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Im excited to introduce another podcaster! His show is called the Small Scale Life and of course you know I believe in a theory of abundance and that if you get something from my podcast and his podcast and someone else’s were’e all the better for it!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a husband, 22 years tomorrow so that will be great and an awesome anniversary! and we have 2 boys 21 & 17

My background professional civil engineer

working on light rail projects

2 billion light rail project, right now I’m

building

work for the federal govt

• first love is railroads,
• 2nd love is gardening
• now this whole podcasting thing.

120 feet of raised beds but I’m renting so I can’t till up the backyard and plant all of it, so it’s been sort of an interesting ride!

My blog is smallscalelife.com launched a podcast launched on Jan 1… BUT WE’RE moving forward

The mission of small scale life to develop a healthy life, through

• gradening,
• healthy living frugal living and also having some adventure and fun along the way
• weight loss
• adventures and doing some fun things
• frugal living

We talk a lot about gardening, the latest piece that we have aded is the frugal living piece my wife is taking charge of trying to make our budget work and make our dollars stretch, I’m plugging in with that to, so we’ve got a lot of content coming and we have a lot out there.

We only started Small Scale Life in November before that I started small scale gardening which was all about gardening and I got into blogging world. I wanted to talk about a little bit more and so we’re opening it up now.

What’s your wife’s name?

Julie she is a Wedding florist, she has a studio business here at home called Julia’s Blooms

She does all kinds of events and weddings here in the twin cities for years.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

I’m actually from Wisconsin, my wife will start snickering over at her desk, because I’ve lived most of my life in Minnesota, we also lived in Illinois for 9 years for job purposes. My roots are back in Wisconsin, so hopefully some day soon… wel’ll move back there.

all but my first gardening experience

been around gardening ever since I was a little kid, my grandparents, they were the kind of gardens where you have a plot, till it up every spring, plant some things tomatoes, squash but over- weeded over by mid season overrun with grass and weeds, so punishment was going out and weeding, I had my own space carrots and lettuce etc

rabbits owl, deer

My dad was a professional foot ball player, and retired and said what are we gonna do?

120-140 acres

hobby farm

pigs and chickens

what are we doing?

made some friends

got sick and had to sell it

background

fast forward

we were moving around with my job and everything and we were living in Illinois and right around crash of 2009, I was an office leader… and I tried some tomatoes but they were measly tomatoes

I didn’t know what I was doing, and my neighbors across the street were

not enough sun

what are you doing?

All new square foot gardening book

I have it in my hands

I don’t want to do the weeding, I earned my stripes doing that what I was.

My wife looked at it and said they have cells, it’s organized we can do this.

1×1 foot area

for this certain vegetable

We read the book, and had a big harvest that year.

got excited

built

simple compost bins out of wire

got excited, it was a big stress reliever, I’d be at work and then I’d come home water the garden, it was a lot of fun

thought that if the crash comes,

you know learning some skills

didn’t know if I would have a job

if nothing else we can go home and eat from the garden.

Best part about the raised beds

don’t have any weeds

couple of layers underneath

I always tell people when you have limited water, you only get water on the roots, and no weeds are getting any water. I’m thinking we need to build my mom a raised bed! I thank that’s a great price of inspiration for people and that you were able to come home from work and do it when you came home from work after a full time job.

don’t go back

beans aren’t gonna yell back at you unless they and think I see the bird over there it’s nice, it’s soothing and hey let’s pick a few cucumbers it’s ripe! and you get a lot of pride out of that, and think we built this, we made this happen!

I hope my friend Daniela is listening because she just built a deep bed herself. this weekend.

water shortages. You have the watering bans, using rain barrels is a great way to capture in.

illegal in some states

ways to try to water

article last week

one of my readers, said my husband is extremely frustrated

growing tomatoes

got a blight

turns out he was watering the

2 zones were hitting the leaves and that just encourages the blight and the encourages the fungus

water

so how you water…is important.

My husbands always yelling at me watch the leaves, dont water the leaves. I this especially if you do it during the day, it’s maybe not as bad in the night or early morning… I know Shelley Clark talked about keeping the beds clean…

pruning of tomatoes…side stems get those low hanging branches out of there.

How did you learn how to garden organically?

it really came back to Male Bartholomew

raised gardens with compost

fertilizers do have a lot of chemicals, they have a lots of salts in there. Over time you’re really poising that soil.

really looking at organic was

build rich soil

Milted

folks out in Utah, it is very productive. There’s things I like about it like the

• Raised beds
• intensive plant spacing

almost like a market gardener

how tight they plant the plants

they use fertilizer weekly, water it in, they treat the soil, and call it like a medium

soil is that key ingredient, that key building block

it gets all of it’s nutrients

really rich compost

organics

lot of life

compost tea

if something happens don’t need fertilizer

got to figure it out

Mel is a civil engineer

Mel Bartholomew in Square foot gardening,

Curtis Stones

and Jean Martin Fortier.

You can have a commercial business and use compost.

Do you have any tips for building compost, I know my mom always had compost when we were kids and I don’t know if it’s cause my dad’s gone or what’s going on? She’s worried about squirrels and animals etc getting in her compost. Which seems weird because we live in the wild and nothing gets in our compost except the chickens.

It’s all about layers, I use during the season

I’m using

• vegetables scraps
• potato peels
• apple peels
• you know stuff you cut off
• no meats attacks the raccoons

no

vegetable

generates a lot of heat you really want the compost or soil to heat up

gonna cook any weeds or seeds that’s in your compost pile

a little brown matter like

• cardboard or
• shredded paper or
• even some crunched up branches.

Also in the fall the leaves…

• leaves
• compost full of leaves

layer of leaves on the beds before you button em up for the year

soil getting better…That’s what you want to see! Your soil getting better!

Our compost can go from kitchen scraps to compost in almost 2 weeks. It’s funny my bother came on and he talked about his compost bin and they have 2 kids on long island and he just alks about it just sits through the winter and he does about one a year, but Mike and I we keep ours going and try to produce a lot more of that.

I wish I had another 2 sections, I’d let some compost age for a little bit, and then a third  and be flipping between the 3

past 2 years just using a tote, but I was generating too much so I went and took an old pallet and some scrap wood, boy that thing holds a lot, but I need another one!

We do too, mike built another one for bigger stuff and we bought a chipper even too !

chop up the bigger stuff…

yeah like watermelon rinds, banana peels! 

• egg shells
• coffee  grinds…
• fish bones

That was something we’ve never done before was just egg shells.

One thing about the egg shells, I did the same thing, when I plant tomatoes, I put coffee grounds in the hole and then the eggshells and I’ve heard put some aspirin

egg shell is calcium to help with blossom end-rot

nitrogen

aspirin

What I found digging up in my tomato bed this year is that the eggshells didn’t break down like I thought they would, so I looked online and it said that would create a concoction with vinegar, that would make a slurry of the water and egg shells

release

research on that…

You asked another question about fish bones?

Funny story about that.. fish will break down in the soil and really add a lot of nutrients to the soil

My grandmas secret my grandpa was a great sportsman, he was an insurance salesman in Wisconsin, he had a heart attack and so they actually bought a resort in Central WI and they lived there for 50 years. So he would go catch all these fish, that he brought home supper. So she would sneak some and bury them in the garden because she was like I can’t cook all these! So 1/2 the fish would end up in the garden but she must of got it deep enough where they couldn’t smell it! I know I have enough trouble with squirrels I’m not gonna entice raccoons, we have 3 big ones in the neighborhood.

One thing I’m gonna say is listerners, whenever Mike plants tomatoes or anything he puts a coffee can full of water in the hole and let it soak in before he plants anything to moisten the soil. Then he puts the plant in. The other thing I was thinking she said to crush the egg shells in the blender.

Yes I use  motor and postal, those chunks I found… but I got a a thrift store a Cuisinart Coffee Grinder so I went through and ground them up really small.

everything…

yeah you don’t want eggshell to scratch your Ninja or Nutrabullet. Yeah a cheap $7 coffee grinder or something did great!

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

The tomatoes! They did great over 13 feet tall… Really big fan of Amish Paste and Packaroma

Seed Savers Exchange

aroma s

don’t have many seeds

Amish Paste is more of a juicier tomatoes

really big on cutting back the side stems

trimmed them up to the lowest fruit and take off any suckers

really grew well

this year I’m gonna see

cut the growing tip once they are 8 feet tall,

tall is nice… but I want production.

When you say trim them up to the lowest fruit. When you plant it and it startes to grow and this is after they have flowers?

I wait till they develop some tomatoes on them, you might get some low branches getting. I’m so paranoid about fungus, I’ll let them grow up a little bit.

Another thing I do is I trellis them

simple trellis built of

2 by 4

string to a conduit. I also have an old clothes line that’s along the base of the box where the where the stem of the plant is

tie off around the line, and start rapping tje line around the stem of the plant

I just use these lines

technique I learned from the Mittleider folks. Again take the best of what you learn. Almost like a greenhouse style of gardening. Once those plants grow up I’ll start taking off those side stems

not right away

once the first fruit starts to set, Ill take off those lower branches, they  are just taking energy from plant, when you do that it tells the tomato, I need to stop growing my stalk so tall I need a thicker stalk.

Mittleider Gardening Method GrowFood.com

Jacob Mittleider was a plant dude at the University at Birmingham Young

Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new?

One thing I’m finding, I planted too many seeds this spring, so I only have 120 sq.. feet. I think I have everything booke, all my raised beds so I think I’m gonna try some vertical gardening. One of my followers on Instagram, started his own urban farm using rain gutters, I’m gonna tray some rain gutters filled with soil and with drain holes

leafy greens with basil in those

Im gonna try to go vertical

foot spacing between the rain gutters, they’ll have rain holes in them, I’ve toyed with the idea of adding a water source underneath but that would addd some costs.

Now you’re still working full time and doing all this? You much have a bundle of energy!

My wife thinks I’m kind of crazy

weekends get into project mode, I just spend all day Saturday and sunday out there, I mean the beds are in place already

shouldn’t

Are you selling any of this?

not selling anything yet.

In my second podcast, Small Scale Life I talked about the growing the greens challenge. I want to knock the leafy greens off the grocery list. I have a ton of greens kale etc growing. I’m gonna see if I can knock the leafy greens off the grocery list.

We’re big into canning… big into salsa so I make a lot of salsa

• salsa
• killer pickles

part of the healthy frugal living is to stock the pantry and freezer, so when we get into the winter months

• pesto pre-make that and freeze it up
• pickles
• corn relish from last year
• jellies and such

try to use as much we can. I’m not selling anything yet.

I know I know listeners are always looking for a challenge because they download the episode but no one has signed up. Last year I said let’s grow one vegetable for a season one or two months and a half a dozen people signed up, this year I made it really easy just plant anything and no one has signed up!

This is all me…

how much would it take

he’s a speedy runner

work out freak

loves salad!

supply enough …

for his demands

Ninja

Julie got a Ninja for Christmas! And she loves it! That has been great! It’s just so versatile! Throw some kale and spinach in there, it’s green but it’s awesome! We’ve got salads at night.

To see if I can

Romaine hearts and 5 in a pack, so I have to get aggressive and see if I can grow it, what it takes to actually do it…

so far it’s not growing fast enough I’ did finally get a salad this week so I’m winning!

Congrats. That was always Mike’s goal to grow enough of our food, for us so we dont have to buy product. I met this guy in Paris, who has a vertical grow system, the guy came from boston or New Orleans and he had these systems from Wyoming (Check out Dr. Nate Storey coming soon!)

I talked about the challenge and the rain gutters thing is coming…

funky growing system

high red rain gutter grow system like an aquaponics system without the fish and running water. I have a 3inch pipe with net cups

pipe is the water reservoir, self watering, the water wicks up into the baskets of soil… it’s been great for the past two years, really productive.

small scale blogging

my first blog, that article is still the top post…

I’ve got some other plans how to make it so simple

try that as a garden

simple

That’s amazing, I think listeners will be inspired because you work a full time job and have time to garden and blog! I can’t do that. I thought when I started I would be blogging and I can’t keep up with any of it, the social media piece is really hard even for me a techy, having new phones really helps. I would be happy if I could just consistently post 3 days a week!

OK, I’m a night owl, so I might stay up a little later and then I try to write something on the weekend, one or two articles. It’s been an evolution too, my first ones we’re really long and then you kind of get into a flow that might be too long, people don’t want a wall of text. They might want...