The Urban Farm Podcast with Greg Peterson (Urban Farm Team)

751: Mike Crimmins and Gary Woodard on Logging The Rain

Collecting rainfall information in a cooperative community project

In This Podcast: Rainlog.org is one of the coolest Citizen science projects available.  Simply purchase a rain gauge create an account and track your rain.  Join Farmer Greg as he chats with the creators of the site.  Mike and Gary came together 20 years ago to track rural rainfall in Arizona and their project has expanded worldwide and includes millions of readings.   

Mike is on the faculty of the Department of Environmental Science at the University of Arizona and is an Extension Specialist in Climate Science for Arizona Cooperative Extension. He has been in this role for 18 years  working with ranchers, farmers and natural resource managers across Arizona to integrate climate information in their planning and decision making and assisting them in developing strategies to adapt to a changing climate.

Gary has more than 40 years of experience in municipal water resource issues both a consultant, and as a researcher at the University of Arizona. He specializes in integrating economic analysis with water resources issues, providing a critical bridge often missing from policy decisions. He works on projects that involve modeling municipal water demand, forecasting trends, evaluating the impacts of drought and climate change on water demand, rainwater harvesting, and assessing water conservation programs.  

Together they have developed an incredible citizen science data collection page called Rainlog.org

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/rainlog for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

834: Kirsten Simmons on Streamlining Farmers' Busy Work

She is all about helping farmers in the back office.

In This Podcast: We follow the journey of Kirsten Simmons. After experiencing farm failures, she co-founded Good Agriculture in 2022, a company that manages administrative tasks and provides financial, marketing, and grant-writing support for farmers. Kirstin shares how the company has grown, helped farmers become more profitable, and developed manual and automated tools to support farm operations. Good Agriculture aims to streamline back-office tasks, enabling farmers to focus on farming, with services tailored to small and large farms..

Our Guest: Kirsten began growing mixed vegetables in 2016 in Atlanta, and currently focuses her growing efforts on Yupik strawberries.

In 2022, she co founded Good Agriculture, where she and her team create products that manage the back offices for farmers..

Book - First Generation Farming by Chris Newman - Available Digitally Only

Visit UrbanFarm.org/GoodAgriculture for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Pursuing regenerative farming solutions for desert climates and communities.

In This Podcast: Dry, arid regions make for some creative watering strategies. Sara El-Sayed has taken the traditional olla method of watering to a new level by incorporating drip irrigation tubing. The Clayola system creates a hands-off watering system that only needs monthly attention. She also shares about how food creates culture and identity, how to consider the whole food system beyond the grocery store shelves, the growing conditions in Egypt, and how to regenerate areas using biomimicry.

Sara is pursuing her Ph.D. at Arizona State University in food system sustainability, specifically on Women in Arid Region's Regenerative Practices. She is dedicated to making a difference in her local food system and has co-founded multiple organizations for this purpose.   

Nawaya is a social enterprise working as a catalyst to transition small scale farmer communities in Egypt into more sustainable ones through education and research. Dayma is an LLC responsible for outdoor Environmental Education, teaching young adults about Biomimicry and local Egyptian communities. And, Clayola, is an LLC creating low-tech irrigation systems in collaboration with local Egyptian clay artisans.  

Sara has served as a board member in Slow Food, an international movement aiming to safeguard local food cultures and traditions by promoting Good, Clean and Fair food for all. 

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/11/19/495-sara-el-sayed/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

495: Sara El-Sayed on Low-Tech Irrigation.

Claire is the co-author with two genetic engineers of the new book, GMO Myths and Truths: A Citizen's Guide to the Evidence on the Safety and Efficacy of Genetically Modified Crops, which is for sale on Amazon and in bookstores. GMO Myths and Truths summarizes the facts on GM crops and foods in simple terms that are accessible to the non-scientist but still relevant to scientists, policymakers and educators. As her regular job, Claire is the managing editor of GMWatch.org, a public news and information service on genetically modified crops and foods. She also grows some of her own food in her garden. 

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/04/05/claire-robinson/

Working with military vets to share urban farming skills.

In This Podcast: AOVS Urban Farm is much more than CSA and Farmers Market produce. The farm is home to veterans, and Christopher Peterson discusses the immense benefits for the veterans who work and walk through the farm. This unique model has its challenges, and he shares how they planned a regenerative, ADA accessible space that produces food, but also acts as landscaping for the on-site residents. Listen in to learn about this unique approach to helping our veterans and the surrounding community! 

Christopher works as the Farm Manager at AOVS Urban Farm, a 2-acre Urban Farm and Gardens in South Memphis serving economically disadvantaged veterans who have suffered from physical and/or mental health conditions. Prior to this position, he ran Loch Holland Farm, a small, sustainable livestock farm focusing on multi-species rotational grazing and has worked on several other small, sustainable farms in the Memphis area.  

Christopher also previously served as Executive Director for GrowMemphis (now a program of Memphis Tilth) and has consulted on various other Mid-south food initiatives. In addition to food work, he holds an MA in Human Value and Global Ethics and continues to teach locally as an adjunct professor in Philosophy and Anthropology.  

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/11/09/492-christopher-peterson/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

492: Christopher Peterson on Urban Farming with Vets

Educating kids and parents on the role food plays in their health.

In This Podcast: Laurie Ouding is working to revolutionize the food system on the south side of Chicago. Through her work as a nurse, she identified the need for healthy, affordable, and available food in local neighborhoods. Now, Laurie is working with local educators to teach kids and their families healthy food habits through gardening and cooking at home. Listen in to hear about her amazing plans to build a year-round farmers market and empower her community to grow nutritious food near home! 

Laurie Ouding is an RN currently working at Rush University Medical center as a pediatric nurse. She was raised in rural Michigan where she spent much of her like working in cultivation of gardens, raising her three daughters and active volunteer organizations and nursing.

Working with local community organizations, she is moving toward opening an indoor, year-round farmers market, greenhouse with vertical hydroponics, and a spirulina farm. Her south side Chicago project will employ commercial kitchen facilities to provide inner-city communities a path to prosperity through self-enabled, local food industries. 

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/03/16/431-laurie-ouding/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

431: Laurie Ouding on Food Inequity and Kids' Health

Getting serious about the microscopic life in soil.

In This Podcast: Retired after years of leadership in Monsanto, David Stark was asked to mentor a young company making what was essentially compost tea. Reluctantly and with some concerns over the science, he agreed and now is excited to share what he has learned about soil science and plant health. Grateful for not turning down the request, he now can help teach about soil and plant health and explain about the various microbes in the soil and the essential roles they play.

Dr. Stark is President of Holganix LLC where he leads the company’s efforts to expand its business into agriculture.  Dr. Stark spent over 25 years with Monsanto Company where he held various senior leadership roles in technology, corporate affairs and business operations. 

In 2015 he went to work for Holganix, sells a line of 100% natural bionutritional products for turf, ornamental and agriculture use. The product starts with a proprietary process for making and concentrating a diverse mix of over 800 species of beneficial bacteria, fungi and protozoa. The end result is the most complete mix of Organic beneficial microbes on the market.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/08/13/470-david-stark/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

470: David Stark on Soil Microbes.

Clearing up illusions about the substances we use to grow our food.

In This Podcast: We've all bought plant-specific fertilizer or used leaves to diagnose what additives we need for our plants. But according to Robert Pavlis, building great soil needs a different approach. After all, how can you know what to add if you don't know what's already there? Listen in for common soil and fertilizer myths, the easy additive that fixes anything over time, your ideal soil ratios, and how to distinguish fact from urban legend. You'll never think the same about fertilizer!

Robert is a well-known speaker and educator with over 40 years of gardening experience. He is the author of three books,  Building Natural Ponds, Garden Myths, and Soil Science for Gardeners  and publishes the popular gardening blogs;  GardenMyths.com  and  GardenFundamentals.com. As the owner and head gardener of Aspen Grove Gardens, a six-acre botanical garden, he grows 3,000 varieties of plants.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/05/05/537-robert-pavlis/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

537: Robert Pavlis on Garden Soil Myths.

806: The Rogue Food Conference with Joel Salatin and John Moody

Showcasing those who are making a difference in our food systems.

In This Podcast: The Rogue Food Conference" is an annual gathering of innovative thinkers and passionate advocates who are challenging the status quo of the food industry. Hosted by Joel Salatin and John Moody, this conference showcases individuals and organizations that have found creative solutions to navigate the regulatory hurdles and bring nutrient-dense, local, and authentic food to their communities.

Joel Salatin and his family owned Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Featured in the iconic foodie book, Omnivore's Dilemma, An award winning film, Food Inc., the farm's moniker is Healing the Land One Bite at a Time. Joel is a prolific author and speaker. He promotes local food systems, freedom of food choice, and farming systems that build the commons. Joel was a guest on our podcast and appeared in episode 310.

John Moody lives in his homestead in the rolling hills of Kentucky. He founded the whole life buying club, one of the largest alternative food distribution approaches in the country. He is the author of five books and a well known speaker at conferences across the country on health, food, farming, and freedom. John is a returning podcast guest and appeared on episode 116 and 535.

NOTE: the tickets are available at the Rogue Food Conference website, which is RogueFoodConference. com

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/806Rogue for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

802: All About Chickens, Goats, and Sheep

A Garden Chat with Judith Horvath.

In This Garden Chat:

Judith joins our Garden Chat and she shares the ins and outs of getting into raising small backyard animals. This includes goats, sheep, and chickens. In this Chat, we explore the pitfalls associated with having small animals and how to avoid them.

Our Special Guest:

Judith Horvath has journeyed from a white-collar business executive to hair sheep and dairy goat farmer. When COVID and global events laid bare the fragility of our food supply chain, Judith found a way to leave corporate life to concentrate solely on farming.  Today she’s helping launch a new generation of small farmers with the goal of establishing a resilient local food supply chain based on regenerative agriculture methods, rotationally grazed grass fed meats, and nutrient dense produce.  She’s on a mission to help people get started farming and be immediately successful. 

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg or choose one of the senior members of our Urban Farm team to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Cultivating Soil: The Dirt Craft Story

In This Podcast: We feature Adam Schwartz and Sarah Murphy, founders of Dirt Craft Living Soils, a company that creates high-quality, peat-free soil mixes for organic farmers and gardeners in the Southeast. Adam and Sarah discuss their backgrounds in farming and environmentalism, their move to North Carolina, and the establishment of their soil business in 2018. They emphasize the importance of local, sustainable agriculture and detail their innovative composting facility aimed at producing certified organic compost from pre-consumer food waste. The conversation also covers the environmental impact of peat moss and the benefits of their alternative soil ingredients. Key moments include their efforts to support local farms, their family business dynamics, and the challenges and triumphs of running a small, quality-focused enterprise.

Our Guests:  Adam Schwartz and Sarah Murphy are lifelong environmentalists and perennial entrepreneurs who are passionate about building a resilient and just local food system. They moved to Western North Carolina for the opportunity to live a rural lifestyle and stewardship with the land. Together, they founded Dirt Craft Living Soils, a family owned and operated business that blends high quality, peat free soil mixes for organic farmers and gardeners throughout the Southeast.

Visit UrbanFarm.org/DirtCraft for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Bringing gardening methods full circle.

In This Podcast:

We learn from Crystal Stevens about the many inexpensive ways to build a regenerative and edible landscape using natural resources. Crystal describes the different possibilities that can be incorporated into any size space that can lead one down the path towards self-sufficiency. One of her specialties is herbs and she shares with us some of the medicinal properties of herbs and their health benefits. 

Don’t miss an episode!visit UrbanFarm.Org/podcast

Crystal lives along the bluffs of the Mighty Mississippi River in Godfrey, Illinois with her husband, and 2 children. She is an Author, an Artist/Art Teacher, a Folk Herbalist, a Regenerative Farmer, and a Permaculturist. She has written 3 books published by New Society Publishers: Grow Create Inspire, Worms at Work, and Your Edible Yard. Crystal speaks at conferences and Mother Earth News Fairs across the United States and has been teaching a Resilient Living workshop series for over a decade.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/06/08/606-crystal-stevens/ for shownotes and links.

Crystal Stevens on regenerative urban farming.

800: Robbie Shaw on American Chestnut Blight and Rescue.

Saving an iconic resource almost lost to history.

In This Podcast: What if you discovered a long lost tree, one that there used to be billions of two centuries ago, but are now functionally extinct? Today's guest found one and rather than do nothing, she wrote a book about their story. Join Robbie Shaw as she shares the epic adventure of the American Chestnut.

Our Guest: Robbie is a naturalist with a deep passion for storytelling that dates back to her childhood. When she stumbled across the New York Times article about an incurable blight that brought about the functional extinction of the American chestnut Forrest, she was moved and shocked. She wondered why generations of her family living in these forests never spoke about this incredible loss and why she had never learned about it in school.

It has taken a century, but today’s science and technology exist to address this tragedy and turn back the hands of time.  Restoring a functionally extinct species is no small task.  The goal of her debut novel, the tree that called us home is to share a story based on true events and disseminate, that story far and wide, so that every American for generations can come to know the beauty of sitting under a spreading chestnut tree and roasting chestnuts on an open fire.

Robin holds a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from Syracuse University and for years taught traditional breeding methods as a high school educator.   She also had a career as a financial planner, worked as a ski instructor, is a long-time organic farmer, and was elected to serve as a state representative to the Arizona legislature. 

Robbie's Book: The Tree That Called Us Home

Book Recommendation: The Diamond Cutter by Geshe Michael Roach

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/AmericanChestnut for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these

In Part 1 of this special 3 part series about the Past, Present and Future of the Urban Farm, Greg Peterson reviews the history of the Urban Farm and gives a sneak peek into the future.

"Well, the news is out and there are big changes in my life. Heidi and I are moving, and this is not a little move. We are transporting ourselves 1900 miles to our dream home in Asheville, North Carolina. Lots more to come about our landing place in the ‘future’ part of my writing. I want to assure you, however, with our team in place (Janis, Tayler, Theresa, Ray, Renee, Bill, Belle and Kari) all of our programs will continue into the future just like they have for over 20 years. And for those of you that expect to see me on the ground in Phoenix – you still will for the Fruit Tree Program events and the Seed Up.

To begin my journey I thought I would review the Past of the Urban Farm, visit the Present and the biggest question I get…why are you moving?, and speculate on the Future of our new space. Here is a little teaser, we are moving mid-April 2022 to a quaint little town 10 miles from downtown Asheville, North Carolina. We found our ‘dream farm to be’ on 4 acres that is exploding with possibilities, way too many for me to choose right now."

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/03/15/urbanfarmpast/ for show notes and links.

Bonus Episode 1: Ask Jake and Greg. 

A Q&A session with two experts on Gardening and Fruit Trees.

In This BONUS Podcast: Jake Mace the Vegan Athlete and Greg Peterson of The Urban Farm are both gardening educators offering classes, podcasts, and videos on a large variety of gardening topics. Every month they get together for a monthly gardening chat to discuss what is going on in their gardens and answer your questions.. This is the June 2017 Q&A episode with a variety of questions addressed from shade trees, mulching, fertilizing, soil amendments, watering, and much more. 

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/06/26/bonus-episode-1-jake-and-greg/ for more information and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Episode 252.5

781: Alexandra Kutner on You Are What You Eat

Bringing a passion for health into a healthy snack business

In This Podcast: Join Greg as he chats with Alexandra Kutner and how she transformed her life with a healthy lifestyle, food is medicine, non-toxic house attitude! Alexandra is very passionate about the saying “you are what you eat” and she believes that the proper diet through food from the earth is all that we truly need.

Our Guest: Alexandra is a health enthusiast and entrepreneur. As the Creator of EveryDATE Treats, she is driven to promote health and longevity and a true believer and activist of the “you are what you eat” lifestyle. Her passions run deep and her journey to entrepreneurship was created through wanting to spread health to her community and eventually the world.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/EveryDate for the show notes and links on this episode!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

768: Integrated Pest Management.

A Garden Chat with Teresa Watkins.

In This Garden Chat:

Integrated pest management is a concept that looks at all the ways of managing pest pressure and uses the least impactful one first. Greg talks with Teresa Watkins about how to use the least harmful method of pest control to the environment first, which could mean picking off insects off the plants, or even spraying aphids off a plant with water. It means using the best management practices to help prevent pests or diseases before they arrive.

Our Special Guest:

Teresa is a garden author, landscape designer, horticulturist and radio personality. She had the honor of designing the landscape for the first certified green home in Florida. Theresa taught Florida friendly principles for the University of Florida and was instrumental in developing the Florida Water Star Water conservation and certification program.

She is the host of the podcast, Better Lawns and Gardens, plus her first gardening book series A Gardener's, compendium: Gardening in a Twitter world in 140 characters or more is available at bookshops, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and on Theresa's website.

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg or choose one of the senior members of our Urban Farm team to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Transitioning to a plant based diet for a healthy lifestyle.

Karine was once an extreme carnivore and she happily ate sweetbreads, blood pudding, lots of meats including game, and all kinds of raw meats. Food was her life. She had a catering business and organized dinner parties that would have made a vegan faint. Life was spent in the kitchen, and life was good. Then she embarked on her vegan journey just over year ago to combat significant skin issues. She started by first eating fruits and vegetables in large quantities but she struggled from low energy levels. Then she tried a paleo diet which did not work out for her, so she started educating herself about plant-based protein.

Education was the key to her success, and two pillars of veganism became important to her: mercy for animals, and protection of the environment. Grains, seeds, and nuts are now the biggest part of her diet while she is striving to achieve a complete plant-based diet.  She loves whole and natural ingredients, and wants to show others how a vegan diet can be fun, easy, and delicious!

IN THIS PODCAST:  Greg gets to chat with new friend Karine who has a mission to help others cook delicious vegan meals.  Karine shares her experience of going vegan and explains why she was she was motivated to make that change. With her experience running a catering business, it makes sense that cooking would be a passion that continues even with a dramatic lifestyle change. She is committed to helping others by sharing her journey and sharing many tasty and healthy vegan recipes and she explains why this is so important to her.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/10/29/karine-kuchipudi/ for show notes and links.

238: Mimi Arnold on Farm-to-Table, Resort Hotel Style

 Building food and garden resources for an ocean-front, secluded ranch hotel.

In this podcast: We hear from Mimi Arnold, the gardener who is helping initiate a farm-to-table program at one of California’s beautiful coastal hotels. She explains how she has been working with the owners and the chef to help design and provide the resource gardens on the property. She is dedicated to preserving the environment and loves helping the Inn and its guests connect with nature as much as she can!

Mimi is a visual artist and garden designer. After receiving her bachelors in Fine Art at UCLA's School of Art and Architecture, her ongoing interest in botanicals and green spaces fully surfaced; thus, she merged her artistic background with her love in all that is green and headed into the garden design industry. For over two years, Mimi worked for two specialty gardening companies in San Francisco, and contributed to projects for Google and Restoration Hardware.

Currently, she is located on California's Mendocino coast where she works as the head ornamental & edible gardener for the Inn at Newport Ranch, as well as the ranch’s florist.  Here, she is involved with developing a farm-to-table food service for the inn, botanical styling throughout the interior, and providing weekly fresh florals-whether grown on site or foraged from the 2,700 acres of redwood forest.

Food, flowers, and foliage, - the source matters; she’s doing her best to keep things local and maintain a mindful and sustainable practice.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/05/23/mimi-arnold/ for more information

Bridging the gap between farmers and consumers.

In This Podcast: Want more info on what it takes to be a farmer? Trevor Williams of the Farm Traveler Podcast interviews farmers about their day to day life and processes. Listen in to learn about becoming educated on where your food comes from, some of Trevor's epic guests, and some of the innovative things people are doing in the farming industry. He also shares what it's like to single-handedly produce a podcast and his goals and vision for the future of his show.

Trevor is a former High School Agriscience teacher now software analyst and host of the podcast Farm Traveler. He graduated with a major in Agricultural Education and Communication and a minor in Environmental Horticulture from the University of Florida and is a former Florida Future Farmers of America State Officer. Trevor taught agriscience classes for two years in Daytona Beach, FL and helped direct a career academy focused on Horticulture and Aquaculture.  After two years he moved closer to home and, in order to stay involved in agriculture while working as a software analyst, he started Farm Traveler in 2016 with the motivation and editorial expertise of his wife Allie. As host and producer of the Farm Traveler Podcast, he pretty much does it all to make it work.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/06/02/541-trevor-williams/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

541: Trevor Williams on Farming Podcasts.

Incorporating wild ingredients into every day and special occasion fare.

In This Podcast:  Her curiosity, her love of gardening, and her creativity in the kitchen, come together beautifully and for our benefit when Marie Viljoen compiled recipes for her new cookbook.  She shares how she moved from gardening in 66 square feet to foraging all over New York City.  If you are ever in her city, you will want to take a foraging walk with her!

Marie is a celebrated New York City forager, gardener, cook and author who has loved edible plants since her childhood in South Africa.  She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and leads acclaimed seasonal wild plant walks through NYC.

In Marie’s new book Forage, Harvest, Feast, there is a groundbreaking collection of nearly 500 wild food recipes and features hundreds of color photographs as well as cultivation tips for plants easily grown at home. This cookbook is destined to become a standard reference for any cook wanting to transform wildcrafted and homegrown ingredients into exceptional dishes, spices, and drinks.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/11/03/396-marie-viljoen/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

396: Marie Viljoen on Wild Inspired Cuisine

Transforming food with healthy microbes.

In This Podcast:

Wanting to know more about healthy eating after his father got sick, Alex Lewin did lots of reading, studying, and research. He narrowed his focus to real foods and transforming food with healthy microbes.  Eventually he was quite skilled at fermentation and has enjoyed helping others get excited about this preservation process. He shares with us why this healthy option is worth learning about.

Alex grew up on the East Coast where he discovered that one of his gifts is the ability to co-exist side-by-side with friendly bacteria. While others struggle with it, Alex embraces them. As a graduate of Harvard, the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, he seeks to create a healthier and tastier world by spreading the good news about fermentation and real food.

Alex is the co-author of "Kombucha, Kefir, and Beyond" and the author of "Real Food Fermentation: Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen".

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/06/05/357-alex-lewin/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

David Burns and Austin Young talk about the placement of fruit trees throughout urban spaces as a means to cultivate community and food security. Fallen Fruit is a collaborative art project that began in Los Angeles in 2004 with mapping public fruit–fruit that grows on or over public property. Our projects include diverse site-specific artworks that embrace public participation. Fallen Fruit’s art works encourage the public to experience their city as a fruitful, generous place, inviting people to engage in sharing and collectively explore the meaning of community and collaboration through public participation and exhibition projects. 

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2015/12/24/david-burns-and-austin-young/

Jake Mace will talk about why humanity's global future is local and 3 ways to ensure your fruit trees thrive. Jake is The Vegan Athlete, runs Longevity Gardens in Phoenix, AZ with his wife Pam, and is one of the most passionate food advocates that we know. This is his third visit to The Urban Farm Podcast. We love having him on the show because he is always working on some new project in his yard and has a lot of valuable expertise to share!

For show notes and links visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/04/28/jake-mace-humanitys-future/

851: Seed Conferences

A Seed Chat with Special Guest Julia Dakin

In this episode, Greg from Urban Farm U hosts a seed chat with Julia Dakin, co-founder of the nonprofit Going to Seed. They discuss Julia's work in promoting seed sovereignty and adapting crops to local conditions. Julia shares her mission of transforming agriculture from an industrialized system to one focused on community and ecological resilience. They delve into the organization's programs, including seed diversity initiatives and supporting farmers in adapting crops to their specific environments. Julia also talks about her participation in the California Organic Seed Summit, addressing issues like land access, seed cooperatives, and engaging younger farmers. The conversation highlights the importance of genetic diversity in seeds for nutrient-dense crops and resilient food systems.

Julia Dakin is the co founder of Going to Seed, an organization dedicated to promoting seed sovereignty and teaching growers how to adapt crops to local conditions and community preferences. For several years she has been working in community driven projects that focus on adapting gardens for for climate and community resilience using ancestral techniques.

Julia leads initiatives that empower local growers to build resilient, locally adapted food systems, enhancing community resilience and food diversity.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/851-seed for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

What is the Seed Chat?

At least ten times a year we have a live Seed Saving Class with Bill McDorman, the former Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013. 

Come join us for the next live class, or catch up on our previous classes through our podcast episodes.  Either way you will expand your seed knowledge and gain new perspectives on your food system.

Register anytime for the next event.

Register Here for the Monthly Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Benjamin Fahrer is joining us today on the Urban Farm Podcast. Ben is the owner and operator of Top Leaf Farms and has over 18 years of organic farming experience. Prior to starting Topleaf farms a year ago, Ben worked with Josiah Cain, a well-known landscape architect known for vertical systems. Ben was called in to consult on a new project: To design and convert a living roof into a food roof.

181: Quita Jackson on Thrifty Self Sufficiency.

Taking small steps to being green and making a difference.

Quita is one of the founders of GreenDesert.org.   And while some would call her an urban farmer or a gardener, she prefers to consider herself spiritually connected to mother earth and her environment.  She loves everything about nature! GreenDesert.org is all about showing people ways to be more self-sufficient, whether you’re gardening, making your own clothes, recycling, or making your own cleaning products… every little bit counts.

Quita is all about living the lifestyle…everything from maintaining a garden rich with herbs, vegetables and fruit, to raising chickens and tilapia, to using a water generator to make water from the humidity in the air, to collecting rainwater and The list goes on. She is quite passionate about this topic because she believes we are all in this together… and must recognize how our actions about the environment affects others.  In addition, saving money is a huge priority for her and of course that’s a huge part of being green.

IN THIS PODCAST: Being green is all about having less of a negative impact on the planet and here Greg chats with Quita who has fully adopted a new lifestyle and loves helping others find their way into it as well. Quita tells how she got the courage to start gardening, and how that gave her confidence to try new ways to become self-sufficient even while living in a major city. Her encouraging attitude and caring nature helps as she spreads the word about little steps people can take in their own lives.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/01/10/quita-jackson/ for show notes and links.

Homesteading Off The Grid.

Join Aurora Rogers and Greg for a lively conversation about resiliency, home steading, low grid and becoming financially free.  Aurora is a Venezuelan designer and process consultant devoted to creating resilient frameworks for every area of her life. Her usband of 24 years is Jason, who is an American engineer devoted to creating effective systems for growing food, generating fuel, and building sustainable homes. Aurora believes that the currency of the future are heirloom seeds and resilient living skills.

Aurora Rogers and her husband, Jason founded Producing Freedom Academy for families and broadcast their Resilient Pioneer Podcast Livestream on Youtube where they interview their favorite experts and talk about off grid survival, primitive homesteading, and other related topics which encourage their audience to create healthy and vibrant ecosystems.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2023/04/07/732-aurora-rogers/ for show notes and links.

Aurora Rogers on Resilient Pioneering

Jennifer is the Director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, a project of Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.  New Entry is a beginning farmer training program that assists limited-resource individuals to begin small-scale commercial agriculture in Massachusetts as a way to preserve farmland and to expand consumer access to locally-grown foods. Jennifer is also a vegetable and livestock farmer she raises chickens, eggs, pork, beef, rabbit, and specialty vegetables.   

Jennifer serves on boards of the Urban Farming Institute of Boston and The Carrot Project, a small farm financing organization.  She is a farm business planning instructor for the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources and has organized farm labs and field trips for graduate students in the Tufts’ University Agriculture, Food and Environment program.

Jennifer served as an agricultural Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, holds a Master’s degree in Agricultural Policy from Tufts University and a BS in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Indiana University. 

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/03/17/jennifer-hashley/

236: Roza Ferdowsmakan on Sourcing Food in the Digital Age.

Helping foodies find chefs, and chefs find local farms, all through their phones.

In this podcast:  We are excited to share this conversation with Roza Ferdowsmakan, someone who cares about building up the local food economy as much as we do.  Roza decided she could make a difference in her community by connecting foodies, culinary talents, and local farms through a specially design app.  It is with her new app that she hopes to give people culinary awakenings like the one she had as a young teenager.

Roza wants to change the way people connect with food, with their communities, and with the earth. As a tech company founder, she has created a community-driven, farm-to-table mobile app called bites., set to be released in beta to the metro-Phoenix community in July.

bites. is a marketplace app for foodies of all socio-economic levels to connect with and reserve personal chef services offered by homemaker cooks, culinary students, and professional personal chefs. These participating chefs are encouraged to source ingredients from local farms.

These farms, whether they identify themselves as urban, micro, organic, co-op, family-owned, or simply small farms are encouraged to participate and gain visibility by visiting the bites. website and creating a farm profile prior to the July 1st beta release date so that their profiles will be up and running when the app goes live.

Roza also just started a Phoenix area local meetup called "grassroots", intended to engage foodies, local culinary talent, local farms, and sustainability supporters in community events centered around sustainability and education, all part of the ethos behind the bites movement. Beyond "grassroots", she is working to co-organize and resurrect TEDx Phoenix for the local community.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/05/18/roza-ferdowsmakan/ for more information on this podcast and to find our other great guests.

Paris Masek is the Managing Director for Green on Purpose and the Director of Agriculture Programs for Quincea Social Enterprises. He is also a PhD candidate at ASU in English Literature working with Indigenous American Literature and Cultures. He is an active member of the Maricopa County Food System Coalition as well as an urban gardener who uses raised beds, edible landscaping, and a flock of chickens in his downtown residence to keep fresh produce and eggs on his family’s dinner table. 

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/07/07/paris-masek/ for show notes and links.

In Part 2 of this special 3 part series, Greg Peterson reflects on the upcoming move from the Urban Farm in Arizona, to a new, yet to be named farm in North Carolina.  He talks about the factors leading up to the move and the criteria for choosing the new location.

"Well, the news is out and there are big changes in my life. Heidi and I are moving, and this is not a little move. We are transporting ourselves 1900 miles to our dream home in Asheville, North Carolina. Lots more to come about our landing place in the ‘future’ part of my writing. I want to assure you, however, with our team in place (Janis, Tayler, Theresa, Ray, Renee, Bill, Belle and Kari) all of our programs will continue into the future just like they have for over 20 years. And for those of you that expect to see me on the ground in Phoenix – you still will for the Fruit Tree Program events and the Seed Up.

To begin my journey I thought I would review the Past of the Urban Farm, visit the Present and the biggest question I get…why are you moving?, and speculate on the Future of our new space.  Here is a little teaser, we are moving mid-April 2022 to a quaint little town 10 miles from downtown Asheville, North Carolina.  We found our ‘dream farm to be’ on 4 acres that is exploding with possibilities, way too many for me to choose right now."

For more information visit www.UrbanFarm.org/patron

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/03/22/urbanfarmpresent/ for show notes and links.

A chat with Kari Spencer. 

In This Garden Chat:

Great gardeners seem to know all the rules - but the very best gardener is the one who wrote the rules. She is Mother Nature and has no equal. Her systems and regenerative cycles CAN be replicated in our own gardens and food forests to help them be amazingly resilient. Permaculture is the best way to start and it can make your gardening much easier! Author Kari Spencer is going to help us find the best ways to adopt permaculture practices for increased resilience in our gardens.

On the last Tuesday every month we host The Urban Farm Garden Chats where Greg Peterson has a relaxed conversation in a Zoom room with a special guest to cover useful gardening topics, and they answer questions from the live listening audience.

Our Special Guest:Kari Spencer 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. Her book is City Farming: How-To Guide to Growing Crops & Raising Livestock in Urban Spaces.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/09/28/638-garden-chat/ for shownotes and links.

Permaculture in the Garden.

Stewarding future crops through considerate cultivation and harvesting of seeds.

In This Podcast: In the pursuit of resetting his health, Luke Allen took a four-day fasting journey and ended up taking his life in a new direction.  Eventually he resettled, started growing food, and seeds! He helps break down some seed terminology for us and discusses the importance of true breeding in seeds.

Luke was raised in a small town, then moved to Seattle where he worked doing computer graphics design. After many years there, he realized something was missing from the daily grind and went on a series of vision quests where realized that he needed to work with the land, the water, the animals and the food. Luke studied permaculture, received his permaculture design certificate and started growing food.

Sundial Seed is a small, family run regional seed company located in Willits, California to produce hand-crafted market-ready varieties.  They work with seed growers to co-create delicious market-ready true-breeding varieties.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/05/25/448-luke-allen/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

448: Luke Allen on True Breeding Seeds

244: Raymond Jess on Wicking Beds

Watering up in the garden, and using physics to maintain proper soil hydration.

In This Podcast:  We hear from Ray Jess, a man who loves to learn, and is enthusiastically helping others get excited about wicking bed gardens.  When he first saw a wicking bed at a fellow Master Gardener’s yard, he was intrigued and that started his deep research. From there he tinkered with an idea about how he could build one in his own yard, with a little improvement, of course. Now he has written an article for the Urban Farm and we hear the benefits of capillary action in his own words.

After retiring from two careers, the Air Force and teaching, he pursued his love of food by graduating from the Phoenix Art Institute with a certificate in Culinary Arts. The highlight of his culinary experience was working as a chef for the 2007 Super Bowl at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Natural extensions for this self-proclaimed foodie were the completion of his Master Gardner training and his Certificate in Permaculture Design.

A love of fresh foods and herbs kept him gardening for the last two decades.  During a volunteer component of his Master Gardner training, Ray discovered wicking garden beds. A man of curiosity and a seeker of ways to do things more efficiently, he embarked on a research project leading him to the Father of Wicking Beds, Collin Austin. As a result of Ray’s research, his backyard garden has evolved from rows of crops in a plot of ground and raised beds, to grow-buckets and wicking beds. He is currently keeping his eyes open for the next great idea to perfect his garden, so he can keep giving his family, friends, and neighbors fresh produce.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/06/05/raymond-jess/ for more information on this podcast and to find our other great guests.

Bringing bulk seed sharing to every community.

In This Podcast: The Great American Seed Up is a project designed to improve resilience through local seed saving and sharing. With the events of 2020, seed sharing cannot be done in large events so Greg, Janis, Bill & Belle chat about a new way for neighbors and groups to share seeds through the Seed Up In a Box Program. Listen in to learn about how this new bulk seed shopping works, how anyone can participate, how the savings is shared, and ideas on ways to promote seed sharing with friends and family.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/09/03/556-seed-up-in-a-box/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library! AND check out the article Eleven Ways to Share Seeds by Kari Spencer the fourth founder of Great American Seed Up.

Greg, Janis, Bill and Belle on Seed Up in a Box.

Bonus Episode #21: Seed Saving Class September 2018.

A chat with an expert on Seeds. 

In This Bonus Podcast: We are harvesting even more seed information in this chat with Bill McDorman. This is the September 2018 episode of a Seed Saving Class - seed names, medicinal plants, plant knowledge, landrace, and so much more.

Join the class! Register anytime for the next event.Register Here for the Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/10/16/bonus21/ for more information and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Improving geographic, economic, and informational access to healthy foods for residents in food deserts.

In This Podcast: What is it like growing up without fresh, healthy food available? Rob Horton used his experience living in a food desert as motivation for creating Trap Garden. In this community garden in Nashville, he is teaching kids, community members, and college students not only how to grow their own fresh food, but how to cook healthy meals using their garden. His garden offers innovative solutions to the physical, financial, and educational shortcomings in food-insecure communities.

Robert "Rob Veggies" Horton is the Founder and Executive Director of the trap Garden established in Nashville, Tennessee. Rob's motivation as an urban farmer and community health activist stems from his own experiences growing up in a St. Louis, Missouri neighborhood with few fresh, healthy food items. Then, moving to Nashville to attend Tennessee State University, Robert was frustrated with having to drive miles away from home for a grocery store that supplied quality, fresh products. 

Rob received his Bachelor of Science in Health Care Administration from Tennessee State University in Nashville, TN, and Master of Business Administration from Belmont University in Nashville, TN. 

Trap Garden is a social enterprise that provides a sustainable source of healthy, high quality foods and offers innovative solutions to the physical, financial, and educational shortcomings in food insecure communities. Their mission is to help build, sustain, and empower low-income communities by assisting in the creation of community gardens and the promotion of healthy eating. 

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/03/23/433-rob-horton/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

433: Rob Horton on Food Sensitive Communities

248: Ellen Zachos on Wildcrafted Cocktails

            Blending naturally wild flavors to delight the palate and stir up the conversations.

In this podcast: The love of plants was a strong enough call to help Ellen Zachos leave the Broadway stage, and her love of food and flavors combined with plants led her naturally to wild foraging, and then to experiment with mixing cocktails.  Ellen has done a lot of research and testing to bring her foraging skills to the cocktail bar and here we learn a lot about mixing the right flavors to get a perfect drink.  You might just rethink your next hike to the mountain or the farmers market after this podcast. 

A former Broadway performer (she was once in the cast of Les Miz), Ellen is a Harvard graduate and has earned multiple certificates in horticulture and ethnobotany from the New York Botanic Garden. In her spare time Ellen is a garden writer, photographer, and lectures at flower shows & for garden clubs around the world.  She is the author of seven books including The Wildcrafted Cocktail and Backyard Foraging: 65 Familiar Plants You Didn’t Know You Could Eat both by Storey Publishing.

Ellen was named a Great American Gardener by the Epcot Flower and Garden Festival, has served two terms as a National Board Member for the Garden Writers Association and works with RemyUSA, teaching foraged mixology workshops across the US.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/06/15/ellen-zachos/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to find our other great guests.

223: Paten Hughes on Heirloom: Tomatoes and a Web Series.

 Growing tomatoes when life gives you lemons

In This Podcast:  We get the inside scoop from actress Paten Hughes on the inspiration for her new web-series which is based on her transition of actor-to-tomato-farmer. She did not just plant a few, she planted more tomato plants than most people can even conceive and now she has several restaurants that order from her. 

Paten is the star and co-creator of the hit digital series HEIRLOOM on Vimeo, written by Bekah Brunstetter (NBC's This Is Us) and co-starring Margaret Colin, Tom Wopat, Pascale Armand, Ryan Cooper, and John Lavelle.  

This semi-autobiographical web series follows the character Emily who gives up her struggling acting career in New York to move to California and farm heirloom tomatoes on a property she inherits.  Paten, who really moved to Northern California and become a first-time farmer, sells her juicy organic tomatoes to several local restaurants in Sonoma.  She is very committed to preserving nature, supporting local and organic farming.  The show’s flavor carries her pro-environment, sustainability, and organic preferences. 

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/04/18/paten-hughes/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to hear from our other great guests.

Bringing together nature and theology.

In This Podcast:

Her background is in studying the connections of religion to many aspects of daily life and Professor Lena Roos is now focused on how religion and gardening are interwoven in our past and what that looks like in our present. She discusses several key religions of the world, the garden connections, and even how some myths built upon gardening and creation themes.  She is asking for input on her current research and wants to know of active faith-based community gardens.

Lena is a Full Professor, teaching History of Religions in Stockholm Sweden. She is also an avid allotment grower of vegetables who last year harvested (literally) a ton of vegetables from her 120 square meters in two allotments in urban Uppsala.

Originally a medievalist, she specializes in inter-religious relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims during the Middle Ages. Her other research includes topics like religion and volunteering, religion and sexuality, religion and food, and more recently religion and gardening.

Lena is about to embark upon a new research project on faith-based community gardens and would like to get in touch with people currently involved in such.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/10/09/390-lena-roos/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

390: Lena Roos on Religion and Gardening

785: Vermicomposting

A Garden Chat with Enoch Graham.

In This Garden Chat:

Vermicomposting is an incredibly useful gardening skill that converts kitchen scraps and garden waste into gardener's gold. Join us as we chat with our good friend Enoch Graham to discuss the process that most any gardener can do in their own space.

Our Special Guest:

Enoch is a small space gardener who has been growing some of his own food for over 12 years in his limited urban space in Southern Oregon. Growing so many different varieties of vegetables and fruits in his limited space garden has taken his gardening skills to a new level each year and he's been sharing his gardening adventures with his viewers on YouTube at The Urban Gardener Channel for the last 7 years. When his passion for growing food grew over the past few years he never imagined where it would take him. He is constantly surprised by what he gets back by sharing his growing adventure.

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg or choose one of the senior members of our Urban Farm team to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

6: Paul Dysinger on Winter Growing on a Budget

Paul Dysinger is the founder of Born to Grow and the brand new Garden Launch membership community where he enjoys teaching people how to grow their own healthy, nutrient dense, organic food. He lives with his family on Bountiful Blessings Farm where they serve the community year-round with fresh veggies, herbs, and berries. 

Paul joins us from Bountiful Blessings Farm in Tennessee to share some winter growing techniques that will protect your plants without leaving you broke! Paul is the founder of Born To Grow and the brand new Garden Launch Membership Community. Find out more about his work, winter growing on a budget, and his Garden Launch Membership Community in this podcast!

Check out our shownotes for more links and resources at http://www.urbanfarm.org/blog/2015/11/28/paul-dysinger/

Diana is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living on a working organic farm outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Homegrown Paleo Cookbook: Over 100 Gluten Free, Seasonal Recipes and a Complete Guide to Growing Your Own Healthy Food. Diana speaks internationally about nutrition and sustainability issues in our food system, runs the popular podcast, Sustainable Dish, and works with people one on one to help them recover their health through real food.

Come join us as we hear Diana tells us how she and her husband created the sustainable farm and education center they now run. Her passion to help others is obvious as it weaves through her story.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/06/18/diana-rodgers/ for show notes and links.

Bonus Episode 24: Seed Saving Class January, 2019. 

A chat with a seed expert on wild crop relatives, biodiversity and more

In This Bonus Podcast: 

There is always a bounty of information available in conversations with Bill McDorman. This is the January 2019 episode of a Seed Saving Class - Listen and learn about the importance of wild crop relatives and biodiversity, the February 2019 Seed Summit, and so much more.

 Join the class! Register anytime for the next event. Register Here for the Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/02/02/bonus24/ for more information and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

845: Keri Evji's Regenerative Journey

Designs for Ecological Change

In This Podcast: Greg interviews Keri Evji, founder of Healing Roots Design LLC, a regenerative landscaping company in Asheville, North Carolina. Keri shares her journey of integrating nature's principles into her life and business, emphasizing a holistic approach to social and ecological change. She discusses her personal experiences and the inspiration behind her book, 'Regenerative Life Design Playbook,' which offers a multimedia toolkit for living a more connected and resilient life. Keri explores the concept of permaculture, its applications beyond gardening, and the importance of embracing our inner ecology for personal and cultural growth.

Our Guest: Keri is the founder of Healing Roots Design LLC, a regenerative landscaping company in Asheville, North Carolina. She is a creative entrepreneur, teacher, permaculture designer, author, musician, and community revitalist, committed to the healing of people and planet. Her goal is to empower others to be proactive agents of social and ecological change, building resilience, ecological integrity, and beauty. Keri is the author of the Regenerative Life Design Playbook, a multimedia decision making toolkit that applies nature's principles to lead a more integrated life.

Visit UrbanFarm.org/HealingRoots for the show notes and links on this episode!

Keri's Book Recommendation: Creating a Life Together, Practical Tools to Grow Echo Villages and Intentional Communities by Diana Leaf Christian

How to reach Keri: HealingRootsDesign.com

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg, Janis or Ray to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

217: Sine Lindholm on an Urban Farming 'Growroom'

Creating and sharing an open-sourced growing sphere to create poetic spaces. 

Sine is from Denmark and has a degree in architecture from Aarhus School of Architecture along with an emphasis on psychology. This shows in her projects where she is combining the two, with her main focus on the theoretical and abstract part of architecture.

She grew up on an organic farm with milking cows, however she had never worked with agriculture or urban farming before, until she won an architecture competition together with architect and carpenter Mads-Ulrik Husum. They had designed an Urban Farming pavilion, which received great attention that led to the further development of the project. They teamed up with SPACE10, a future living-lab, where they developed and released an open source design of their pavilion.  

Together they started the company Husum & Lindholm, where for the moment they primarily focus on further development of combining architecture with gardening. On the basis of a spatial experimentation with the Urban Farming concept, they strive towards creating architecture where atmosphere and sensuousness - acts as the primary design factors.  Their goal - to generate poetic spaces where a symbiotic relationship with vegetation arises.

In This Podcast: Greg sought out this interview with Sine Lindholm after seeing an article about a gorgeous growing sphere design and so today she tells us about the inspiration behind the design.  Sine also explains why they hope an open-sourced design will encourage others to improve on their model.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/04/04/sine-lindholm/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to hear from our other great guests.

Encouraging youth to bloom through off-grid farming on vacant lots.

In This Podcast: We usually speak with food farmers, however, Quilen Blackwell is doing something so amazing with flower farming we needed to get him on the show! Learn why he chose to farm flowers over food, got community buy-in, and how he eliminated much of the overhead cost of a farm by working with nature (even in the middle of a big city). The flowers are a product of his true passion, which is teaching skills to at-risk youth and giving them job skills to better their future.

Quilen’s background in renewable energy and community organizing is well suited in his role as president of Southside Blooms where they serve over 70 youth a week at four sites in Chicago and one site in Detroit. Southside Blooms has the mission of using sustainability to alleviate inner-city poverty through a scalable social enterprise program that converts vacant city lots into off-grid flower farms.

Quilen’s organizing credentials include work abroad as a volunteer in the Peace Corp organizing rural farmers in Thailand all the way to helping working-class residents of suburban Milwaukee attain affordable housing. He later worked in the biofuels industry where he procured feedstock such as used cooking oil and soybean oil for biodiesel production. Quilen holds a bachelor’s degree with comprehensive honors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in environmental policy from the University of Denver.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/02/15/520-quilen-blackwell/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

520: Quilen Blackwell on Urban Flower Farms.

Eddy Badrina on Growing vertically in greenhouses.

Transforming industrial agriculture.

In This Podcast: In This Podcast: Exploring the future of farming, we chat with Eddy Badrina about a new technology that can be a viable solution for creating a regenerative food system. Eddy shares his concerns the impacts traditional farming has on the environment and how the greenhouse technology at Eden Green can shrink down 35 acres of farming into just over an acre. Receiving international attention, he says that vertical farming could be the answer to providing local, healthy foods at commercial levels.

Eddy is a graduate of Texas A&M University, and the Bush School for Government and Public Service. He has had mission-critical roles at the US Department of State, executive leadership at a White House Initiative, and director level positions at two successful startups. And, he is CEO of Eden Green Technology, a vertical farming technology company dedicated to changing the way we farm our food and feed our communities.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/03/23/585-eddy-badrina/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

James is the author of two nonfiction books, including My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It. In his writing he explores what it means to be human in the natural world. His work has also appeared in print and online in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic and Conservation as well as numerous other publications, and he has appeared on a variety of national public radio shows. Jim currently serves as a creative and environmental writing professor at the University of South Carolina.

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2015/12/17/james-barilla/

Earth Friendly Potting Soil.

Educating about soil and planetary health with peat free planting mix.In This Podcast:

Justin “Jules” Giuliano may be a relative newcomer to the garden, but his love of the outdoors and his willingness to make mistakes have grown into a lifelong passion for the soil.  Combining that passion with his roots in education, he is a natural advocate for keeping our soils healthy.  Jules inspires us to carefully consider what we put into the soil… and what we take out.  Even his language is infused with his love of gardening!

Justin "Jules" Giuliano is an organic farmer and educator with a background in vermicompost and natural farming. He is the lead soil researcher at Rosy Soil, a potting soil company based in Georgia. Prior to joining Rosy, Jules managed an urban farm in Atlanta, studied regenerative agriculture at the Rodale Institute and won a Cannabis Cup for his organic cannabis cultivation. In addition to Rosy, Jules manages the Tik Tok @SmokeYrGreens with over 250k followers where he educates his community about plant, soil, and planetary health.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/10/28/703-jules-giuliano/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Bonus Episode 15: Seed Saving Class February 2018.

A chat with an expert on seeds. 

In This Bonus Podcast: There is always a bounty of info available in conversations with Bill McDorman. This is the February 2018 episode of a Seed Saving Class - patents, descriptions, regional adaptation, open sourced seeds, and so much more.

Join the class! Register anytime for the next event. Register Here for the Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/04/17/bonus-15/ for more information and links on this bonus podcast, and to find our other great guests.

 Stewarding our seed futures with regional growers working together.

In This Podcast: We dove into the world of urban seed saving and starting a seed co-op with Casey O'Leary. She has worn many hats: an environmental activist, farmer, CSA owner, and founder of the Snake River Seed Cooperative. She now supports her bioregion (and the world) with seeds specific to her area and educates on seed saving in her upcoming seed school. Her CSA challenges members to learn how to cook a variety of food, and they educate members on how to prepare and store new items.

Casey is a seed freak and urban farmer in Boise, Idaho. On her farm which is called Earthly Delights, she grows oodles of seed crops as well as vegetables, herbs, and flowers for her CSA members. She also co-founded the Snake River Seed Cooperative, which now involves over 30 Intermountain West farmers stewarding nearly 400 varieties of regionally-adapting seeds, which they sell to area farmers and gardeners. Casey loves to talk with others about the wondrous interconnections of the natural world.  

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/04/09/437-casey-oleary/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

437: Casey O'Leary on Seed Cooperatives.

A Garden Chat with Don Titmus

Join Farmer Greg Peterson and Don Titmus, a horticulturist and permaculturist as they reflect on their 20-year friendship and shared journey in permaculture. They outline the fundamental principles and ethics of permaculture focusing on Earth care, people care, and fair share. This episodes sets the stage for a series of eight more sessions focusing on the individual permaculture principles. They emphasize the organic and adaptable nature of permaculture, likening it to martial arts in energy flow and management. The conversation also touches on practical implementations of permaculture in gardening and community, encouraging a sustainable and regenerative approach to living in harmony with nature.

Our Guest: Don grew up in London and at age 16 spent 4 years being trained in horticulture through an apprenticeship and a college course. From there he continued landscaping in his hometown until he moved to Arizona in 1981, where he worked in landscaping and then starting his own business in garden maintenance. In 2003 he attended a Permaculture Design Course, which was life-changing for Don. He knew right away that this was the path he’d been waiting for, and later attended two Permaculture Teacher Trainings.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/871-garden for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg or choose one of the senior members of our Urban Farm team to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Laura operates Indian Ladder Farmstead Brewery and Cidery in Altamont, New York with her husband, Dietrich. The two have been growing hops and brewing beer at home while working to restore local hop production in the northeast. Their orchard has been in Ten Eyck’s family for four generations, and she and Dietrich have lived there for more than twenty-five years, growing fruits and vegetables for sale to restaurants, gardening extensively, and raising animals, including sheep for meat and wool, dairy goats for milk, and chickens for eggs and meat. Laura is also the author of  The Hop Grower's Handbook:  The Essential Guide for Sustainable Small-Scale Production for Home and Market (published by Chelsea Green).

Check out our show notes here - https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/04/21/laura-ten-eyck/

826: Managing Heat Stress with your Animals

A Garden Chat with Judith Horvath.

In This Podcast: We chat with Judith Horvath, a former business executive turned regenerative farmer, focuses on helping new farmers and creating a resilient local food supply chain. They chat about managing summertime heat stress in various farm animals such as sheep, goats, chickens, and turkeys.

Key practices mentioned include maintaining clean and cool water, using misting fans, providing loose salt and minerals, and using methods like cold watermelon to help animals stay hydrated and cool. The importance of observing animal behavior and routine for early detection of stress signs is emphasized. Additionally, Judith shares insights based on her experience and expertise in regenerative farming and offers resources for managing internal parasites in farm animals.

Need a little bit of advice or just a feedback on your design for your yard or garden?

The Urban Farm Team is offering consults over the phone or zoom. Get the benefits of a personalized garden and yard space analysis without the cost of trip charges. 

You can chat with Greg or choose one of the senior members of our Urban Farm team to get permaculture based feedback.

Click HERE to learn more!

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

691: Seed Harvesting.

A Chat with an Expert on Seeds.

In This Podcast: This is the July 2021 Seed Saving Class with Bill McDorman discussing seed harvesting.  Before you know it, all your crops will be going to seed. Rather than deadhead and “clean everything up,” learn how to be your own best seed detective. What are the characteristics of the plants from which you should be saving seed? How do you decide when and how to harvest your seeds? What are some simple strategies that can be applied to most plants when saving for seed? What are the benefits from saving your own, locally cultivated and adapted seed?

Bill McDorman is Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/08/12/691-seed-chat/ for the show notes on this bonus episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Bringing awareness to the value of local food systems.

In This Podcast: Picture buying salad greens at the grocery store that were just picked the day before. Paul Lightfoot from BrightFarms is making this happen in the stores around their farm. Passionate about getting fresh food to more people, Paul discusses the benefits of local vs organic food, how shortening the supply chain provides fresher, safer food, and the nutritional value decline. Listen in to hear about the setup and safety protocols at BrightFarms so they ensure healthy, safe food.

Paul is BrightFarms’ founder and president and leads the company on its mission to provide consumers with the freshest, tastiest, and most responsibly grown produce.    Through his vision, BrightFarms is  creating the first national brand of locally grown produce.  In 2017, BrightFarms  was named  235th on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies, ranking  10th among all food companies and the only produce company featured on the list.  Paul is a member of the board of United Fresh Produce Association. They believe Local, indoor produce is fresher because it’s grown closer to where it’s sold. It is cleaner because it can be grown without pesticides. And most importantly, it tastes better. BrightFarms is the No. 1 brand of locally grown packaged salads, serving the freshest, tastiest and most responsibly grown produce to consumers nationwide. BrightFarms operates hydroponic greenhouse  farms  in the communities it serves, enabling them to eliminate time, distance, and costs from the food supply chain.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/06/09/542-paul-lightfoot/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

542: Paul Lightfoot on Local is the New Organic.

219: Jennifer Osuch on Fundamentals of Self Reliance.

Teaching back to basics food preparation and preserving skills.

In this podcast: Jennifer tells about the importance of self-reliance skills and why they are becoming needed once again. She explains what led her to this place in her life where she teaches some of these old traditions that traditional homesteaders relied on daily.

Jennifer is the author of the Preparedness Planner series, lead teacher at the online Self Reliant School (which is dedicated to teaching preparedness and self-reliance skills), host of the weekly live Self Reliant Living Show (which I was a guest on in Nov 2016), and a homeschooling mom. She is dedicated to teaching back-to-basics food preparation and preserving skills that help people eat healthy, save money, live greener and be prepared for anything.

Jennifer and her husband turned to the old-school basics when they found themselves in mountains of debt, two of their three boys suffering from asthma and allergies, and she, herself, struggling for years with her own weight management. She knows from experience that eating real food when you're watching every penny is not easy, and trying to put healthy food into storage is almost impossible.

Jennifer, her husband and her three teenaged boys live in Texas. She is on a mission to save the knowledge and wisdom of our grandparents, and to help people apply it to their lives today.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/04/08/jennifer-osuch/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to hear from our other great guests.

Adding liquid nutrients to your plants.

Gardening tips, tricks, and advice in short, bite-size episodes.

In This Brief Bite: Farmer Greg chats with Anthony Dominguez, the co-founder and C.O.O. of HyKreations, a company that produces liquid soil amendments and fertilizers. Anthony informs us on the process of foliar feeding and why trees and plants will greatly benefit from the additional nutrients. He also speaks in-depth on their line of liquid amendments that optimize nutrient delivery to your plants.  

Do you ever wish you could catch those tidbits of wisdom that some people throw out without warning? Well, in our new Farmer Friday episodes - Farmer Greg shares quick thoughts, revelations, tips, and general farming advice in bite-sized and fun episodes. Sometimes it might be Greg just sharing a thought that hit him while working in the yard, or a really cool inspiration from the garden, and occasionally he’ll answer some listener questions. Other times he will catch a moment with a farming friend or podcast guest to share educational farming tidbits.  This quick podcast episode is designed to be brief and not take up your day. So… listen in and enjoy this Garden snack… 

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/04/16/591-farmer-friday/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

A chat with Raymond Jess. 

In This Garden Chat: Farmer Greg talks with Raymond Jess and Janis Norton, from the Urban Farm, about a multitude of variations on the traditional garden box.  They share their own experiences and discuss the unique advantages of each type of bed, covering topics such as how they work, how to set them up, and how to care for them.  Raymond gives us a peek inside his garden, telling us what he is currently growing and how he is growing it, and Janis tells how to nourish your plants so they thrive.

On the last Tuesday every month we host The Urban Farm Garden Chats where Greg Peterson has a relaxed conversation in a Zoom room with a special guest to cover useful gardening topics, and they answer questions from the live listening audience. To join us for the next event, go to www.GardenChat.org or Click HERE to register for the Monthly Garden Chat with Live Q&A

Our Special Guest: Raymond Jess is the Urban Farm General Store leader, master gardener, and all around fun guy.  Ray has been gardening for more than two decades and loves to experiment with ways to plant in the ground and in various containers.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/12/24/651-garden-chat/ for show notes and links.

Breaking down the recipe for good, healthy soil.

In This Podcast: The ingredients for healthy soil make up an essential recipe for gardeners and farmers, and is worth describing a few times until the perfect connection is made. Emily Rockey appreciates good soil so much that she earned the nickname "The Dirt Girl" and she loves helping others appreciate compost and soil. She has something important to say to those who think they have a ‘black thumb’!

Emily received her degree in Plant Sciences from the University of Arizona.  In the past, she worked at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, Walt Disney World's Epcot Center, and the Tucson Botanical Gardens.  She is currently the Director of Sales and Marketing for the tank's Green Stuff in Tucson, which specializes in "green" landscape debris recycling, construction debris recycling, and more. 

Emily brings her passion for both plants and recycling to the company’s composting operation. This is where they convert landscape debris into organic compost which is then returned to gardens and green spaces.  They offer an entire line of organic garden and landscape materials which are “Good for People, Plants, and Planet”; and are available under the name ‘Tank’s Green Stuff’. 

With her nickname ‘The Dirt Girl’, it is not hard to see that Emily loves talking about the importance of compost, microbes, and soil.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/09/12/286-emily-rockey/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

#UrbanFarmPodcast #goodsoil #TanksGreenStuff

Pia Maffei on Exploring Clean Eating.

Teaching people to recognize clean, healthy food.

In This Podcast:

Most people perceive food as healthy based on popular buzz words and special labels such as grass-fed or non-GMO, yet, never questioning the source of ingredients. However, Pia Maffei says we should absolutely be asking ourselves this question. Listen in to learn about understanding clean eating, getting smart about deceptive marketing practices, and finding the right path towards living a healthy lifestyle by making the right food choices that work best for us. 

Pia used to think she was eating clean because she didn’t eat fast food or go to chain restaurants, she cooked mostly at home, ate beef about 3 times a year, and would only go out to eat at fine dining restaurants. In 2013, after a successful 25 years in technology, she opened a small, curated market called Artisan’s Palate in Temecula, California. It quickly attracted many local artisans who were making their products ‘fresh’ and ‘with love’. However, she soon realized they were using the same inexpensive ingredients commonly found in mass-produced processed foods, and they wanted to charge double the price. Just because they were making it from ‘scratch’ didn’t mean it was clean. From that day forward she started to scrutinize both the ingredients used and the processes that were implemented in the foods she carried at the market and began to work only with suppliers that were conscientious when sourcing ingredients and farming practices.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/10/27/564-pia-maffei/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library

Enjoying a good meal cooked with great food.

In This Podcast:

When you are passionate about getting a good meal from locally grown farms into your home, you have some technology experience, and you are community minded, it is likely that you’d create your own app to make this happen for others. After you are done, why not make short films about some of these experiences? Roza Ferdowsmakan has developed an app to create Farm-to-Table experiences for the benefit of foodies, chefs and farmers; then she created a film series allowing others to have a sample taste of what the experience is like.  We learn why this is an ethos driven app, and how this is helping the three key players in a great meal.

Roza’s goal is to change the way people connect with food, with their communities, and with the earth. As a tech company founder, she created a community-driven, farm-to-table mobile app called bites which launched officially in February of 2018. She also developed two new, related film projects as well as a mural project promoting farm-to-table experiences.

Foodie + chef is an indie film series, where she interviews chefs while they hang out in her kitchen and give her a farm-to-table dining experience.

Farm Talk is another indie film series, featuring tours of local farms with conversations about who they are, how they do what they do, and what the farmers grow.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/07/03/364-roza-ferdowsmakan/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Lynn Pugh is the farmer at Cane Creek Farm in north Georgia. She has been sharing what she has learned in organic farming classes at her farm since 2007. She teaches adults from a curriculum she developed for Georgia Organics, introduces children to agriculture through farm camps and hosts a Lunch N’ Learn series on a variety of topics related to food, farming and gardening. Many alumni of her classes are farming and gardening organically across the southeast.  Her background as a chemistry teacher and higher education degrees in plant pathology and science curriculum give her a good foundation for establishing an agricultural education program.

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/03/31/lynn-pugh/

Picking the best indoor garden for your needs

In This Podcast:

Angelo Kelvakis demystifies the hydroponic garden.  The right garden can be a great investment in your health and wellbeing.  Angelo helps take the guesswork out of choosing the garden that best fits your lifestyle.  He’ll teach you how to ask the right questions, identify the most important components, and research a system before you make a purchase, so you will continue to enjoy your garden and reap many benefits from it for years to come.

Don’t miss an episode!

visit UrbanFarm.Org/blog/podcast

Angelo Kelvakis is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago where he studied environmental science and published research on nutrient uptake for plants. During this time, he also managed the Eco-Dome lab where he ran the aquaponics system which supplied fresh produce and fish to the Loyola Farmers Market. After graduating, he worked for several indoor farm companies helping them get start up, and finally was an early employee of Rise Gardens where he works today. At Rise, Angelo is both the Director of Research and Development, and a Horticulturalist where he is in charge of the Rise Lab focusing on nutrient design, plant growth research, and algorithm development.

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/Podcast-by-episode-titles for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Angelo Kelvakis on Indoor Garden Systems.

urbanfarm.org/RiseGardens

Ben Kilbride on The Garden Guide and More.

Time-tested and trusted planting resources from the Old Farmer’s Almanac.

In This Podcast: The Old Farmer’s Almanac has been used as a guide mainly by farmers to aid in predicting weather patterns. Ben Kilbride, who is the editorial assistant for the Old Farmer’s Almanac discusses the variety of publications and guides available to all types gardeners from novice to expert. Listen in to learn about the history of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the prediction methods used, and the various gardening guides covering topics from growing techniques to battling pests.

Benjamin is an editorial assistant with The Old Farmer’s Almanac. While he doesn’t own any land, he gets creative gardening every year in pots, in small mobile green houses, and under lights in his pantry.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/09/29/560-ben-kilbride/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Optimizing the diet for backyard poultry.

In This Podcast:

Watching a bakery business fail, spending time in the navy on a destroyer, and then selling macaroni & cheese, might not seem like the background of a person managing part of a large poultry and egg business.  However, this is the path that led Frank Bergin to Eggland’s Best and helping them decide to offer their best proprietary feed to urban farmers.  He shares with us the reasons he joined the company as well as some significant statistics they found in their research and why they opted to put their feed on the shelves.  

Frank is currently General Manager of Strategic Ventures & Innovation for Eggland’s Best, LLC. He has always wanted to run a food business since he was a teenager working in his family’s summer bakery.  After spending seven years as a US Naval Officer, the next eleven years he helped grow iconic brands like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Jell-O, Cream of Wheat, Post Cereals, Balance Bar and Ritz Crackers. In his final role with Kraft, Frank led the turnaround and rebirth of the Back To Nature natural/organic business.

He went onto pursue his passion for building smaller, more entrepreneurial businesses and since joining EB in 2010, where he has help the company’s revenue triple. It was in looking for new ways to keep that remarkable pace of growth going that Frank and the Eggland’s Best team hit upon the idea of selling its proprietary feed directly to backyard chicken farmers

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/03/27/339-frank-bergin/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

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, aquaculture, and reptiles. Companies around the world use these methods to protect the environment, create jobs, and increase protein availability.

Dr. Tomberlin is currently the Director of EVO Conversion Systems, which has a primary mission of building food and waste management facilities that utilize the black soldier fly.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/12/09/313-jeff-tomberlin/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Samara Price on the Exceptional Elderberry

            Handcrafting a local berry into gourmet products

In This Podcast:

Greg speaks with Samara Price about a tiny berry with huge potential.  Like many people, Samara became interested in elderberries for their health benefits and she began making syrup.  But she has discovered there are so many other ways to use them!  They also make delicious and healthy beverages, baked goods, and even condiments.  Hear how her interest in this amazing food has grown into both a business and a passion.

Samara Price is the founder of Brew Naturals, a gourmet elderberry company based out of Western Northern Carolina. Brew Naturals is a farm to table product that focuses on real ingredients, delicious flavor and full body wellness. For years, elderberry has been seen primarily just as wellness products, however Samara is committed to making the most delicious elderberry products in the region to showcase their versatility. She is passionate about saving this berry from obscurity by highlighting the culinary creativity it inspires!

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2023/03/31/730-samara-price/ for shownotes and links.

225: Edward Griffin on Indoor Smart Gardens

 Solving some space and time issues around growing fresh food.

In This Podcast:  We meet Edward, a millennial concerned about sustainability and food equity issues, who also wanted to have an active lifestyle and still grow his own food.  Not having a backyard did not stop Edward as he took agricultural and sustainability concepts he learned in college and created his own solution.

Edward graduated from Arizona State University in 2013 double majoring in Sustainability and Political Science. During this time, he studied some of the hardest questions relating to sustainability at a social, economic, and environmental level. The area of global sustainability that always spoke to him was the complex issue of agriculture, specifically food deserts because it was something he dealt with his entire life.

Faced with environmental and time constraints he began experimenting and developing new ways to integrate technology and grow food inside his apartment. This quickly became a new-found passion of his, and with this new obsession he founded the company Lyfbox, which has just released the first fully intelligent indoor smart garden to automatically grow fresh organic food inside your home year-round and is controlled using the Lyfbox app on your phone.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/04/22/edward-griffin/ for more information and links to our other guests!

Providing organic, non-GMO, and soy-free chicken feed to local backyard farmers. 

In This Podcast: Even if you don't own chickens, if you've ever considered the difference that eating organic makes, this podcast on Chicken Feed Co-ops is for you! Learn why Scott Brown is passionate about finding reasonably priced organic feed for his hens and how his plight created a community co-op. Most importantly, he shares some of the science and studies on GMO's, soy, and organic foods. Through bioaccumulation, our food's food is our food and he puts a whole new spin on eating well.

Scott is just a guy who started a chicken feed co-op to save money on eggs. He organized Phoenix Organic Feed, Flour and Grain, as a local buying club to get organic chicken feed at reasonable prices.  Plus as an added bonus he can specify which ingredients go into the premium USDA certified organic feeds, grains, and flours.   

Phoenix Organic Feed, Flour and Grain is a local supplier of organic, non-GMO chicken feed serving Phoenix and Tucson.  

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/11/26/497-scott-brown/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

497: Scott Brown on Chicken Feed Co-ops

Learn what urban farmer Jake Mace's 10 favorite trees are and why wood chips might just be the BEST thing you can do for your garden.

Which trees give you the most bang for your buck? What are the most nutritious fruits to grow? Urban farmer Jake Mace weighs in on his Top 10 favorite trees to grow, some tree-growing tips, and what he loves about each of these trees. 

Jake's secret for growing thriving trees? Wood chips! Listen for how to use them and why he is convinced they may be the BEST thing you can do for your trees.

Check out our show notes at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/02/02/jake-maces-10-favorite-trees-and-wood-chips/

Living off grid on a remote section of a Pacific island.In This Podcast: Join us for our conversation with Camille James and learn how she went from working in the tech industry, to owning a juice bar, to living off the grid in Hawaii. Camille shared what it’s like living communally on an off-the-grid farm and all the different foods they grow. Tune in to hear what her day to day life looks like, why she loves it, and how her successes and failures brought her to Hawaii.

Camille is a certified Clinical Nutritionist & public speaker living in Kauai, Hawaii.  She has sixteen years’ experience in web design, e-commerce development, and social media marketing. And prior to moving to the island, she was the owner of a juice bar and Volunteer Coordinator for a CSA in Bellevue, Nebraska.

She currently lives off-grid on a 35-acre organic farm in Kauai, where her duties include design/planning, planting, harvesting, composting, grounds maintenance, landscaping, working in the nursery, and being a chicken whisperer.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/02/26/426-camille-james/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

426: Camille James on Organic Farming in Hawaii

Assisting our food-growing veterans who feed their communities.

In This Podcast:

Rachel Petitt is part of a group that has the mission to help veterans who want to be farmers. This has translated into several grant and resource projects that are empowering veterans to build their farms. She tells about how she started and what the organization is offering veterans all across the country. 

Rachel worked on small-scale farms for six years after earning a degree from UC Santa Cruz in community studies with a focus on food systems. During her time in the field, she learned the intricacies of harvesting okra without getting itchy, collecting 600 eggs without cracking any, and bunching kale with one hand. Rachel currently manages the Fellowship Program at the Farmer Veteran Coalition.

The Fellowship Program enables veterans to invest in the infrastructure and tools they need to feed their community. Here, Rachel administers grants that support veteran farmers in their new careers.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/09/15/384-rachel-petitt/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

Kerry is the founder and visionary of Zendoway and hopes to share with you from all her life experiences. Kerry serves as the Director of Human Resources and Operations for Actualize Consulting in which she spearheaded and runs a successful wellness program. In addition to wellness and leadership articles, Kerry has authored “Audrey’s Journey” a children’s book series focused on living with compassion and joy.  She also wrote the "Pile of Smile Activity Book" to give away free to children undergoing cancer treatments and If It Does Not Grow Say No” to teach kids about having fun with nutrition.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/07/21/kerry-wekelo/ for show notes and links.

Tonyehn is the owner of Eco-Arts Living. Eco-Arts Living is about interconectedness, living with wholeheartedness and meaning, and the lives we want versus the lives WE CREATE for ourselves.  We spend too much time focusing on what we don’t have the time, the skill or the money to do.  Life is about making the time, finding the space and doing your best. Tonyehn is an avid gardener, foodie and prior restaurant reviewer, and sits on the board of The Greenhouse Project.

For show notes and links visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/04/30/tonyehn-verkitus/

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. Her new book City Farming: How-To Guide to Growing Crops & Raising Livestock in Urban Spaces, by 5MPublishing has just been released.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/01/13/323-kari-spencer/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

249: Andrew Gunther on Humanely Raised Farm Animals

 Labeling for meats to show how the animal was cared for and prepped for consumption.

In this podcast: We learn about how the way an animal is raised can make a difference, not only in the taste, but in how healthy the meat is for us as consumers.  Andrew Gunther explains why it is important to know this distinction and how to recognize it when making your buying selection at the store. 

Andrew is the Executive Director of A Greener World where he spearheaded the growth and development of the “Animal Welfare Approved”, or AWA, certification into what Consumer Reports calls the only “highly meaningful” food label for farm animal welfare, outdoor access, and sustainability.

Andrew works to increase the availability of Certified AWA meat, dairy and eggs in traditional retail settings. He is currently a member of the U.S. delegation for the International Standardization Organization who is responsible for development of standards related to Animal Welfare.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/06/17/andrew-gunther/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to find our other great guests

Gardening tips, tricks, and advice in short, bite-size episodes.

Returning guest Brian Wells, host of The Homestead Journey podcast, shares the most common yet avoidable mistakes that everyone should know when beginning a homestead. Brian points out that homesteading is a journey of trial and tribulation with emphasis on not a 'one size fits all' approach. The tips he shares focus importance on being realistic, accepting failure, and knowing what works best for you and your space.

Do you ever wish you could catch those tidbits of wisdom that some people throw out without warning? Well, in our new Farmer Friday episodes - Farmer Greg shares quick thoughts, revelations, tips, and general farming advice in bite-sized and fun episodes. Sometimes it might be Greg just sharing a thought that hit him while working in the yard, or a really cool inspiration from the garden, and occasionally he’ll answer some listener questions. Other times he will catch a moment with a farming friend or podcast guest to share educational farming tidbits.  This quick podcast episode is designed to be brief and not take up your day. So… listen in and enjoy this Garden snack… 

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/05/21/601-farmer-friday/ under the Farmer Fridays section for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Avoiding three common mistakes when starting a homestead.

A SPECIAL Farmer Friday Interview with Jeffrey Smith.

In This Farmer Friday Podcast on Wrap Up of Roundup:

Jeffrey Smith joins us to discuss the astonishing news that Bayer will discontinue sales of Roundup to residential consumers in the US.  Jeffrey is a passionate advocate for people and nature in the fight against Roundup and GMO’s.  He explains the significance of this announcement by discussing both the history leading up to it and the opportunities created by it. There is still much work to do to protect our health and safety, but this is a monumental step forward! 

Do you ever wish you could catch those tidbits of wisdom that some people throw out without warning? Well, in our new Farmer Friday episodes - Farmer Greg shares quick thoughts, revelations, tips, and general farming advice in bite-sized and fun episodes. Sometimes it might be Greg just sharing a thought that hit him while working in the yard, or a really cool inspiration from the garden, and occasionally he’ll answer some listener questions. Other times he will catch a moment with a farming friend or podcast guest to share educational farming tidbits.  This quick podcast episode is designed to be brief and not take up your day. So… listen in and enjoy this Garden snack… 

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2021/08/27/629-farmer-friday/ for shownotes and links.

Wrap Up of Roundup.

Creating resilience in an urban community.

In This Podcast: It was after spending some time out of the country that Francey Slater woke to the poor American relationship with food.  This motivated her towards food justice and making a difference in her community.  With a belief that healthy food is a right for everyone, she co-founded a non-profit that is creating community and school gardens, and building a stronger, resilient community as a result. 

Francey is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Mill City Grows in Lowell, MA. Her experience creating garden-based educational programming spans two decades, several continents, and youth through adult learners. 

Mill City Grows is an organization that fosters food justice by improving physical health, economic independence and environmental sustainability in Lowell through increased access to land, locally-grown food and education.

Prior to founding Mill City Grows, she was the Education Director for CitySprouts, worked as a member of the Urban Nutrition Initiative in Philadelphia, PA, helped to restore agricultural efforts in a village school in Bangalore, India; and provided education for farmers, gardeners, and youth in Hocotepec, Mexico. 

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/08/10/469-francey-slater/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

469: Francey Slater on Urban Ag and Food Justice.

Kim Eierman on Pollinator Victory Gardens.

Calling bees, butterflies, and more to your landscape.

There is a lot of focus on the importance of pollinators, yet there is still a concerning decline in populations. Kim Eierman, author of The Pollinator Victory Garden, specializes in environmental horticulture, and is encouraging gardeners to enhance pollinator pathways. Listen in to learn about the various types of pollinators, understanding native ecosystems, and how to connect your yard to a pollinator pathway. 

Kim is an Environmental Horticulturist specializing in ecological landscapes and native plants. She is the founder of EcoBeneficial LLC in New York. Kim teaches at the New York Botanical Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, The Native Plant Center in NY, Rutgers Home Gardeners School and several other institutions. She is an active speaker nationwide and also provides horticultural consulting to homeowners and commercial clients. In addition to being a Certified Horticulturist through the American Society for Horticultural Science, Kim is an Accredited Organic Land Care Professional, a Steering Committee member of The Native Plant Center, and a member of The Ecological Landscape Alliance and Garden Communicators International, and designs pollinator victory gardens for both home owners and commercial clients. Kim is the author of the new book, The Pollinator Victory Garden: Win the War on Pollinator Decline with Ecological Gardening.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/09/08/557-kim-eierman/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Don't forget to check out Kim's blog article on Ten Tips for a Thriving Pollinator Victory Garden

20: Matt Gordon on Rogue Farm Corps and Cully Neighborhood Garden

Matt is an urban farming rockstar in Portland, Oregon. He not only is in charge of Cully Neighborhood Farm's CSA, but also the chapter coordinator for Rogue Farm Corps, a non-profit dedicated to training the next generation of farmers through hands-on farm internships in Oregon. Check it out!

Check out our show notes page at https://www.urbanfarm.org/2015/12/31/matt-gordon/

Edmund Williams on The Phoenix Backyard Garden Program.

Changing the face of food in phoenix.

Ed Williams joins Greg on the podcast to bring us up to date on the project he is tackling in the heart of Phoenix to transform the world of urban agriculture with one simple way of growing food. Ed has been working hard to create a system that will make a difference in reducing food deserts at a level that the individual gardener can reach, yet can be supported by cities anywhere. He goes further and explains what democratizing the food system.

Ed is a civil engineer and urban agriculture innovator. He has developed a new method of gardening called a LEHR Garden, a garden system that combines 12 different methods and practices of gardening, soil creation, and ecosystem repair into one cohesive system that is designed to meet the unique challenges of urban agriculture.

 Between water struggles and the decline of urban farmland, Phoenix has an urgent need to develop a resilient food system. Like in most cities a massive, largely unused, land resource in the form of large backyards is available. As one part of the solution to food insecurity and resilience, the City of Phoenix is reviving the concept of Victory Gardens. Just as everything else has changed since the 1940s, gardening and farming have changed drastically. Phoenix is testing building gardens in backyards and LEHR Innovations is one of the partners.  Ed is not just trying to figure out how to get people gardening, but KEEP them gardening, all through the power of living, regenerative soil.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2023/05/05/738-edmund-williams/ for show notes and links.

Edmund Williams on The Phoenix Backyard Garden Program

Knowing a Thing or Two Dozen About Raising Hens and Collecting Eggs

In This Podcast:

Eggs are an important and readily available food source, and they are so very versatile.  Rediscover the humble egg with returning guest, Lisa Steele as she talks about her newest book, The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook.  She also tells us a bit about the process of writing the book, as well as what she feels has contributed to her success as a blogger, and her expansion into television.  Even if you don’t have chickens, you will love the tips Lisa shares in this episode!

Lisa Steele is a fifth-generation chicken keeper and founder of the popular blog, Fresh Eggs Daily. Referred to as Queen of the Coop, Lisa traded in her life on Wall Street for life on a farm in rural Maine, where she has kept chickens for more than a dozen years. Having written a number of books on raising and caring for chickens, Lisa is a trusted source for all things chicken and egg. Her latest book is “The Fresh Eggs Daily Cookbook: Over 100 Fabulous Recipes to Use Eggs in Unexpected Ways” published by Harper Horizon and just released in February 2022.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/05/06/677-lisa-steele/ for show notes and links.

Lisa Steele on Cooking with Eggs.

Learning the identity and uses for common plants growing wild in North America.

In This Podcast: Sharing her knowledge about wild herbs and plants is exactly what Brigitte Mars wants to do and she used modern technology to reach this goal. After an inspiring walk with a couple of Navy Seals, she focused on making a new mobile app specifically to help identify wild plants and educate on their uses and dangers if any.  She shares with us some common plant and what they are useful for along with a few suggestions on how to protect plants in your areas. 

Brigitte is an herbalist and nutritional consultant of Natural Health with almost fifty years of experience.  She is also the author of more than a dozen books and DVDs. However, today we are most interested in her mobile app for wild plant reference called iPlant.

She teaches Herbal Medicine at Naropa University, and The School of Health Mastery in Iceland and has taught at Esalen, Kripalu, the Arise Festival and Mayo Clinic.

Brigitte is the author of more than a dozen books and DVDs, including - The Home Reference to Holistic Health and Healing, The Country Almanac of Home Remedies, and her most recent book through Storey Publishing called Natural First Aid.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/08/08/271-brigitte-mars/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

194: Kate Miller on Bioregional Herbal Medicine.

Sourcing herbs and plants in the local ecosystems for health.

Kate is a bioregional community herbalist, medicinal herb grower, & Permaculture Design Teacher.  She is both formally trained and self-taught in the field of Permaculture Design, with focus on Dry-land Herb Farming, Herbal Medicine, Mountain Ecology, & Ethical Wildcrafting Practices.  And she is a Certified Herbalist from the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism in Boulder. 

Kate became interested in herbal medicine through years of dealing with chronic illness, including Lyme Disease, food allergies, & autoimmune issues.   Together with her partners Dawne and Stephanie, she runs the bioregional & biodynamic focused herbal product company, Dynamic Roots High Altitude Herbals. 

Kate is also a co-facilitator for the new Boulder Permaculture Design Course, Across the Divide, running one weekend a month from April through October all around the Front Range of Colorado.  In the next year, Kate is opening Alpine Botanicals, an herbal apothecary, community herbal kitchen, & clinic in downtown Nederland, Colorado.

In this podcast: Greg interviews Kate Miller, an herbalist with a focus on healing her community.  She tells how she found her calling in herbalism and becoming a partner in an herbal product company and she explains why ethical harvesting of herbs is so important.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2017/02/09/kate-miller/ for more information, photos and links on this podcast and to hear from our other great guests.

Maximizing growing potential by gardening out of the box.

In This Podcast: Garrett Hill loved gardening using grow bags so much, he made it into a business. Today we talk about starting a business, the benefits of grow bags, how they work, and some of the cool things Garrett is growing in them. We also dive into the wifi controlled watering system he recommends to all his clients that helps conserve water and integrate technology to improve his farm to table gardening.

Garrett and his wife moved back to Gilbert, AZ from Huntington Beach, CA after honorably serving for 10 years of active duty in the United States Coast Guard. As native Arizonians, they both realized that their home state offered the perfect climate for gardening and they began their urban garden using strictly grow bags. 

Realizing grow bags allowed them to grow vegetables, fruit, herbs, and more far beyond their maximum potential of a standard pot or raised pine box garden, they soon started their business Urban Hills Grow Bag Gardens with the intention of sharing with others this discovery.  Their passion and drive opened doors for a new business concept that revolves around water conservation, farm to table gardening, and integrating technology for 21st-century gardening.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/04/16/439-garrett-hill/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

439: Garrett Hill on Gardening in the 21st Century

812: Seed Borne Diseases

A chat with an expert on seeds.

In This Seed Chat:

This is the April 2024 Seed Chat - Seed-borne diseases quietly jeopardize the vitality of crops, as seeds unwittingly harbor microscopic threats like fungi, bacteria, and pests. Bill and Greg will help you identify these pesky pests and guide you through the measures to screen for disease-resistant seeds to thwart these covert adversaries.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/812-seed for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

What is the Seed Chat?

At least ten times a year we have a live Seed Saving Class with Bill McDorman, the former Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013. 

Come join us for the next live class, or catch up on our previous classes through our podcast episodes.  Either way you will expand your seed knowledge and gain new perspectives on your food system.

Register anytime for the next event.

Register Here for the Monthly Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 850 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Staying Open to Possibilities

In This Podcast:

In this special episode, Greg Peterson shares an update from his new home in North Carolina.  There are lots of exciting possibilities created by starting from scratch in a completely new and different place and Greg is taking the time to explore them all.  He also confirms that the Urban Farm programs are not going anywhere, and he replays the very first episode of the Urban Farm Podcast.

Don’t miss an episode!

visit UrbanFarm.Org/blog/podcast

Visit www.UrbanFarm.org/Podcast-by-episode-titles for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

The Future of the Urban Farm and 000 Relaunch.

159: Brandon Peterman on Natural Building

Constructing buildings and materials from locally sourced ingredients 

Brandon grew up in Southern California and went to University of Southern California Riverside.  Always feeling a connection to nature, he has been living on homesteads in the woods for the past four years and has been actively doing natural building for the past three years.  He has participated in the building of over two dozen natural structures from cottages to bread ovens, garden walls, to covered benches and other homestead based structures.

His goal is to create a fully functioning working farm with a gardening education program and a year-round school program.  After his own apprenticeship, Brandon joined Kirk Mobert at the Sundog School of Natural Building which is based on 50 acres in Gualala, California. The school offers classes and on a rotating basis and apprenticeships in natural building.

IN THIS PODCAST:  Greg gets to hear about a new topic on the podcast when he chats with Brandon who shares the basics about Natural Building.  A life-long lover of the outdoors, Brandon tells how he found what he had been looking for in a building process that has been around for many centuries. This process is one that embodies several permaculture principles and has many time-tested examples existing around the world. Brandon tells about this method and the school that offers apprentice positions.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2016/11/19/brandon-peterman/ for show notes and links.

Organically recycling through vermicomposting.

In This Podcast: Rhonda Sherman, an extension specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University, shares how throwing away our food waste is a major problem in landfills, releasing methane gas which is a contributor to climate change and causing heavy metals to be released into water sources. She spends 90 percent of her work time educating people in what to do with their food waste instead, namely by composting or vermicomposting. Rhonda shares access to many of the publications she’s written which can be found on her website.

Rhonda is an extension specialist in the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University, providing leadership for university outreach programs on solid waste management issues through the Cooperative Extension Service. She holds degrees in Environmental Studies and Urban/Regional Planning, and Environmental Resources Analysis with an emphasis in solid waste management.

Rhonda’s areas of expertise are vermicomposting, composting, recycling, and waste reduction. She gives about 40 presentations annually and has authored over 65 publications on these topics. Her new book is The Worm Farmer’s Handbook: Mid- to Large-Scale Vermicomposting for Farms, Businesses, Municipalities, Schools, and Institutions published by our friends at Chelsea Green.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2018/12/08/405-rhonda-sherman/ for more information and links on this podcast, and to find our other great guests.

405: Rhonda Sherman on Worm Farming

761: Tom Spellman on Heat Stressed Trees . 

A chat with an expert on trees.

In This TREE Chat:

This is an excerpt from our July 2023 TREE Chat discussing Heat Stressed Trees. We have our mentor Tom Spellman join our monthly Tree Chat to talk about how the heat is affecting our trees in the southwest and how we can help them survive the brutal extremes of the summer season. Tom brings decades of experience to the table as we chat with our zoom audience.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/trees23july for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

What is the Tree Chat?

Greg and Janis host Tree Chats – live Zoom webinars focusing on fruit tree care with seasonal tips, harvest alerts, and timely refreshers for success with your fruit trees. And YES we do live Q&A for your fruit tree questions!

This monthly class will take place on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, at 5pm AZ time.

Register anytime for the next event.

Register Here for the Monthly TREE CHATS with Live Q&A

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 775 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Growing food while overcoming droughts, record rains and floods, and catastrophic fires.

Clara is a 31-year-old Amateur Mycologist, mushroom grower, Beekeeper, and Chicken lady who is passionate about animals and the environment.  She is Hungarian-Australian and currently living in Australia, where she is President of the local Permaculture Central Coast group.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2022/11/04/704-clara-roza/ for show notes and links

Angeline Young about Starting from Scratch.

Creating a garden with little money, space, or experience.

In This Podcast: Many people believe gardening requires money, experience, and a yard with ample space. However, Angeline Young has been an urban apartment dweller most her life and recently, she put herself to the challenge while adding creativity to her limited space. Listen in to learn about Angeline’s trials and errors through her recent gardening quest, her upcycled watering and planting systems, as well as how to naturally eliminate pests and build healthy soil.

Angeline is a dancer and scholar from San Francisco, California. She is currently completing her PhD in Comparative Cultures and Languages at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on the Chinese community in Rome, Italy. In her spare time, Angeline has started a small container garden. Her “garden” is an 8x6-foot balcony in a large apartment complex. Using grow pots, milk cartons, and recycled plastic containers, she is cultivating her green thumb.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/12/01/569-angeline-young/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

Mentoring cancer survivors through backyard vegetable gardens.

In This Podcast: Anyone who gardens knows the benefits, but Kerry Smith is proving it with her Harvest for Health program for cancer survivors. This experiment partners the Alabama Master Gardeners with Auburn University to track improvements in physical activity, diet, and stress markers for people who beat cancer. In addition to teaching them gardening basics and healthy food habits, they spread the love for plants through volunteers who are motivated by heartwarming experiences.

Kerry is the Home Grounds team Co-leader in the Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Working with team members she develops, supports and delivers programs that inspire smart yards for home landscapes. She is also the State Program Coordinator for the Alabama Master Gardener Program, a large volunteer group assisting the same mission of promoting sustainable, smart yard landscapes. Kerry has worked for the Education Department at Callaway Gardens, been a schoolteacher, an estate gardener, and many things in between. Her current priority for the Master Gardener program is Harvest for Health, a 5-year garden mentor project in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Through this project, Master Gardeners mentor cancer survivors learning to grow a backyard vegetable garden.

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2020/02/01/515-kerry-smith/ for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

515: Kerry Smith on Harvest for Health.

Making good use of rain water in the community.

In This Podcast: 

As Ricardo Aguirre was about to become a father, he took stock of his life. Would he continue to work as a civil engineer as he had for 15 years or would he do something that would have a positive effect on the earth? Which one would he be proud to tell his son about? The answer was to bring about more creative and natural approaches to improve conventional engineering. He tells us more about water management and holistic planned grazing to help avoid negative land management issues.

Ricardo is the founding member of Holistic Engineering and Land Management, Inc. (HELM) and is focused on creating innovative approaches to improve conventional engineering. He works to integrate natural processes into large scale engineering projects with his primary professional focus to implement functional design strategies to achieve multiple synergistic objectives. 

Ricardo has a profound interest in reversing desertification through water harvesting and increasing soil organic matter. This can have a measurable benefit to reduce flooding, improve both storm-water and soil quality, conserve water, provide passive irrigation for vegetation, and reduce the heat island effect. Ricardo’s project experience includes infrastructure improvements for communities that have been adversely impacted by storm-water.  

Visit https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/02/09/421_ricardo_aguirre/ for show notes and links.

Ricardo Aguirre on Water Harvesting & Land Management

784: Wildflower Seed Chat. 

A chat with an expert on seeds.

In This Seed Chat:

This is the December 2023 Seed Chat - Who doesn't love wildflowers? Contrary to popular belief, you don't toss wildflowers on your land and hope that they grow.

Like most crops, they need special tending to get them started. If you're really daring, you might mimic the patterns of the plants whose seeds you want to sprout. But keep in mind, wild plants put out thousands of seeds because so many of them don't make it. They're looking for the odds to be in their favor. Join Bill & Greg as they dive into this seedy topic.

Visit www.urbanfarm.org/seeds23dec for the show notes on this episode, and access to our full podcast library!

What is the Seed Chat?

At least ten times a year we have a live Seed Saving Class with Bill McDorman, the former Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance, Ketchum, Idaho. He got his start in the bio-regional seed movement while in college in 1979 when he helped start Garden City Seeds. In 1984, Bill started Seeds Trust/High Altitude Gardens, a mail order seed company he ran successfully until it sold in 2013. 

Come join us for the next live class, or catch up on our previous classes through our podcast episodes.  Either way you will expand your seed knowledge and gain new perspectives on your food system.

Register anytime for the next event.

Register Here for the Monthly Seed Saving Class with Live Q&A

Become an Urban Farm Patron and listen to more than 800 episodes of the Urban Farm Podcast without ads. Click HERE to learn more.

*Disclosure: Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Transforming waste into soil, jobs, and community.

In This Podcast: 

Sarah Boltwala-Mesina, along with other parents, hoped to start a recycling program at their children’s school. This was the first step on her journey to creating Food2Soil, a business that collects food scraps from people and businesses in San Diego and turns those scraps into rich compost. Her company provides services helping homeowners become successful composting in their own backyard, provides hubs around the city for people to drop scraps off, and offers scrap pickup service to restaurants. There is even a wait-list of businesses and breweries hoping to participate.   

Sarah is the executive director of  Inika Small Earth, a nonprofit that started Food2Soil where they train interns in good composting techniques. Food2Soil collects vegetative food scraps from local restaurants then composts the scraps at two urban farms in San Diego, selling the finished product to local gardeners looking for high-nutrient soil. 

Inika Small Earth is a charitable organization working to enhance the network of community composting hubs across San Diego.  Their aim is to build the collective capacity to transform food scraps into soil and jobs for the community.

Go to https://www.urbanfarm.org/2019/01/15/416-sarah-boltwala-mesina/ for more information and to find our other great guests.

Sarah Boltwala-Mesina on Community Composting