Category Archives: Podcasts

So—What’s wrong with lawns? Podcast #34

May 14, 2012 by The Manic Gardener
The Back Story

I grew up in an apartment in Manhattan, so anything green seemed natural to me. It’s only much more recently that I’ve come to see lawns as man-made objects imposed on the environment—often an unforgiving and unreceptive environment.

Then Eric Vinge of Planet Natural asked me to write an article on organic lawn care. Writing that article (A Home-Owner’s Guide to Organic Lawn Care: Maintaining a Chemical-Free Lawn) was my education in lawn-care pesticides and other chemicals, and it was quite a class. Obviously, I started with a strong bias towards the organic point of view. But I have a strong skeptical streak, and I decided to trace every claim about rising cancer rates and endocrine disruption, about tracked-in chemicals, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the rest to either a university or a government study.

You know what I found? It was all true. All those claims about contaminated well-water and streams, the danger of childhood exposure, reproductive disorders—they’re all true.

This show is an attempt to share some of what I learned. Continue reading →

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A Farmer’s Story – podcast #33

May 7, 2012 by The Manic Gardener
Overview

source: http://atinadiffley.com/bio/

This is a conversation with Atina Diffley about the loss of one organic farm to development and the fight to protect its replacement from an oil pipeline. She talks about the ecological damage and spiritual wounds she, her children, their father, and his family farm suffered when The Gardens of Eagen went piecemeal under the bulldozer. Then she describes how she took on the Koch brothers and won. Her memoir Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works came out this spring.

Continue reading →

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Podcast #26 Minding Your Manure

March 19, 2012 by The Manic Gardener
The Show

The manure problems—pollution and contamination—that I reviewed in my last post occupy the first part of this podcast, and if that were all we covered, you too might be inclined to crawl under your desk and stay there.

A quick recap: Rather to the surprise of many an organic gardener, even organic manures can cause problems: phosphorus can contaminate surface water, while nitrogen can leak into ground water and can also form nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas almost 300 times as powerful as carbon dioxide. Continue reading →

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Posted in Composting, Environment, Podcasts, Soil & Amendments

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Podcast #20 – Water-Wise Gardening

February 7, 2012 by The Manic Gardener
Overview

The Show: Water-Wise Gardening

Tom Christopher

Guests: Thomas Christopher – author, lecturer, gardener – on how and why to save water in the home garden.
Edwin Beck – entrepreneur, designer, consultant, gardener – on a rain barrel, EarthMinded RainStation, that’s even more environmentally friendly than most.

And while we’re on the subject– How do you save water in your garden? Add your ideas and experiences to the comments below.

The Show

image from Timber Press

The statistics in Tom’s introduction to The New American Landscape: Leading Voices on the Future of Sustainable Gardening are enough to make you want to fall on your pitchfork in the gardener’s version of the old Roman custom of falling on one’s sword when the battle was clearly lost.

Now some of these stats, I’d seen before–for instance the fact that about 30% of water used by residences goes to water lawns and gardens. But the claim that 36 states would face chronic water shortages by 2013? That’s next year. This was a new one on me. And the fact that Southern Florida, which gets 55 inches of rain, has a water shortage? How could this be? (If you don’t believe these are facts, please feel free to take it up with the EPA and the Gov’t Accounting Office, a.k.a. the GOA.)

Given such statistics, how did Tom manage to avoid is own pitchfork, much less encourage us to avoid ours? Continue reading →

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Posted in Environment, Podcasts, Tools of the Trade

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Podcast #19 – The Way It Works: Compost Science

January 31, 2012 by The Manic Gardener
The show

I remember two things in particular about the first time a friend showed me a book on composting: first of all, I was dumbfounded that anyone could find enough to say on the topic to fill a book; and secondly, I had no temptation to read it.

How things change. I’ve now read several books and probably hundreds of articles on composting, and I find the topic endlessly engrossing. So much so that I’ve added my own book-length article to the stack. (Check out the green table of contents on the left at Composter Connection. Yeah, the one that kinda goes on and on.)

The thing is, once you do get interested in compost and actually try to learn about it in any detail, you realize how inadequate most web resources are. Continue reading →

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