Food Garden Life Show: Helping You Harvest More from Your Edible Garden, Vegetable Garden, and Edible Landscaping

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! ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]

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. ---Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started. [Join the newsletter]