Blog

Meet My Sister!

Haley

As you may know, I’ve been rather busy for the past 2 years filming videos for the Academy.

It's been loads of fun, but it means I rarely get around to doing free videos, and sometimes it's 3 or more weeks between blog posts.

So I've finally decided to get a bit of help. I'm still doing everything around here, just with a bit of help from... my sister! I’ll let her introduce herself:

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Hobbit Garden: 2 Organic Gardening Tips I Picked Up From Hobbits

Hobbit Garden Style In Olympic Mountains
Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic Mountains, WA

I went hiking in the mountains on Tuesday.

My surroundings got me thinking we could learn a thing or two about organic gardening by a good old-fashioned hobbit garden.

Did you know they just wrapped up filming for the new hobbit movies in New Zealand?

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My Home Vegetable Garden - Video Walk-through With A Few Tips

Home Vegetable Garden

Yesterday, I was recording a video in my home vegetable garden that will serve as an introduction to the growing food section of the Academy...

(Note to Academy members, that section will be ready this fall)

...and I decided to take a walk through my vegetable garden with the video camera, and also post the video here.

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Growing A Vegetable Garden (And Skipping The Doctor)

Phil Growing A Vegetable Garden

We had a family get together a couple of weeks ago.

It's always fun trying to explain to family or friends who I haven't seen for awhile about what I do for a "living."

"I have a website where I teach people about growing a vegetable garden, and organic gardening in general."

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Intensive Gardening VS Permaculture Gardening VS Biological Gardening

Intensive Gardening With Permaculture/Biological Gardening Principles

The scope of this topic probably calls for at least a few thousand words.

But this isn't meant to be an authoritative or conclusive comparison on these organic gardening topics.

It's just a few thoughts I've been having this week that I figured I'd pass on to you.

First, a few notes:

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Companion Planting Chart - Boost Your Garden With Companion Plants

Companion Planting With Lettuces
Even a mesclun mix is a better than a monoculture

Today, I have an incredible companion planting chart to share with you for FREE!

But first, let's briefly get into what companion planting is and why it's important.

Companion gardening involves pairing plants that work well together. I'll use the 3 sister guild as an example, which are 3 plants that were originally combined by Native Americans in such a way that the plants all helped each other out (I'll get a photo when I get back to my garden next week).

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Self-Sustaining Garden - How I Can Leave My Organic Garden For 8 Weeks

Praying Mantis In My Self-Sustaining Garden
Insects like this praying mantis take care of my garden for me.

One of my goals is to have a self-sustaining garden.

Today is a good example of why. Heather and I are visiting her brother and his family in New York City.

I don't know how anyone gets anything done with a 3 year old (sorry, 3 and a half) and a new baby in the house!

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Compost Tea Recipe To Inoculate Your Organic Garden With Microbes

Compost Tea Recipe

A compost tea recipe doesn't have to be complicated in order to be effective.

In fact, the simplest compost tea recipes are often the best because they're easier to experiment with.

In case you don't know, compost tea doesn't look like my literal interpretation in the picture at left.

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Garden Watering - Exciting? No... Important? Absolutely...

Watering Vegetable Garden - Adhesion

Watering the vegetable garden. Chances are you don't want to spend much time reading about it, because water is just always there for us.

We take it for granted because it comes so readily out of our tap, so we find the topic rather boring.

But man, is it ever important, vital for all living things. Go 24 hours without drinking it and we would all become more interested. The fact is, we're made of it. Throughout the course of our lives, our bodies contain between 50 and 80% water.

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Plant Sickness - Why Do Pests Eat The Sick Plants In Your Garden?

Studying plant sickness is fascinating because we know pests only dine on sick plants.

What I have for you today is some info on why those plants invite pests when they're sick, and how to avoid that.

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Free Ebook Download

Organic Gardening Ebook "The Holistic Gardening Handbook: Condensed Version"
"You have been a source of wisdom, humour, encouragement and influence" Marylin, B.C.

Grow Healthy Food

Smiling Gardener Academy
"450+ Vital Lessons For Becoming A Better Organic Gardener"
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