426. Bluebird Gardens | CHARLOTTE EKKER WIGGINS | Missouri

426. Bluebird Gardens | CHARLOTTE EKKER WIGGINS | Missouri

Tuesday • March 15, 2022

Here from Missouri is an amazing beekeeper, gardener, and author, CHARLOTTE EKKER WIGGINS!

Bee Club Basics: How to Start a Bee ClubA Beekeeper's Diary: Self Guide to Keeping Bees

Has lots of checklists to help you get started.

Master Beekeeper class is using her next book Bees Need Flowers, Planting for Pollinators coming out soon.

Tips include:

  • reading a lot.
  • Join a bee club because it's like learning a new language.
  • Beekeeping is very local
  • Need to know bee biology to work with bees not tell them what to do
  • Spend a year learning about beekeeping by taking 1 or more classes, reading, meeting other beekeepers.

Bees are colony based, not self centered like humans. Bees sometimes leave because they don't want to spread disease to the hive.

Jackie asks what if you can't find a club?

Thanks to the pandemic lots of clubs are meeting on Zoom like Bees Beyond Borders in Florida have guest speakers from leading bee experts in the country.

What works and what doesn't in a garden

The critical part of providing bees is your SOIL HAS TO BE HEALTHY!

Need to keep soil healthy which will keep plants healthy and then bees will be healthy and food we eat will be healthy.

One out of every 3 bites of food we eat is from bee pollination.
  • Composting is the easiest thing to do.
  • Mulch with compost.
  • Lots of bird houses for natural pest control

I'm the same way. There's so many garden chores I don't want to do but compost is so easy! I don't understand people who say it's too hard, messy or complicated.

Charlotte adds we need to move away from perfection. In the old days, magazines used to really focus on green lawns. Common sense says it's expensive to put in, you need to put in high expensive fertilizers, the minute it grows you cut it down and it doesn't really add anything to the environment.

A bug bite on a rose leaf is exciting it means there's a relationship between ladybugs and praying mantis etc who are eating the pests in the garden because they need food so a whole in a leaf is important for the rose to grow.

What grew well?

Catnip

What's something new or different your excited to try?

Some Baker Creek Co Seeds.https://www.rareseeds.com/

Some flowers and peppers that were ordered.

I like the tried and true.

Do you save your own seeds?

I just tried spaghetti squash and loved it so I saved those. I also do companion planting. I plant onions around my roses to deter bugs and if I need an onion. I mix my vegetables and flowers, I don't have them in rows, I plant them in with my flowers because I can move them around each year so they're not planted in the same soil and using up all the nutrients and the pollinators are attracted by the flowers.

How about something that didn't go the way you thought is was going to?

My least favorite thing is to dig holes, I didn't get as much mulch as I would have liked in some new flower beds, and I planted...

Avsnitt(298)

Bee a part of the solution | The Sustainability Project | Care Bellamy the beekeeping REALTOR®  who “Cares” | Florida

Bee a part of the solution | The Sustainability Project | Care Bellamy the beekeeping REALTOR® who “Cares” | Florida

I’m so excited I have a listener on the line who is going to share a ton of golden seeds! I talked to her before from Florida and she is going to share with us about her Sustainability Project! 1. Tell us a little about yourself. By day, I’m a REALTOR® and beekeeper. I’m also a 3rd generation farmer.  My grandparents owned a 100 acre wheat farm on the prairie in rural Dufresne, Manitoba. My family lived off the land, they grew their food seasonally in a 1 acre vegetable garden. After the local community collectively brought in the fall harvest, they would busily preserve and can their produce for storage in their root cellar. These people were a hardy bunch, they managed to survive the brutually harsh winters with minimal resources using a wood burning stove for heat, crude electric and no running water or indoor plumbing. They kept and cared for livestock and only took what they needed to survive, my ancestors practiced “The Tragedy of the Commons” method.  That’s how they managed to raise a family of 8 in rural Manitoba. And Manitoba is where people go to see the polar bears right? Yes Churchill Manitoba is where the polar bears are. Then you went to the opposite end of the continent practically to Florida. Yes I did I got hired to work for Disney at the Epcot Center back in the early 80s and that’s where I met my husband two weeks later and we’ve been here ever since! That’s so romantic! I always wanted to work for Disney, I tried to get a job or get into art school at the California Institute of Arts in LA. Well, they must have liked me! I managed to beat out 64 other people fro the job! So yay for me! And you worked there for a long time right? Yes 35 years! 2. Tell me about your first gardening experience? We used to visit the farm in the summer time every two years, however my mom! When my mother moved to the big city of Toronto, Ontario, she became a backyard farmer and composter carrying on her family farming tradition. I began helping my mother garden as a young child, she taught me valuable lessons in planting, harvesting and food preservation skills. All these years later I’ve been utilizing this and it’s been working out fantastic for me. Luckily for me, both my parents were award winning gardeners so pulling weeds or fresh carrots comes naturally. So then is it challenging down in Florida? Do you have to learn different practices to grow in that climate? Well, gardening is pretty much the same wherever you go. IT’s just the conditions and the climate. In Florida there is a sandy soil, where my parents lived it was a deep rich soil. You have to plant things things that grow...

7 Jan 201959min

Replay of 2018 Garden Goals Challenge from the Organic Gardener Podcast! 2019 challenge coming VERY SOON!

Replay of 2018 Garden Goals Challenge from the Organic Gardener Podcast! 2019 challenge coming VERY SOON!

I’m so close to wrapping up Free Garden Course.com and I know you are going to love the new one that will take place in a real google classroom! When it’s ready, we’ll have a new 2019 Garden Goals challenge and full color workbook I think you will love! Go ahead and listen to last year’s challenge. There’s a facebook group you can join and even access the google classroom with access code 75yju4. Do you want to save time in your garden? Do you want to grow a garden full of healthy vegetables but feel you don’t have time? Do you struggle to get all the weeds pulled and watering done in the heat of summer when your friends are all headed to the lake? Are you tired of paying the high cost of organic vegetables in the store but struggle to grow your own? Well, our 2018 Garden Goals Challenge will help you find success in your garden journey! Free Garden Course.com So, if you follow me you probably know that I created a Free Garden Course also known as Free Organic Garden Course over Christmas break! Days 1-8 2018GardenGoalsChallenge For the first 8 days of 2018 I’m going to walk you through the steps of planning your garden goals so you are growing awesome nutrient dense vegetables with the least amount of work and time. Now I’m not gonna fool you and say it’s all gonna be easy but I will say it will be worth it.  Day One is all about brainstorming!  You can  download the first 30 days here   while you’re waiting for it to come in the mail.  <img class="size-medium wp-image-4367 aligncenter" src="https://organicgardenerpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SailboatPeas-225x300.jpg" alt="boat of peas" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://organicgardenerpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/SailboatPeas-225x300.jpg 225w,...

3 Jan 201953min

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