#296: Vegetable Garden DIY, Beneficial Insects, Raised Garden Beds & Growing Your Best Garden Ever with Savvy Gardening

Vegetable Gardening

In this episode of The Vegetable Gardening Show

In this episode of the Vegetable Gardening Show Mike chats with the 4 ladies of the award winning website, SavvyGardening.com. Amy Andrychowicz, Jessica Walliser, Niki Jabbour & Tara Nolan make up the team that provide valuable gardening infomation through SavvyGardening.com that includes DIY projects, learning about beneficial insects, how to grow great vegetables all year round, and a number of projects that will get you excited about gardening in raised beds.

The ladies will share us some valuable tips on how you can grow your best garden ever, money saving DIY techniques, the science behind gardens and insects as well as the misinformation that is all over the internet and how to detect the good information from the bad information.

From there they will give us a behind the scenes look at Savvy Gardening, how Savvy Gardening all started, how Savvy Gardening gets organized and arranged to make it the award winning website that it is.

This and so much more on this week's episode of The Vegetable Gardening Show!

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Here's what we'll cover in this episode of The Vegetable Gardening Show

DIY Projects for your gardenAttracting beneficial insects, and the plants you need to do itCreative and productive Raised Beds for your vegetable gardenGarden CollaborationsHow SavvyGardening became an award winning gardening blog

Mentioned in this episode of The Vegetable Gardening Show

Savvy GardeningJessica WalliserGet Busy GardeningTara NolanNiki JabbourAttracting Beneficial Bugs to Your GardenRaised Bed RevolutionRaised Bed Revolution Facebook PageContainer Gardening CompleteThe Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year, No Matter Where You LiveGroundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your GardenNiki Jabbour's Veggie Garden Remix: 238 New Plants to Shake Up Your Garden and Add Variety, Flavor, and FunSquash Arch

About this week's guests from Savvy Gardening

Savvy Gardening™ is a place where fresh gardening voices come together to revel in the charms and fascinations of the horticultural world. It’s a place where art and science play nicely together, where you’ll find curious musings on everything from voodoo lilies and cucamelons, to the merits of wheel bugs and Vietnamese coriander. We are four garden writers, from two different countries and four different hardiness zones, each with a unique knowledge base, a passionate voice and a weighted opinion. Savvy Gardening™ exists to offer fanatical (and newbie) gardeners of all abilities and persuasions innovative solutions, novel ideas, enlightening research and a solid dose of sensible advice. We believe that gardens not only offer beauty and food and respite, but they’re also life laboratories. They are places where we can experiment, discover, dissect and reconnect with nature in all its forms. We believe that arming gardeners with confidence and information is what Savvy Gardening is all about.

Savvy gardening writers

Amy Andrychowicz is a blogger and writer who believes that creating gorgeous gardens doesn’t have to break the bank. Her smart, money-saving gardening tips, techniques, and DIY projects are always a huge hit with our readers! Amy has spent most of her life with a pair of pruners in her back pocket, growing vegetables, herbs, annuals, and perennials in Minneapolis, Minnesota (zone 4b). When she bought her first home in 2002, Amy couldn’t wait to transform a boring suburban yard into a garden oasis. In the years since, she and her husband have completed many inexpensive do-it-yourself projects, tackling everything from building arbors and creating ponds, to constructing raised beds and installing rain gardens. During the long Minnesota winter, Amy tends to her extensive collection of houseplants, succulents, and tropicals by experimenting with propagation techniques and fighting fungus gnats by whatever means necessary. Amy is the personality behind the popular gardening blog, Get Busy Gardening! (a blog devoted to helping new gardeners), and has written several successful eBooks, including her latest title Plant Propagation Made Easy: The Secret To Getting Free Plants.Jessica Walliser is a horticulturist, author, and devoted bug lover. She’s most interested in supporting pollinators and saving threatened ladybug species, as well as promoting ways to control garden pests without resorting to chemical warfare. When she isn’t writing about bugs and science for Savvy Gardening™, she’s composing articles for Fine Gardening, Organic Gardening, Hobby Farms, and Urban Farm magazines. Jessica also writes two weekly columns for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review where she has the pleasure of covering a wide range of gardening topics. On the weekends, she hangs out with her husband and young son, speaks to garden groups, and co-hosts The Organic Gardeners, an award-winning program on KDKA Radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As owner of Ironweed Apparel, Jessica is working to unite fashion and gardening at long last by providing gardeners with fun and funky urban farming and gardening tee shirts. Jessica has a degree in horticulture from the Pennsylvania State University and is the former owner of a 25-acre organic market farm. She’s also the author of four gardening books, including Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control (Timber Press, 2014) and Container Gardening Complete (Cool Springs Press, 2017).Niki Jabbour is an award-winning author and edibles expert from Halifax, Nova Scotia, who believes that a long Canadian winter shouldn’t mean an end to the homegrown harvest. While as a child Niki limited her vegetable intake to yellow beans and potatoes, she now grows (and eats!) dozens of different vegetable varieties in her 2,000-square-foot garden, including experimental crops like quinoa, peanuts, artichokes and figs. Niki’s unconventional – yet wildly successful – growing techniques are proof that elbow-deep snow is NOT, in fact, a valid excuse for a puny parsnip harvest. Her first book, The Year Round Vegetable Gardener, was honored with the 2012 American Horticultural Society’s Book Award, and her latest title, Groundbreaking Food Gardens: 73 Plans That Will Change the Way You Grow Your Garden (Storey Publishing, 2014) opens your eyes to an infinite number of tasty possibilities. Look for Niki’s next book in 2017! Niki’s work is also found in Fine Gardening, Garden Making, The Heirloom Gardener, and Birds & Blooms magazines, and her column on vegetable growing techniques appears in each issue of Horticulture magazine. Oh, and one last thing about Niki: her radio program, The Weekend Gardener, which launched in 2007 is heard throughout Eastern Canada on News 95.7 FM. In 2015, Niki won the ‘Best On-Air Talent’ award from the Garden Writers of America for her radio work.Tara Nolan is a garden and lifestyle writer from Dundas, Ontario. Her first book, Raised Bed Revolution (Cool Springs Press), was published in 2016 and is already a best-seller! Fascinated by ornamental plants, Tara loves to experiment by partnering spirited colors and textures, and using new-to-her cultivars and combinations in both container gardens and flower borders. For six years, Tara served as Canadian Gardening magazine’s online editor and penned various articles for the publication. Her lecture experience includes talks at Canada Blooms, Canada’s largest flower and garden festival, the Toronto Botanical Garden and Lee Valley Tools. Tara has also written about gardening for the Toronto Star, Reader’s Digest, Canadian Living, and Style at Home, among others. When she’s not in the garden, this card-carrying member of the Garden Writer’s Association is on her mountain bike or travelling somewhere to check out public and private gardens, always intent on discovering the next big gardening craze. Tara also considers herself to be pretty crafty (meaning creative, not sly), and while you probably aren’t going to learn about her talent with a needle and thread here, you will learn about the amazing (and crafty!) garden creations growing right outside her back door.

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Mike Podlesny is the host of The Vegetable Gardening Show where he interviews gardening industry experts, and he is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person. Don`t forget to link up with Mike on Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.