selecting soil, finding a suitable spot, and caring for your container vegetables.
If you’re looking for more on container gardening, here are top container garden crops.
Don’t miss out on fresh figs just because you’re gardening in a cold climate.
There are many cold-climate fig growers who defy zone boundaries with creative overwintering techniques.
Figs can take quite a bit of cold. Not the extreme cold. A creative gardener gets figs through the winter by moderating the extremes.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about fig-growing tactics for cold climates so that you can harvest figs—even if you have zone envy!
If you’re looking for more cold-climate fig-growing tips, drop by our fig home page.
Can’t get enough pawpaw fruit? Want to grow a pawpaw tree?
If you haven’t tried pawpaw fruit, many people describe the flavour of its silky, yellow flesh as tropical.
While it’s the largest fruit native to North America, it’s difficult to find the fruit for sale.
Yet it’s easy to grow.
That’s why many gardeners and small farmers plant pawpaw trees.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk with pawpaw expert Adam D’Angelo to get tips on growing pawpaw trees.
We talk about:
D’Angelo is the founder of Project Pawpaw, a crowd-funded pawpaw research and breeding program.
If you’re looking for more on pawpaw, tune into our interview with the Indiana Jones of pawpaw, Neal Peterson, and hear our chat with Toronto pawpaw expert Paul DeCampo.
When you make only withdrawals—no deposits—you eventually end up in overdraft. It works that way at the bank, with friendships—and with soil.
And growing crop after crop in a garden is like making withdrawal after withdrawal. The crops use nutrients. Working the soil affects its structure.
Amending soil is like putting money back into the bank. Soil amendments can improve soil structure, soil chemistry, and return nutrients to the soil.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about practical ways home gardeners can improve soil quality with soil amendments.
We discuss different types of manures, making compost, using leaves, wood chips, and common products such as bone meal, peat moss, and blood meal.
If you’re looking for more on soil, check out this post about how and when to use wood ash in the garden.
Looking for herb garden layout ideas?
If you’re planning a herb garden, there are many ways to add herbs to the landscape. You can have a stand-alone herb garden, a herb lawn, herbs mixed with paving, use herbs as bedding plants, weave them into a perennial border, or make a herb container garden on a patio, deck, or paved space.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about ideas for using herbs in home garden landscapes and share their favourite perennial herbs, annual herbs, and exotic herbs.
If you’re looking for more on planning a kitchen garden, check out this post on kitchen garden planning.
Leafy greens fizzle out in the summer? Does your lettuce bolt too soon?
Find out how to grow more leafy greens in your garden and how to extend your harvest so you can pick fresh salad greens as long as possible.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about crops ideas for leafy greens, how to plant leafy greens in a home garden or edible landscape, choosing greens crops for ongoing harvest, how to hurry up your spring harvest, and how to slow down bolting—even in hot weather.
If you’re looking for more on leafy greens, check out this guide to 5 heat-tolerant salad greens.
Tried growing a potted lemon tree but it didn’t thrive?
Citrus expert Byron Martin has the solution. And it’s not difficult.
AND he also has recommendations for other unusual potted citrus trees.
We talk about finger limes, blood limes, pomelo, sweet lemon, sunquat, kumquat, citron, and more.
For all of these citrus trees in pots, proper watering is the key to success. We hear how to water—and what to expect from potted citrus trees in the fall. (Spoiler alert: If your lemon tree drops leaves when you bring it indoors, you’re not alone!)
We also find out about Byron’s favourite rootstock for citrus grafting.
If you’re looking for more on indoor lemon trees, here’s a guide to growing a lemon tree in a pot (that actually fruits!)
Don’t have time to spend on fussy fruit crops? Then growing raspberries is something to think about.
You can prune raspberries and manage the crop to maximize production. But this is one of those bulletproof crops that can do quite nicely without your help.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about planting raspberries, how raspberries grow, how to prune raspberries, and how to care for them.
If you’re looking for more on raspberries, tune in to our chat with Conrad Richter from Richters Herbs about the genus rubus (and learn about raspberry leaf tea!)
And here’s more on how to tip-layer blackberries and black raspberries.
Wondering which flowers you can eat? There’s a wide variety of edible flowers that are easy to grow.
You might already have some and just aren’t using them.
Edible flowers often come from well-known vegetable, herb, and fruit crops. But there are many that come from ornamental plants too. Even some shrubs and trees.
Find out which flowers are edible—and how you can use them to spice up your cooking and have fun with your culinary creativity.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about their favourite edible flowers, and how to use them.
If you’re looking for more fun crops, check out these edible perennials. (You might already be growing some of them!
Wondering which vegetables to grow? Or how to pick suitable varieties for your vegetable garden? If you put some thought into your choices, you can avoid harvest-time disappointments.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about crops they find worthwhile, along with some favourite varieties. The choices for Donna’s cold prairie garden aren’t always the same as for Steven’s milder growing zone.
Start to narrow down the top choices for your vegetable garden with ideas on crops and varieties for:
If you’re looking for more ideas to plan the perfect kitchen garden, check out these ideas.
Growing tomatoes from seed? Get the right combination of timing, soil, light, and containers, and you can grow great tomato seedlings at home.
There’s more than one way to raise tomato plants from seed. And that means you can do it in a way that fits your growing space.
AND make sure to pick a variety you’ll love—because that’s a big reason for growing tomato seedlings. Some of the best tomato varieties are only available as seeds.
In this episode, Donna and Steven chat with Gen Z tomato grower Emma Biggs, who has raised tons of tomato plants for her annual plant sale and seed business. They talk about how they grow tomatoes from seed and the varieties they love. (They each do it differently!)
If you want more on planting tomatoes from seed, check out the guide to growing tomato seedlings on the website.
Do you shut down your garden for the winter? Wondering what vegetables to plant in the winter?
If you’re in a northern climate, to grow vegetables in winter you need to give them heat and light…and that usually means high-input greenhouse growing.
But there’s another way to approach winter vegetable gardening.
And it’s low-tech.
The idea is to choose hardy crops and grow them big enough before light levels take a dive. Then keep those hardy crops alive in a protected space—and keep harvesting through the winter.
The key to successes is the right combination of crops, varieties, and the spacing.
In this episode, find out how to you can harvest winter vegetables in cold-climate home gardens.
We’re joined by JM Fortier, co-author of the book The Winter Market Gardener. The books shares years of research at Ferme des Quatre-Temps.
Fortier is also founder of The Market Gardener Institute, which offers training for small farmers. He’s founder of the small-farm tool and accessory retailer Growers & Co.
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If you’re looking for more information on seed-starting, vegetable gardening, and growing food at home, drop by the Food Garden Life website and grab the free guide, 20 Small-Space Food-Garden Hacks.
Wondering when to plant your seeds indoors? Started too early and grown in pots too long before moving to the garden, your seedlings might run out of gas. They stall. But started too late, your seedlings might be midgets when it’s time to plant them in the garden.
The right time to start seeds indoors—and have plants that aren’t too big or too small— depends on your crops and your location. It varies from place to place, but there’s a simple way to choose seed-starting dates.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about when to start seeds indoors so that your vegetable transplants are a good size for transplanting into the garden. They also discuss direct-sowing dates for garden vegetables.
If you’re looking for more information on seed-starting, vegetable gardening, and growing food at home, drop by the website and grab the free guide, 20 Small-Space Food-Garden Hacks.
Got seedlings that look like stilt-walkers? Are your seedlings leggy? Leggy seedlings don’t have as much chance of success once you transplant them into the garden…if they even make it that far.
The best way to solve the problem of spindly seedlings is to prevent them from getting that way in the first place.
Set up your seed-starting area so you can give seedlings good light, an appropriate temperature, a suitable potting soil, and good containers.
In this episode, Donna and Steven talk about best practices so that you can grow compact, healthy vegetable seedlings at home.
If you’re looking for more information on seed-starting, vegetable gardening, and growing food at home, drop by the website and grab the free guide, 20 Small-Space Food-Garden Hacks.
And say hi—we love to hear from what you think.
Seed catalogues are arriving already! Find out what you need to know to make good seed-shopping choices.
In this episode, Steven and Donna share seed-shopping tips and talk about common seed-related terms.
Not sure if untreated seed is organic? Wondering what "heirloom" really means? Tune in to find out about seed terminology and crop related lingo.
Damson plums: Sometimes they're simply called damsons. Their rich flavour makes them a culinary gem. Even though they're not difficult to grow, the fruit is rarely available commercially.
Find out how to grow damsons.
Sarah Conrad Gothie, Author of Damsons: An Ancient Fruit in the Modern Kitchen joins us to talk about the history of damsons, how to grow damsons, and how to use them in the kitchen. (Spoiler alert: They make a marvellous gin!)
We head to the UK to chat with homesteader Kim Stoddart about how to grow a resilient vegetable garden.
We talk about:
Kim is an award-winning writer, journalist, and educator. Her new book is The Climate Change Garden: Down to Earth Advice for Growing a Resilient Garden.
Brad Lancaster is a permaculture and regenerative design consultant and educator. His specialty is sustainable landscapes.
We chat with Brad about using the landscape to harvest rainwater. And about using the landscape as a living air conditioner.
Brad also talks about a very inspiring project that he helped spearhead, a community food forest.
We talk about:
Brad is the author of Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond.
Vertical vegetable gardening squeezes more plants into a limited space by making use of space above the ground.
In today’s episode, Steve digs into vertical gardening.
We talk about:
Wally Satzewich joins us from Saskatchewan to tell us about Small-Plot Intensive Farming (SPIN Farming.)
Having studied psychology and ran a taxi franchise, Wally became interested in market gardening.
So he bought a farm.
But a conventional market garden wasn’t the right fit for him. That’s because a big operation requires hired help and capital outlay for equipment.
So Wally and his wife Gail sold the farm—and moved back to the city. To farm—to farm other people’s yards.
And in the process, Wally mapped out a system of best practices called SPIN farming (Small Plot Intensive farming.)
Today he tells us his journey, and what he’s learned along the way.
We talk about:
Andrew Huxsel joins us from St Placide, Quebec to tell us about worm composting. Also known as vermicomposting.
Andrew runs Vermicbec, a company that sells worms and worm compost.
We talk about:
It’s planting season here..and the gardening questions are pouring in.
Here’s the Q + A from our latest live show.
We talk about:
We head to Georgia to chat with 7-year-old Kendall Rae Johnson and her mom, Ursula.
Kendall is the youngest certified farmer in the state of Georgia.
At her aGROWKulture Farm she grows her favourite crops and teaches other kids about gardening.
Kendall has been on Good Morning America, The Ellen Show, and Sesame Street.
Our own connection with Kendall is that we’re fans of the organization KidsGardening. Emma and Kendall were both involved in an event that KidsGardening hosted last year.
We chat with Zach Loeks, an educator and grower who specializes in edible ecosystem design.
He talks about the two-wheel tractor, a versatile piece of equipment that he says can be used by backyard gardeners, homesteaders, edible landscapers, and in community gardens.
(If you’re about to skip this episode because you don’t want more equipment…stay a while. Zach has insights into soil and tillage too.)
In this episode we talk about:
Zach is the author of The Two-wheel Tractor Handbook.
Permaculture Orchard
We chat with orchardist Stefan Sobkowiak who replaced an organic apple orchard with a permaculture orchard at Miracle Farms.
We talk about:
When it comes to the idea of permaculture, Sobkowiak says, “It’s just applied common sense.”
Grow What's in Your Kitchen!
In this episode, we head to Vermont and get great ideas for what we can grow right now, in early spring, using what’s in the kitchen.
We talk about kitchen-scrap gardening with Em Shipman, Executive Director at KidsGardening.
Em also tells us about Kids Garden Month, with lots of fun activities and prizes for kids.
We talk about:
In this episode, we dig into some history, a sad story – and hope.
All this from a tree that was known as the redwood of the east. A towering tree prized for its wood. A tree pivotal to the forest ecosystem.
And by the 1950s, it was thought to be extinct in Ontario.
But it wasn’t extinct. And it’s not extinct now.
We head to southwestern Ontario to find out what the Canadian Chestnut Council is doing to bring the American chestnut back to the landscape.
Whether you’re a forager, interested in food forests, or want to grow nuts, this is a fun chat.
Our chestnut guide is Ron Casier, chair of the Canadian Chestnut Council.
We talk about:
Niki Jabbour on how to Make and Use Mini Tunnels
Less frost damage. Fewer bugs. Better growing conditions.
Mini tunnels have lots of advantages, and they're easy to make and use.
For this episode, we head to Nova Scotia to chat with vegetable gardening expert Niki Jabbour about how to make and use mini tunnels.
She’s the author of Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden and the creator of the online course How to Build and Use Mini Hoop Tunnels in the Vegetable Garden.
We talk about:
Homesteading as a State of Mind
We head to Minnesota to chat with small-scale homesteaders Michelle Bruhn and Stephanie Thurow.
Both are urban homesteaders, and they’ve collaborated on a book to help small-scale homesteaders, Small-Scale Homesteading.
We talk about:
Grow a Vertical Vegetable Garden
Space. For many gardeners, there’s never enough of it.
So in small spaces we train crops upwards instead of outwards. The term vertical gardening is often used to talk about adding the dimension of height to a garden.
Today on the podcast we head to Vancouver Island to chat with vegetable gardening expert Donna Balzer about vertical gardening. Steven and Donna are teaming up to hold a live online event on Vertical Vegetable Gardening on April 4, 2023.
Bay Laurel
Dave Hanson from The Grow Guide Podcast joins us to talk about growing the Mediterranean herb bay laurel. Steven and Dave are teaming up for a live online event on creating a Mediterranean Kitchen Garden in cold climates on March 14, 2023.
Oregano that Tastes Like Oregano!
We find out how to grow great Oregano with Dave Hanson from The Grow Guide Podcast. (No more bland orgegano that tastes like...hay!)
Why Now is a Great Time to Homestead
Homesteader Steve Maxwell talks about his journey from suburban Toronto to a rural homestead on Manitoulin Island.
He tells us why he think there's more opportunity than ever for homesteaders today.
Specialty Fruit Crops
We continue our chat with agronomist Laurie Brown from Cultur'Innov. She talks about 5 more minor fruit crops, how to grow them, and the opportunities they present for growers.
We talk about:
One is quite healthy but tastes awful. One is very juicy and suited to processing. And one is suited to eating fresh.
In this episode we look at 3 fruit crops: aronia (a.k.a. chokeberry), elderberry, and haskap (a.k.a. honeyberry).
Agronomist Laurie Brown from Cultur'Innov explains how to grow these minor fruit crops, talks about the opportunities for growers, and tells us where they’re at in terms of commercialization.
Cultur'Innov is a co-op focused on lesser-known fruit, nuts, and forest crops such as ginseng and mushrooms. This Quebec multi-stakeholder co-operative has both farmers and employees as members.
The co-op helps its farmer members with different aspects of production:
Steven Edholm is a California homesteader who teaches a wide variety of self-reliance skills.
He is passionate about grafting fruit trees. He's created trees that have over 100 varieties.
In this episode, he explains how to graft apple trees at home.
We talk about:
Oklahoma garden designer Linda Vater loves to create elegant edible gardens. Her work is inspired by the tradition of the potager garden.
We talk about:
Linda's new book is The Elegant & Edible Garden.
In the second part of the show we catch up with Sunday Harrison from Green Thumbs Growing Kids in Toronto. We're big fans of this non-profit that brings gardening to school kids and communities in downtown neighbourhoods.
We find out more about their model, which solves a common challenge of school gardens: Summer.
We talk about:
We chat with cold-hardy citrus expert Sam Hubert from One Green World Nursery.
Sam's interest in citrus began when he realized he could grow trifoliate orange in New England.
If you've tried trifoliate orange, you'll know it has true pucker power.
But don't worry!
Sam has lined up a mix of cold-hardy citrus: Along with fragrant and bitter citrus that add complexity to all sorts of recipes, he tells us about some eat-straight-from-the-tree cold-hardy citrus.
We talk about:
Sam also shares tips about different ways to grow and protect citrus in cold climates.
Forced rhubarb is a winter specialty that's quite different from rhubarb grown outdoors: It's milder, more tender, and brightly coloured.
Brian French and his wife Jeannette run Lennox Farm in Dufferin County, in Ontario. Along with field-grown rhubarb, they force rhubarb indoors during the winter.
Brian French explains how to force rhubarb:
(Spoiler alert: Brian tells us whether it's really necessary to harvest by candlelight, as it's traditionally done!)
To see photos of the rhubarb-forcing operation at Lennox Farm, see the blog post for this episode at Foodgardenlife.com.
We chat Teresa Zohorsky from Solana Garden in Ontario.
What started as a fascination with unusual tomato varieties grew into an addiction! Teresa specialized in heirloom and unusual tomato varieties, and now sells tomato transplants and fruit.
We talk about:
Growing Quince
Quince expert Joseph Postman joins us to talk about quince. This fragrant fruit is unknown to many in North America, and often relegated to use as a rootstock for pear trees.
Postman is a retired plant pathologist and curator of the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis, Oregon, where he helped develop a pear collection with cultivars and species from around the world.
We talk about:
Delectable Root Vegetable Recipes
Cookbook author and professional home economist Jennifer MacKenzie joins us to talk about cooking root vegetables and shares recipes from her book The Complete Root Cellar Book.
We talk about:
In this replay of a 2019 interview, we chat with Bob Bors, head of the fruit breeding program at the University of Saskatchewan.
We talk about:
Emma chats with tomato expert Linda Crago about the 'House' tomato, a compact tomato plant that some gardeners keep over the winter in the house.
They also talk about a few other unusual tomato varieties, including one of the ugliest tomato plants you'll see: 'Stick.'
How to Grow and Cook Medlar
Jane Steward, author of Medlars – Growing & Cooking, talks about how to grow medlar, how to cook medlar, and shares some fascinating medlar facts. (Find out how medlar wood was used in Dutch windmills!)
Steward planted a medlar orchard, holds the UK National Collection of medlars, and runs Eastgate Larder—a food business where she processes medlar.
We talk about:
Garden Planning and Seed Shopping
Horticulturist and vegetable-garden expert Donna Balzer talks about garden planning and shares her tips for seed shopping.
We talk about:
Daniel Speck from Henry of Pelham winery talks about growing grapes, wine, and different types of wine grapes.
We talk about:
Mark Wolbers, president of the Alaska Pioneer Fruit Growers Association, talks about growing fruit north of 60.
We talk about:
Dave Hanson from Sage Garden Greenhouses in Winnipeg, Manitoba tells us about growing herbs indoors.
Dave has joined us here on the show before to talk about exotic edibles.
Along with Sage Garden Greenhouses, he co-hosts The Grow Guide podcast.
We talk about:
Taking Math to the Garden
It started with a math lesson. A very boring math lesson.
Educator Sonya Harris was trying to get a concept to stick. And the thing that got it to stick was the garden.
A non-gardener, she saw how it could help kids take in ideas. But she wasn’t sure where to start once she got buy-in from the principal to make a garden.
So she did it with a fun celebrity event.
We talk about:
Discover the Next Great Apple
Susan Poizner, founder of Ben Nobleman Community Orchard in Toronto, talks about the upcoming apple-tasting fundraiser event for the orchard. Poizner is a college instructor, author of Grow Fruit Trees Fast and Growing Urban Orchards, and the founder of Orchard People.
At the virtual apple tasting, participants are guided through characteristics such as:
The apples in the tasting were bred in Ontario — and have not yet been released.
An apple tasting event is something you can do yourself! Poizner shares tips on how to host your own apple-tasting event.
Pruning Fruit Trees
We also talk about how to prune fruit trees:
We chat with giant vegetable grower Norman Kyle from Ennismore, Ontario.
Kyle will have a number of his giant vegetables on display at the 2022 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, November 4-13.
We talk about:
We chat with artist, filmmaker, and gardener Arlin McFarlane in Whitehorse, Yukon about gardening in cold climates.
McFarlane produced the gardening show The Curious Gardener, about Yukon farmers and gardeners.
We talk about:
Connect
The Curious Gardener: thecuriousgardener.ca
Steven explains why lemons are his top citrus choice for cold climates.
He talks about:
Grow Your Own Spices
In the first part of the show, we chat with Tasha Greer about how to grow your own spices. She’s the author of the book Grow Your Own Spices.
We chat about:
Feed Yourself for a Year
In the second part of the show we talk with homesteader, cold cellar, and food storage expert Steve Maxwell for ideas about food storage – even if you’re an urban dweller. He’s the creator of the online course Feed Yourself for a Year: Select & Store 365 Days of Food.
He talks about:
We chat with Adina Oosterwijk, the Community Greening Officer at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney, Australia.
We talk about:
We chat with author and market gardener Dani Baker about forest gardening.
Baker has created a forest garden on her USDA Zone 4 farm. She shares her tips for making a forest garden, whether it’s an acre or just a few square feet.
We talk about:
Her new book is The Home-Scale Forest Garden: How to Plan, Plant, and Tend a Resilient Edible Landscape.
2022 Tomato Roundup
Steven and Emma take a look at the 2022 tomato crop.
We chat about:
Toronto Garlic Festival
In the first part of the show, we chat with Peter McClusky about garlic. He’s the founder of the Toronto Garlic Festival, now in its 12th year.
We chat about:
Backyard Hens get Hentopia
In the second part of the show we talk about backyard hens with Frank Hyman, author of the book Hentopia.
Hyman’s approach to keeping chickens is that he aims to spend less time doing chicken-related chores than cooking eggs. And he sets up the coop so that he can go away for a couple of weeks at a time.
He tells us about:
We chat with Pittsburgh author and horticulturist Denise Schreiber about edible flowers.
Schreiber is the author of the book Eat Your Roses.
We talk about:
We chat with Darryl Nelson and his teenage son, Aden, about light and gardening under lights.
Darryl and Aden tell us how they taught children about light at a children’s event at a local museum. (Spoiler alert: it involved colourful Skittles candy.)
Darryl is an avid food gardener — and his specialty is light. His business, Just Led Us, specializes in lighting.
Land Conservation
We chat with Jack Spruill, whose farm is is on the shore of North Carolina’s Albemarle Sound, the largest freshwater sound in the world.
Spruill plans to donate the farm to an organization that will maintain public access, with the land used for low-impact farming, research, and education programs.
At the moment, some of the property is used for a community garden — and a community fig orchard.
We talk about:
Time Outdoors…and Trout
You probably never expected to hear about polar bears on The Food Garden Life Show.
Today’s show is a bit of a departure from our usual focus on plants. We continue with our focus on food, the outdoors, and the human story.
Time Outdoors…and Family
Mike Borger, lived some of his younger years as a self-described canoe bum, travelling northern waters in pursuit of brook trout. Today, he helps people plan trips to remote fishing destinations through his business Canada Fishing Guide.
We learned of Mike Borger when a friend sent us a link to a video of a great family trip: A Dad who takes his 10-year-old son on a spring brook-trout fishing trip into Algonquin Park – and they get the mother lode of fish.
In today’s show, my son Quinn, an avid angler, joins in our chat with his fishing questions.
We talk about:
Connect
Summer in the Garden
In the first part of the show, we chat with landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing, hosts of the Down the Garden Path radio show and podcast.
We talk about:
Foraged
In the second part of the show we talk about unique foods, foraging, and turning your passion into a career with Jack Hamrick from Foraged.
He tells us about:
Katie Elzer-Peters tells us about kitchen gardening. That is, gardening in the kitchen -- with leftover greens, seeds, and roots.
We talk about growing:
And saving seeds from squash and tomatoes.
Katie's is the author of No-Waste Kitchen Gardening: Regrow Your Leftover Greens, Stalks, Seeds, and More.
Container Gardening
Pittsburgh gardener Seth Finn talks about his container garden and the container garden on the roof of his daughter’s restaurant.
The restaurant rooftop garden furnished the restaurant with fresh figs and shishito peppers amongst other things.
We talk about:
A Rose Garden Re-Imagined
In this episode we speak with Alex Henderson about the rejuvenated rose garden at Royal Botanical Gardens.
Henderson, Curator of Living Collections, explains that the original rose garden, planted in 1967, was suffering from the combined effects of poor soil health, rose varieties susceptible to disease, and a ban on cosmetic pesticides.
We chat about:
Summer Vegetable Garden
In the first part of the show, we chat with vegetable gardening expert Niki Jabbour.
She shares tips about:
Jabbour is an award-winning author of four books: The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, Groundbreaking Food Gardens, Veggie Garden Remix, and Growing Under Cover. As well as hosting and producing The Weekend Gardener radio show, she is a CBC radio columnist. Her award-winning website is savvygardening.com.
Hardy Apples
In the second part of the show we talk about hardy apples with Bob Osborne.
He tells us about:
Osborne has over 40 years experience propagating and selling apples. He runs Corn Hill Nursery in New Brunswick, and is a CBC radio columnist, and the author of the book Hardy Apples: Growing Apples in Cold Climates.
Straw-Bale Gardening
In this episode we speak with Joel Karsten about straw-bale gardening.
He is the author of Straw Bale Gardens Complete.
We chat about:
Connect
In this episode we visit Misilla dela Llana in Washington State to talk about growing food year-round.
She is the host of the YouTube channel Learn to Grow, where she shares her passion for growing food.
In this episode we chat about:
Her new book is Four-Season Food Gardening: How to grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs year-round.
Year of the Garden
2022 is The Year of the Garden here in Canada.
This year of celebration includes lots of ideas to help people weave gardens and gardening into their lives.
We chat with Michel Gauthier and Cheney Creamer about their weekly Year of the Garden invitations that offer people something simple to do in the garden.
Gauthier is the executive director of the Canadian Garden Council. Creamer is the chair of the Canadian Horticultural Therapy Association.
Live the Garden Life
How do you weave gardening into your life? Tell them about it by sharing your garden and what you love about gardening, and use the tag #yearofthegarden.
Connect
Eating Locally in Yukon
Suzanne Crocker joins us from Dawson City, Yukon to tell us about the year she spent knowing where all the food on her plate came from.
There was no salt, no sugar, and no caffeine. There were three hungry (and sceptical) teenagers, and a reluctant husband. There was no grocery-store food in the house for for the entire year.
Food Discoveries
Crocker talks about some of the techniques she learned during the year:
Gardening North of 60
With only a couple of months of frost-free days, the gardening season is short and intense. The intense light causes some cool-weather vegetables such as spinach to bolt.
Crocker talks about crops that do and don’t grow in Dawson — and about gardening with moose!
From Medicine to Film
Crocker was a rural family doctor before becoming a filmmaker. She captured the year of her family eating locally in her new film, First We Eat.
This isn’t the first time she’s turned the lens on her family. Her first feature documentary, All The Time In The World, shared her family’s experience leaving home to live in the remote Yukon wilderness for 9 months.
Cold-Hardy Fruit and Nuts
In the first part of the show, we chat with veteran fruit growers Allyson Levy and Scott Serrano, founders of Hortus Arboretum and Botanical Gardens.
Their focus is cold-hardy fruit and nuts with good disease resistance and minimal pest problems — plants suited to home gardens and landscapes.
They tell us about:
Their new book is Cold-Hardy Fruits and Nuts: 50 Easy-to-Grow Plants for the Organic Home Garden or Landscape.
Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators
In the second part of the show we talk about native bees and how we can support them in our gardens, with bumblebee researcher Sheila Colla and native plant expert Lorraine Johnson.
They tell us about:
Their new book is A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators.
Today we hang out with 2 urban gardeners who brainstormed 101 ways we can grow food and beauty in urban gardens.
Teri Speight and Kathy Jentz talk about creative ways that city dwellers can make productive, functional, and beautiful gardens.
Jentz is a journalist, editor, and frequent radio and TV guest. She is also the editor and publisher of Washington Gardener magazine.
Speight is a speaker, writer, and podcaster. She’s the former head gardener of the City of Fredericksburg, founding farmer of a CSA, and an estate gardener.
Gardener and author CaliKim joins us from southern California to talk about growing vegetables in raised beds.
Grow Vegetables in Raised Beds
Raised beds can have a number of advantages:
How to Make Raised Bed Gardens
CaliKim says that raised bed gardens don’t have to be a box or a square. “Think outside the box,” she advises.
A raised bed garden can be tailored to the yard and to the gardener. That could mean:
Gardening with Chickens
In the first part of the show, we chat with chicken expert and author Lisa Steele.
Steele is a Maine Master Gardener and 5th generation chicken keeper.
In this episode, she tells us about:
Grow Fruit Trees Fast
In the second half of the show, we chat with fruit tree expert Susan Poizner, founder of Orchard People.
Poizner is the host of The Urban Forestry Radio Show, a college instructor, and the author of the award-winning book Growing Urban Orchards.
In this episode, she tells us about:
Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
Jere Gettle from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds joins us to talk seeds, seed saving, and seed collecting.
He loves meeting gardeners, chefs, and farmers who share old seed varieties and the stories behind them.
Lifelong Passion for Heirloom Seeds
Gettle started his seed business as a teenager, with a 12-page photocopied price list.
Today, the seed company tests over 4,000 heirloom seed varieties each year.
Gettle says that for a variety to make the cut for the catalogue, he’s looking for 3 things:
What do you Need to Raise Chicks?
We’ve talked about backyard poultry here on the show before, but we’ve never explored raising chicks.
Our guest today is Dr. Scott Gillingham from Guelph, Ontario. He’s a poultry veterinarian who works with big flocks. But he’s also a homesteader with his own small flock.
Commercial scale and homestead scale agriculture are often in different silos. His passion is bridging the silos.
We’ll hear about:
Observation is Very Important
We’ll also talk about something that is very useful tool when raising chicks: A 5-gallon bucket.
Gillingham explains how he uses a simple bucket to sit on and observe what’s up. It works in big commercial barns; it works with small home flocks.
He says that when chicks have everything they need you’ll see them eating, drinking, sleeping, and playing. If not — you’ll see huddling for warmth or with wings up trying to cool themselves.
Book about How to Raise Chicks
Gillingham’s book is Raising Amazing Chicks: The First Seven Days.
Make Seed and Nut Oils at Home
Our guest today makes oils from a wide range of nuts and seeds.
Bevin Cohen runs Small House Farm in Michigan, where he specializes in oils, seeds, and cosmetics.
Home Oil Pressing
Cohen says home oil pressing gives fresh oil with superior flavour to oils that are mass produced.
He explains how to press small batches of oil at home.
Oil Seeds for Northern Gardeners
In this episode, Cohen talks about how to press oil from:
Crooked Farmz
In the first part of the show, we chat with Sean Smith from Crooked Farmz in Toronto.
Smith talks about his journey into growing food, learning about soil and composting, and the beginnings of his Toronto microfarm.
Compost Tea by Subscription
He calls himself the “brewer” at the farm. The brew? It’s compost tea.
Along with selling at farmers markets, Smith has taken another route to selling the compost tea: by subscription.
Home Composting Tips
Some of Smith’s top composting tips:
Honey Bees and Native Bees
In the second half of the show, we chat with Missouri beekeeping expert, author, and TEDx speaker Charlotte Wiggins.
Wiggins talks about attracting native bees to gardens, gardening for both native and honey bees, and shares tips and ideas for people thinking about getting into beekeeping.
Tips for People Interested in Keeping Bees
Looking for more beekeeping guidance? Wiggins’ latest book is the award-winning A Beekeeper’s Diary: Self-Guide to Keeping Bees.
105 Million Head of Livestock
Jarrod Goldin, one of the founders of Entomo Farms, talks about how he and his brothers got into the business of raising food-grade crickets, the use and benefits of crickets as a food source — and about using cricket frass as a fertilizer.
Cricket Frass Fertilizer
Frass: It’s the word for insect excrement. If you’re wondering what cricket frass looks like, Goldin describes it a sand-like in texture and light coloured.
Entomo Farms initially treated it as a waste product. They gave some away, and stored some on the farm.
After seeing how well vegetation grew where they had piled the frass, and after hearing anecdotally about its use as a plant feed, Entomo Farms began to study the use of the frass as a fertilizer.
Initial trials on fields of hay have shown surprisingly large yield increases, along with longer-term residual effect.
Entomo Farms cricket frass is now available commercially.
Sharing with Community
Susan Antler joins us to talk about the Plant • Grow • Share a Row program.
This program helps groups and individuals to grow extra vegetables to share with nearby food banks and soup kitchens.
First Step
As a first step, Antler suggests connecting with a local food agency to find out what is needed, and also find out details such as delivery days and times.
Another way to get started is to connect with a group of like-minded people in the community who want to grow to share.
Plant • Grow • Share a Row Program
The goals of the program include:
Winter-Hardy Vegetables
Wolfgang Palme joins us to talk about winter-hardy vegetables and year-round growing. He is an agronomist, and head of the Research Institute of Horticulture in Austria.
Accidental Discovery
Palme’s journey into winter vegetable growing started by accident one year when autumn weather was unusually cold. Some of the test plots that he had not yet harvested survived, much to his surprise.
So he started to investigate cold-hardy crops.
He was surprised to find that that published frost hardiness recommendations are often incorrect.
Not New
Palme points out that growing cold-tolerant crops and using simple protective measures is nothing new. This knowledge has simply faded with the advent of large-scale, high-tech growing.
Low-tech, low-input approaches are often well suited to small farms and home gardeners. As well as costing less, there is a smaller environmental footprint.
Surviving Winter
Palme explains that frost is not the main challenge for overwintering greens: It’s moisture and disease.
A covering such as a hoop house, tunnel, or cold frame can keep leaves dry and reduce susceptibility to disease. In combination with a covering, good ventilation is important, to let humid air escape.
Edible Landscapes
Lindsay Stuijfzand talks about how she weaves her passion for growing food into her work as a landscaper.
Pretty Tasty Gardens
Stuijfzand is a horticulturist who runs Pretty Tasty Gardens, an edible-landscape garden company in Toronto.
Roots in Landscaping
When she first got into the industry, she worked in conventional landscaping — with a focus on ornamental plants and hardscaping.
As her interest in edible plants grew, she branched off into edible landscaping. It’s a path that makes her a bit of an outlier—or trailblazer—in the landscape industry.
Grow Food Indoors
In the first part of this episode we chat about growing food indoors with Kim Roman, a garden educator and square-foot-gardening instructor.
Her new book is How to Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round.
Regenerative Gardening
In the second part of this episode we find out about regenerative gardening from Stephanie Rose. She is a permaculture designer and herbalist.
Her new book is The Regenerative Garden.
The Best Way to Grow Tomatoes
There’s more than one way to slice a tomato; there’s more than one way to grow a tomato.
Growing tomatoes is like many things in life…there are lots of ways you can tackle it.
Do you have a favourite way? Or a tomato-growing tip handed down in your family?
Different Strokes, Different Folks
In this episode, we take a deep-dive into growing tomatoes with two experts who have very different approaches to growing tomatoes.
Tomato Talk
Lamp’l and LeHoullier talk about:
They also share tips for new gardeners. “Don’t get hung up on the destination, but learn to love the journey,” says LeHoullier.
Growing Epic Tomatoes
Lamp’l and LeHoullier bring together their tomato-growing experience in an online course called Growing Epic Tomatoes. Registration is open now.
One Farm, Many Farmers
Daniel Brisebois joins us from La Ferme Cooperative Tourne-Sol near Montreal.
The farm operates as a workers co-operative, where farm owners are the workers.
When the farm started in 2005, sales were through both farmers markets and CSA baskets. Today, sales are entirely through CSA baskets.
Work-Life Balance
There is a focus on work-life balance. Vacation and parental leave — challenges for many farmers — are possible under the co-operative model.
“It’s always been important to us that we don’t burn people out.”
Seeds and Breeding
Seed sales have always been part of the farm business, but were a small portion in the beginning — $700 in the first year.
Today, the farm sells more seeds than vegetables, with an online seed store and seed racks in over 150 retail locations.
Spreadsheet Maniac
Brisebois believes in the importance of making business decisions based on data.
He uses spreadsheets to collect and understand farm data. He shares his passion for spreadsheets through his Farmer Spreadsheet Academy.
Daniel Brisebois website: goingtoseed.net
La Ferme Cooperative Tourne-Sol: fermetournesol.qc.ca
Farmer Spreadsheet Academy: farmerspreadsheetacademy.com
Beneficial Insects
If you’ve heard the terms beneficial insects, beneficial bugs, or biological control, these all relate to this ideas of letting some bugs help us deal with the challenges that other bugs cause for us.
In commercial horticultural production, beneficial bugs are big business. They’re used for some field crops, in greenhouses, in nurseries.
In Gardens
Beneficial bugs can help to control infestations of insect pests in gardens too. The gardener just needs to know where to look…and how to garden in a way that’s friendly to these beneficial bugs.
Pittsburgh-based horticulturist and award-winning author Jessica Walliser joins us to talk about attracting beneficial insects to gardens.
Today we talk about wind tunnels, horticultural therapy, landscaping with edibles, and gardening with kids.
Our guests today are professional garden educators who have an infectious love of gardening.
We start in Prince Edward County in Ontario, chatting with consultant and horticulturist Charlie Dobbin about using edible plants in ornamental gardens, gardening in windy areas, and birds in the garden.
Then we head to Puerto Rico to chat with Perla Sofia Curbelo about horticultural therapy, gardening and wellness – and about gardening with kids!
Wood chips: They’re abundant, inexpensive, and renewable. There are many possible applications in horticulture.
Uses of Wood Chips
Wood chips have many uses in gardens, farms, and landscapes:
Ben Raskin’s new book is The Wood Chip Handbook.
He sees a lot of untapped opportunity for wood chips in horticulture. He uses wood chips at the agroforestry farm he manages. And through his work as the head of horticulture and agroforestry at the Soil Association, talks to growers and researchers working with wood chips.
The garden is the bridge.
For clients of The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, one way to connect with the surrounding community is through gardening.
Atullya Singh, CAMH Garden Co-ordinator, talks about the Sunshine Garden, located at the main hospital site in downtown Toronto.
When neighbours drop by for the weekly market where CAMH clients sell produce grown on site, Singh considers it as an opportunity to make stronger bonds with the community. “My mission is only accomplished if I have these customers connected to the actual garden,” he explains as he describes taking them over to see the garden.
Horticultural Therapy
Along with community connections, the garden is a way of providing horticultural therapy for CAMH clients. Singh explains that for some people, the social aspects are therapeutic. For others, it’s having something to focus on. For others, its being outdoors.
The garden is a joint venture between CAMH and a Toronto organization called Foodshare, which supports community-based food initiatives.
Beekeeping with a bees-eye view
Our guests today help us explore bee-friendly beekeeping techniques.
Common Sense Natural Beekeeping
Kim Flottum is editor emeritus of Bee Culture magazine. He teaches beekeeping courses, lectures on beekeeping, and writes about beekeeping and the business of bees. He also hosts the Beekeeping Today and Honeybee Obscura podcasts.
Stephanie Bruneau is a beekeeper, herbalist, and artist. She runs The Benevolent Bee, where she sells honey and bee-related products. She lectures on bees and bee-derived products.
In their new book, Common Sense Natural Beekeeping, they explore ways to keep bees while minimizing human intervention.
Gardening for the Blind
Christine Nichols and Gord Johnston share ideas to help blind and low-vision people garden, and talk about the gardens at the Canadian Hellen Keller Centre, which serves the deaf-blind community.
They talk about:
Bird Gardening
Steven Price, past president of Bird Studies Canada, talks about how to attract birds to gardens and how to make gardens bird-friendly.
He talks about:
We wrap up the 2021 season of podcasts with 12 ideas for ways that you can give something — something other than material “stuff” — to the gardeners in your life.
Rob Avis from Verge Permaculture shares tips on passive solar greenhouses.
Avis says a key consideration when designing a passive solar greenhouse is whether to optimize the design for light or for thermal efficiency. He says it’s a trade off between light and heat.
Knowing the balance between light and heat will help inform design choices such as glazing material and the amount of glazing surface.
From the Ground Up
Pamela Warhurst from the Incredible Edible Network talks about turning grey spaces green by helping people believe in themselves.
The original Incredible Edible project in her hometown started with “propaganda” gardens on public land. It evolved to include edible plants around the community health centre and collaborations with businesses in the community.
Today the Incredible Edible Network includes communities around the world.
Top Tips
Warhust says to start by helping people to help themselves.
Here are her top two tips to get started:
Grow Now
Emily Murphy believes individual gardeners doing small things can add up to big change.
Murphy is a garden designer, educator, and author with a background that includes botany, ethnobotany, environmental science, and ecology. It gives her a unique vantage point to teach people about gardening and the environment.
Murphy is the creator of the website passthepistil.com, and author of Grow What You Love, 12 Food Plant Families to Change Your Life.
Her new book is Grow Now: How we can save our health, communities, and plant – one garden at a time. In it, Murphy looks at how individual gardeners can make change positive change in the world.
Green Thumbs Growing Kids
Sunday Harrison gets city kids gardening. She’s with Green Thumbs Growing Kids, which gives hands-on garden and food education to urban school kids.
Along with school gardens, she talks about microgreens, a fast maturing crop for kids. And a new project is kids growing trees from seed — trees that will line Toronto streets.
Since Harrison joined us on the show a year ago to talk about school gardens, demand for school gardens has been huge.
Have you ever thought of changing your relationship with food?
Gary Dickenson put food front and centre in his new life as a homesteader. He tells us about his move from a seaside town in the UK, where he worked in marketing, to a remote corner of northern Latvia.
Dickenson says that the thing he best likes about homesteading life is the freedom it offers him.
Busy Homestead
It’s a busy homestead. Projects include:
The Wateroo Region School Food Gardens project has built 35 school gardens, touching 20,000 students in this region of Ontario.
Allison Eady, program co-ordinator, explains that it provides information and curriculum ideas to educators, grants for school gardens, and direct programming for youth.
Garden-Based Learning
Eady sees school gardens as an opportunity for teaching more than gardening. She says garden-based lessons can be used for many subjects, including art, math, and science.
Launch a School Garden
“The best chance for success is when there’s a network of people who support it,” says Eady as she talks about successful school gardens.
She says it’s important to find allies in the community, whether it’s organizations or community members. That’s because school populations change fairly quickly: kids (and parents) move on, and staff are shuffled between schools. That makes the stability of community support important for the long-term success of a school garden.
Eady says not to worry about being a garden expert when starting a school garden. “It’s about figuring it all out together,” she says.
Youth Programming
During the COVID pandemic Waterloo Region School Gardens has pivoted to provide more direct programming for youth, including career mentorship and student-run markets.
Another initiative helps youth explore food-related topics of interest to them. Youth research a topic, and then create blog posts or videos to teach other youth, with the support of program staff.
Stop and smell the roses? Community event helps people to stop and smell…apples.
Susan Poizner recently helped 50 Torontonians to stop and smell…apples. Poizner, a fruit-tree-care educator and college instructor with a passion for growing fruit trees, organized a virtual apple-tasting event as a fundraiser for her local community orchard.
Virtual Apple-Tasting Event
Poizner visited an orchard specializing in heirloom apple varieties to get enough apples for 50 participants.
Participants received a paper bag containing the six apple varieties for the tasting. Each was marked with coloured stickers for identification.
To help participants think about what they were tasting, the event was facilitated by an apple sommelier, a researcher specializing in taste perception.
Poizner explains that researchers testing new apple varieties for consumer acceptance might consider upwards of 50 things. For this event, participants were asked to share feedback on four things: overall apple intensity, honey, floral, green-herbaceous.
Apple Varieties
The tasting event took attendees to different parts of the world with six heirloom apple varieties.
Grow Quince in Cold Climates
Imagine a job that revolved around a plant you’re passionate about. What plant would it be for you?
For Nan Stefanik that plant is quince.
She first tasted quince as an adult, on an overseas trip. After returning home, she was surprised to learn it grew locally in New England.
With a long history of its cultivation in New England, knowledge of quince had receded over time.
#GrowQuince
Stefanik’s business, Vermont Quince, makes quince paste, quince preserves, and other specialty quince products using New-England-grown quince.
Along with food products, she has made it her mission to collect and share quince information.
Using a specialty-crop grant, she started a #GrowQuince campaign to share quince-growing information.
Find more information about how to grow and how to cook quince on the Vermont Quince website.
What’s next? Stefanik and her son have acquired land for a quince education centre where they can combine a shop, demonstrations, and hold scion exchanges.
A fabric showing the different types of quince used in a recent quince taste test.
Toronto & Golden Horseshoe Gardener’s Journal
Our second guest today is also passionate about what she does. Helen Battersby produces the Toronto and Golden Horseshoe Gardener’s Journal.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the journal, which includes information about frost dates, seed-starting dates, plant and seed sources — and also has space to record garden successes and failures.
There’s a deeply human story behind the journal, the story of a mother helping a son. Battersby shares that story, and talks about what’s new in the 2022 edition.
A wood-chip compost pile steams up this hot tub.
Today we visit a Colorado garden at an elevation of 6,500 feet.
Tom Bartels harvests 1,000 pound of fresh produce a year from his 1,300-square-foot garden, even though he has only 130 growing days.
Bartels uses a large amount of compost in his garden to maintain healthy soil. Much of that compost comes from wood chips.
But wood chips do more than feed his soil: They generate heat as they decompose. He can heat an outdoor hot tub through two Colorado winters with a pile of wood chips. No combustion is needed.
Heat from Wood Chips
Bartels says that many arborists pay to discard wood chips. By composting them, he removes them from the waste stream and gets both heat and compost for free.
The wood-chip pile used to heat the hot tub is approximately 6 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter. As he builds the pile, Bartels wets the wood chips and coils plastic piping within the pile.
The added moisture makes conditions suitable to microbial growth, while the water-filled plastic piping collects heat generated within the pile as microbes break down the wood chips.
Over two winters, the decomposing pile of wood chips generates the heat equivalent of burning 7 cords of wood. The temperature inside the pile gets as high as 150°F, and it stays warm enough to heat the hot tub for about 18 months.
From Heater to Compost
As microbial action slows down and the temperature within the pile drops, Bartels adds worms to speed up the composting process.
After another two or three months, the wood chips have been transformed into finished compost—worm castings—ready for the garden.
The wood chips that heated the hot tub for two winters are turned into 50 wheelbarrow loads of worm castings.
Fred Hornaday is bullish about bamboo and it’s many uses. From fuel to food to fibre, he sees it as a versatile crop with environmental benefits.
He shares his passion for bamboo through his bambubatu website, which has information about bamboo, how to grow it, how to use it, and its lore.
Many Uses of Bamboo
Bamboo is an extremely versatile crop that be be made into:
Bamboo in Cold Climates
There are many types of bamboo that survive in cold climates. Many of these cold-hardy bamboos are in the gemus Phyllostachys or Fargesia.
Bamboos in the former are “running” bamboos. Hornaday says most cold-hardy bamboos are running bamboos…those fast-spreading types that gardeners either love or hate.
But the Fargesia bamboos are clumping, making them desirable for gardeners not interested in containing their bamboo patch.
Bamboo as an Agricultural Crop
Hornaday is hearing from a lot of people interested in farming bamboo commercially in North America. At the moment, he says, there’s a need for processing infrastructure. Farmers growing bamboo for commercial processing could also harvest shoots as a specialty food crop.
As a perennial crop that can grow on marginal land, it can be used to stabilize soil.
Wendy Kiang-Spray’s children don’t recognize canned bamboo shoots. That says a lot about the difference between fresh bamboo and its canned cousin.
Kiang-Spray, author of The Chinese Kitchen Garden, grew up eating fresh bamboo, one of the many crops her father grows in his large garden.
She talks about growing, harvesting, and cooking bamboo.
Grow Bamboo
There are two groups of bamboo:
Kiang-Spray points out that running bamboo might not be suited to small yards—at least not without measures to contain it. “It would be a big mistake in my suburban backyard; all my neighbours would hate me,” she says, as she talks about how quickly running bamboos can spread. A running bamboo spread to her yard from a neighbour’s yard over 100 feet away…not exactly a slow-growing plant.
Today on the podcast we hear how one person’s journey into food gardening evolved into a documentary film — and then we find out how to use garden covers to take vegetable gardening to another level.
In My Backyard: A Documentary about Urban Growers
Torontonian Jamie Day Fleck converted her entire suburban backyard into a kitchen garden. That was the starting point of her documentary, In My Backyard, where she looks at ideas that urban growers have dreamed up in her hometown of Toronto.
Fleck talks about the urban growers she met while filming, how their gardens were different — and what they had in common. She also reflects on the future of urban growing.
Growing Under Cover with Niki Jabbour
We head to Halifax for food-garden inspiration from author, broadcaster, and vegetable gardening expert Niki Jabbour.
Jabbour talks about gardening in a polytunnel, reflects on her 2021 garden, and shares tips about how to use covers in the garden to grow more, protect crops from weather, and minimize pest problems.
Her newest book is called Growing Under Cover. It’s a must-have for serious vegetable gardeners.
Pawpaw. It’s a fruit that has a long history in Ontario.
Yet it’s not well-known, nor do most people realize it grows wild in some parts of the province.
Paul DeCampo, Toronto’s pawpaw ambassador, planted his first pawpaw trees in 1994. “Nobody I knew had ever heard of this fruit,” he says.
Working in the food industry, he has had the opportunity to share his pawpaw fruit with chefs. Describing how, years later chefs will still talk about a fruit he gave them, he says, “Even if you’re someone who spends all day tasting the most interesting things, these are particularly astounding.”
Why Grow Pawpaw?
Besides the fact that the fruit is almost never available for sale, DeCampo says a pawpaw tree is a good fit for the challenges of a city yard.
That’s because:
DeCampo’s Pawpaw Tips
DeCampo suggests thinking of a forest-edge garden when planting pawpaw. For urban gardeners, the shade of the forest is replaced by the shade of buildings.
Other tips:
Where have all the newspaper boxes gone?
If you’re in western Pennsylvania, don’t be surprised if you find a dark green newspaper box with a sign in the window that says “Doug’s Free Seed Shack.“
Pittsburgh garden expert Doug Oster, a newspaper industry veteran, is using old newspaper boxes to get seeds to as many people as possible. He wants more people to garden. And he wants vegetable seeds easily available in communities where access to fresh produce is limited.
Having seen pictures online of seed-library boxes, he thought about doing something similar in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
Oster, who jokes about not being handy, decided building boxes wasn’t his thing. Instead, he repurposed old newspaper boxes. All it took was spray paint and a trip to the print shop for signs.
After the first summer of the project, Oster says he’s pleased with the results. The seeds are getting into the community. He’s getting good feedback. And people are asking if they can share seeds in the boxes, which is exactly what he wants. He wants the seed shacks to be like a library, where people can take seeds—but can also return seeds if they wish.
Old becomes new.
When David Goodyear began to think about food costs, sustainability, and how he and his family ate, he sat down with older relatives to hear how people used to eat. “Everybody ate root crops because they grew it themselves,” he was told.
Goodyear says there are many root crops that grow well in Newfoundland. It didn’t seem right when his grocery store had carrots from abroad. Nor did it didn’t seem sustainable.
Change in Diet Turns to Growing
Goodyear and his family started by changing their diet and eating more root crops. The food bill went down. They found more locally raised choices.
Then they decided to grow their own root crops.
Today they grow root crops, greens, tomatoes, strawberries…even figs. The next project? A food forest.
As Goodyear explains, his is a challenging climate. His town, Flatrock, is close to St. John’s, the third windiest city in the world. He has 110 frost-free days a year. “Winter starts in November; it doesn’t end till the end of May,” he says.
The focus on growing their own food led to an interest in storing the harvest. “If you’re going to grow a massive amount of root crops you need somewhere to put them,” says Goodyear as he talks about his root cellar.
Goodyear and his family switched up their diet; and have now switched up their life. Their homestead includes the gardens, a root cellar, a greenhouse, and a passive home.
Coconut. Almond. Green fig.
These are some of the flavours people use to describe what they taste when Chef David Salt serves something flavoured with fig leaves.
Salt cooked with fig leaves in London, England, where he had a ready source of fig leaves in a nearby churchyard.
Upon relocating to Toronto, he didn’t know where to find them.
And that’s when host Steven Biggs received an enquiry that read:
Salt got some fig leaves, and invited Biggs to the restaurant to taste his fig-leaf ice cream, fig-leaf cheese—and a fig leaf grappa!
Cooking with Fig Leaves
Salt says that the most classic method of using fig leaves is in the same way as banana leaves — as a wrap. When used as a wrap, they protect the enclosed meat or fish, keeping it moist. They also impart a unique flavour.
When cooking with fig leaves, the leaf is used to wrap food, or an infusion used to pull out the fig-leaf flavour.
The flavour is delicate. Salt finds it pairs well with light-flavoured meats or fish; and light-flavoured fruit such as strawberries and blueberries.
But he says to be creative: He’s paired fig leaves with hot chocolate, a strong taste, and found worked well.
His favourite dish made using fig leaves is ice cream.
For people using fig leaves for the first time, he explains that heat can help to bring out the flavour—but to avoid boiling, which results in a stewed-vegetable flavour. When time permits, a cold infusion is best.
Drifter’s Solace
Salt is gearing up to create fig-leaf flavoured foods this fall at his brand new chef’s-table style restaurant in Toronto. It’s called Drifter’s Solace.
Toronto has lots of big restaurants. Drifters Solace is at the opposite end of the spectrum: It’s small and personal, for groups of 6-8 people.
Mushroom identification can be daunting for beginners, with Latin names and spore prints used to differentiate hard-to-identify mushrooms.
In his new book, How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying: An Absolute Beginners Guide to Identifying 29 Wild Edible Mushrooms, Frank Hyman focuses on edible mushrooms that are easy to identify.
Easy-to-Identify Edible Mushrooms
Hyman suggests starting with easy-to-identify mushrooms when learning to forage — mushrooms that can easily be distinguished from non-edible ones.
Here are some of the mushrooms that he talks about in this episode:
More than Dinner
Hyman points out that along with the culinary uses of foraged mushrooms, there’s another reason people might consider foraging: It’s a fun outdoor activity; it’s time outdoors, in nature.
Joseph Lofthouse had hundreds of jars of seed around his house when he began market gardening.
He saved seeds from each variety…a time-consuming task.
Today he has far fewer jars of seed. Today he practices landrace gardening.
Lofthouse no longer focuses on keeping pure varieties, but instead uses genetically diverse lots of seed.
His is the author of the book, Landrace Gardening: Food Security through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination.
What is Landrace Gardening
Landrace gardening is not new. It’s a traditional method of growing using locally adapted, genetically variable seeds. The genetic variability makes it more likely that some plants will perform well even if there are adverse conditions.
“What I’m doing was standard practice through all of human history up until about 60 years ago, until people started farming with machines instead of human effort,” explains Lofthouse.
How to Start Landrace Gardening
Not having pure varieties feels strange to some gardeners. But Lofthouse points out that uniformity isn’t important in small-scale operations or home gardens.
Here are his tips for gardeners who want to try landrace gardening:
Lofthouse notes that there are some crops for which he avoids certain mixes. For example, he does not mix his popcorn with his sweetcorn; or his hot peppers with his sweet peppers.
Julie Brunson didn’t garden as a child, but began to garden and grow food as an adult. When her husband was in a dark place and found solace in their garden, the garden not only fed them, it helped him to heal.
That was the start of a journey into teaching kids about regenerative gardening, and also using the garden as a way to touch on a host of other topics including social justice, mental health, and nutrition.
What is the ideal plant for a small yard?
The ideal plant for someone wanting something ornamental – yet edible too?
And, just to complicate things, it has to be good for a garden where there are lots of squirrels.
Claus Nader found that hot peppers were that ideal plant.
Nader was gardening in a small yard that was frequented by marauding squirrels. While the squirrels sampled many of the things he grew, they didn’t eat his hot peppers.
So Nader made hot peppers the focus of his garden, growing them in pots on his balcony, deck, and dotted around his small yard.
Along with a passion for growing peppers in containers, Nader is also interested in unusual varieties and culinary uses and traditions. (His “Tummy Torch” sauce is magic on a piece of barbecued chicken.)
Chris Smith remembers his first okra encounter well. It was at a diner in Georgia.
A native of the UK, where growing conditions are not conducive to heat-loving okra, the vegetable was foreign to him. So was the cuisine of the American south.
His recollection of that first taste of okra? Slime and grease.
While not enamoured by his first okra experience, a later gift of a dry okra seed pod—a pod with a story—ignited his interest in okra.
He began to grow it and to experiment with it in his own kitchen, using pods, leaves, flowers, stalks—even the seeds.
As that interest and his knowledge of okra grew, Smith started to teach others about it. In his quest for even more okra information, he’s spoken with food historians, researchers, farmers, and chefs.
He brings it all together in his book, The Whole Okra, A Seed to Stem Celebration.
Jennifer Lauruol weaves together permaculture concepts, native plants, food plants, forest gardening, and educational elements in her regenerative-garden design work in Lancaster, England.
Her passion is edible ornamental gardening—especially in front yards.
Lauruol also uses many native plants in her designs. She finds that effective design helps people interpret the use of native plants as a garden.
Edible Front Yards
Lauruol recalls a neighbour’s concern that children might steal the fruit that Lauruol was growing in her front yard. Yet that was exactly her goal: that children would enjoy the fruit and learn where it comes from.
She says that a well-planned garden can have a succession of edible fruits and ornamental plants. Another way to weave edible plants into a landscape is to create an edible hedge.
While edible front gardens might not appeal to everyone’s taste, Lauruol does have a tip for gardeners worried about sceptical neighbours: “I do know what to do about the diehards: give them strawberries,” she says.
Native Plants
Lauruol explains that having a mown strip around plantings of native plants helps people understand it as something intentional. “If you create a frame around it then people can understand it,” she says.
Her own design with native plants is strongly influenced by Brazilian artist, painter, and landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, who used big blocks of colour in his work. She says planting native plants in large drifts, as opposed to mixed plantings, is an approach that is less likely to be interpreted as sloppy.
Sensory Gardens
Lauruol creates sensory gardens for people with special needs. Her focus on sensory gardens stems from her own experience with her daughter Marie, who has special needs. “She comes alive when she is in nature,” says Lauruol, adding, “For me, the base of a sensory garden really needs to be a wildlife garden.”
Meet Neal Peterson, the Indiana Jones of pawpaws. He was so moved by the taste of pawpaw that it became his life’s work.
There were improved pawpaw varieties in the early 20th century—but the fruit fell into obscurity.
Peterson dug through the literature to uncover past pawpaw breeding work, and then set out to track down lost varieties for use in his own pawpaw breeding work.
About Pawpaw
Peterson says that in the wild, pawpaws are an “understorey” tree, often growing in shade of larger forest trees. When they are in shady locations they become lanky and do not produce a lot of fruit.
But given more light, they produce much more fruit.
Two genetically distinct trees are needed to produce fruit.
Pawpaws sucker extensively, which can give rise to groves of pawpaw that are all clones from a single parent tree.
Peterson says that in the wild, pawpaw fruit can be quite seedy, with up to 25% seed by weight. In his work he has bred varieties with more fruit and less seed. His best variety has 4% seed by weight.
Today on the podcast we head to Reno, Nevada to hear about Urban Roots, an organization that uses garden education to help change the way people eat. It takes gardens to classrooms…and uses the garden as a classroom at its urban teaching farm.
Fayth Ross and Elsa DeJong talk about the summer farm camp, programming for home-schooling families, and collaborations with local schools.
Farm Camp
During the summer and school breaks, Urban Roots runs programming for children at its urban teaching farm.
DeJong explains that there is a different theme each week. Themes include:
Woven into this farm camp curriculum are literature, art, engineering, music — and cooking.
Farm School
This program for home-schooling families takes place twice a week during the academic year, and includes lessons, games, and farm chores.
In this rebroadcast of the radio show that aired live on July 7th, we talk about soil and no-till practices with market gardener, farm journalist, and podcaster Jesse Frost.
He’s the host of The No-Till Market Garden Podcast, and he and his wife are no-till farmers at their Rough Draft Farmstead in Kentucky.
Frost’s new book is The Living Soil Handbook.
Choosing a No-Till Model
Frost says that there is no one-size-fits-all model of no-till growing.
It depends on the context — things such as soil, rainfall, climate, and the crops being grown.
No-till is as varied as the growers using it.
3 Principles to Grow By
A successful no-till system goes beyond not tilling.
Frost suggests three principles growers and gardeners can use to guide their approach to tillage:
Where is the sweet spot that gardening meets the natural world…so that gardening is ecological? Our guest today explains that ecological gardening is all about balance.
Matt Rees-Warren says, “Your garden is a pocket of wild; it will never be purely wild, because it’s an interaction between ourselves and nature. But it can be much more regenerative.”
Rees-Warren is a professional gardener and garden designer who’s passionate about the difference that individual gardeners can make to strengthen biodiversity and lessen environmental degradation.
He says gardening is one way individuals can make a tangible difference to the environment. Don’t wait for governments to act, he says. Start making changes now, in your own garden.
Rees-Warren is the author of The Ecological Gardener: How to Create Beauty and Biodiversity From the Soil Up.
Ecological Gardening
“If we design our gardens to be regenerative, the result will be functional, beautiful spaces full of life and vigour, robust enough to face the challenges of the future and elegant enough to beguile all those who walk among them,” says Rees-Warren.
But ecological gardening is more than a philosophy. There are many practical things we can do in the garden.
Here are some of the ideas discussed:
Our guest today, Chef Alan Bergo, looks at vegetables through the eyes of a forager. He’s passionate about using parts of the plant that are often overlooked.
Chefs using a whole animals might use the term nose-to-tail cooking. Bergo takes this approach with his vegetables, using a root-to-flower approach.
Bergo is the author of the new book, The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora: Recipes and Techniques for Edible Plants from Garden, Field, and Forest.
Often-Forgotten Plant Parts
Bergo talks about using squash tips in the kitchen. “The squash is a perfect example of how foraging and looking for different ingredients changed how I consider vegetables that I thought I knew,” he says.
His advice for cooking squash shoot tips? Cook gently and delicately. Steam them, or blanche for one minute…or barely wilt them in a pan.
Other often-forgotten plant parts include:
Foraged Ingredients
Thoughts on Flavour
Bergo talks about flavours that are shared amongst plants in the same families, recounting the time he served dolmas made using galinsoga leaves, only to have people ask him if they contained artichoke.
Another example of a shared flavour is the hint of almond that shines through in plum kernal oil or saskatoon berries.
Bergo’s Top Tips
“I can’t hold them back sometimes,” says physiotherapist Nancy Durrant as she tells us about the garden at the long-term care home where she works.
The residents she’s talking about are mainly in their 90s. And the vegetables and herbs they grow and harvest become part of the menu at this Toronto long-term care home.
An avid gardener herself, Durant says the home had nice grounds previously…but she saw the space and imagined a garden. The management agreed with her idea of a garden, and two years ago, Durrant, with the help of staff members who built raised beds, set out with a core group of residents to garden.
She points out that gardens are an excellent fit for what she does as a physiotherapist because gardening is exercise. It’s good for the body, and good for the mind.
Growing Interest
There is a core group of residents who, along with staff, run the garden. Durrant says other residents take part, especially with harvest.
Along with vegetables, they grow a number of herbs. “We have a few herbs which I think is really good because it hits more senses,” says Durrant.
There are a number of ways they grow interest in the garden:
Age-Appropriate Garden Tips
Durant says that the gardens are a combination of in-ground plots, raised beds, and containers. The desk-height raised beds make it possible for gardeners with differing physical abilities to take part.
Find a Way
Durrant says that there are ways to help those with disabilities continue to garden.
She gives the example of a resident who recently had a heart attack, but who can still cut herbs in the raised beds, and can drops bean seeds into a pre-dug trench.
Today on the podcast we visit the Black Creek Community Farm in Toronto.
The farm is located along the northern boundary of the City of Toronto, in a densely populated neighbourhood where Toronto meets one of its northern suburbs, within walking distance of the Jane and Finch neighbourhood.
If you’re from Toronto, you’ll know Jane and Finch — at least by name — from the media attention it gets.
The good things going on in the area — and that there is a vibrant community here — don’t get a lot of media attention, so it might be a surprise for some people to connect Jane and Finch with urban farming, with growing food, and with growing community through food.
“When you do something from the heart, when you’re passionate about what you do, I think you can do big things.” Mildred AgsaoayUnique Property
Founded in 2012, the Black Creek Community Farm is on an eight-acre property that includes three acres of farmland, a heritage farmhouse and barn, and forest that extends into the Black Creek ravine.
The property has a market garden, a food forest, greenhouses, an outdoor classroom, an outdoor brick pizza oven, a medicine-wheel garden, a mushroom garden, a chicken coop, and beehives.
At the Farm
There are a number of programs at the Black Creek Community Farm.
Sunshine Community Garden
Beyond the farm site, the Black Creek Community Farm has been involved in the creation of the Sunshine Community Garden on the property of a nearby high-rise apartment building. Agsaoay explains that the garden is more than just growing food: It’s a way to build community.
“Growing food is a great connecctor for people. It builds relationships and trust.” Mildred AgsaoayIn a broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we head to California to talk with Christy Wilhelmi, a self-described garden nerd with a passion for growing fruit and vegetables, and an expert at small-space edible-garden design.
In the podcast she shares tips about:
Today on the podcast we head to Montreal to hear about City Farm School, an urban-agriculture apprenticeship program.
Jackie Martin, a co-ordinator with City Farm School, explains that this not-for-profit program uses space provided by Concordia University. In addition to greenhouse space on the 13th floor of a downtown building, the “farm” is located at the Loyola Campus, in a residential neighbourhood. She says that the market garden is roughly the size of a soccer field — and there’s a medicinal-plant garden too.
Apprenticeship Program
The program, which is open to anyone in the community, has two streams: a market-gardener apprenticeship and a medicinal-plants apprenticeship.
The program begins in the greenhouse in March, with seed-sowing for transplants the farm and for a plant sale. In May there is transplanting and seeding at the market garden.
The community market opens in June. Students take part in harvesting for the market, preparing the harvest for sale, and staffing the market. Later in summer they save seeds for the following year.
Before graduating students are expected to teach a free workshop that is open to the public. Martin says that past topics have included seeding, fermentation, and pest control — with some of the more memorable topics being herbal medicine for pets and edible weeds.
Community Outreach
The weekly market has been an important way to connect with the community. “Our neighbours are our biggest supporters, and always have been,” says Martin. She explains that many of their neighbours now grow their own kale, after she sent them home from market with their own kale seed. It’s not a move that increases kale sales — but it’s in keeping with their mandate to encourage gardening in the city.
Martin says former students have gone on to become farmers, teachers, and community organizers. Many of the organizations they now partner with were created by former students.
Today on the podcast we talk about “foodscaping,” gardening that combines the ornamental with the edible, also known as edible landscaping.
Foodscaper Jeremy Cooper says he likes to work with plants that have multiple functions, including ornamental, herbal, medicinal, ecological, and edible.
Cooper worked in a number of jobs before focusing on foodscaping. In hindsight, he sees that he was circling this intersection of food, gardening, and the environmental before he even realized it.
Part of what he does as a foodscaper is to educate clients about smarter ways to garden. For example, many times he’ll find people battling plants that are edible. “That’s food!” he tells them, as he helps them see the plants in another light.
Foodscaping Tips
Cooper’s tips for gardeners interested in foodscaping:
Today on the podcast we explore the idea of healing through growing.
We travel to Israel, to meet Nachum Lamour-Fridman. He uses plants and growing as part of the programming at the Borgani community centre he founded for PTSD sufferers and their families.
Lamour-Fridman’s dream is to create a model of a sustainability centre that can be used to help PTSD sufferers everywhere.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Lamour-Fridman realized the power of growing when, in the depths of his own PTSD, being outdoors and amongst plants was one of the things that helped him rise up and begin to heal.
He says that he was sometimes unable to sleep or eat, making it difficult to function. Yet living in a kibbutz, where there is a strong culture of work, he says that those who can’t work can be ostracized. “It affected my soul; it affected my ability to engage reality,” he says as he talks about how PTSD affected his ability to live and work in his own community.
He recently spoke to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, where his key message was for it to act now to help those with PTSD, likening untreated trauma to a terminal cancer or an auto-immune disease.
Borgani
Lamour-Fridman explains that Borgani translates into “pit garden,” a fitting name given that the centre is located in a what was a stone quarry in Roman times.
The old quarry had previously been used by the community as part of a cattle farming operation, but for the past 20 years was used as a garbage dump.
Lamour-Fridman began to clean it out.
At first, he wasn’t able to stay in the enclosed space for long, and might only stay 5 minutes. Now it’s become a place of comfort and healing for him. “Today when I go there it’s like a stone womb,” he explains.
The Borgani sustainability centre brings together agriculture, technology, and education. It includes a greenhouse and farm, selling food baskets to the community. There is also a composting facility, and studios where participants make furniture and art.
“It’s not a charity,” he explains, pointing out that participants take part in the full cycle of growing, tending, and selling. He notes the importance of participants seeing the value in what they do.
Looking ahead, he says, “We have big plans.” These plans include yoga and therapy through movement and music.
“When you start, it doesn’t matter if it’s a half-a-metre garden or 20 acres. When you start, don’t stop. Because nature doesn’t stop and life doesn’t stop.”
In a broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we head to North Carolina to chat with beekeeper Justin Maness.
Backyard Honeybees
Maness began working with honey bees after finishing college, when he joined a research team studying the links of neonicotinoid pesticides and honey bee mortality. After that, he worked in for-profit and non-profit ventures with bees, and eventually founded Buddha Bee Apiary.
He says that at Buddha Bee Apiary his goal is to spark curiosity about bees, educate people about bees — and grow a crop of pollinator advocates.
Buddha Bee Apiary places honeybee hives in urban and suburban backyards through its Host-a-Hive program. It also offers a mentorship program for those interested in one-on-one learning.
Living Big in a Small Space
We also hear about the life that Maness and his family live in their converted school bus.
Maness says that their interest in the school-bus lifestyle started after his wife, Juby, bought a small school bus to ferry merchandise for her business to events. After a couple of nights on the road, they realized that they liked the mobility — and eventually bought a larger bus to convert into a home.
Maness says that having a small home means they spend more time outside, whether working in the garden, eating, or hanging out.
He and Juby share their approach to life and food in their new cookbook, Tiny Home, Big Flava’.
Today on the podcast we meet an avid gardener who grew up in downtown Toronto, in a family that didn’t garden. And for a long time she didn’t garden either.
But then one person sparked her interest in gardening, and dropped by with a bucket of llama poo to help her make and plant her very first garden.
Julia Dimakos hasn’t looked back. Her kitchen garden has grown to 7,000 square feet.
Now, she is on a mission to spark the interest in gardening in other people.
Today on the podcast we hang out here in Toronto to speak with Isaac Crosby. Isaac is the Urban Agriculture Lead at Toronto’s Evergreen Brickworks.
During our chat, Isaac told us that, “Part of wisdom is not keeping it to yourself.”
He shares with us wisdom that has come to him through Ojibwa teachings. Isaac is from the Ojibwa of Anderdon, a small farming community In south-western Ontario. He takes the seven grandfather teachings and explains how we can interpret them when gardening.
His advice for new gardeners? “Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, because that’s where you learn.”
The 7 Grandfather Teachings
The 7 Grandfather teachings are about:
Today on the podcast we head to Ohio to find out more about potager gardens. Jennifer Bartley tells us about this traditional kitchen garden style from France, and how to create the same sort of food-producing garden with seasonality and a sense of intimacy at home.
Bartley writes, “The potager is more than a kitchen garden; it is a philosophy of living that is dependent on the seasons and the immediacy of the garden.”
Bartley is a landscape architect, whose firm, American Potager, designs gardens inspired by the grand French kitchens.
In a broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with herbalist Bevin Cohen about using, growing, and foraging herbs. He talks about culinary, medicinal, and cosmetic uses.
He also talks about his journey into the business of herbs and building his herb business.
Cohen is also an author and seed saver. His new book is The Artisan Herbalist: Making Teas, Tinctures, and Oils at Home.
Today on the podcast we head to Quebec City to talk about civil disobedience: Civil disobedience with vegetables.
Marie-Hélène Jacques from the not-for-profit organization Les Urbainculteurs – which translates into urban growers – joins us to talk about moving the needle on growing food in Quebec City.
The urban agriculture scene in Quebec City is hot right now. Jacques says, “It’s not like a wave of interest that’s happening now in gardening — it’s a tsunami of interest.”
Today on the podcast we head to Montreal to hang out with Shawn Manning from Urban Seedling. He tells us how, 10 years ago, he channelled his love of growing vegetables into a business specialized in creating vegetable gardens.
Along with helping people create and grow vegetable gardens, another goal was to improve food security in the city. He realized that installing gardens for people who can afford a gardener probably doesn’t move the needle much on food security…but he’s tweaked the business to include corporate gardens—and use that as a way to improve food security in Montreal.
We chat with forager and a wild-food educator Mike Krebill in Iowa.
Krebill shares foraging tips, his insights into teaching, his approach to outdoor education—and stories from the years he spent teaching a grade seven elective course on foraging.
Krebill’s new book is A Forager’s Life: Reflections on Mother Nature and my 70+ Years of Digging, Picking, Gathering, Fixing and Feasting on Wild Edible Foods.
We chat with forest garden designer and edible landscaper Mark Lord in south-western Germany.
“A garden should be a holistic experience, feeding all of your senses, and your mind,” says Lord. He believes food gardens can be about more than just eating—that they can also be visually appealing, bio-diverse, and appeal to other senses such as smell.
We also digress into his experiments making liqueur including linden, serviceberry, cherry…and nettle!
We chat with author, horticulturist, and plant breeder Joseph Tychonievich.
Tychonievich shares his top tips for new vegetable gardeners.
As an avid food gardener, he grows many different food crops. But every so often he focuses on a particular crop and grows as many varieties as he can. He recently emerged from a cucumber phase…and as a teenager, he went through a pineapple phase.
He gardens in his own yard, a neighbour’s yard, and even inside in a closet.
Tychonievich’s new book is The Comic Book Guide to Growing Food: Step by Step Vegetable Gardening for Everyone.
We chat with Arlene Hazzan Green and Marc Green, co-owners of The Backyard Urban Farm Company (BUFCO) in Toronto about their mission to help people grow food at home.
They are edible landscapers who help people plan, plant, and maintain food gardens. They have even ventured into wheelchair-accessible beds.
From Film to Farming
Hazzan Green explains why, after over 30 years in the film industry, they decided to venture into the business of edible landscaping, saying, “It was the lifestyle it was offering us that had such an appeal.”
In hindsight, she realized that a lot of the film scripts she had been pitching had a farming theme. “I realized that what I was trying to do in my writing was create the life that I want to live,” she says.
We head to San Diego, California to chat with Mim Michelove and Nan Sterman, who share a love of growing food and involvement in food activism.
As unemployment in their community grew during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as the local food supply became shaky, they decided to use their connections with commercial growers, in the community, and with social service agencies to help people feed themselves. The result was the Grab & Grow Gardens program.
Grab & Grow Gardens
The Grab & Grow Gardens kits contain two transplant-size vegetable seedlings in a carry bag, along with growing instructions in English and Spanish. “We do this in Mim’s backyard,” explains Sterman, as she talks about assembling the kits with a small army of volunteers.
Kits are distributed to those in need through hunger relief agencies, school districts, and affordable housing organizations.
At the time of the interview in February, 2021, they had distributed over 8,500 kits.
Initially, everything for the kits was donated. Securing donations of vegetable transplants was possible because they are located in an area with a large vegetable-transplant industry.
As demand for the kits grew, and as they were able to access grants and donations, they began to purchase seed, allowing them to choose the most suitable crops and varieties.
We head to Montana to chat with Tim Southwell of ABC Acres, the permaculture homestead he and his his wife Sarah created.
Southwell, who grew up in suburban Houston, explains that it was while living in Kansas City and growing a front-yard vegetable garden that he was introduced to permaculture and many of the concepts that he uses today on the farm.
In addition to livestock, they have a crater garden, a food hedge, chinampas, and a sunken greenhouse with citrus, bananas, figs, and papaya.
The unique microclimate created by the crater garden permits them to grow apples, peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots in their harsh climate. He explains, “Every fruit tree we have, we build with it a microclimate.”
We chat with Vermont garden educator and radio host Charlie Nardozzi, who discusses his journey into no-dig gardening—and why it’s good for gardeners, the soil, and the environment.
He also tells us about his new book, The Complete Guide to No-Dig Gardening.
Nardozzi hasn’t always been a no-dig gardener. He used to garden with a gas-guzzling tiller. He shares ideas for gardeners who want to create a new no-till garden, as well as ideas about how gardeners with existing beds can transition them into a no-till system.
In the fig segment, we chat with a New York fig grower who has "stepover" figs. In the tomato segment, we explore the idea of "keeper" tomatoes.
What inspires youth and children to garden? In today's show we speak with a 15-year-old on a mission to inspire other teens to garden, and find out about an organization helping people garden with children.
We speak with 15-year-old gardener Vivien Wong in New York State, who fills her small suburban yard with fruit and vegetables. She has been documenting her gardening journey with the goal of inspiring other teens to grow their own food. Along the way, she won a prize at the fair!
In the second half of the show we chat with Em Shipman, Executive Director of Kids Gardening, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to get kids gardening.
“It’s our job and our passion to support those people that we know are working really hard to provide important, meaningful education opportunities for kids,” says Shipman.
The Kids Gardening website has lesson plans, ideas for activities, and information about grants for community and school gardens.
With a reputation for unusual and wildly popular tomato varieties, tomato breeder Brad Gates focuses above all else on flavour.
He didn’t start out working in tomato breeding. While working in the landscape industry, he was asked by a friend to help sell heirloom tomatoes at a farmers market. Gates loved the energy at the market—and he was fascinated with the unusual heirloom tomatoes.
So he started growing, and, eventually, breeding tomatoes.
“I was looking for the holy grail that would have my customers come crawling back on their hands and knees.”
What’s old is new: Cold cellars are back.
Transition Guelph launches an initiative to build local food-storage capacity through cold cellar education and installations. We find out what they’re doing—and get tips to help you make a home cold cellars.
We are joined by Steve Tedesco and Ian Findlay from Transition Guelph. Tedesco is a Guelph-area farmer, and Findlay is a contractor specializing in cold cellars.
Why Cold Cellars are Back
Findlay says to think of a cold cellar as a passively-chilled walk-in cooler. He says people with the added food-storage capacity of a cold cellar can store more homegrown produce, and can also stock up on locally grown produce when it is in season.
Tedesco points out that having a cold cellar can change the way meals are planned. “It becomes an active participation sport to manage your cold room and plan your meals around what you have so that nothing goes to waste,” he says.
Tedesco explains that the Transition Movement is a global movement focused on building local resilience. Transition Guelph formed in 2009.
We chat with vegetable gardening expert Niki Jabbour about using garden bed covers. She is the author of the new book, Growing Under Cover: Techniques for a More Productive, Weather-Resistant, Pest-Free Vegetable Garden.
Jabbour is a Halifax-based, award-winning author, host of The Weekend Gardener radio show, and one of the experts behind the gardening website Savvygardening.com.
She discusses the benefits of using garden bed covers, choosing covers suited to your situation, how to boost insulation of cold frames, tips for people thinking of a greenhouse, and greenhouse covering materials.
Why use Garden Bed Covers
Jabbour says that there are many reasons to use garden bed covers. “It’s about gardening smarter, not harder,” she says.
Reasons to use garden bed covers include:
Types of Garden Bed Covers
Jabbour points out that not everyone has the space or money for a glass greenhouse. But there are many other options to provide cover for crops. These include:
Complete show notes at foodgardenlife.com/show/garden-bed-covers
It’s an astringent. And it might already be growing in your yard or nearby. Today we take you beyond eating raspberry fruit to explore the herbal and medicinal properties of the plant itself—along with its relatives in the genus Rubus.
Ever heard of raspberry-leaf tea? Tune in, and find out about the many uses of this plant.
The 2020 Herb of the Year is Rubus. The genus Rubus includes raspberries and blackberries.
Conrad Richter from Richters Herbs joins us to delve into the history, herbal, and medicinal properties of the approximately 700 species of the genus Rubus.
Richter, who trained in botany, also has a keen interest in history. “I do straddle those two worlds very well,” he says.
He says that the earliest recorded use of Rubus dates back 10,000 years. And 2,000 years ago, the ancient Greeks recorded its use for treating diarrhoea. As an “astringent,” a class of herbs that shrinks tissue, it’s medicinal properties were well documented.
Fast forward to the present day, and Richter says that there is interest in using Rubus leaves in creams to “tonify” the skin, and in the health benefits of the anthocyanins in the fruit.
Chef and author Jennifer McLagan joins us to talk about bitter foods, explaining what bitterness is, and how to effectively use bitter in the kitchen.
McLagan is the author of the book, Bitter: A Taste of the World’s most Dangerous Flavor, with Recipes.
McLagan recalls the grapefruit that her mother served her as a child. They had a slight bitterness—an “edge.” Her mother balanced that bitterness with a sprinkle of sugar on top.
McLagan says bitterness has been bred out of modern grapefruit. Now they’re sweet and pink…with no bitterness.
That loss inspired her book. “They don’t taste like grapefruit any more,” she says.
McLagan says that many people confuse bitter with sour. It is different from sour—one of the four basic tastes, along with sour, sweet, and salty.
“It adds a complexity and depth to the food,” says McLagan, explaining that using bitterness—like salt—makes food more interesting and less flat.
She gives the example of crème brulée: The caramel topping has a bitter edge, which plays well with the sweet, rich pudding below.
McLagan says that bitter is not as popular in North American cuisine as it is in other parts of the world. “The American palate is very geared towards sweet,” she explains.
Bitter pairs well with fat and with sweetness. “Bitter and fat are the 2 perfect things; one rounds out the other,” she says.
We’re joined by tomato expert Craig LeHoullier to talk about the Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project, preserving seed varieties, and to find out what’s new in his garden.
LeHoullier, an avid seed saver with a passion for saving and sharing heirloom tomato varieties, says that his seed collection contains somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 seed packets.
The project began in 2004. LeHoullier was getting a lot of questions about compact varieties at his annual tomato-plant sale.
He explains that dwarf tomato varieties, which grow vertically at approximately half the rate of other indeterminate tomato varieties, already existed at the time. But these dwarf varieties were obscure and hard to find.
He teamed up with a friend in Australia to start breeding new dwarf tomato varieties. That initiative soon grew into an open source, volunteer-run, worldwide breeding project. The goal was to breed stable, open-pollinated, dwarf tomato varieties from which gardeners could save their own seed.
The project began releasing dwarf tomato varieties to seed companies in 2010.
By 2020, 135 varieties had been released.
The Johnny Appleseed of cold-hardy citrus, Stan McKenzie, joins us to talk about how to grow citrus in cold climates.
McKenzie talks about how he became a "citraholic" and started down the path of growing citrus on his USDA Zone 8 farm and nursery in South Carolina. McKenzie Farms specializes in citrus suited for cold climates.
We’re joined by Pittsburgh-based horticulturist and author Jessica Walliser to talk about her new book Plant Partners: Science-Based Companion Planting Strategies for the Vegetable Garden.
There is a lot of folklore that finds its way into discussions about companion planting. Walliser explains that her hope is to reboot the term “companion planting” by looking at it through a scientific lens.
Walliser says that companion planting is purposely planting two or more plants close together to get some sort of benefit.
Companion planting does not have to mean putting two plants together at the same time, however; it can also mean growing plants in succession.
Common terms used in science that overlap with the idea of companion planting are:
Intercropping
Plant partners
Interplanting
Polyculture
In her book, Walliser has chapters on seven different benefits of using plant partners in the vegetable garden.
Soil preparation and conditioning
Weed management
Support and structure
Pest management
Disease management
Biological Control
Pollination
We head to Kansas to speak with Lynn Byczynski and Will Nagengast about market farming, cut flowers, farm journalism, Italian culinary traditions, and seeds. Their family business is Seeds from Italy.
Byczynski founded Growing for Market, a magazine for market farmers. She is the author of Market Farming Success, The Flower Farmer: An Organic Grower’s Guide to Raising and Selling Cut Flowers, The Hoophouse Handbook.
Byczynski says that when the farm wasn’t enough to support the family, she branched out into producing Growing for Market using her background in journalism and newspaper reporting.
She found that the writing and farming fed off of each other: While interviewing people for articles, she heard ideas that they could try on their farm; and things they were doing on their own farm could be shared with other farmers in Growing for Market.
She says the hair on the back of her neck stood up when an advertiser for her Growing for Market newsletter told her that the sale of his Italian seed distribution business had fallen through. “I could just feel this was the next thing we were going to do,” she says.
The first thing that the family did after taking over Seeds from Italy was to take a trip to Italy to meet the owners of Franchi Seeds, the company whose seed they would be distributing in the United States.
Nagengast and Byczynski say that once home, they immersed themselves in the varieties they were selling by having weekly Italian-themed meals cooked with the Italian varieties they distribute.
In a broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with herb expert Sue Goetz about growing herbs in containers. Goetz is an award-winning garden designer, writer, and speaker. Her motto is “Inspiring gardeners to create.” She gives us creative ideas for growing herbs in containers and for using herbs. Goetz also shares ideas from her new book, Container Herb Garden Complete: Design and Grow Beautiful, Bountiful Herb-Filled Pots.
In Emma’s tomato segment, we talk about some of Emma’s top tomato-variety recommendations for 2021.
In the Biggs-on-Figs segment, we head to the Toronto suburb of Vaughan to get the scoop on the fig tree at Angelo’s Garden Centre. Over the years Steven has had lots of people ask whether he knows of the tree. He sure does—he’s long admired it. He finds out about the history of the 19-foot-high fig tree from Carlo Amendolia, owner of Angelo’s Garden Centre.
We speak with author, educator, and edible-ecosystem designer Zach Loeks from Eastern Ontario.
A former market gardener, Loeks has converted his farm into the production of berries, fruit, and edible perennials.
He is also the director of the Ecosystem Solution Institute, which is involved in education projects such as an edible-biodiversity conservation area near Ottawa, Ontario. The site includes herbs, fruit trees, berry bushes, and ground covers, all labelled with interpretive signs.
He believes that many small actions can add up to big change. In his new book, The Edible Ecosystem Solution, he talks about ways to grow edibles, even in small spaces.
We speak with farmer and plant breeder Joseph Lofthouse in northern Utah about breeding tomatoes, and his work with The Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato Project.
Lofthouse focuses on breeding landrace crop varieties that are are locally adapted and genetically diverse.
Living in a mountain valley with cold nights and only gets 100 frost-free days, his work breeding tomatoes started out with the simple goal of breeding varieties suited to his growing conditions. “If I wanted to grow tomatoes, I basically had to breed my own tomatoes,” he explains.
He has found much more than cold tolerance.
We are joined by Helen Battersby, a Toronto garden blogger, garden coach, and publisher of the Toronto & Golden Horseshoe Gardener’s Journal.
Battersby talks about the difference between the Canadian and American garden zone systems—both of which provide gardeners with a zone number to use when selecting hardy plant material. The lower the number, the colder the garden zone.
She points out that while her garden is a zone 6 using the Canadian system, it’s a zone 5 using the American system.
The Canadian system uses a number of variables including lowest mean temperature of the coldest month, highest mean temperature of the hottest month, precipitation, and the number of frost-free days.
The American (U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA) zones are based solely on average annual minimum temperatures.
She likens the Canadian system to a Betamax; and the US systmem to the VHS.
We chat with Ben Caesar about perennial vegetables and salad greens. Caesar, who runs Fiddlehead Nursery, specializes in perennial edibles.
He says that in Western cultures, annual vegetable crops are the norm. But with a shift in thinking, it’s easy to incorporate perennial vegetables into the diet.
That shift to perennial vegetables is good because not only can they be easier for gardeners to manage—they require less soil tilling, which means less release of carbon that’s locked up in the soil.
Tomato expert Linda Crago joins us to talk about how to create a new tomato variety.
At her Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in the Niagara Region of Ontario, she raises hundreds of varieties of tomatoes.
This past summer, Emma grew a couple of tomato varieties that Crago released. She tells us what she did to get them—and shares tips on creating new tomato varieties.
We speak with Colorado gardener and backyard plant breeder Andrew Barney about his work developing a red-podded pea, cold-adapted watermelons, and new tomatoes.
Barney connects with other plant breeders through seed swaps, social media groups, and online forums. He says many people who are interested in plant breeding and preserving plant varieties are happy to share plant genetics.
While some approaches to breeding require more effort on the part of the gardener, others, such as the landrace-style breeding he's using for his watermelons, take less work to manage.
His advice to would-be backyard plant breeders is, "Just try it!"
We’re joined by Saskia Vegter, the Urban Agricultural Co-ordinator at 401 Richmond, a former industrial building that has been transformed into a cultural hub in a dense downtown Toronto neighbourhood.
The rooftop at 401 Richmond has three garden areas: A deck-patio area, which includes trees and shrubs in containers; an extensive sedum green roof; the “mini farm,” which has fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers for cutting growing in containers.
Small-scale farming expert joins us to talk about his road to profitable small-scale farming. He’s an innovator who is out to remake agriculture.
He talks about his own farm, Les Jardins de la Grelinetteas well as his work in training a new crop of farmers at Ferme des Quatre-Temps.
Fortier is quick to point out that a profitable small farm is not an oxymoron.
His book, The Market Gardener, has sold more than 200,000 copies and been translated into 7 languages.
Heirloom vegetable grower and tomato expert Linda Crago joins us to talk about seed lingo, saving seeds—and sharing seeds.
An avid seed-saver, she concedes that she has a whole freezer dedicated to seeds alone.
Crago operates Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm in the Niagara Region of Ontario. She also organizes an annual Seedy Saturday seed swap and event in her community.
In our second chat with Kentucky farmer and author John Moody, we talk about elderberry.
Moody is the author of The Elderberry Book, in which he explores not only the cultivation and use of elderberry, but also it’s rich history.
Moody talks about how, on a small farm such as theirs, 30 bottles of specialty elderberry syrup brings in roughly the same amount as what a conventional farmer might get from an acre of corn.
We chat with Kentucky farm educator and homesteader John Moody to learn how a junk-food-eating city kid ended up as a farmer and farm educator. Moody, who had been heading towards a career in academia so that he could teach, says that in hindsight, “I got a farm so I can teach.”
After a health scare, Moody and his wife began to change their eating habits, buy more whole foods and locally grown foods. With the change in food buying habits, he noticed that his food bill went way up. “The farmers aren’t getting any of this money I’m spending,” he thought.
His interest in growing food evolved out of his interest in healthy food—especially after meeting farmers who were sceptical about cutting their use of external inputs. So he set out to do it himself.
In this interview that first broadcast live on the Food Garden Life Radio Show in 2018, we chat with nut-growing expert Ernie Grimo from Grimo Nut Nursery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
When Grimo set out to grow nuts in his yard, he couldn’t find local nurseries selling plants. That was the beginning of his foray into collecting, breeding, and selling nut trees.
At his farm and nursery in Niagara, Grimo grows a wide variety of cold-adapted nuts including heartnut, butternut, Persian walnut, black walnut, pine nut, hazelnut, chestnut, beech, hickory, and pecan. He also has crosses such as the “hican,” a hickory-pecan cross.
We chat with Sunday Harrison, the founder and executive director of Green Thumbs Growing Kids, a non-profit organization that provides hands-on garden and food education to urban school children.
Harrison says that she started the program as an after-school program in a local Toronto park, but after hearing students say, “I really want a garden at my school,” she partnered with local schools.
Now in its twenty-first year of operation, the program has grown to include placements for post-secondary students. Her top tip for those thinking of starting a program: “Start small and do it well.” She says that this attracts other people.
Greg Neal from North Vancouver tells us how he got the bug for growing citrus. At last count he had 19 varieties around his suburban yard, some in the ground, some in pots, and some in his greenhouse. He takes delight in seeing the look of surprise on the face of delivery people who notice lemons, tangerines, and limes growing in his front yard.
Neal says that memories of lemons growing around his aunt’s California yard inspired him to look into growing lemons at home. He learned that Meyer lemons are quite cold hardy, and, seeing Meyer lemon plants for sale in 2006, came home with three plants.
He kept one plant in the house; it died. But the two that he stored in his cold garage for the winter lived.
He now grows Meyer lemon directly in the ground, covering it with a string of incandescent lights and fabric for winter protection. The lights emit just enough heat to get the plant through the coldest days.
He explains that the fruit takes about one year to mature—so it’s important to protect it from freezing over the winter.
Toronto master preserver and pastry chef Camilla Wynne joins us to talk about preserves—and about her Quince Scrap Jelly.
Wynne hates to waste a scrap of quince because it’s full of flavour and pectin—and it’s hard to find locally grown quince in Toronto.
Wynne, the author of Preservation Society Home Preserves: 100 Modern Recipes, writes about preserving and teaches preserving classes.
In a broadcast that originally aired on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with Jude Schuenemeyer from Colorado about the history of apple cultivation in Colorado, his work finding and preserving heritage apple varieties—and the recent “rediscovery” an a variety that he and his wife Addie have been working to track down and identify for 20 years: the Colorado Orange.
Schuenemeyer, a Sherlock Holmes of the apple world, scours historical horticultural records and talks to old timers, as well as using technology such as genetic fingerprinting.
We dig into the art and science of preserving—and talk about preserving apples— with Sarah Page, a contributor to the latest version of the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving: 400 Delicious and Creative Recipes for Today.
Page, who works as a recipe developer and tester, is a trained consumer chef and home economist. She loves creating new recipes with local and seasonal harvests.
Page’s top tips for successful preserving are to use a tested and approved recipe; and use fresh produce.
Page, who grew up in a household where her mother served applesauce regularly, loves to work with apples and shares a few of her favourite ideas:
Apple-cranberry butter, preserving apples for pie filling later in the year, apple sauce with a savoury flavour (e.g. chipotle), and leaving the skin on pink apples when making apple sauce to give the sauce a pink colour.
We chat with Montreal fig enthusiast—and fig tourist—Michal Hacio. Hacio says that his passion for growing figs and meeting other fig growers started when he spent time living in Vancouver, where an Italian neighbour introduced him to fig growing.
Hacio says that in a country of immigrants such as Canada, people often bring something to connect them with their home country. For many people, that something is a fig plant.
He finds that a shared interest in figs is a good way to connect with other people.
Hacio has overwintered figs many different ways in Montreal. His key message for would-be growers is that there is more than one solution to overwintering figs in a cold climate. “Be creative,” he advises.
We head to Minnesota to chat with Mary Schier, the editor of Minnesota State Horticultural Society’s magazine, Northern Gardener—a magazine dedicated to gardening in USDA Zones 3 and 4.
Schier is a Minnesota gardener and the author of 'The Northern Gardener, From Apples to Zinnias, 150 Years of Garden Wisdom.'
She gardens in St. Paul, where she crams as many plants as possible into her urban lot. Schier says that St. Paul is an urban heat island, so creative gardeners often try to push zone 4 limits.
Schier says that when it comes to growing fruit, it’s very important to take the time to research varieties well suited to cold zones. For example, the Evans Cherry does very well in Minnesota. Sweet cherries do not. Another important tip in cold zones is not to start seeds indoors too early. Schier only plants out her tomato transplants on June 1—so she works back from that date and starts her transplants later than gardeners in warmer zones.
We chat with Winnipeg-based garden educator Dave Hanson, co-host of The Grow Guide Podcast, and founder of Sage Garden Greenhouses.
Hanson, who spent time in his youth in a tropical climate, has been growing herbs and spices since his childhood, eventually working at a herb nursery as a teenager.
He loves growing exotic edible plants. His Winnipeg climate means that frost-sensitive plants can come out June 1, and be back under cover in time for the first fall frost in late September. That doesn’t stop him.
Hanson gives his tips for growing guava, yacon, starfruit, cinnamon, curry leaf, and black pepper.
Ever thought you could get five garlic harvests from your garden?
Today on the podcast, garden expert Doug Oster joins us from Pittsburgh, PA to talk about growing and cooking with garlic.
Oster, who loves growing and cooking with garlic, shares his love of garlic by taking seed garlic to friends…earning him the nickname “Dougy Garlic Seed.”
Oster recently gave two presentations about garlic at the Virtual Tomato and Garlic Days hosted by Phipps Conservatory: How to Get Five Harvests from Growing Your Own Garlic, and Garlic is Love.
Oster explains that there are 5 possible harvests when growing garlic: greens in the spring, scapes, bulbils, fresh garlic, and the main harvest.
We chat with Ryan Cullen, co-owner of City of Greens in Bowmanville, Ontario, about starting a regenerative farm and homestead.
Cullen, who joined us for the last episode to talk about the food-forest garden at Durham College, is in the process of turning a 10-acre property into a regenerative farm and homestead, and is creating a market-garden business as part of that plan.
We chat with Ryan Cullen, the field supervisor at Durham College, about the newly planted food-forest garden at the college’s Whitby campus.
Cullen explains that the idea behind the food forest is to grow a mix of food-producing species, layered in the same way that a forest is. There’s a herbaceous layer at ground level, a shrub layer, and a canopy layer of trees above. With time, the food forest becomes self-maintaining and, with the appropriate mix of plant species, can have self-renewing fertility.
The top layer of the food-forest garden is the “canopy” layer. Cullen says that they planted this layer with fruiting tree species including cherries, plums, persimmon—and even a hawthorn.
The lower herbaceous and shrub layers, which are still being developed, will be a polyculture—a mix of different plants. Along with edible properties, plants in the lower layers might make available soil nutrients (deep-rooted plants bring up nutrients,) supply nutrients (pea shrubs capture nitrogen from the air,) and attract pollinator species.
Lower-layer plants include bee balm, chamomile, rosa rugosa (for rose hips), strawberreis, and blueberries. Cullen says that this list will grow, as there is still a lot of planting to do in this layer.
We chat with Steven Peck, president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, the Toronto-based industry association that supports the North American green roof and green wall industries. He talks about about what goes into a green roof, what’s new in green roofs, and how home owners can find out more about green roofs.
The need for green roofs goes beyond creating more space to garden. Peck talks about the urban heat island effect, which can make urban areas up to 10°C warmer than rural areas. He explains that the effect is the result of the removal of vegetation—which is replaced by surfaces that radiate heat.
He says that vegetation is like a natural form of air conditioning—and green roofs keep buildings—and the city—cooler.
We chat with Jack Spruill in North Carolina about the community fig orchard on his family farm and about his work developing a conservation project to protect the farm from future development.
Spruill explains that the farm grows very good figs. They were an important crop for his grandparents, who bought the farm in 1914. But by the time his father took over the farm, things were starting to change. The figs still grew well…but they were no longer a money-making crop.
So his father started to let people come to pick figs for free. Along with fresh eating, there is a local tradition of making fresh figs into fig conserve.
The fig orchard was a community fig orchard even before he started to call it such.
Spruill says that these days, some people come to pick a few figs for fresh eating—and some still come for figs to make fig conserve.
In a broadcast that originally aired on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with author Amy Goldman about growing melons, growing tomatoes, her passion for seed-saving, and about her research when writing her books The Melon and The Heirloom Tomato.
The Melon: Goldman took nine years to write this tribute to melons that is filled with mouth-watering pictures and information about selecting varieties, growing, seed-saving, and melon recipes. Did you know that charentais melons are the true cantaloupes; and that they’re different from the American muskmelons that we mistakenly call cantaloupes?
Heirloom Tomatoes: Was the original Brandywine tomato pink-fleshed and potato leaved or red-fleshed and regular-leaved? “This is something that only a gardening nerd would care about,” says Goldman. Incidentally, it’s the latter.
We chat with Paige Lockett, the director of operations for The PACT Urban Peace Program in Toronto about garden-based experiential learning for at-risk you and about a Community Compost Exchange Program.
Through its Grow to Learn partnership with the Toronto District School Board, PACT provides experiential garden-based learning at three gardens and one orchard located on school properties. The gardens are used to teach subjects as diverse as English as a second language to carbon sequestration. Lockett says that the vermicomposting program is especially popular.
The community compost exchange program provides participants with bags in which they can contribute home kitchen waste for composting. In exchange, they are given “PACT dollars” that can be used to purchase fresh produce at the PACT produce market.
In this interview that first broadcast live on the radio show in 2018, we chat with Phil Hunt from the Giant Vegetable Growers of Ontario (GVGO) about growing giant pumpkins and giant tomatoes.
Hunt and his wife, Jane, grow giant vegetables near Lindsay, Ontario.
We first spoke with them when they shared giant-pumpkin-growing tips for our book Gardening with Emma. After seeing them on the news in 2018—for growing a record-breaking giant pumpkin—we invited them onto the show to share tips.
After showing their giant pumpkins at competitions, they collect seeds from them, and then put them on display on their front lawn when neighbours can see them. Hunt says they carve the pumpkins for Halloween—and there are local children who have come years after year to see their carved giant pumpkins.
We chat with Nathan Larson, Director of the Cultivate Health Initiative in Madison, Wisconsin.
When we visited Madison in summer 2019 to attend the National Children and Youth Gardening Symposium, Larson gave us a tour of a wonderful community garden—the Troy Community Garden.
There are currently about 100 families growing food there…although at one point it looked as if the land on which the garden stands would be sold off for a housing development. Larson talks about how people and groups pulled together to find a way to save the space.
The plot of land was reimagined to include community garden plots, an urban farm with a CSA, a kids garden, some housing, a tall-grass prairie restoration project, and a food forest.
When we visited the Troy Community Garden, we were struck by signs for a “worm city” and the “mud pie kitchen.” Larson is passionate about garden-based education.
The garden now includes a pizza oven that is used for weekly nights, along with music.
We check in with Sarah Dobec, the co-ordinator of the Carrot Green Roof, an inspiring rooftop garden that we visited for the first time earlier this year. Dobec explains that this unique community space was originally imagined by architects and landscapers—and also by artists and community members.
Of the approximately 8,000 square feet on the rooftop, approximately 2,000 square feet is used to grow food. There is also a meadow garden, bee hives, and a low-growing area with sedums.
The community space on the roof, which includes tables, chairs, and a food preparation area, is used to bring people together. Dobec says that the space is rented out for private functions—and is provided for free for those sharing knowledge that fits in with the values of the Carrot Green Roof.
The programming in the community space is different every year. Dobec recalls one year when a group performed a play on the roof, using the garden space all around the community space in which to perform.
The Carrot Green Roof has partnered with Building Roots, a social venture with a focus on providing access to fresh food.
We get an update from gardener, chef, and author Signe Langford on her hay-bale garden, and then talk about tips for using fresh tomatoes in the kitchen.
Langford suggests using fat to soften the acidity of fresh tomatoes. She likes mayonnaise, olive oil, or butter. Some people use sugar to soften the acidity…but she prefers fat—and says her favourite fat to use with tomatoes is with butter.
For a quick, easy tomato sauce, Langford suggests mashing fresh tomatoes, adding basil, and butter (a “generous knob” of butter). Add salt and pepper, and then heat and serve.
Bread, she says, is part of the “Holy Trinity” of enjoying tomatoes. The other two ingredients are cheese and the tomato itself. Langford’s bruscetta tip: For the best bruschetta, use fresh basil—and fry the bread in olive oil.
We chat with Millennial gardener Ross Raddi in Philadelphia. He balances a very intensive approach to food gardening with the need to share the yard with his family—who want grass.
Raddi has previously joined us on the Food Garden Life Show to talk about his passion for growing fruit, and about his passion for growing figs. He goes by the nickname “Fig Boss.”
We talk with Luay, from Urban Farm and Kitchen in Toronto, about how he started growing food, his gardens, some favourite recipes, failure, and tips for new gardeners.
His day job in the engineering industry is hectic and includes lots of travel. Gardening and cooking are his way of unwinding.
Luay currently grows in his backyard and at a municipal allotment garden. But he didn’t grow up gardening. His interest in gardening was piqued by unusual vegetables he got through a CSA subscription. Once his interest had been piqued, he started small—with a tomato plant on his balcony.
His backyard includes raised beds, fruit trees, and an area to eat and entertain…but he admits that potted edible plants make their way into all parts of the yard.
Luay loves to cook with what’s in season. As we talk, it’s fresh tomatoes. The kitchen is his place to unwind.
In this episode that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we talk with urban gardener, author, podcaster, and YouTuber Kevin Espiritu from California.
Espiritu, who did not grow up gardening, explains how, after studying business, he discovered gardening.
He made the garden—and teaching people to garden—his vocation. Espiritu is the founder of the website Epic Gardening.
In part 2 of a program first broadcast live on the radio show in 2018, we continue our chat about growing fruit in cold climates with Dr. Ieuan Evans, a forensic plant pathologist and a former Provincial Plant Pathologist for Alberta Agriculture.
Along with his work in plant pathology, Evans is passionate about growing fruit in cold climates. In this segment, he talks about edible mountain ash, plums, pears, apples, damsons, and apricots. And we talk about how he grows figs in Edmonton.
“Growing fruit on the prairies is not a problem at all—you just have to take a new angle.”
Toronto urban farmers Jessy Njau and Misha Shodjaee join us to talk about their journey into growing food and using food and farming as a tool for social change. Their farm, Zawadi Farm, began on land provided by a local garden centre.
They now farm Njau’s yard, other yards in their neighbourhood, as well as space at Toronto’s Downsview Park, which has land dedicated to urban agriculture.
Njau explains that he was deeply inspired by Vancouver urban farmer Michael Abelman, who uses urban farming as a way to build community and effect social change. Success for Shodjaee and Njau is growing an interest in food production—not growing the amount of space they cultivate.
“We want to be able to grow farmers.”
We chat with garden expert and author Niki Jabbour in Halifax, Nova Scotia to find out what’s new in her garden this summer, how things are growing, and for tips for new gardeners.
Her top advice for people who want to start growing food but haven’t started this year: “There’s lots of things you can still plant, even in the coming weeks—so don’t think that you’ve missed the boat!”
Greenhouse versus Garden
Her greenhouse tomato plants are a good two weeks ahead—and far bigger than those growing in the garden
Straw-Bale Update
Niki grows in straw bales every year. They are doing well this year…the challenge is keeping them well watered
Fun Crops
Ever heard of ‘Itachi’ cucumber or ‘Black Kat’ pumpkin?
Succession Planting
Niki has lots of ideas for succession planting from this point onwards, including carrots, beets, and winter radishes
In this portion of a program first broadcast live on the radio show in 2018, we chat about growing fruit in cold climates with Dr. Ieuan Evans, a forensic plant pathologist and a former Provincial Plant Pathologist for Alberta Agriculture.
Along with his work in plant pathology, Evans is passionate about growing fruit in cold climates.
He talks about some of his favourite pear and apple varieties for cold climates—varieties that he says taste much better than store-bought apples or the apples from trees sold in local nurseries.
We chat with Laura Luciano, a graphic designer from Long Island. She loves to find the stories behind locally produced food and the people who grow it.
Her passion for local food grew into her own blog, a column in Edible Long Island, and, eventually her involvement in the Slow Food movement.
Then it grew into an interest in growing her own food. So she created a rooftop garden.
In our mid-July garden check-in, we talk about what’s new in our garden.
School garden educator Shannon Stewart thinks of herself as an emerging seedling amongst old growth forests.
Stewart, who teaches in San Diego, California, says that this is her second career—and as a “seedling” in the the field of school gardens.
She uses the garden to teach:
health and nutrition
science
critical thinking
teamwork
and even public speaking
In a program first broadcast live on the radio show in 2018, we chat with Bill Muzychko of Bill’s Figs in Flemington, New Jersey.
Muzychko grows over 180 varieties of figs—all in containers—and all in zone where they would not normally survive without winter protection.
We chat with Max Meighen, owner of Avling Kitchen & Brewery, and Danette Steele, the Farm Manager for the rooftop garden.
Steele grows a wide variety of crops on the roof., including greens, tomatoes, herbs, flowers for pollinators—and “flavour crops.” She explains that the flavour crops are used in the brewing process. A recent example is pineapple sage, which was infused in a local honey. That infused honey was then used in brewing.
Steele, who previously farmed in a rural setting in Nova Scotia, say that she is drawn to urban farming.
She explains that there is a strong community connection with the garden.
Meighen talks about the Avling Farm box, which includes meat and produce. Half of the produce for the boxes comes from the rooftop garden, half from new and small farms in Ontario. He believes in connecting the community with food producers. Earlier this year he hosted a meet-the-farmer night where customers mingled with farmers supplying Avling Kitchen & Brewery.
In an episode that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, Lee Reich, author of Landscaping with Fruit, joins us to talk about landscaping with fruit.
Reich is the author of many books, including Uncommon Fruit for Every Garden, and, most recently, The Ever Curious Gardener: Using a Little Natural Science for a Much Better Garden.
Reich is a serious food gardener, with a “farmden” in the Hudson Valley of New York. He explains that his farmden is more than a garden, less than a farm.
Virginie Gysel joins us to talk about transforming the grounds of a neighbourhood church into an orchard and food garden.
It started when she approached the church about growing vegetables on the property in exchange for looking after the flower gardens. She didn’t have anywhere sunny to grow tomatoes in her own yard.
It led to an orchard on a south-facing hill and lots of community engagement. She gives bags of produce to church members, donates the harvest to those in need, as well as sharing the harvest amongst volunteers.
Gysel founded the volunteer-run project TreeMobile that supplies food-bearing trees and shrubs at a low cost to home gardeners.
Gysel says that this self-supporting program also gives grants to schools, church groups, and community groups.
“I just realized this is the most amazing job in the world.”
We chat with Jeff Quattone about his work bringing seed libraries to New Jersey, plant propaganda (not propagation!), and the Jersey tomato.
Quattrone is an artist, lifelong gardener, and marketing professional. He founded LIbrary Seed Bank in 2014. He talks about his journey into seed saving and helping to set up seed libraries.
“The whole idea that food can go extinct was something that shocked me because I didn’t understand diversity.”
He is so passionate about Jersey tomatoes that he has a page devoted to them on his website. “I think I’ve grown just about every one of them and I love them all!” Quattrone explains that the traditional Jersey tomato was bred to be a 10-ounce, round, red tomato because of the canning industry in New Jersey.
As a marketing professional, he finds that people often have a negative impression of the word propaganda. He looks at the fine line between propaganda and branding—and talks about why he thinks garden propaganda is important.
We dig into tomato and food gardening questions from members of the Ontario Backyard Plant Growers group on Facebook.
The Ontario Backyard Plant Growers Facebook Group is a group that shares information about growing plants in Ontario. It's a passionate group with broad knowledge on propagating, growing and harvesting, and tools and amendments.
We tackle tomato and food-gardening questions.
Annalisa Pedraza joins us from Bozeman, Montana, where she manages the Spring Creek Community Garden. “Right now we have 30 members and that feeds about 25 households.”
Spring Creek Community Garden was founded by Richard Weaver after he inherited 3 acres of land in the middle of a subdivision. He removed the grass to create an urban farm and a sunken greenhouse.
Unlike many community gardens, everything is shared. There are no individual plots; and members divvy up the harvest based on what they feel they have contributed.
The gardeners hold a weekly potluck dinner, using garden produce. Pedraza finds that the social interaction is an important part of gardening.
While she’d love it if these get-togethers encourage people to become community-garden members, what she would really like is if they inspire people to make more community gardens. “What we really hope is that they replicate that elsewhere.”
We’ve been talking a lot about our neighbor Joe over the past couple of days.
Joe and his wife, Maria, are amazing neighbours. They always stop to chat. They share their garden harvest. And they send cookies for the kids. But the reason we’ve been talking about Joe these past couple of days is that Joe is an amazing gardener. We learn something new every time we drop by to visit. AND Joe shares with all the neighbourhood gardeners.
The yard is surrounded by a wall of pole beans. Joe shared his favourite bean seeds with us for our garden. Steven posted about Joe’s beans the other day on social media as he explored how gardeners share, for an event called Garden Days. The response has been inspiring. Tune in for great sharing ideas.
It's not too late to grow vegetables this year. We chat with Carol Michel and Dee Nash about starting a summer vegetable garden.
Michel and Nash are vegetable gardeners Indiana and Oklahoma who joined forces to produce The Gardenangelists podcast and share their love of gardening.
“I’m in zone 7, and she’s zone 5.” Michel and Nash talk about how they got into vegetable gardening, and then share their tips for starting a vegetable garden in the summer. It’s not too late!
“It is not too late. There are plenty of vegetables that you can sow seeds for right now.”
Ever wondered if growing food and and growing native plants are mutually exclusive? Our guest Ryan Godfrey talks about his sixth-floor balcony garden where he weaves together edible and native plants—all in containers.
Godfrey’s balcony container garden includes habitat-themed containers:
Edible plants include woodland strawberries, Jerusalem artichoke, sweet grass, and Virginia mountain mint.
Godfrey also has an allotment garden plot where he grows both food and native plants. He says that his plot draws a lot of pollinators.
In a journey that started with vacuuming acorns as a child, Ryan went on to study biology and evolutionary biology. He says this makes him a “plant nerd,” a gardener who learned about plants outside of a garden context. It colours his approach to gardening.
In this episode that originally broadcast live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with Susan Antler, the Executive Director of the Compost Council of Canada.
Susan talks about using gardening and food to make change, the Plant·Grow·Share a Row program and the Soupalicious festival. “Gardening can change the world,“ she says.
In Emma’s Tomato Talk segment, she talks about blue tomato varieties, tomato training methods, and transplanting tips.
In the Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven is joined by author Helena Moncrieff, who shares the story of a Toronto gardener whose fig tree became an integral part of the neighbourhood. Moncrieff is the author of the book The Fruitful City.
Excerpt from The Food Garden Life Radio Show, June 2020
In the Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven is joined by author Helena Moncrieff, who shares the story of a Toronto gardener whose fig tree became an integral part of the neighbourhood.
Moncrieff is the author of the book The Fruitful City.
Atlanta urban farmer, food system thinker, educator, changemaker, and worm whisperer Maurice Small joins us to talk about growing people, growing community, and growing food.
Small talks about what got him into growing food, the urban agriculture scene in Atlanta, using gardening as a way to build community, and youth leadership. “I had the desire to do what my father did with me, which was grow food, share food, propagate plants.“
Small also talks about helping customers understand what goes into food production. “They know that something might crawl out because we don’t spray,” he says.
Robin Henderson joins us to talk about foraging. As he was growing up, he heard family stories about the foraging of previous generations.
Then, as urban growth engulfed the area where he lived, he discovered the many edible plants growing in his own neighbourhood.
Henderson points out that many people think of “subsistence” foraging—foraging to fill the stomach. For him, foraging can be a lot more than subsistence—he’s a big believer in “gastronomic foraging.”
Henderson explains that it’s even possible to forage in winter, while there is snow on the ground.
Helena Moncrieff, author of The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest, talks about the fruit that grows in cities.
Fruit plants often reflect the history of an area. Grape vines are common in neighbourhoods where a lot of residents have Mediterranean family roots; cherry trees are common in areas with large Ukrainian populations.
Moncrieff became interested in urban fruit and the people and stories behind it when her daughter joined Not Far From The Tree in Toronto, a fruit picking and sharing project.
Emma made Meyer lemon sorbet yesterday. She made it with home-grown Meyer lemons, picked in Toronto in the month of May.
Steven has grown lemons since the 1990s—but it was a visit to Bob Duncan at Fruit Trees and More Nursery in British Columbia that inspired him to write his book Grow Lemons Where You Think You Can’t.
Victoria has a mild climate, so Bob grows lemons espaliered on the side of his house. Over the winter, he used incandescent light strings and row-cover fabric to protect the lemon trees.
Steven and Emma dig into growing lemons in colder climates—and why lemons are an idea container plant.
Did you know that in addition to the fruit, you can use lemon leaves in the kitchen?
There are many ways to keep lemon trees over the winter, even without a greenhouse or a bright south-facing window.
Emily Murphy finds daily inspiration in her garden in Northern California. She describes her passion for gardening as, “A love affair.”
Emily got an early start in gardening. “If you were around in the 70’s, I was the kid down the road whose family was growing potatoes in her front yard instead of a lawn,” she says.
Emily is a garden designer, educator, and author who weaves together her studies in botany, ethnobotany, environmental science, and ecology. In her teaching she brings together gardening and living.
Emily is the author of the book Grow What You Love, 12 Food Plant Families to Change Your Life, an inspiring guide to planning, making, and growing a garden.
Backyard food gardener Dushan Batrovic tells us about his journey into food gardening.
After growing up in a family that gardened, Dushan took a break from gardening. But when he started gardening again, the taste of fresh garden produce made him an advocate for backyard growing.
Dushan gardens in two raised beds, along with a garden on his shed roof. As he was making the shed, he thought, “Since I’m creating a roof here I might as well add a bit of real estate to my growing.”
Working in the tech industry, and seeing how he and other neighbours could harvest more of their favourite crops than they could use, he wondered about ways to share around excess harvests. Dushan created an app called SeedVoyage, which helps gardeners who have excess produce connect with eaters.
We chat with pepper expert Claus Nader, owner of East York Chile Peppers in Toronto, Ontario.
Claus tells us about his urban hot-pepper container garden.
He grows specialty peppers, saves seeds, and makes hot sauces, pickled peppers, jams, salsas, and dehydrated peppers.
Claus shares his approach to making hot pepper sauce: he thinks hot and sweet go well together.
Claus says, “It’s a really nice community, and we inspire each other, which is great.”
Excerpt from The Food Garden Life Radio Show, May 2020
In The Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven talks with Bill Lauris, a chemistry teacher and nursery operator in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who loves growing figs and other unusual fruit. Bill runs Off the Beaten Path Nursery.
In this broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, author and gardening expert Tara Nolan joins us to talk about front yard gardens and share ideas from her new book, Gardening Your Front Yard: Projects and Ideas for Big and Small Spaces.
In the Tomato-Talk Segment, Emma chats with Trish Crapo and Tom Ashely at Dancing Bear Farm in MA. Trish and Tom joined us on the show in April 2019 to talk about figs…but they are tomato-crazy too!
In the Biggs-on-Figs Segment, Steven chates with Bill Lauris from Off the Beaten Path Nursery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bill is a chemistry teacher by day who spends his spare time educating people and challenging them to grow unusual fruit.
Cheyenne Sundance talks about how she started her urban farm, Sundance Harvest, when she didn’t see urban farms representing the diversity she felt they should.
A believer that independence is growing food, Cheyenne teaches and mentors youth, sharing her passion for growing food.
Liberating Lawns
An initiative that she started in the spring of 2020 is Liberating Lawns, a neighbourhood-centric yard-sharing program she hopes will help people reconnect with land and food.
Mark Stewart and Kassie Miedema join us to tell us about a grassroots program encouraging people to grow food in front yards.
The idea is to produce more food locally—and to connect people around food.
Participants in the program can also put up a sign in the garden to raise awareness of the idea—and to stir up conversation.
What does success look like? A food street, with many neighbours growing up front.
Food Up Front is an initiative of Transition Toronto, a chapter of a global movement for change.
Wendy Kiang-Spray, author of The Chinese Kitchen Garden, joins us to talk about about vegetable crops used in Chinese cuisine, Chinese intensive gardening, and her family’s gardening journey.
Her book weaves together stories and photos from three generations of her family.
While she started gardening as an adult when one of her own daughters asked to grow a garden, Wendy grew up immersed in gardening, in a household where gardening and cooking fresh garden produce was normal. Her father is an avid gardener, and both he and her mother love to cook.
The book includes many of her parents’ recipes for traditional Chinese dishes.
We check in with vegetable gardening expert Niki Jabbour in Nova Scotia to find out what’s new in her garden for 2020, and to see what favourites she is growing.
Niki is the author of Veggie Garden Remix, Groundbreaking Food Gardens, and The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener, and the host of The Weekend Gardener radio show.
We find out more about some of the crops in Veggie Garden Remix—and find out some of her other garden favourites.
Ever heard of hodge-podge? It’s an East Coast specialty that sounds delicious!
Stephanie Rose has a passion for inspiring other people to grow and use plants. It’s a passion that began with her own journey of healing herself by taking up gardening.
Stephanie is a Vancouver-based award-winning author, speaker, and master gardener who teaches people how to grow and use plants. She weaves her knowledge of herbalism and permaculture into her work.
Stephanie talks about her own journey of recovery as she began to garden.
A parent, she has a lot of ideas for parents who want kids to garden. In her own yard, she opted for a play garden instead of a plastic swing set. Her 6-year-old son says that he wants to be a master gardener: When she runs kids gardening events, he likes to lead groups of kids on scavenger hunts.
Stephanie discusses ideas from her new book, Garden Alchemy, which is a guide for gardeners who want to make and do things themselves. The book covers a wide range of topics including fertilizers, soil amendments, sprays, and ideas to beautify the garden.
Rob and Chris Croley at Sentimental Farm in Niagara, Ontario, Canada grow about 70 per cent of the food they need on their 1/2 acre urban homestead.
An interest in self-sufficiency that started with growing vegetables has grown to include chickens, bees, mushrooms, goats, preserving, and making soaps and cosmetics.
Ben Cohen, the author of Saving Our Seeds, joins us to talk about seed-saving, seed libraries, and the importance of community seed-sharing programs.
An author, herbalist, gardener, and educator, Ben farms with his family in Michigan.
They started Small House Farm when they realized that they wanted to to slow down and live a more simple life.
Ben is the founder of the Michigan Seed Library, a seed sharing initiative that has helped set up 70 seed library programs.
Linda Borghi from Farm-A-Yard joins us to talk about how she got into growing food, her first farm, her move into SPIN-Farming (small-plot-intensive), and her current work in communications with her Farm-A-Yard project.
Her mission is to teach others how to grow so that they can turn lawns into food gardens. To achieve this, she connects people with skills and information to help them succeed growing.
Coming from a business background outside of agriculture, Borhi has a strong interest in the business side of growing—and is keen to challenge accepted practices.
Horticulturist Joel Karsten, a pioneer of the straw-bale gardening technique, talks about the concept of straw-bale gardening. He explains how it works, where it can be used, and how to make it work well.
Karsten, who grows vegetables in a 24-bale garden on his small residential property in Minnesota, grew up on a farm seeing healthy weeds growing in old, broken straw bales. When he bought his first house and decided to make a vegetable garden, he couldn’t—there was too little soil.
In this broadcast that originally aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with farmer, author, and food system activist Micheal Abelman. Michael is a visionary of the urban farming movement. In addition to his family farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, he’s the co-founder and director of Sole Food Street Farms in Vancouver, an urban agriculture business that provides employment to people managing poverty and addiction. The farm covers 4 acres of land, producing 25 tons of food annually.
The author of many books, his most recent book is Farm The City: A Toolkit for Setting up a Successful Urban Farm.
In the second half of the show, we chat with horticulturist and foodscaping expert Brie Arthur about her new book, Gardening with Grains. Brie is an advocate of including food plants in the landscape, and a proponent of planting edibles within traditional ornamental landscapes.
Brie gives advice for growing grains from planting to harvest. Ever thought of growing barley? It gives a whole new meaning to the term “beer garden!”
Brie previously joined us on the show to talk about her book The Foodscape Revolution.
The Tomato-Talk segment and Biggs-On-Figs segments are included in the chat with Michael Abelman.
Food writer Signe Langford from Port Hope, Ontario talks about her passion for growing food, her food garden, cooking, and how her garden connects her with her community.
With more than 10, 000 known varieties, how do you choose which tomato to grow? Host Emma Biggs talks about things to consider when choosing tomato varieties for your garden.
Emma talks about:
Days to maturity (DTM), growth habit, fruit type, flavour, appearance, disease resistance, and seed type.
Donna tells us about gardening on her very sandy soil, talks about how she uses a greenhouse to harvest year-round, and shares some of her favourite crops.
As well as being an avid gardener, Donna is a gardener, horticulturist, garden journalist. She is the co-author of No Guff Vegetable Gardening. Donna has a passion for soil and soil biology.
On this rebroadcast of an episode that aired live on The Food Garden Life Radio Show, we chat with garden and wellness expert Shawna Coronado, who talks about getting community buy-in for her front-yard vegetable garden, and then turning that garden into a work of art. Her most recent book, Stacked with Flavour: An Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook with Dairy-Free, Grain-Free & Low-Sugar Recipes, was inspired by her struggle with severe degenerative osteoarthritis. She talks about that journey, along with practical, flavourful, anti-inflammatory cooking ideas that have helped her manage pain.
In the second part of the show, we chat with natural beauty products expert and author Janice Cox about growing luffa (a.k.a. loofah), which can be used for personal care, as a natural sponge, to hold water in flower pots, for arranging flowers—and to eat! Janice’s latest book is, “Beautiful Luffa: A Guide and Workbook for Growing, Using, and Enjoying Sponge Gourds.”
In Emma’s Tomato-Talk segment she chats with Hanna Jacobs from Matchbox Garden & Seed Company in southern Ontario about some of Hanna’s favourite tomato varieties.
In the Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven chats with Will Pananes from south-central Pennsylvania about his innovative use of a heat column to overwinter fig trees.
Excerpt from the live radio show, March 2020
In The Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven talks with Will Pananes, a fig grower in Pennsylvania who uses heat column to protect his figs over the winter.
Our first guest is Ciara Byrne, who tells us about the the organization Green Our Planet, which is training a generation of student “farmpreneurs.” Students operate farmers markets at schools—and, twice a year—there is a giant market with students from many schools setting up in one location. The next market will have over 700 fifth-grade students selling fruit and veg from school gardens.
In the second half of the show, we chat about rooftop gardens with Hilary Dahl from the Seattle Urban Farm Company. The Amazon campus rooftop garden is a collaboration with a not-for-profit organization that uses food harvested from the garden for community culinary training programs.
The building of many new multifamily dwellings in Seattle has given her the opportunity to be involved in a number of edible rooftop garden projects. She talks about rooftop challenges, and also considerations such as weight and irrigation.
In the Tomato-Talk segment, Emma chats with Colette Murphy from Urban Harvest seeds about tomato varieties with a story.
Hear about urban market gardening from Jessey Njau, who left a corporate job to make an urban farm his Toronto backyard. His operation, Zawadi Farm, has grown to include more yards, as neighbours see what he is doing and offer their yards. Jessey sells his produce to CSA subscribers and at local farmers markets.
In Emma’s Tomato-Talk segment, she shares some of her favourite tomato varieties.
Excerpt from the radio show, November 2019
In The Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven talks with Tony Christini, a fig grower in West Virginia whose focus is hardy and early-ripening fig varieties suited to his mountain growing conditions.
Excerpt from the radio show, October 2019
In The Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven talks with Ben Nguyen from Seattle Garden & Fruit Adventures about growing figs in Seattle and about Ben’s Ultimate Fig Breba List.
Excerpt from the radio show, July 2019
Tune in for a chat with Sundae Horn, who helps to organize the Ocracoke Fig Festival on Ocracoke Island in North Carolina. This two-day festival takes place this year on August 16th and 17th, and celebrates figs through food, history, music, and all sorts of fig stuff. Find out more about the festival—and find the recipe for Ocracoke fig cake—on the website for the Ocracoke Preservation Society.
Excerpt from the radio show, June 2019
Tune in for a chat with John Biberich, a greenhouse fig grower in Grove City, Pennsylvania.
John and his wife Sue started growing figs and citrus as they were looking for unique crops that give them a place in an industry that’s increasingly reliant on automation and dominated by discount and big-box stores.
It’s a neat idea to consider for people thinking of how to carve out a niche in horticulture.
Excerpt from the radio show, May 2019
Tune in for a chat with Ross Raddi. Ross is a 27-year-old backyard orchardist in the Philadelphia area who is passionate about growing his own fruit and vegetables. Ross talks about what to do with figs trees in the spring, as they start to come out of dormancy.
Excerpt from the radio show, April 2019
Tune in for a chat with Trish Crapo and Tom Ashley at Dancing Bear Farm in Leyden, Massachusetts. They got into figs by accident a decade ago—and now they sell fresh figs at farmers markets and sell fig trees to other cold-climate gardeners.
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