Category: Podcast

Yes, another bee story, but one with larger deeper thoughts. Rick joins Eric to talk about doing everything wrong while its happening around you. This time the story line involves a bee swarm but it applies to when stuff is happening around you and you do the wrong thing.

Watch the swarm video here: https://gardenfork.tv/beehive-swarm-beautiful-thing-stand-middle-gf-video/

Erin’s new YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/WIsailorgirl

Hoisting a 250 pound roof hatch up on the same roof: https://gardenfork.tv/hoisting-250-lbs-steel-4-story-building-dont-try/

We then answer a lawn mower repair question from Matty. The generator repair video is here: https://gardenfork.tv/generator-wont-start-time-replace-carburetor-gf-video/

Eric would like to check out the new Chevy Bolt and Volt electric and hybrid cars. How do you charge it in the city, how long does it take to charge?

Check out our Facebook Discussion group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1692616594342396/

We talk about switchel, a old drink that is new again.

The Opera browser with a VPN you can turn on: http://www.opera.com/

Rick uses the Safer VPN app on the iphone.

Done is better than perfect is a GF mantra, so it Embrace Failure. This essay by Karen Rinaldi rings true for me.

I’m doing a deep dive into 99 Percent Invisible, not just the podcast, but also the articles posted on their site. Neat stuff here: http://99percentinvisible.org/

Can you transplant sugar snap peas? Plant sunflowers in cold weather?

How to grow sugar peas video https://gardenfork.tv/how-to-grow-peas-gf-video/

Growing Hops, is there a way to identify the different varieties of hops? Do I have Williamette hops or something else.

Trellis Building Video https://gardenfork.tv/build-a-trellis/

Plus deep thoughts on reducing clogging in one’s bathroom sink.

Matt’s Views From A First Year Beekeeper on the site: https://gardenfork.tv/tag/inside-the-hive/

photo courtesy Johntex on Wikimedia CC3.0

Last week I got an email from a high school student:

My name is Kevin and I am currently a [high school] senior in NJ. I am currently working on my senior project which is installing my own drip irrigation system in my backyard. I have seen your YouTube videos about drip irrigation and I have found that they are extremely knowledgeable. I just have a few questions that I hope you will answer.

Thanks,
Kevin

Questions:

What is your current profession, and how long have you worked in that industry?
Do you spend a lot of time in the garden?
How familiar are you with drip irrigation?
If you are familiar, How effective is it?
Do people need to hire someone to set it up, or is it relatively easy if one has a lot of time?
On average, how much do you think people pay in water bills for using a hose to water their gardens?(Average is 5 gallons per 8 sq feet)
How much money would you say people can save using a water saving technique like drip irrigation?
Why should people switch from using their hose to using drip irrigation to water their garden?
Do you think we will see more people in the future set up a drip irrigation in the future?
What are some main components to a drip irrigation system?
Some people would say a drip irrigation system would look odd in a garden, how would you respond to that?

I suggested to Kevin that we do a Skype call and put this on the GardenFork Radio Podcast. So we did. What fun. Watch our soaker hose drip irrigation videos here.

We talk about the planning failure for the maple syrup season and then the enormous failure that Eric made a video about . Watch Here.

Color correction comes next, not sure why, but you can color correct your video and photos by using a color card when you are shooting.

Podcast we like: Up And Vanished, a true crime show Eric likes. Lean and Hungry is a show Rick likes.

Eric tellls of his succesful beekeeping meetup in BKLN using a Google email list.

Rick suggest using the Ghostery app & plugins when surfing the web. Rick now uses Signal from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for calls and texts.

GF fan Greg sent photos of his pallet compost bins.

Erin from The Impatient Gardener   joins Eric to talk about garden predictions, the pain part of freecycle and craigslist’s free section, waffles and making your own DIY pendant lamp.

Erin says raised beds are trending. Eric agrees, plus they are very practical, which is what GardenFork is all about. Watch our how to build a raised bed videos here.

Outbuildings are trending, maybe a tangent from the Tiny House movement. Eric saw a prefab grandparents house that one can drop in to a backyard. Whether that kind of house would work with local building codes is a question to be answered locally.

People not showing up after agreeing to pick up a free item you have listed on Freecycle or Craigslist is a constant problem. Eric and Erin recount their experiences and some solutions that work for them. Local seems to work better, especially NextDoor.com for giving away free stuff.

Homemade Yeasted Waffles are discussed, with an overnight rise in the fridge. The flavor blows away quick waffle batters, but does require a bit of planning, as you make the batter the night before. The overnight cold rise works great. Use less batter than you think you should in the waffle maker, FYI.

We talk about Erin’s basement renovation with a home office, and what that entails. Eric noticed a retro lamp Erin wanted to use in the basement project and pointed out one can make these lamps themselves, as GF has a video about it. How unusual…

Erin’s post on how to ditch cable, aka cutting the cord, is here. Eric and Erin have similar systems for getting rid of cable TV, though Eric does not have a DVR. It doesn’t hurt to examine your cable bill occasionally, BTW.

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Erin of The Impatient Gardener joins Eric to talk about cordless outdoor power equipment, sailing the Chicago to Mackinac Island Race, and what to do in the garden in the fall.

Troy Bilt is a sponsor of GardenFork, FYI. Learn more about their CORE cordless products here.

Rick goes on the road transporting Cairn Terrier rescue dogs around the country and tells us about it. There are dog rescue groups for all sorts of breeds, a web search will show you who they are.

Rick tells of driving his Prius across the country several times recently, getting good gas mileage and camping in his tent to make it all easier with the dogs.

You can go camping in NYC! On the far side of Floyd Bennet Field there are tent and RV campgrounds. This reminds Rick of his time as part of the Confederate Air Force.

Wasted food in the US is a an article from The Guardian we discuss. Go buy the damaged fruit. Its cheaper and sends a message to groceries that we will buy less than perfect food.

We touch on a GF sponsor, Eco Scraps, who takes food waste and makes it into garden products.

Rick’s tomatoes are doing much better this year after using plastic mulch.

We talk about the new Troy Bilt vertical rototiller that Eric made a review video about.

photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Erik Knutzen of Root Simple joins Eric to catch up on Erik’s baking bread in L.A. with local grains. He has found that if you use whole wheat bread, you eat less bread, and its more healthy.

Erik helped found the Los Angeles Bread Bakers meetup, and things have been going very well, he likes the face to face meetings.

Making a bread oven is not as complicated as it sounds. The  key is to use local clay, which is usually easily dug up in most parts of the world. Cracks will happen in the oven, but the key is the right mix of sand, clay, water to avoid cracks.

Erik has been using a Komo grain mill for his breads, he gets his grains from Central Milling in Utah and Grist & Toll in L.A. He uses his own yeast starter rather than a commercial brand, he has limited his breads to whole wheat with sourdough starters.

Eric asks, does home made bread have less of a carbohydrate impact on your diet? Erik says yes, because of the whole wheat, you will eat less.

Drones are the next topic, and our mutual concern for abuse. Realtors like them for selling houses. We will try to borrow one and see what its like.

Erik’s recent podcasts include foraging and cooking wild plants, learn more here. One of the over-harvested plants in Erik’s area is white sage, which he suggests one should just grow one’s garden.

We touch on foraging for mushrooms, watch our videos here, Erik has yet to master this.

We finish on bees, there are more swarms in LA than Eric’s world.

Rick tells us about this new rescue dog, and how it all came about. Never knew dogs got to fly for free in private planes. Nice. There are a bunch of dog photos on the new GardenFork Group on Facebook here.

Eric talks about a new podcast he likes, Someone Knows Something, from the CBC in Canada. If you like the podcast Serial, you might like this one as well.

Rick has been listening to Home of the Brave by Scott Carrier, you may know him for his contributions to This American Life on NPR.

A new 4 part documentary Eric watched is Michael Pollan’s Cooked on Netflix. It shows the universal-ness of cooking food for your family. From the outback of Australia to the streets of Morocco. Neat.

Finally Rick tells of a report that dogs don’t like to be hugged.

I’m a big fan of Bob and his YouTube channel, I Like To Make Stuff, the website, and his mindset is similar to mine: make stuff and share it. Bob was kind enough to take a few moments to go over some tools and techniques he uses to make stuff.

I like how Bob makes projects approachable and with that ‘you can do it’ theme. With about 700k subscribers presently, I think lots of other people do too. His projects are kinda eclectic, sorta like GardenFork, recent ones include a water ballon cannon and a  homemade arcade game. Not bad.

We first touch on welding equipment, and whether one should buy a mig welder or a flux core welder to start. I have a flux core welder, which is less expensive, but it has limitations.

We move on to using micro controllers like the arduino and raspberry pi, which is on my to do list.

Bob likes to use Trello as a task management app, and we talk about that as well. We finish with our mutual agreement on how the web can be a place for good stuff to happen.

If you use Epsom salts when planting tomatoes, will you get bigger tomatoes? Find out on this episode of the GardenFork Radio podcast. Erin joins Eric to talk gardening myths, and we find out which ones work and which ones don’t.

Epsom Salts, Fact or Fiction?

Does using Epsom salts with tomatoes help?

Use treated wood for raised beds?

Does hydrogel work?

Does soap deter deer?

As you listen to the show, clearly Erin of The Impatient Gardener has done her homework, and Eric learns a few things. A good takeaway from the research we did was that you can find any answer you want on the internet, so stick to sites that have a good reputation. Erin suggests that information from accredited universities is a good place to start. So look for websites that end in .edu for reliable information.

We reference a very good garden book, The Truth About Garden Remedies, for good information to dispel or prove some of these garden myths, a big thank you to Jeff Gilman for the effort he put into the book.

There is that FOMO thing that happens when you hear about a tip for growing better tomatoes, and the anxiety that you are missing out on a cool thing by not using this simple tip to better vegetable gardening. This is why Erin and Eric picked a few topics suggested by GardenFork viewers to talk about on this podcast. I’ve seen videos on YouTube get thousands of views with these simple tips to better fruiting on plants, and I feel the compelling need to watch them, then I realize what the video about is not worth the time I spent watching. At least while listening to GardenFork Radio, you can also do something else.

We will be doing another garden myths show, please let us know what garden myths you have heard in the comments below.

Rick joins Eric to talk for this episode of the GardenFork podcast.

Eric tells of his trip to Austin to meet with GardenFork sponsor Troy-Bilt and meet up with rest of the Saturday 6 bloggers. The community service project, reviving a community garden, was done working with Planet In Action.

Rick tells about his LED grow lights and his concerns about UV light. He is moving the lights to the garage. We then move into talking about Rick repairing a door that had been chewed, and learned a lot about a product from reading online reviews.

The Garden Gem tomatoes we talk about are available here.

Clyde’s Garden Planner is a great tool for planting times, we love it. It is also available as an app!

The best camera to use is the one in your hand! Eric and Rick discuss what cameras they use and why. Plus how to store your photos and display them.

Rick has this Canon DSLR camera: http://amzn.to/1o2Wc1s  Recommends this great small camera: http://amzn.to/1KUyfOG And uses a portable hard drive to back up his memory cards: http://amzn.to/1KUxKnB

Rick uses Fracture for prints: https://www.fractureme.com/

We talked about time lapse and I use the Lapse It app and Rick uses HyperLapse.

Tracy joins Eric to talk more about how they moved their parents into care facilities, emptied the house, and sold it.

In our previous podcast about taking care of our parents, we talked about working with a medicare consultant or elder care laywer, this was very helpful for us.

Getting  power of attorney is the basic tool of all this. Make sure you get financial and medical power of attorney, the legal document varies by state. You should be able to purchase it online and have it notarized by your local bank. You can hire a lawyer to help with this POA, which may be a good way to start working with an elder care lawyer.

A good real estate agent is key to emptying a house of its contents and selling the house for the best price. Using an estate sale company worked very well for us, they take possession of everything in the house and deliver you an empty house. No need for garage sales and travel. It was very nice to have the house emptied by a third party, it can eliminate a lot of the drama.

Having a bank account for your parents with your name on the account also is a great help. And if they are in managed care, having their bills mailed to your house is a plus. Let your postal carrier know you will be receiving their mail so it doesn’t get sent back.

There are several forms for assigning ownership of the car, bank accounts, etc upon one’s death, and it avoids probate. Ask a lawyer about it.

Erin of The Impatient Gardener joins Eric to talk about garden trends and what Erin see happening in the garden design world, something Eric knows nothing about, so this should be interesting.

White Gardens are big, but the number of plants are limited with that color. Boxwood is also all over the place in the gardening world. Erin has been using Redbor kale in her garden beds, and not just as an edible, but as an ornamental plant. Edible gardens are trending, we learn.

Seed starting and soil blocks come next. Erin has been using a soil block maker, read her seed starting post here, and we learn how the soil block keeps seedlings from becoming root bound. Erin makes her own soil mix and the results are great. She has a home made grow light, much like our DIY grow lights.

We then talk about how to deal with contractors during a renovation in your house. This is a tricky relationship and we talk about the how the situation works from both sides of the project.

The camera operator joins Eric to talk about resolutions vs goals, how to run a general store, and when its time to hire someone to do work in your house.

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We touch on hiring people to install a tile floor in the kitchen and how the use of newer tile innovations worked for us. We found out that regular roll linoleum wouldn’t work for our floor, as the seams will split open over time. The floor company suggested sectional tiles that snap together. It ends up the kitchen floor came together quickly, and Eric was very happy not to install the floor.

The same goes for wallpaper hanging. If you are not good at measuring and precision, wallpaper hanging is not for your. Its a good thing Eric hired a friend to hang the wallpaper. Its a task that requires lots of planning and cutting paper straight. Its best to have two people doing this if you try this.

We talk about our general store re-opening. What is key is personal customer service. The people running the store have to have really good interpersonal skills, plus food service experience. Lucky for us, the store is now run by people who have great people skills.

Eric’s back injury recovery gets on the show, its important to have a good relationship with your physical therapist and do the exercises they give you.

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Pipe wrenches are great for plumbing, but they are also great tools for getting stuff un-stuck. I have several of them, up to 36″ in length. I have two of the 3′ ones, btw. They have a neat clamping mechanism that  makes it easy to remove them from a nut or pipe and reset the wrench to take another pull. Who invented this thing? A man named Stillson, according to Wikipedia.

In Rhodesia its called a bobbiejohn spanner. neat.

That being said, we used them to replace the valve on one of our steam radiators. These valves can be frozen, as they are exposed to wet hot water – steam – and tend to rust solid. So the pipe wrench comes in handy. This is why you should buy one or more as gifts for your loved ones and friends, I think.

A big thank you to our Patreon supporters, because of you, we were able to buy the new Adobe software suite, which will make editing easier. I’m now learning the new software. Thanks for youtube videos on that!

Got some good feedback on the visual changes to the show, last week and this week were fun to shoot and edit, thanks for all the comments.

On meditation, we read two emails, with suggestions for checking out Oprah and Deepak’s meditation series. You can also check out Happify.