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

Online classes happening soon: Grow a Potted Yuzu Citrus, Grow Angel's Trumpet (brugmansia) on Your Patio.
--- 

In this episode, Steven revisits a 2020 conversation with farmer, author, photographer, and urban agriculture pioneer Michael Ableman.
Ableman is the co-founder of Vancouver’s Sole Food Street Farms, an urban farming project that turns city land into productive growing space while creating meaningful work and community connection. His book Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting Up a Successful Urban Farm shares practical lessons from that work, including how to find land, choose crops, build markets, navigate regulations, raise funds, and engage the community.
This is not just a conversation about growing vegetables in unlikely places. It’s about what happens when food growing becomes a way to rethink land, work, dignity, neighbourhoods, and the purpose of a farm.
For home gardeners, there’s a useful reminder here: gardens are never only about yield. They can feed people, yes. But they can also create beauty, connection, routine, and purpose.  
In this episode:
Why urban farming is more than putting raised beds on pavement 
How Sole Food Street Farms uses farming to create jobs and community 
What urban farmers need to think about beyond growing crops 
Lessons from Farm the City
Why food gardens can be practical, social, and quietly radical 
What home gardeners can learn from urban farms, even on a much smaller scale

 
---
There’s a whole world inside figs. I explore it in my Fig Culture podcast—varieties, recipes, collectors, and the stories behind them.
Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started.   [Join the newsletter]

Online classes happening soon: Grow a Potted Yuzu Citrus, Grow Angel's Trumpet (brugmansia) on Your Patio.
--- 

Once garlic comes out of the garden, you’re left with a useful patch of open soil and one big question: what goes there next?
In this episode, we talk through summer succession planting using garlic harvest as the seasonal peg. He explains how timing, climate, heat, dry soil, and first frost dates all affect what you can plant after garlic or after any early crop that frees up garden space.
You’ll learn which crops are easiest to direct seed in summer, when transplants are a better bet, and how to use shade, boards, mulch, and row cover to improve germination and protect young plants.
Topics include:
Why garlic harvest timing varies by region
Direct seeding vs. starting transplants
How to deal with dry soil, heat, strong sun, and crusting
Easy summer succession crops such as bush beans, basil, dill, rapini, and greens
Crops for fall harvest, including spinach, beets, carrots, turnips, winter radishes, kale, and Asian greens
Why bush snap beans are a better follow crop than pole or dry beans
How to decide whether cucumbers and summer squash are worth planting after garlic
Tips for short-season and cold-climate gardeners
A simple “succession seed bin” system to make replanting easier
Succession planting doesn’t have to mean filling every inch perfectly. It’s about using open space in a way that fits your garden, your season, and your available energy.

 
---
There’s a whole world inside figs. I explore it in my Fig Culture podcast—varieties, recipes, collectors, and the stories behind them.
Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started.   [Join the newsletter]

Online classes happening soon: Grow a Potted Yuzu Citrus, Grow Angel's Trumpet (brugmansia) on Your Patio.
--- 

I once flew home with an olive tree in a suitcase. Maybe not what the average traveller would do, but I was visiting a nursery that had a variety I wanted…which says something about my priorities.
Even where olive trees aren’t winter hardy, they make superb potted plants. Their silvery foliage shimmers in a breeze, they look beautiful on a patio, and they make a cold-climate garden feel just a little more civilized.
Olive trees are tough, forgiving, and well suited to pots. The trick is remembering that a pot changes everything, especially in winter. And while getting olives isn’t guaranteed, there are practical ways to improve your odds.
In this episode, I talk about growing olive trees in pots where they’re not normally hardy: why to grow them, where to put them, how to overwinter them, and what helps them fruit.
Want more? My 2026 Olive Camp recordings are available here. Or check out my book Grow Olives Where You Think You Can't, available at FoodGardenLife.com or on Amazon.

 
---
There’s a whole world inside figs. I explore it in my Fig Culture podcast—varieties, recipes, collectors, and the stories behind them.
Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started.   [Join the newsletter]

Online classes happening soon: Grow a Potted Yuzu Citrus, Grow Angel's Trumpet (brugmansia) on Your Patio.
--- 

Common quince is beautiful, fragrant, useful in the kitchen—and still surprisingly uncommon in Canadian gardens. In this episode, I talk with Matt Soltys, The Urban Orchardist, about why this old fruit deserves another look.
Matt shares what he’s seeing as he visits urban fruit trees across southern Ontario: backyard quince trees, older pawpaws, locally adapted genetics, and overlooked trees that could become the foundation of future breeding work. We talk about common quince as a small garden tree, how it differs from Japanese quince, why one tree can be plenty, how the fruit is used, its role as pear rootstock, and simple pruning ideas for healthier fruit trees.
In this episode, we cover:
Growing common quince in cold-climate gardens 
Why quince is such a good fit for home gardeners 
The difference between common quince and Japanese quince 
Quince preserves, cider, and other kitchen uses 
Fruit-tree breeding and locally adapted genetics 
Pawpaws, pears, and other unexpected urban fruit trees 
Pruning quince and other backyard fruit trees

 
---
There’s a whole world inside figs. I explore it in my Fig Culture podcast—varieties, recipes, collectors, and the stories behind them.
Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started.   [Join the newsletter]

Online classes happening soon: Grow a Potted Yuzu Citrus, Grow Angel's Trumpet (brugmansia) on Your Patio.
--- 

Growing tomatoes in a cool or maritime climate can feel like an uphill battle. It doesn’t have to be.

In this episode, I’m joined by tomato expert Holly Farrell, author of The Tomato Grower’s Handbook, to talk about how to get reliable, flavourful harvests even when summers are mild, damp, or unpredictable.

We dig into practical strategies for gardeners in places like coastal Canada, the UK, and the U.S. Pacific Northwest—where heat is limited and blight is always lurking.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why variety choice matters more than anything else 
The difference between bush (determinate) and cordon (indeterminate) tomatoes 
How to use microclimates (walls, courtyards, sunny corners) to your advantage 
Simple ways to add protection—from cloches to greenhouses 
How to reduce risk from blight in damp conditions 
Tips for growing tomatoes in: Balconies 
Containers 
Garden beds 
Tunnels & greenhouses 

How to deal with wind exposure (especially coastal winds) 
Holly’s favourite tomato varieties for different uses 
If you’ve ever struggled to ripen tomatoes or deal with disease pressure, this episode will give you a clearer path forward.
If you would like to see what Holly is up to in the garden, here is her Instagram handle.

 
---
There’s a whole world inside figs. I explore it in my Fig Culture podcast—varieties, recipes, collectors, and the stories behind them.
Join 6,000+ gardeners in The Food Garden Gang and get practical weekly tips to grow more food at home—free. It’s the best way to get started.   [Join the newsletter]