Food Garden Life Show: Helping You Harvest More from Your Edible Garden, Vegetable Garden, and Edible Landscaping

Steven Biggs: Horticulturist and edible landscaping expert.

Want to grow your own food but need creative ideas so you can get the most from your space and your growing zone? Our passion is the edible garden.

We help people grow food on balconies, in backyards, and beyond—whether it’s edible landscaping, a vegetable garden, container gardens, or a home orchard.

There are many ways to approach edible landscaping. Find out how to harvest enough fruit, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. Get top tips for exotic crops. And learn how to garden in a way that suits any situation.

Host Steven Biggs was recognized by Garden Making magazine as one of the “green gang” making a difference in Canadian horticulture. His home-garden experiments span driveway straw-bale gardens, a rooftop kitchen garden, fruit plantings, and an edible-themed front yard. He's a horticulturist, award-winning broadcaster and author, and former horticulture instructor with George Brown and Durham Colleges in Ontario, Canada.

Get started with one of our fan favourites. Season 6, Episode 10: Big Harvests from a Small Space with a Vertical Vegetable Garden.

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268 episodes
Updated Thursday

Episodes268

Newest first

Feb 3, 2022 · 1 hr 1 min
Ornamental Edibles, Hort Therapy, Kids Gardening
Today we talk about wind tunnels, horticultural therapy, landscaping with edibles, and gardening with kids. Our guests today are professional garden educators who have an infectious love of gardening.We start in Prince Edward County in Ontario, chatting w
Jan 27, 2022 · 40 min
Build Soil Health with Wood Chips
Wood chips: They’re abundant, inexpensive, and renewable. There are many possible applications in horticulture.Uses of Wood ChipsWood chips have many uses in gardens, farms, and landscapes:* Mulch to suppress weeds and conserve moisture* Heat for propagat
Jan 20, 2022 · 35 min
Gardening as Medicine for Mental Health
The garden is the bridge.For clients of The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, one way to connect with the surrounding community is through gardening.Atullya Singh, CAMH Garden Co-ordinator, talks about the Sunshine Garden, located
Jan 13, 2022 · 50 min
Natural Beekeeping
Beekeeping with a bees-eye viewOur guests today help us explore bee-friendly beekeeping techniques.* Lessons from the way bees live in the wild* Management strategies that respect the functioning of bee hives* Hive design elements that promote colony heal
Jan 6, 2022 · 1 hr 2 min
Landmarks help Blind Gardeners + Gardening for Birds
Gardening for the BlindChristine Nichols and Gord Johnston share ideas to help blind and low-vision people garden, and talk about the gardens at the Canadian Hellen Keller Centre, which serves the deaf-blind community. They talk about:* Using landmarks i
Dec 23, 2021 · 9 min
12 Gifts from the Heart for Gardeners
We wrap up the 2021 season of podcasts with 12 ideas for ways that you can give something — something other than material “stuff” — to the gardeners in your life.
Dec 16, 2021 · 47 min
Passive Solar Greenhouses with Rob Avis
Rob Avis from Verge Permaculture (https://vergepermaculture.ca) shares tips on passive solar greenhouses.Avis says a key consideration when designing a passive solar greenhouse is whether to optimize the design for light or for thermal efficiency. He says
Dec 9, 2021 · 50 min
Incredible Edible: Pamela Warhurst on Making Grey Spaces Green
From the Ground UpPamela Warhurst from the Incredible Edible Network (https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk) talks about turning grey spaces green by helping people believe in themselves.The original Incredible Edible project in her hometown started with “p
Dec 2, 2021 · 1 hr 2 min
Making Change One Garden at a Time
Grow NowEmily Murphy believes individual gardeners doing small things can add up to big change.Murphy is a garden designer, educator, and author with a background that includes botany, ethnobotany, environmental science, and ecology. It gives her a unique
Nov 25, 2021 · 44 min
Food-Focused Homestead Life
Have you ever thought of changing your relationship with food?Gary Dickenson put food front and centre in his new life as a homesteader. He tells us about his move from a seaside town in the UK, where he worked in marketing, to a remote corner of norther
Nov 18, 2021 · 32 min
School Food Gardens Open Career Horizons
The Wateroo Region School Food Gardens project (https://seeds.ca/schoolfoodgardens) has built 35 school gardens, touching 20,000 students in this region of Ontario.Allison Eady, program co-ordinator, explains that it provides information and curriculum id
Nov 11, 2021 · 40 min
Virtual Apple Tasting
Stop and smell the roses? Community event helps people to stop and smell…apples.Susan Poizner recently helped 50 Torontonians to stop and smell…apples. Poizner, a fruit-tree-care educator and college instructor with a passion for growing fruit trees, org
Nov 4, 2021 · 1 hr
Grow Quince and Garden Journal
Grow Quince in Cold ClimatesImagine a job that revolved around a plant you’re passionate about. What plant would it be for you? For Nan Stefanik that plant is quince.She first tasted quince as an adult, on an overseas trip. After returning home, she was s
Oct 28, 2021 · 30 min
Compost Heater Heats a Hot Tub
A wood-chip compost pile steams up this hot tub.Today we visit a Colorado garden at an elevation of 6,500 feet.Tom Bartels harvests 1,000 pound of fresh produce a year from his 1,300-square-foot garden, even though he has only 130 growing days.Bartels use
Oct 21, 2021 · 40 min
Grow Bamboo in Cold Climates
Fred Hornaday is bullish about bamboo and it’s many uses. From fuel to food to fibre, he sees it as a versatile crop with environmental benefits.He shares his passion for bamboo through his bambubatu website (https://bambubatu.com), which has information
Oct 14, 2021 · 26 min
Grow and Cook Bamboo
Wendy Kiang-Spray’s children don’t recognize canned bamboo shoots. That says a lot about the difference between fresh bamboo and its canned cousin.Kiang-Spray, author of The Chinese Kitchen Garden (http://www.wendykiangspray.com/book.html), grew up eating
Oct 7, 2021 · 1 hr 2 min
Urban Growers + Gardening Under Cover
Today on the podcast we hear how one person’s journey into food gardening evolved into a documentary film — and then we find out how to use garden covers to take vegetable gardening to another level.In My Backyard: A Documentary about Urban GrowersToronto
Sep 30, 2021 · 38 min
Pawpaw in Ontario with Paul DeCampo
Pawpaw. It’s a fruit that has a long history in Ontario.Yet it’s not well-known, nor do most people realize it grows wild in some parts of the province.Paul DeCampo, Toronto’s pawpaw ambassador, planted his first pawpaw trees in 1994. “Nobody I knew had e
Sep 23, 2021 · 37 min
Doug Oster uses Newspaper Boxes to Share Seeds
Where have all the newspaper boxes gone?If you’re in western Pennsylvania, don’t be surprised if you find a dark green newspaper box with a sign in the window that says “Doug’s Free Seed Shack.“Pittsburgh garden expert Doug Oster, a newspaper industry vet
Sep 17, 2021 · 49 min
A Windy Newfoundland Homestead with a Sustainable Focus
Old becomes new.When David Goodyear began to think about food costs, sustainability, and how he and his family ate, he sat down with older relatives to hear how people used to eat. “Everybody ate root crops because they grew it themselves,” he was told.Go