Four-Season Food Gardening
Misilla dela Llana joins us to talk about four-season food gardening.
Misilla dela Llana, author of Four-Season Food Gardening, joins us to talk about growing vegetables year-round.
Year-Round Food Gardening
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:
Extending the growing season
Crops for season extension
Perennial food crops
Some of her top crops
Her new book is Four-Season Food Gardening: How to grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs year-round.
Food, Flowers, and Fun for Urban Gardens
Growing food and beauty in the city with Kathy Jentz and Teri Speight.
Urban gardeners Teri Speight and Kathy Jentz talk about creating gardens that are functional, productive, and beautiful.
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.
Grow in Containers
Deeper window boxes
Planting pockets
Succulents in a frame
Grow bags
Berries in containers
Make Gardens Fun and Beautiful
Fragrance freeway
Patchwork pavers
Make small spaces feel big through design
New Book: The Urban Garden
Jentz and Speight are authors of the new book, The Urban Garden: 101 Ways to Grow Food and Beauty in the City.
Raised Bed Gardening
CaliKim shares tips about growing vegetables in raised beds.
CaliKim joins us to talk about growing vegetables in raised beds.
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:
Soil warms more quickly in spring
Less back and knee strain
A solution for locations with less-than-ideal soil
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:
A shape suited to the location
Choosing materials that tie in to the style of the garden
A mobile unit to be place wherever there is available sunlight
“You have to make it fit your situation.”
Top Tip
CaliKim says would-be gardeners sometimes feel overwhelmed at the thought of making a garden.
Her top tip? Start small, but get started. “Just get started,” she says.
New Book
Her new book is Raised Bed Gardening: All the Know-How you Need to Build and Grow a Raised Bed Garden.
A Passion for Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
Jere Gettle from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds talks about heirloom vegetable seeds.
Jere Gettle from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds talks about heirloom vegetable seeds.
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:
It’s beautiful
It tastes great
It grows well
Connect
Baker Creek Heirloom Seed: rareseeds.com
If this episode piqued your interest in seeds, tune in to the November 2020 episode entitled Creating New Tomato Varieties. Emma chats with heirloom seed saver and tomato expert Linda Crago about breeding tomato varieties.
Winter Vegetable Gardening with Wolfgang Palme
Wolfgang Palme talks about growing vegetables year-round and ways to grow vegetables through the winter.
Wolfgang Palme talks about winter-hardy vegetables and year-round growing. Photo Johannes Hloch.
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.
“Keep it as simple as possible.”
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.
“We always think about the frost when we think about the winter season. But that’s not the main challenge for the plants.”
Book
Connect
Vienna City Farm: www.cityfarm.wien
Grow Food Indoors + Regenerative Gardening
In this episode: Growing food indoors with Kim Roman, author of How to Garden Indoors & Grow Your Own Food Year Round; and regenerative gardening with Stephanie Rose, author of The Regenerative Garden.
Stephanie Rose talks about regenerative gardening and Kim Roman talks about growing food indoors.
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.
Grow Epic Tomatoes, with Joe Lamp'l and Craig LeHoullier
Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier talk about different ways to grow tomatoes, and share tips for a better harvest,
Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier talk about how to grow tomatoes, and their new course, Growing Epic Tomatoes.
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.
Garden expert, author, and broadcaster Joe Lamp’l loves growing tomatoes. He’s met lots of gardeners using a wide range of tomato-growing techniques through his work as the host and producer of the Growing a Greener World television series, and through his podcast, The joe gardener Show.
World-renowned tomato grower Craig LeHoullier co-leads the Dwarf Tomato Breeding project, has named and popularized many well-known tomato varieties such as ‘Cherokee Purple,’ and is an expert on straw-bale gardening. He’s the author of the book Epic Tomatoes.
Tomato Talk
Lamp’l and LeHoullier talk about:
The tomato-growing methods they use in their own gardens
How their gardens differ
Tomato-growing ideas they’ve learned from each other
Favourite tomato varieties
Tomato-growing techniques they’ve seen in other gardens
They also share tips for new gardeners. “Don’t get hung up on the destination, but learn to love the journey,” says LeHoullier.
“Don’t get hung up on the destination, but learn to love the journey.”
More on Tomatoes
If this episode piqued your interest in tomatoes, tune in to the December 2020 episode entitled Tasty Tomatoes for Small Spaces: The Dwarf Tomato Breeding Project. In the episode, LeHoullier tells us about this citizen-science initiative to breed dwarf tomato varieties.
Attract Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden
Attracting beneficial insects to your garden with Jessica Walliser.
Jessica Walliser, author of Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden, talks about creating a healthy, balanced, and diverse garden that supports beneficial insects.
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.
“Stop thinking of your garden as only a place to please you.”
The new second edition of Jessica Walliser’s book Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden.
Ornamental Edibles, Hort Therapy, Kids Gardening
Talking about gardening in wind, horticultural therapy, ornamental edibles, and gardening with children with Charlie Dobbin and Perla Sofia Curbelo.
Charlie Dobbin and Perla Sofia Curbelo join us to talk about ornamental edibles, gardening in wind, horticultural therapy, and gardening with kids.
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!
Passive Solar Greenhouses with Rob Avis
Rob Avis from Verge Permaculture talks about passive solar greenhouses.
Rob Avis from Verge Permaculture talks about passive solar greenhouses.
Rob Avis from Verge Permaculture shares tips on passive solar greenhouses.
Balance
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.
Grow Bamboo in Cold Climates
Bamboo expert Fred Hornaday on bamboo for cold climates.
Fred Hornaday talks about how to grow bamboo in cold climates, the many uses of bamboo — and its potential as an agricultural crop.
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:
fabric
flooring
fuel
paper
food
mats
cutting boards
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.
Grow and Cook Bamboo
Wendy Kiang-Spray on how to grow and cook bamboo.
Wendy Kiang-Spray, author of The Chinese Kitchen Garden, talks about how to grow and cook bamboo.
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:
Running bamboos spread quickly by underground rhizomes.
Clumping bamboos grow in clumps.
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.
To keep running bamboo in check she suggests:
Grow in containers
Plant on high berms (new shoots coming out the side will be easy to spot)
Instal a metal, plastic, or concrete barrier, buried to a depth of approximately 30 inches
Harvest Bamboo
Bamboo is harvested in the spring. Kiang-Spray says to use a knife — or to simply kick it over. “They should snap really easily,” she says, likening it to asparagus.
After harvest, cut shoots lengthwise and remove the edible “heart” by scooping it out with a thumb.
Fresh bamboo must be boiled prior to use to denature toxins. Boil uncovered for 30 minutes before use.
Urban Growers + Gardening Under Cover
Jamie Day Fleck talks about the urban growers she met while filming her documentary In My Backyard; and Niki Jabbour talks about garden covers and her book Growing Under Cover.
Filmmaker Jamie Day Fleck and author and broadcaster Niki Jabbour.
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.
A Windy Newfoundland Homestead with a Sustainable Focus
David Goodyear talks about his homestead at Flatrock, Newfoundland.
David Goodyear
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.
Are You Frightened of Landrace Gardening?
Joseph Lofthouse talks about landrace gardening and promiscuous tomatoes.
Joseph Lofthouse talks about landrace gardening and promiscuous tomatoes.
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:
Grow and save seeds of a favourite variety
Then grow another variety of the same crop with desirable traits next to it
Aim for 2 - 5 varieties of the same crop from which to start your landrace
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.
Container Gardening with Hot Peppers - REWIND
Claus Nader from East York Chile Peppers on growing hot peppers in containers.
Claus Nader from East York Chile Peppers
Hot Peppers
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.)
What's to Hate? A Look at the Whole Okra
Chris Smith, author of The Whole Okra, on growing okra, recipes, varieties.
Chris Smith, author of The Whole Okra, A Seed to Stem Celebration
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.
Coppices, Alcoholic Hedges, and Thoughts on Ecological Gardening
Matt Rees-Warren on ecological gardening, coppices, hedgerows, and schythes
Matt Rees-Warren talks about ecological gardening, scythes, coppicing, hedgerows — and pleachers.
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:
Coppicing. Talking about renewable materials for the garden, Rees-Warren explains the process of coppicing, where trees are repeatedly cut back to the ground to give a harvest of sticks that can be used in the garden.
Scythe. He describes this as “the most immersive” of tools. “It’s the only tool for wildflower meadows,” he says.
Hedgrows. Rees-Warren says hedgerows can also be food reservoirs, using plants such as blackberry, sloe berry, hops, raspberry, and hazelnuts. On the mention of sloe gin, he adds that sometimes these are called, “alcoholic hedges.”
Pleachers. “Laying a hedgerow” and the technique of using “pleachers” is one way to create attractive hedgerows that are like a living fence. Young trees are cut leaving just a thread of bark connecting them to the stem, and then folded down horizontally. “It looks fabulous,” says Rees-Warren.
Foodscaping
Jeremy Cooper talks about foodscaping
Jeremy Cooper from Cooper’s Foodscaping talks about his path into foodscaping and shares his top tips.
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:
Don’t be afraid to dream about other ways to use a space and think about what you might like in the long term. “Don’t be afraid to dream…it doesn’t have to be a lawn,” he says.
Grow foods you like to eat.
Make sure the soil is healthy, and, if in doubt, dig into the topsoil and then down below the topsoil to see what is there. He points out that in many new subdivisions, gardeners are left with hard-packed soil and gravel beneath a shallow layer of topsoil.
Cooper’s Favourite Food Plants
Serviceberry. Cooper says that while many people grow this as an ornamental plant, a lot of people don’t realize the fruit are edible. He points out that it’s an excellent understory tree that does well in partial sun.
Amaranth. Beautiful, colourful. Edible leaves and grain.
Currants.
Bergamot. Flowers and herbal uses.
Yarrow. Flowers and herbal uses.
Squashes.
It Takes One Person
Julia Dimakos went from never having gardened to a 7,000 square foot garden.
Julia Dimakos is an avid gardener and garden communicator…but she didn’t grow up gardening. One person sparked that interest.
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. She gives presentations about gardening, and shares her passion for gardening online.
Garden Wisdom
“I want people to see gardening as something fun,” says Dimakos as she shares her tips for new gardeners.
Her top tip is that new gardeners start small, and not take on too much the first year. Make it manageable, and grow the garden over time.
And if something doesn’t work? “Every failure is an opportunity to learn to do better next time,” she says.
Hi, We’re Steve and Emma!
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.
