090 Garden Myths: Nitrogen, Roundup, Compost Tea

...n a number of controversial, hot-button gardening topics such as synthetic fertilizers, roundup and compost tea. Robert maintains a six acre garden near Guelph, Ontario all by himself, he’s a master gardener and a speaker. He has a background in chemistry and biochemistry and runs two blogs: gardenmyths.com and gardenfundamentals.com. During the show we also discuss the “whys” of gardening, mosquito prevention, stuff you shouldn’t buy and the prob...

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Designing the World’s Most Pretentious Garden Shed

...p of my “honey-do” list is a much needed garden shed to store tools, pots, fertilizer and chicken feed. After years of dragging my heels for years, the project went from napkin sketch to construction in under a week. I set as my goal to build the world’s most pretentious garden shed and, as much as possible, to use salvaged materials. Yes, I’m crazy. I have to admit that when British hedge fund manager Crispen Odey tried to build a $250,000 neo-cl...

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Shedcropolis: A Garden Shed Made From (Mostly) Salvaged Materials

Kelly requested a small shed to keep our garden tools, pots and fertilizer. I was not satisfied with either the small and ugly plastic storage structures nor the large, fake barn-like sheds available at the big box stores so I vowed to build my own. In a September blog post I wrote about my eccentric design process. Today, I’m declaring the world’s most pretentious garden shed, a.k.a. “Shedcropolis,” finished. For materials, I sourced salvaged 2x...

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Putting Your Civic House in Order: How the Young Members of the Family Help

...his surprise he found him with a wheelbarrow laboriously hauling soil and fertilizer to his forlorn corner patch. Toni turned “good” and through interest in gardening got interested in other phases of school work. With him, as with all children, mastery of the soil proved mastery of self. The movement showed parents how the work of children can be made the means of contributing to the family income, thus making it possible for them to stay in sch...

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Saturday Linkages: Congrats Nithya Raman!

...Is Naming Your Garden Pretentious? Mesquite, crucial to Indigenous diets for centuries, works miracles with water and needs no fertilizer. Why don’t we grow more of it? Partial fire season relief, at last: cold storm arrives in California Friday I Don’t Like Flashy Wood – Go Figure Two Gen Xers Walk Into A Retirement Home… Bruno Latour: ‘This is a global catastrophe that has come from within’...

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