The Urban Farm Podcast With Greg Peterson

Making the most of small spaces for gardens.In This Podcast: Returning guest Jessica Walliser opens our eyes and minds to working in small spaces with container gardens.  She worked hard to make a comprehensive book with important steps and key details for those who wish to make a container work for growing their vegetables, fruits and flowers too. And we get a few ideas for containers too.Our Returning guest Horticulturist Jessica co-hosts The Organic Gardeners, an award-winning program on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of The American Horticultural Society.In addition. she is also the author of several gardening books including the Amazon best-seller Good Bug, Bad Bug: Who’s Who, What They Do, and How to Manage Them Organically, and her fourth book, Attracting Beneficial Bugs to the Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control, which was awarded the American Horticultural Society's 2014 Book Award.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/01/16/324-jessica-w

Growing crops and raising livestock in urban spaces.In This Podcast: Returning guest Kari Spencer talks about her first book City Farming, and shares about some of the key aspects of farming in a city space.  She visited several farms to research other perspectives and methods and gathered all the data into this book. She also tells about how it is so jam packed with information that part of the book had to go digital.  There are several great ideas to help urban farmers gain confidence and overcome some challenges.Kari is a popular local gardening & homesteading speaker. As a Master Gardener and a Master Farmer, she enjoys sharing her passion for growing and raising food with others. In addition to teaching classes all over the city of Phoenix, she is the creator of Urban Farm U’s Growing Food the Basics & Backyard Livestock courses.She and her family operate The Micro Farm Project, a small farm in North Phoenix, where gardens and livestock animals provide her family with fun and food.

Checking for the presence of pesticide in our food.In This Podcast:A youth spent on an organic sheep farm, and early adulthood spent traveling as a journalist led Henry Rowlands to the development of Sustainable Pulse – a news source dedicated to informing on sustainable agriculture. He now leads up the Detox Project which helps increase awareness of pesticide exposure in our foods and our bodies, and is spreading the word about a testing process that can determine pesticide levels in foods or bodies.  This is information that can be used to help determine the toxicity of chemicals in use today.Henry was raised on a family-run, organic sheep farm in Wales.  This led to his deep interest in issues related to sustainable agriculture, and he worked for a time as a news agency journalist in many countries across Europe.  He eventually moved on to set up Sustainable Pulse, a global news source focusing on sustainable agriculture and food, with a readership of over 500,000 people per month from over

Attuning our minds to social permaculture solutions.In This Podcast:When given the opportunity to make an abandon greenhouse become useful Adam Brock and a few friends created the GrowHaus.  He has traveled many places focusing on the invisible structures of permaculture design and has crafted a course that teaches how to see the needs and make a difference in your community. He tells us how this came about and why he was encouraged to write a book on a topic that is not well known. Adam helps explain many permaculture concepts that are important but often left undeveloped when discussing the stages of design.    Adam is a facilitator, author, and designer working at the intersection of urban agriculture, sustainable business, and social change. As co-founder of The GrowHaus, Adam helped transform an abandoned half-acre greenhouse in Colorado's most polluted zip code into an award-winning hub for urban agriculture. The GrowHaus engages thousands of low-income residents per year, grows 1500

Documenting the histories of seeds in Baker Creek Catalogs.In This Podcast: Traveling the world to get the unique seeds and document their stories – a dream job for a writer and gardener like Shannon McCabe.  She tells us a little more about how she got started working for Baker Creek Seeds and some of the perks of working for a visionary like Jere Gettle. She also shares about the upcoming Seed Expo in California in the Fall and the donation program for non-profits and school programs.Shannon is a writer who found her passion melded beautifully with farming and growing heirloom vegetables when she landed the perfect job as the farm manager and catalog writer at Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company.  She has traveled the world as a seed explorer for Baker Creek, from cycling the tulip fields in Netherlands in search of rare bulbs, to the remote jungle markets of the Peruvian Amazon in search of rare fruit.Shannon co-writes the award winning Whole Seed Catalog, and dreamt up the Baker Creek childre

Translating fowl language for urban farmers.In This Podcast:After moving all the way across the country, Melissa Caughey shares why she added chickens to her family.  She tells about how, with her science and teaching background, she eventually started teaching people about chickens. Always learning, she discovered there is a fowl language that could be understood and started teaching others how to Speak Chicken. She coaches Greg through a few key calls that, once translated, will be obvious to anyone who keeps chickens.Melissa is the author of How to Speak Chicken and A Kid’s Guide to Keeping Chickens published by our friends at Storey Publishing. She is a backyard chicken keeper, beekeeper, and gardener who writes the award-winning blog Tilly’s Nest. She writes for HGTV, DIY Network, and the magazines Grit, Chickens, Community Chickens, and Country Living. She also gives presentations on chicken keeping at events across the country. She lives on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2

Recognizing the connections between insects and plant life.In This Podcast:Several years into running a landscaping company, a few key employees opened Jessica Walliser's eyes to the importance of avoiding pesticides. Taking the time to educate herself, she converted to a whole new mindset and is now an avid teacher about natural pest control. She tells us about the predator-prey cycle and why we need to stay out of the process as much as possible, and shares a few tips on how to help the population of beneficial bugs grow in your space. We hear descriptions of several types of insects and bugs that are part of healthy ecosystems in gardens and farms.Jessica earned her degree in Horticulturist from Penn State University and co-hosts “The Organic Gardeners”, an award-winning program on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of The American Horticultural Society. She is a regular contributor to Fine Gardening, Urban Farm, and Hobby Farms magazines, and her two we

Breaking down some factors in the science of studying soil.In This Podcast: It was not her first thought when she went college, but after an inspiring study abroad trip, Mary found her passion in the science of studying soil. She tells us how this life path change occurred, and how she not only found a topic she could literally dig into, but also a society that she would enjoy and now represents through her blog articles.  She also tells us more about the factors involved in the formation of soil and how to keep it healthy in our raised bed gardens.Mary is a soil scientist and Agro-ecology PhD student at Florida International University in Miami. Originally from Iowa, she received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Environmental Science and Agronomy at Iowa State University. Her master’s research was on ants and the ways they influence prairie soil formation.Her passion for soils has taken her across the globe, from the Alaskan to, tropical rainforests –and many places in between - all in hopes to better

Stacking beekeeping businesses with alternative energy for everyone's benefit.In This Podcast: Chiara and Travis Bolton are not just any regular beekeepers, they are also changemakers in that they have devised an innovative way to help several aspects of their local community in environmentally friendly and the area of sustainable energy.  They realized they could stack the functions of beekeeping with the land intensive areas of solar panels for mutual benefit and provide a product that was healthy, local, and in demand.  Then they decided to expand this concept to help others do the same thing and have set up a business just to help in this process.Chiara and Travis are beekeepers in Minnesota.  In their business, Bolton Bees they sell Minnesota-Hardy bees adapted to survive Minnesota's harsh northern climate and distinct location specific honey.They have been featured in National Geographic, Martha Stewart, Smithsonian Magazine, and Modern Farmer for their innovative partnerships with s

Embracing simplicity and starting a new life.In This Podcast: After spending some time completing an earthen building project and maintaining two mortgages and many of the standard life trappings, Leanne Phillips realized this was not the lifestyle she was looking for and decided to simplify.  She moved to a remote property off a 10-mile dirt road and started over without the infrastructure many people take for granted.  She tells how she got solar power set up, established a new well, and even planted 100 new fruit trees before those were done.  Her experiences are fortifying her classes that she teaches and her story telling helps to make it all really interesting!Leanne, creator of Wisdom ooh Zivaat, is an organic lifestyle and holistic health Educator, and an inspired advocate for creating clean, deeply nourishing foods.  She extends this into a full organic lifestyle and teaches classes in Living foods, Gardening, Essential oils and more. Wisdom ooh Zivaat is an off grid 34-

Finding amazing seeds and becoming a seed storyteller.In This Podcast: Her young life was spent on a small island near a 300-year-old farm, with a family that loved to share history through storytelling.  Then Shannon McCabe got a chance to work for Baker Creek Seeds and now she documents the stories of seeds from around the world. She explains just what an heirloom seed is, and why they are special. She also shares a couple seed stories, including one for garden berries in Peru, and another about an ancient, crooknecked watermelon from a cave in Arizona.  We cannot spoil this, you must listen for yourself!Shannon is a writer, seed explorer and horticulturist for Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. After earning a degree in Environmental Horticulture from the University of Rhode Island, she worked on mixed-vegetable farms and a fruit orchard before starting her own small-scale farm on historic farmland.She combined her life-long love of writing with her passion for farming when she began working

Seeking natural solutions for food waste recycling.In This Podcast: It was his grandmother’s principles about not wasting food or resources in rural Georgia that influenced Dr. Jeff Tomberlin’s philosophies on his life. He found his calling in college and has dedicated much of his energies to teaching others about nature’s extremely effective recycling tool – the Black Soldier Fly. Growing and harvesting this insect is actually quite easy once you know the steps, and he wants everyone to do it at home. He tells why this insect could prove to be a solution to not just dealing with food waste, but providing a source of food for both chickens and fish, closing a loop in the food-waste cycle.Dr. Tomberlin has been working with the black soldier flies for almost 20 years. His PhD research with Dr. Craig Sheppard resulted in methods for mass-producing the black soldier fly for use in recycling food or animal waste and the subsequent use of the larvae as feed for livestock, poultry, aquacult

Getting to know more about the popular culinary fungi.In This Podcast: His space was limited and he wanted to start a small food growing business, then Kevin Fitzgerald found his perfect match in growing mushrooms and selling them at the farmers market.  He talks with us today about the mycelium that is a favorite of many foodies, and has such potential to nourish while also helping the environment. He has even started selling mushroom kits that can help the home grower start off on their own mushroom adventure.After spending years in communications contracting and feeling unfulfilled Kevin decided to start farming and settled on mushrooms as something that fit his interests and could be profitable on small scale. Starting on a hobby scale he has grown from mini green house and small humidifier to full size room fully climate controlled. He grows mushrooms for both culinary and medicinal uses.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/12/05/312-kevin-fitzgerald/ for more information and links on this podc

Bringing exotic flavor to local food systems.In This Podcast: Starting off at age 18, Joshua Burman Thayer was headed in the direction of working with plants and nature. He took his time before getting his permaculture certificate, but he packed a lot of learning and hands-on experience in during that period. Now, he is sharing that training, knowledge, and passion as he builds food forests, educates his clients, and writing articles about permaculture and food forest design.  Joshua has a degree in Community Engineering from Humboldt State University. He proudly admits he has always had his hands in the Earth, especially through his extensive travels throughout the Americas working with communities around plants and food.  He worked as a WWOOF volunteer on organic farms throughout Latin America, and as a laborer on organic CSA farms in California. He gained even more experience while apprenticing and working in ecological landscape design, as well as doing native plant field research with

Chatting with a Sustainable Farming giant.In This Podcast: Having three generations of regenerative and sustainable farmers to learn from, Joel Salatin was very immersed in the philosophies of farming that rejected the use of chemicals.  Their efforts over the years on the virtually barren land his father purchased in the early 60’s has resulted in a vibrant, and productive farm that Joel now runs. He shares several key lessons he learned about farming and soil generation, and throws out some gems worth quoting!Joel and his family own Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Featured in the iconic foodie book Omnivore's Dilemma and award-winning film FOOD INC., the farm's moniker is "healing the land one bite at a time." A prolific author (12 books to date) and speaker, he promotes local food systems, freedom of food choice, and farming systems that build the commons.Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/11/28/310-joel-salatin/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our oth

Getting ready to raise chickens from eggs with your kids.In This Podcast:Raising chickens for eggs has been a joy of Fresh Eggs Daily author Lisa Steele’s for quite some time, so it was natural for her to write a book about raising chickens from eggs too.  She tells us how she decided to write a book for kids and why it is so special.  She also shares some tips and techniques for making the transition to raising the chicks from eggs and how to introduce new chicks to your flock.Lisa is a 5th-generation chicken keeper, top-selling author and the creative mind behind the Better Homes & Gardens award-winning blog Fresh Eggs Daily® (www.fresheggsdaily.com). Lisa inspires both the newcomer as well as the seasoned chicken keeper and engages fans worldwide on her Facebook page of the same name with her easy, fun and accessible approach to raising backyard flocks naturally. She is the author of several books and has a new one for kids coming out 1st Quarter 2018 called Let’s Hatch Chicks by Voyager Pres

Recognizing the seasonal commonalities in different areas.In This Podcast: It was the timing of it all that needed to be addressed, so author and farmer Ann Larkin Hansen realized she needed to write a book about how to recognize the right time to do things on the farm no matter where you lived. She took the time to identify the seasons in ways that would make sense in every area because it compiled the common factors that affected when to plant which type of crops. Her interest in writing and farming also helped with a few other books that she wrote and she shares a few more useful tips. Go to urbanfarm.org/annlarkinhansenAnn is a homesteader and small-scale organic farmer, as well as a farm journalist specializing in sustainable farming and forestry. After she retired from farm reporting, she authored a number of books. Her latest book The Backyard Homestead Seasonal Planner – what to do and when to do it by Storey Press is in bookstores now.  She lives with her family on a farm in northern Wiscon

Tackling local food waste and hunger through team effort.In This Podcast: Retirement does not mean you no longer contribute to your community, in fact retired teacher Steve Knight has taken advantage of his free time to do the make a huge difference for local food charities, and create a new club in his area. When he realized local farms had leftover produce after the harvest, he organized volunteers to go through the fields and orchards to gather the remnants for local food pantries. His volunteers are truly making a difference on two fronts! Steve taught high school science for 40 years and then retired. He spent the past few summers teaching chemistry for Upward Bound at the University of Maine at Farmington.  But what he is excited about is after he retired, he started a volunteer organization called Central Maine Gleaners Group. In the first 3 years, Steve and 15 volunteers have gleaned over 21,000 pounds of food from 7 local farms and back yards and he then gives this food to various food

Harvesting sustainable and nourishing foods found growing in the wild.In This Podcast: Taking the skills handed down for generations, Mark Lewis is very comfortable eating foods he finds in the wild. He teaches about these foods and their history to the next generation as well as to the people he meets while working at local farmers markets.  He is also starting a private farm hoping to save and expand on some of the wild plants that were once a primary source of food for local cultures.Mark is a Wildcrafter extraordinaire. Wildcraft harvesting provides ¾ of his family’s food supply on a daily basis, additionally Mark demonstrates sustainable foraging of 200 indigenous plants and 50 mushrooms at Phoenix area farmers markets, universities, schools, and regional conferences.Mark is now embarking on a new endeavor The Farm – growing 100 of the plants that he wildcrafts, introducing them and their culinary potential to area chefs, and sharing them and a library of First Nations’ language ethnobotanical mater

Finding healing in gardening and peace in helping others grow healthy foods.In This Podcast: Uprooted as a very young child with her widowed mother from a familiar routine to a chaotic new and foreign world across an ocean, Lee Stewart eventually found healing and health through her gardening hobbies.  It made sense that she eventually focused on a career of health and wellness, and it was even more natural for her to find ways to help others start gardening at home so they can find the same healing she did.Lee, the owner of Veg Up Get Dirty was only 4 years old when she made the 2-year journey from Vietnam to the United States. She has been gardening since she came to the US, and believes in the health benefits that come from clean eating.She is a certified personal trainer, corporate wellness coach, and has over 15 years’ experience in nutrition and the health and wellness fields. She knows the importance of gardening, clean eating, and is passionate about educating others about the many health be