Excerpt from The Garage Gardeners Radio Show, December 2019
In The Biggs-on-Figs segment, Steven talks with a Toronto fig enthusiast about growing figs, building community, and a neat online fig resource, ourfigs.com.
“The community is really is my favourite part of the forum.”
Ourfigs.com member Toronto Joe
In the first half of the show we chat with tomato breeder Fred Hempel, who has been breeding tomatoes on his small farm in California since 2006. His breeding business, Artisan Seeds, has produced a number of varieties that are grown by farmers and gardeners around the world. Most of these are striped cherry tomatoes, known for their flavour and aesthetic appeal. His current breeding work is focused on extended shelf life and disease resistance.
In the second half of the show, we chat with Penn and Cord Parmenter, who grow food in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado at an elevation of 8000 feet. They discuss bio-intensive gardening methods, passive solar greenhouses, and cold-hardy crops and vegetable varieties.
In the Biggs-On-Figs segment, Steven chats with Tony Christini, a fig grower in West Virginia. Tony’s focus is on hardy and early-ripening figs.
Figs harvest from Tony Christini’s fig trees in West Virginia
Excerpt from The Food Garden Life 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 Food Garden Life 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 Food Garden Life 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 Food Garden Life 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.
Ross Raddi
Excerpt from The Food Garden Life 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.
Find Ross on social media as @rossraddi.
Excerpt from The Food Garden Life 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.
