Tag Archives: gardening

Episode-832- Darby Simpson on Full Time “Beyound Organic” Farming

A Pigs Life is a Good One at Simpson Family Farm

A Pigs Life is a Good One at Simpson Family Farm

Darby Simpson is the owner of Simpson Family Farm, a 7th generation family farm (1828-present) and a lifelong Indiana resident Darby grew up not realy learning anything about farming, became a mechanical engineer.

He worked in the engineering field from 1994-2010.  Began small scale pastured based meat farming (Joel Salatin style) in 2007.  Grew the business while continuing to work off farm full time. In 2010 like many Americans he lost his job due to the recession and took the farm full time.  The farm now provides his family with a full time income.

Darby’s family began homeschooling in 2011, and his family is now together everyday.   In his words.

“We have a blessed life.  I feel like Neo in the Matrix: I’ve unplugged from what society told me my life was supposed to look like – public school, college, cubical, fast food lifestyle.”

Today he joins us to discuss small scale, beyond organic production of pastured based meats & eggs (beef, pork, chicken, turkey, eggs) for the homesteader or for someone looking to begin their own business (full or part time).

 

Episode-831- Seed Starting Primer for 2012

Starting Seeds

Starting Seeds is Easy

I get a lot of questions from people who are looking to start plants from seeds vs. buying plants at the nursery.  Many people struggle with seed starting for a variety of reasons so I am dedicating most of today’s show to help you master the skill of taking tiny seeds and turning them into food and medicine producing plants.

The reality is starting seeds can be frustrating if you don’t do it correctly but it doesn’t have to be difficult as long as you follow the blueprint Mother Nature has laid out for us.  Once you do that starting your own makes producing your own food extremely cost effective.

Join me today as we discuss…

  • Understanding how seeds germinate in the wild (this answers so many questions)
  • What are the needs of a seed
  • Cubes, pots, paper and peat
  • Why starting indoors is a good idea
  • Light and not all light is equal
  • The role of the greenhouse and getting by without one (sort of)
  • Building a simple grow light
  • Mist watering and watering from the bottom
  • Creating constant temperatures
  • Culling and “pricking out”
  • Starting seeds in pots that are generally considered “direct sow”
  • Seeds that should almost always be direct sowed
  • Hardening off seeds
  • Potting up the why and how
  • Holding back in ground planting until you are sure
  • Mulch is your friend

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Episode-828- Steve Solomon on Organic Mythology and Soil Health

Steve Solomon author and founder of SoilAndHealth.org

Steve Solomon founder of SoilAndHealth.org

Steve Solomon writes books on food gardening.  He officially “retired” at the age of 44 after selling the mail order seed business he built up with great success in the 1980s.  Today he makes his home in Australia where he grows the majority of the food they consume.

Steve considers himself a political libertarian and sees his role in life to be “encouraging others food self sufficiency and better health.  He describes his methods and books as “beyond organic” or even as “outside organic”.

Today he joins us to discuss why the quality of our food has been in decline for centuries.  The importance of mineral amendments in not just growing a lot of food or good looking food but growing highly nutritious food.  Why you should definitely do a soil test on the land you are growing on even if you are getting good or even great production and more.

Steve will even explain why although organic food may be free of many toxins it is often no more nutritionally valuable then conventionaly grown produce.  He will even challenge the definition of “heirloom seeds” in a quite convincing manner.

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

Episode-827- Dave Whitinger of AllThingsPlants.com

Dave Whitinger of AllThingsPlants.com

Dave Whitinger of AllThingsPlants.com

Dave Whitinger is the founder of many websites, most notably DavesGarden.com and AllThingsPlants.com.  Thousands of gardeners around the world use his websites for researching gardening information.

Dave is widely recognized as a leading figure in the online world of gardening. He’s the current president of his local master gardener association and lives a mostly self-reliant existence with his family on 90 acres in East Texas.

He joins us today to discuss the history of Dave’s Garden and his new and dramatically improved website, All Things Plants. We will also be discussing gardening, farming, self sufficiency, sources of online gardening information, advanced gardening topics, permaculture, hugelkultur, raising livestock, gardening in Texas along with the drought of 2011.

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

Episode-813- Growing for Market with Steve “The Greenhouse Guy”

Steve Kasarda, started, built, owned and sold 3 nurseries. Now he grows for market (show theme) and manufactures greenhouses. He is here today to discuss “growing for market” without spending thousands or perhaps even hundreds of dollars.

Steve's Green Houses Growing in The North West Winter

Join Us Today As We Discuss…

  • General green house growing
  • Soils ,plant starts, grow temps, supplemental heat
  • Getting started at the market with selling, display and pricing mix of product
  • How to treat a customer and keep them as a customer
  • The role a greenhouse or poly tunnel can play in making you money
  • How long it takes to become an established market grower
  • Getting plant starts on the cheap or free
  • Creating unique niches and selling the average stuff as wel
  • How to organize your displays for transport and protect your merchandise
  • Making gardening into a profit center

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

Episode-788- Trevor Van Hemert on Composting

Trevor Van Hemert of PedalToPetal.com

Trevor Van Hemert of PedalToPetal.com

Trevor Van Hemert runs Pedal to Petal a company that picks up food scraps from all over the city of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Pedal To Petal is a permaculture-based collective of bicycle loving food security activists who are taking direct action to reduce carbon emissions and landfill waste and to feed the soil and the city’s hungry.

They do all their pick up and transport via the use of bicycles with zero use of any fossil fuels. The finished compost is used to grow food in the same city where the components are collected and the compost is produced making Pedal to Petal a truly local business.

While most people would tend to expect Pedal to Petal to be a non profit business it is actually a very successful for profit enterprise proving that a business can be successful, profitable and still have a soul and a noble purpose.

Join Us Today as we Discuss…

  • What exactly is compost
  • What is compost useful for
  • How does nature make its own compost
  • What can and can not be composted
  • The science of composting
  • How long does composting take
  • Stages of the compost cycle
  • Carbon and nitrogen sources and ratios
  • Rat proofing compost bins
  • Composting with worms
  • Multi bin systems
  • Heating with compost
  • Aerobic vs anaerobic composting
  • Making bio gas
  • Composting humanure
  • Compost pit for water storage

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Episode-776- Winter Gardening Projects

A Winter Homestead

Photo Credit to lawr88223

Now is the time to get going with your late fall and winter gardening projects and project planning.  Yesterday I went and got another load of compost from the city compost facility.

What I noticed is in the 55 degree weather doing so was a lot more enjoyable, it reinforced something I have always said, cool weather is best for your gardening projects.  So I figured today would be a good time to go over some fall/winter project ideas, including some I am currently working on and have planned.

Join me today as I discuss….

  • The greenhouse is going in this month
  • Why I am rethinking aquaponics
  • Time to trick or treat for organic matter
  • My concept for a seasonal zoned rabbit hutch
  • Cover cropping and pasture creation
  • Thoughts on compost heating systems
  • The rocket mass heated greenhouse
  • A true hidden/survival garden
  • Hugelkultur bed progress to date

Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Episode-728- Personal Liberty and Actionable Garden Intelligence

Two we have a two part episode.  In the first part I discuss more about Jan Cline and a progress report on what the TSP audience has done so far.  As of this morning Jan had received over 16,000 and the TSP community by my best count has chipped in over 5,000 of that 16K.

Additionally we discuss personal liberty and why standing up in situations like this is important for everyone’s liberty including our own.  I am also asking you to call the Mayor of Salem Oregon today and tell her what a waiver is!  She stated that they are “looking for a solution to the problem are trying to find some commercial property she can use for her sales”.  Only politicians are stupid enough to see this as a solution.

Apparently this mayor thinks it is okay to expect a woman so riddled with bone cancer to carry her stuff to some “commercial property”.  A woman so riddled with cancer that in her own words, “I could break my leg by walking”.

Personally I feel that at this point that Jan won’t need the sales anymore.  Her real hope though was, “I hope no one else ever has to go through this”.  Well we have come together to help Jan financially now today let us come together to make that wish come true at least in Salem.  Please call the mayor and explain to her that she could and should fix this in 5 minutes with a waiver if she had courage to use her power to do just that.  You can find contact information for Salem’s mayor here.

In part two of the show we discuss the lessons I have learned with my bag and container gardens this year.

Some of the things I  have learned this year…

  • Mason wasps are cool
  • Red wasps patrol your plants looking for prey
  • Cope’s Gray Frogs like dog dishes and blossoms for mini ponds
  • Green anoles are very prolific
  • Swifts and skinks like wood and rock piles
  • Black ants may kill squash vine borers (not sure yet)
  • Bag gardening works great you just have to water often
  • Watermelons grow beautifully in my area

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

Episode-710- Holly Hirshberg from The Dinner Garden

Holly Hirshberg founder of DinnerGarden.org

In 2008, in the midst of a crumbling economy, Holly Hirshberg came up with a plan to help families and communities could weather the tough times by growing produce themselves.  Much like the Victory Gardens of the First and Second World Wars, these “Dinner Gardens” would allow people to stretch their food budgets and enhance their nutritional intake.   Individuals and families could have greater food security and take a direct part in that effort.

To help people achieve their gardens, Holly started at the beginning: providing people with vegetable seeds, free of charge.  Step two was supporting their efforts with gardening information and tips for cheap gardening in the space they had available.   She envisioned a nation where front lawns, empty lots, medians, parks, schools, churches, and community centers devoted space to fruit and vegetable gardens.

Holly often states ,”The Dinner Garden isn’t just about the seeds, It is about giving people hope. It is about showing people another way to live. The Dinner Garden is creating communities where families spend time together in a productive way and children learn that they can create something beautiful and useful to their family.”

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.

 

Episode-699- Marjory Wildcraft on Producing Your Own Food

Note – Today’s show was originally supposed to air on Wednesday last week.  Due to an error it is airing today, so the episode numbers and dates in the audio won’t match.  Today’s show though is now officially Episode 699.  We will do a listener calls show tomorrow and a feedback show on Wednesday to make up for last weeks missed shows.

Today Marjory Wildcraft of Back Yard Food Production joins us to discuss taking control of your own food supply with home growing, small livestock and community building.

Not long ago humans fed themselves, provided for their on needs and were largely self sufficient. They knew how to feed themselves, how to take care of animals, what to plant and what to do when something went wrong. Marjory’s DVD, “Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm” is your guide to recapturing that lost knowledge.

Marjory is a nationally recognized expert in organic backyard food production.  She is the creator of a widely acclaimed video tutorial titled Food Production Systems for a Backyard or Small Farm.  Marjory teaches people with no gardening or agricultural experience, how to successfully grow healthy, vibrant, life-giving nutritious food.

Her DVD is endorsed and carried by such notables as The Permaculture Activist, Acre’s USA, John Jeavons and Ecology Action’s premier seed and tool company Bountiful Gardens, SurvivalBlog.com and The Weston-Price Nutrition Foundation.

She has been featured as a guest on a diversity of national radio shows such as Coast to Coast AM, “The Power Hour” with Joyce Riley, and the Patrick Timpone show.

Join us today as we discuss…

  • Getting started from zero with food production
  • Growing herbs
  • Composting
  • Rabbits vs chicken for meat production
  • The “secret to a green thumb”
  • Guns and gardening
  • How hard times are on the way but you don’t have to participate

Additional Resources for Today’s Show

Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK and you might hear yourself on the air.