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A review of the 1998 edition of Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza. Lasagna gardening is essentially a sheet mulching/composting method designed to turn a patch of turf into a garden bed nearly instantly. Because these gardens don’t require building raised beds, do not rely on the local soil, and only require materials that can be made or sourced cheaply its a great way to start a garden. Although I’m not sure where to get that many newspapers these days. 

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A review of the 2005 edition of The All New Square Foot Garden by Mel Bartholomew with a particular focus on using it to start community and school gardens. You can find more at his Square Foot Gardening Website. The Truth About Peat at In Defense of Plants breaks down the issues with Peat Moss.

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A brief and realistic introduction to starting a school garden. There will be alot more from me on this topic, but for now I just wanted to give some quick “getting started” advice to educators and administrators interested in starting or restarting a school garden. These tips apply equally well to anyone wanting to start a garden with or without children being involved. 

Resources

• School Garden Sustainability
• When a School Garden Doesn’t Grow | Bright
• How to use a Olla to water your garden
• Seed Savers Exchange Seed Donation Program
• Native Seeds/Search Seed Donation Program
• Integrated Pest Management | UC Davis

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A very basic introduction to gardening with children. This is a topic I’m somewhat passionate about, as I’ve already mentioned it is actually my day job. This episode focuses on tips for how to get children engaged in gardening, and how to ensure basic safety. If you have any questions, or if there are topics I mentioned that you’d like me to explore in greater depth, please reach out and let me know. 

Resources

• Sarah’s Realm
• A Cure for Plant Blindness | Margaret Conover | TEDxSBU
• Thousands Of Feral Lime Green Parakeets Call Bakersfield Home
• Crown Bees: The Native Bee Experts
• Frau Zinnie on Monarch Butterflies

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Call it Razor Grass, Wire Grass, or Bermuda Grass, it can be a pain. I had just spent the last week ripping up Bermuda Grass from my garden beds. In this episode I cover why its so hard to deal with, and why the only way tends to involve quite a bit of elbow grease. 

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Another episode on corn, this one covering the complicated world of Hybrid Corn. This should be the end of my info dump on corn for a while. I’m sure as time goes on I’ll have more to say on the topic… hope your all ears :) 

Resources

• Landrace Gardening
• F1 Hybrid, What is it.
• Heinz 57 catalog
• Heirloom Corn at Seed Savers Exchange
• Heirloom Corn at Native Seed Search

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All about corn! Ok, that is an exaggeration, quite a bit about corn. I’m no expert, but I am fascinated by just how much we’ve managed to do with this insanely versatile plant.

Resources

• Corn: It's Not for Cocktails kind of poo poos my favorite theory, but a good overview of some current research.
• The Corn of the Future Is Hundreds of Years Old and Makes Its Own Mucus.
• Who should profit from Mexico’s nitrogen-fixing corn?
• Atom in the garden of Eden

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Getting down with some soil science basics in week 1 of the podcast. Hopefully this lets you understand the material we grow in a bit better. This is definitely a topic I will revisit as things go forward. 

Resources

• Soil Layers
• What Clay Looks Like

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First Episode

Decided to talk about water since it seems to be a question everyone has. Knowing when to water can literally be as complicated or as easy as you'd like.

Links

• Evapotranspiration 
• Water Holding Capacity
• Crassulacean Acid Metabolism 
• Native Seed Search 

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