July 2011

GYG-041 Organic Gardens Need Bees! An Interview with Chef Mil Apostol

by Steve on July 31, 2011

Many times I am asked why do I bother to grow my own food? Why not just run to the store?

Easy Answer -

Take Control of Your Food!

Our Government seems all fired bent on controlling everything in our lives, and I strongly believe food will be the next target they go after.

Seems like a rash statement? Have you followed the SWAT Style Raids on Mom and Pop Farmers who sold some Raw Milk to people who asked for it? Including the Amish Farmer whose Milk tested clean, but they still drug him through Court? Why isnt the government pursuing the large Chicken Egg factories that have already had multiple Salmonella outbreaks with equal vigor? Just asking….

Why did they pass with not a vote, but a stroke of the pen, executive Order 13575 establishing a “Rural Committee” with strikingly similar wording and goals to UN Agenda 21? Why are all the branches including Homeland Security, FBI, FCC, and others that have nothing to do with rural America other than to help “better utilize” rural lands?

Keeping Your Own Honeybees

Honeybees are the leading pollinators not just for our gardens, but for all the crops, flowers and agriculture raised in the world. Yet they under extreme pressure from dwindling resources, pesticides, and encroaching “civilization”. It’s one of the reasons today’s guest Mill Apostol started keeping bees in her urban Northern California Back Yard.

Today Mil Shares with us some of the tips and tricks that helped her start keeping bees, along with some recommendations for what to do before you get your bees that can save you a lot of money.

Visit her website and Blog at UrbanBees

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GYG-040 Organic Garden Tips for Heat, and the Best Hot Peppers to Grow

by Steve on July 24, 2011

in Growing Your Grub

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Hot weather is just as hard on plant in an organic garden as it is in a conventional garden. Trees like Citrus, Apple, Cherry, Peach, and Pear require watching carefully in the heat of summer. In this episode I’ll talk about what I do to make sure my fruit trees get just the right amount of warted.

Water is also a difficult issue for the wildlife in and around our gardens. Sometimes, by providing a little for our wild friends, we can provide more serious damage to our drip and irrigation systems by those same animals as they become more desperate for water.

In an attempt to provide better coverage for you, the listeners, I also asked the question if anyone used or even preferred podcasts in video. Statistics are showing the rising preference to video to audio so I ask the question of you – Which do you prefer? Audio, Video, or both?

I have been planning adding a video channel if I find enough interest. I produced videos on both gardening and cooking long before the Growing Your Grub Podcast was born.

And finally, along with the heat of the summer, what better plant to talk about than Hot Peppers? But rather than talk about how to grow them at this time, I discuss several of the more popular and common varieties, along with their Scoville rating.

Scoville ratings aside, if you ingest more than you planned of the “hot stuff”, I share with you how you can almost instantly neutralize “the burn”. Hint: It’s NOT water, Beer, or Soda.

Growing Your Grub Listener Chef Season Stepp is also a writer for the Spartanburg Herald Journal, and the Spartanburg Magazine ( South Carolina). Check out a couple of her articles at:

Peaches on The Grill

Grown and Using Herbs

Be sure and leave a comment and let her know where you heard about them….

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Caring for Critters

July 21, 2011

One of the surprising side effects of the dry weather in many areas, is the destruction of drip irrigation lines. What? Drip line destruction? What’s dry weather got to do with it? Well, not surprisingly, when the weather turns dry, wildlife, both good and bad also get thirsty. And one of the ways many of them [...]

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GYG-039 Hot Weather Organic Gardening and Organic Gardening and Your Community.

July 17, 2011

It’s now mid July, and in most areas across North America, we now find ourselves gardening in much hotter weather than we are generally used to. But it’s not only our organic gardens that are at risk in the heat – so are we. We need to take precautions when we garden in this weather. [...]

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Pushing Rope

July 14, 2011

Although this post isn’t directly a Gardening post, I think I owe it to everyone to let you know what’s up with my sporadic posting. After all, didn’t I tell everyone I was moving? Well, Yes. have I changed my mind in preference to the extreme Texas heat? Definitely not. What I want to share [...]

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GYG-038 Preserving the Harvest and Fall Garden Planning

July 10, 2011

It.s now midsummer, and most of us are either beginning our harvest, or somewhere in the middle of it. What can we do with all the tomatoes, peppers, Cucumbers, or zucchini we grew? Well, short of stuffing a bag of it in an unsuspecting and unlocked car, we should be thinking about how we can [...]

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Preserving Your Harvest

July 8, 2011

We are now nearing the middle of July. Parts of the country are still suffering extreme flooding and rains, to the point they can’t get into the garden, and haven’t planted. Others, like those of us here in Texas have been under extreme drought conditions with high temps and lots of sun. But then there [...]

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GYG-037 Your Organic Garden and Summer Grilling

July 3, 2011

What says summer more than a picnic with a grill and family? Unfortunately, too many people forget about the great food they have right in their garden that tastes great on the grill. As we celebrate the Fourth of July here in the States with Grilling, Watermelon and picnics, don’t forget the great source of [...]

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