Episode #19, SmartPlant App, CEO Interview, Connecting People with Plants

06/01/18 • 18 min

On this episode, we meet Bert Wahlen, CEO of Smartplant, a company empowering and capturing the next generation of plant lovers. They just launched their new app after years of research and expanding on their mission. They are using demographics data to transform the garden industry from a confusing, overwhelming, a sometimes stale and unwelcoming industry, into a fun and approachable one, in the language that millennials understand, data and technology. SmartPlant is increasing connection between people and their plants and empowering the next generation of plant hobbyists so that the next generation of consumers will be engaged in gardening.

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Episode #18, Permaculture Concepts, Microbes and Natural Methods of Land Restoration

This is episode 18 of the Get in My Garden Podcast. Today we meet Bradley Babb, permaculture expert, consultant to natural farmers and to New Mexican medicinal cannabis growers through his business called Earthtone Permaculture. He consults with businesses and individuals about water catchment, soil building and erosion management but is focussing more and more with medical cannabis customers and is anticipating focussing on fully cannabis growing and eduction once legalization happens. He has a vast knowledge of the soil food web, of natural land restoration methods, and of alternative growing methods such a aquaponics and hydro. He teaches people how to maintain balance in their gardens and shares his knowledge and ideas openly with everyone. In this episode, we discuss low tech ways to renew degraded land and ways to transform unfarmable land into an oasis by working with nature. We discus how mycelium, bacteria and enzymes are likely to fix most of our ecological problems and we talk about low cost methods of creating compost teas and inoculants that have been used for thousands of years.

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Episode #20, Biocontrols and Beneficial Insects with Bug Lady Suzanne Wainwright

On today’s episode, we meet the very interesting Suzanne Wainwright, aka Buglady. She is a very busy consultant and public speaker on beneficial insects and is a leading horticultural entomologist. She is so interesting, and we had quite a long chat starting with a discussion about conservation of native beneficials on small farms, soil nutrition and its affect on pests, the best methods of managing pests on a small farm operation, and how to properly identify insect problems or learn more about your insects. This is the first episode with Suzanne, and the rest of our interview will be available next in part B.