Interviews & Garden Advice

 -- Brummet's In the Media -- 

Join me for the live interview over at Dr Ande Radio, which offers inspirational and educational information, strategies and tips in the realm of small business, nonprofit, entrepreneurship, writing, music and more. Today we'll be focusing on the world of writing.

Today: Dec. 26th, 8 AM (pacific) or 9 AM (central), etc. The show will be archived so you can access it later on at your convenience

Location: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/dranderadioshow/2012/12/26/dr-ande-radio-books-business-entertainment

-- Consciously Gardening --

This time of year we gardeners are actively drooling over garden and seed catalogs as they arrive in the mailbox, or viewing them online. Planing so early might seem a bit over-excited to some, but there are a lot of varieties of flowers that are started in January (think flower baskets) and greenhouse crops that can be started in late January for an early spring harvest before the ground is ready to plant in outside. We have a wonderful gardening expert joining us today to offer some gardening tips:


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Avid gardener, digital marketer and writer Lucas Barnes 

manages a very helpful blog ( http://www.plantdex.com ) 

where he covers topics ranging from a variety of garden projects, 

how to deal with common pests and weeds, growing guides for specific plants 

and more. To learn more about Lucas and find samples of his work visit his blog 

(above) or drop by: https://plus.google.com/u/0/110737022582012761136

Conscious Gardening, Easy Tips for a Sustainable Garden

Gardening is a great physical and mental activity that helps many people feel more connected with their environment and even their food. Gardening can be more than a simple hobby; it can be a strong passion that is carried over into many aspects of people’s lives. Gardening connects you with your food’s growing seasons, cuing to when you might see different fruits and in the grocery store like a Gala apple or even a pomegranate (one of my favorite). One great thing we can learn about sustainability we can learn from gardening is it gives us insight to how it’s possible to live sustainably, everything from how we get our food to how we dispose of our waste.  A properly maintained garden should have very little to no actual waste, and with a few simple changes to how you garden you can dramatically reduce the need for artificial fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides while increasing your harvests.

Mulch is one of the single best practices you can implement to improve not only the sustainability of your garden but even just improve the quality of your harvests. There are a variety of materials used for mulching, but they all help in 3 fundamental ways.  Mulching increase soil fertility and holds moisture which in turn reduces the amount of water needed. Secondly mulch increases the soil temperature which aids in plant’s root development and increase the length of time your plants spend growing. Finally mulching helps keep weeds, and pests down like slugs while preventing soil erosion from wind or rain.

Raised bed gardens are a great way for people with less time to garden to still grow large tasty crops of fruits and vegetables. Raised beds help plant growth in many ways that mulching does; raised beds keep the soil warmer, help retain water, make weed management easier and even allow you to plant your crops more densely using up less space. Raised beds give your plants a lot more fertile soil to grow into and can feed them so that they grow much larger in a short period of time.

Additionally because the beds of soil are raised above the ground the sun can warm the soil your plants are growing in throughout more quickly than it can warm the entire ground. Besides increasing your yield from healthier more densely planted fruits and vegetables the dense plantings allow you to use less water per plant than you would have to in a non-raised bed because less is wasted in surrounding unplanted ground. Implementing mulch, and raised beds in your garden can help you both garden in a more sustainable way and actually increase your plant’s health resulting in higher yields.

Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well!