Shownotes
It’s April 29th! I am so excited to introduce my featured guest today Anne Bikle who is going to talk about her book The Hidden Half of Nature.
Anne are you ready to dig into it?
Anne Biklé is a biologist and environmental planner. Her career spans the fields of environmental stewardship, habitat restoration, and public health. The Hidden Half of Nature is her first book she wrote with her husband David R. Montgomery who is a professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington and a 2008 MacArthur Fellow. He is the author of The Rocks Don’t Lie and other award-winning popular science books.
Their website is dig2grow.com
Welcome Green Future Growers!
350.org
I interviewed this woman Ashley from PittMoss® on February 25th and we just love it. I’ve been using it in the classroom everyday and I just love it.
So you and your husband wrote 3 books now right?
Dirt Trilogy
We ended up with this triology, in Dirt that’s the plight of our soil on
bulldozers
worst thing you can do for soil
digging around
http://amzn.to/2uiYpg2
that’s the story in Dirt, the plight of our soil
the hidden after nature which David and I coauthored, he solo authored Dirt.
This amazing new area of science, where we’re finally able to see into the microbial world and I’m using see metaphorically, because of course the microbrial world is invisible but we now have tools and techniques that scientists have tools to look into
symbiotic relationships plants and microbes in the soil we also cover in
The Hidden Half of Nature the human microbe biome what’s going on in our guts.
Both we and plants are chimeric organisms meaning we are an ammagulation of life forms
We have all our own cells and each plant has all of it’s own selves, but we also each haul around a good number of microbes that help us live and keep us alive. So the
insights and understanding
healthy
May 9th
Growing a Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life
that book is solving the problem talked about in dirt
using the science we unveiled in
The Hidden Half of Nature
Any gardener would not be surprised that we’ve really hammered the soil, but that it’s possible and investigate and understand
- how the soil works
- apply all of that
- bring soil back to life
Do that’s the Dirt triology!
I think I’m talking with David next week.
Where does one find your podcast?
Besides my website… iTunes, there’s Podcast Addict I use on my kindle or android, stitcher, google play… etc. Im usually a techy but the learning curve for Podcasting has been a bit longer then usual. I feel like youre my new friend already, that’s what I love about podcasting I feel like we’re new friends already just talking.
There’s so many angles to the digital world. I think one of the best is when you connect
Tell us a little about yourself.
David and I live just north of downtown Seattle, and this time of year, I was outside way too late last night try
this must be what farmers talk about at harvest time.
in my case here it’s at the other end of the season spring
differnet kinds of maples that are in pots
some I should
root work
dam it!
too far leafed out to be pulling them out of their post
that things opened up now
that’s opening up now
that is the wonderful world of gardening
something very exciting happened this week
let me tell you about it
anyone who reads the
dig2grow.com
I am a big proponent of using organic matter to keep the soil micro biome well fed so it can do all the things for the plants
my favorite ingredients
wood chips
you can get free wood chips
lot of demand for free wood chips
get on the phone with arborists
beg and plead
can’t you bring some
pretty slim pickens
called an arborist
don’t sound whiny
can I please have some wood chips
got a call back 3 hours later
Jason
I love you
comes over my neighbor and I we’re partners in crime
Len, 70 year old painter
if we can all do what he does when were 70
I will be happy happy
Wood Chips
Jason pulls in
almost as big as the RV
then he pulls away
we’re thrilled to have the chips
in the past we’ve gotten chips from arborists
you get what you don’t pay for
they are free
pick around it
these wood chips are promo!
got a really nice grind on these chimps
no bamboo and blackberry
Leonard and I are giddy!
@dig2grow twitter feed
you’ll see the big pile of mulch
Leonard only condition is they be moved out of his driveway by may 31st
So we have a month!
That is my very exciting thing this week we scored those wood chips!
They just bring them to you for free?
they need to get rid of them
They don’t want to have to drive to dump them. They get charged money for that. I think it’s crazy anyway that we have any sort of incentive for a business for an arborist to be throwing away perfectly good organic matter!
that’s just a complete crime!
this is good clean stuff! It’s not like other things you sometimes run into with the gardening and nursery industry!
Anyone out there listening contact your, local arborist. Most every town has some kind of tree service and call them and ask!
I’m sure lots of listeners are like I can just call and they will bring me compost to add to my soil!
Tell me about your first gardening experience?
I grew up in the Denver Metro area of Colorado,
lived there till I moved away for college
I think I remember, maybe being really little and being 4-5 and helping to plant flowers. That was my first gardening experience in June sometime. That’s just little tiny memory.
What I remember most being a little bit older, maybe about 11-12, and my dad would take me to Ardano’s Flower land. That was a big nursery. Anyone who’s been to Denver knows, Sante Fe Avenue
Sante Fe Blvd they had a big wide shoulder not paved just kind of dirt, wide enough there were businesses you’d pull off the paved part of the road.
I remember walking in and it was flowers as the eye could see! We’d get a big cart, he’d say go get whatever you want!
Flower Disneyland
Here I am walking around in flower Disneyland so here I am pulling things off the tables and putting them on the cart!
I grew up in pretty much a suburban environment!
not like an acre
1/4 acre or 1/8 of an acre
There was this small garden right alongside the driveway. That was the garden you waked to and from the house! I always in daily sight I planted up with the things from Ardanos.
Just common things not knocking anybody’s socks off
Something about early June
- being outside
- having the hose nearby
- hands in the dirt
- and all of these gorgeous flowers
- marigolds
- petunias
- snapdragons
- annually around the house
11-12 through high school. Then things got out of hand.
Inside the house, there is no gardening in the winter time, but I started a plant collection
- looking at pictures a while back, I had sort of taken over the living room
- gardening habit
- plant lust bad enough you’ll figure out how when and where you can.
I was just at my friend Nola’s and she talked about back in the beginning. She had this aloe plant blooming! It’s the most incredible thing I ever saw.
We just went on the garden club field trip and I was constantly pointing out arrays, incorporating some math, but it was like Disneyland the kids were excited looking all over at the different plants and flowers!
We have some stuff growing a lettuce garden fro the guineea pig!
How did you learn how to garden organically?
I you know
a true confession
around the house
after planting all the flowers that I had brought home, my father would always insist it’s time to fertilize them, here’s the miracle grow! Here I was dutifully mixing up the miracle grow, the plants needed fertilizer!
There was no example in my household
pretty typical
You fertilize plants, you poison weeds!
We were not throwing chemicals around!
There were weed checmicals in the outdoor shed but I didnt because there was no beauty or joy. so my dad would ask my brothers
not a model
around the house
mostly the yard was a sort of area of benign neglect
unless something got out of hand, it’s intereting because it’s kind of my li
approach here in Seattle, but things grow like crazy so if things get out of hand it’s a little intense! Out of here with all the rain and water!
I interestingly enough
I have to say
