735: Your First Garden Is Your Worst Garden.

A Garden Chat with Emily Rockey.

 

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

In This Garden Chat:

Are you starting your first garden? Take heart!! Your First Garden is Your Worst Garden, and that means yes, you can experience a variety of challenges, set backs, excitement, and successes too. Let’s talk about these and what comes next. Join Emily Rockey and Farmer Greg as they explore the pitfalls of starting a garden anew.

 

Our Special Guest:

Emily studied plant sciences at the University of Arizona focusing on controlled environment agriculture to optimize food production in indoor greenhouse systems.  Then the incredible power of the rich real soil drew her back outdoors and she worked on organic farms in Italy and the US.  During the nineteen years Emily has lived in Tucson, she has worked for a variety of nonprofits and businesses focusing on sustainability, gardening and promotion of compost and soil health.  Prior to her current role at Mission Garden, she worked at Tanks Green Stuff, a local organic compost and soils company.

 

 


CHAT HIGHLIGHTS:

– Mesquite bean milling event, June 2023 at Mission Garden in Tucson, AZ.

– Greg’s miserable success (aka failure)

– The dirt on healthy soil

– Ants are good.

– Building the foundation of your garden: dirt, air space, moisture, organic matter

– Know where your food comes from; know where your garden’s food comes from

– Symbiotic relationships between the plants and the community living in the soil

– Invest in good soil and allow it time to grow.

– Growing in clay soil

– Find good quality compost  US Composting Council

– Observe your new space – sun, shade, wind, cold spots, water flow

– Determinate vs indeterminate tomatoes

– Start with what grows well locally; find locally grown seeds.

– Understand the pests and their role in your garden

– Don’t forget to plant for the pollinators.

– Interpreting the “organic” label

– Creosote cuttings in the compost pile?

– Should plants be shaded in Maricopa, AZ

– Stay with it!  Do not give up.

Missiongarden.org

www.urbanfarm.org/garden23mar

*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. 

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