Category: A Chat with an Expert on

768: Integrated Pest Management – A Garden Chat

A Garden Chat with Teresa Watkins. – 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…

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767: Bugs, Disease, Weather and Animals – A Seed Chat

A Seed Chat with Bill McDorman. – This is the August 2023 Seed Chat discussing the impact that climate change is having on our crops. With all the excitement in the world Bill proposes to get all the diversity you can into your yard, into your neighborhood, into your community. That means more different kinds of varieties of the favorite crops that you wanna grow and more different kinds of crops off the scale. The more genetic and crop diversity that we have in our communities the better.

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760: Pro Gardening Tips

A Garden Chat with Zach Loeks. This month we will chat with our friend and author Zach Loeks about his tips and tricks for getting the most out of your garden. He is willing to share some of what he learned managing his award-winning farm.

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761: Tom Spellman on Heat Stressed Trees – A 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.

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759: Seed Support and Where to Find It – A Seed Chat

A Seed Chat with Bill McDorman. – This is the July 2023 Seed Chat discussing Seed classes, seed libraries, seed companies, books and teaching tools. We’ll talk about (and link) our favorite resources whether you are starting a community seed library, launching a seed business or looking for that fabulous book you can cuddle up with to find inspiration and context for your seed saving journey. Come Chat with Us! 

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755: Water Harvesting For Our Gardens – A Garden Chat

“Rain, Rain, go away?” Whoever said that never had to water a garden in the summer months. Join us as we chat with our good friend and water harvesting educator Don Titmus about boosting our water resources for our gardens with a few simple systems that can quickly pay for themselves.

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753: Seed Saving and Climate Change – A Seed Chat

A Seed Chat with Bill McDorman. – This is the June 2023 Seed Chat discussing Seed Saving and Climate Change. Have you noticed anything odd recently? Perhaps climate change has your community a bit up in arms. Unexpected rain, hotter high temps, lower low temps. How do we prepare for changing climatic conditions in terms of growing and saving seeds? Bill McDorman and Greg Peterson will delve into this ever-evolving topic and offer tips for riding the waves of uncertainty. Come Chat with Us! 

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748: Small Space Gardening, A Garden Chat

A Garden Chat with Enoch Graham. If you only have a little space to grow food, let’s chat about how to make the most of that space. This month we chatted with Enoch Graham, of the YouTube channel The Urban Gardener, about some of the best ways to maximize a harvest out of a minimal space.

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747: All About Grexing, A Seed Chat

A Seed Chat with Bill McDorman. – This is the May 2023 Seed Chat with Bill McDorman and Greg Peterson discussing a gardening concept that involves mixing seeds on purpose before planting with a goal of cross-pollination. A Grex is a mixture of varieties growing together and encouraged to cross-pollinate. The seeds from those crosses are grown out again and again. Instead of crossing two parents to create offspring, the breeder crosses dozens. The word Grex means ‘flock’.

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741: Soil – The Easiest Way to Get Great Results

A Garden Chat with Zach Brooks. – Zach Brooks joins us to share his secrets on making organic, no-till gardening the laziest and easiest way to get great results. Zach’s work at Arizona Worm Farm has given him a chance to experiment with a variety of soil building methods and he shares what he has learned.  

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