Enter the hive with us for another classic critter topic: BEES! We recorded so much on bees that we have to split this bee-nanza into a two-parter! In part one, Leah suits up for a tour at Two Hives Honey in Manor, Texas, and investigates honeybee ecology. In part two, we’ll focus on how, as a gardener, you can support our honey-making friends (along with native bees and other pollinators).  What are honeybees? Why do they live in boxes? And how did Apis mellifera, just one of tens of thousands of bee species in the world, become so ubiquitous in our gardens? We’ll answer these questions and more with the help of professional beekeeper Samantha Dula.  Mentioned in this episode:  The Beekeeper’s Bible by Richard A. Jones and Sharon Sweeney-Lynch; and Bee City (1951), a short film about honeybees narrated by sportswriter and amateur naturalist John Kieran. 

Hothouse

Horticulturati: Gardener's Guide to Honeybees (Part I of II)

Welcome to Hothouse Season 2! If you follow any flower farmers on Instagram, the romance may be all too tempting: picture yourself quitting the city, fixing up an old farmhouse, and spending your days harvesting flowers and arranging bouquets on a ten-acre homestead. Now imagine doing that in a fire-prone, flood-prone, deer-pressured, rapidly developing portion of Austin without access to well water or an agricultural property tax exemption. Sam Eberhardt and Dan Poole are farming on the razor’s edge, doing everything the hard way, and still somehow managing to make the dream look absolutely fabulous. In this episode, we take a walk behind the scenes of Cassiopeia, a flower farm and orchard dedicated to ethical land stewardship, wildlife conservation, and “beyond organic” principles. Sam and Dan discuss the structural obstacles faced by small farms, their commitment to regenerative agriculture, and their “shotgun approach” to rolling with the punches of climate change.  Check out Cassiopeia Farm's farm-to-table CSA, the Best Buds Club, find their flowers at Austin Flower Company, Salt and Time, and Confituras, and follow them on Instagram. This interview was recorded in February 2019. Drop me a line! Music by Moonsicles.

Beyond Permaculture with Cassiopeia Farm

Springtime is owl time. Owlets be hatching. Fledglings be fledging. Owl  cams be streaming. Enter, with us, the kingdom of the night, as we celebrate these mysterious and beautiful birds. Drop us a line at www.horticulturati.com or call the Hotline at 347-WAP-HORT. Please join our Patreon!  Mentioned:  Merlin and Minerva's website, Instagram, and live Twitch stream; Austin Birds on Facebook; “Why is the owl considered a wise bird in the West and a symbol of foolishness in India?” (Times of India, Oct 3, 2004); “All About Owls” online presentation from the Austin Nature and Science Center by Mary Beck (Nov 14, 2020 -- ALSO please excuse us for calling it the Austin Science and Nature Center, that was incorrect); Athena the Great Horned Owl at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; Owl Shack screech owl boxes. 

The Horticulturati: Owl Hours

We're live from Zone 8b with a tell-all about the "epistemological quandary" that is the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. What is hardiness? How is it quantifiable? And how useful is the USDA's classification system for gardeners grappling with extreme weather? Listen to find out.  First up, some tree news -- some of it shady. Last but not least, we get our first-ever call to the Horticulturati Hotline! Thank you Misti from The Garden Path Podcast for your sharing your Big Tree journeys.  Visit us at horticulturati.com and check out our NEW Patreon!  Mentioned in this episode:  "History of Plant Hardiness Zone Maps" (Plant Delights Nursery); The American Horticultural Society's Plant Heat-Zone Map; Famous Trees of Texas by Gretchen Riley and Peter D. Smith  

Horticulturati: Hot Takes on Cold Hardiness

On this Horticulturati, we return from hiatus with tales of the Snowpocalypse -- or  Snowmageddon, Snowvid, whatever you want to call it -- to document the record-breaking winter weather that broke Texas' electric grid and ushered in a scary new climate reality for the plants and people of the Lone Star State. Your hosts discuss personal trauma, a jumble of conflicting post-freeze plant advice, and a bunch of anecdotes about what worked and what didn't in preparing our gardens and ourselves for an unprecedented 144 consecutive hours of below-freezing temps in Austin.  Visit us at horticulturati.com  Subscribe to our PATREON!  Mentioned in this episode:  Aggie Horticulture Facebook page videos; City Council Member Greg Casar; Resolution Gardens

Horticulturati: Thawing Out

On this episode, we discuss virtual foliage, time travel, and big trees. Colleen looks into how video games might play a role in curing plant blindness, and Leah shines a light on the remarkable life and legacy of Margret Hofmann (1925-2012), whose 1970s “Think Trees” campaign introduced Austinites to a majestic urban forest hidden in plain sight. As a City Council member, Hoffman advocated for the preservation of heritage trees, spearheading a contest to locate our city’s biggest and oldest trees, and laying the foundation for our city’s tree-protection ordinances.  Mentioned in this episode:  The Greenberg Turkey plant explosion; “A Video Game Garden: The Delights of Virtual Botany” (The Guardian); Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture; Video Game Foliage (Tumblr); the iNaturalist app; Myst; Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; A Key To Survival by Margret Hofmann;  The 1976 Tree Registry; Hofmann’s archive at the Austin History Center; The Secret Life of Plants documentary; Photo by Alan Pogue of Hofmann in 1975 with a historical marker at the site of a 700-year-old live oak at I-35 and Braker Lane (see the tree on Google Street View)

Horticulturati: Virtual Flora & “Tree Lady” Margret Hofmann

Fertilizers...oxidizers...explosions! We’re still trying to wrap our brains around Ammonium Nitrate over here, so we called on science superstar Dr. Kate Biberdorf, aka Kate the Chemist, to help us out. What is Ammonium Nitrate, and why is this volatile chemical so ubiquitous? What are the conditions that create fertilizer explosions? Is synthetic fertilizer safe? We ask these questions and more, then find ourselves back down the philosophical rabbit hole: questioning our assumptions about organic food, while taking stock of the unintended consequences of industrial agriculture. This is a follow-up to our earlier Ammonium Nitrate episode (released September 19, 2020).  Mentioned: Kate the Chemist on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; Kate’s books: The Big Book of Experiments ; and her Kate the Chemist fiction series; Hypoxic dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico; “Deadly blue-green Algae returns to Austin’s Lady Bird Lake” (kvue.com, July 20, 2020); “Austin’s toxic algae bloom continues to keep dogs out of Lady Bird Lake” (Culture Map Austin September 11, 2019).

The Horticulturati: Kate the Chemist on Chemicals in the Garden

Autumn has come to Texas at long last! To celebrate, we watched the documentary Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf (2017) by Thomas Piper, and we're now officially card-carrying Piet stans sporting Dutch accents, asymmetrical haircuts, and scythes. We discuss Oudolf’s “mathematics” of design, seasonal ambience, and the art of garden editing. How might we translate Oudolf's temperate palate to the not-so-temperate climate of central Texas? Drop us a line at horticulturati.com or a leave a voicemail at 347-WAP-HORT. Here’s where you can rent the movie: https://shop.fiveseasonsmovie.com/product/single-viewer/ Mentioned in this episode: Oudolf designs at Hummelo; Hauser & Wirth; the Lurie Garden; the High Line; Planting Design: Gardens in Time and Space by Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury;  Medicinal Plants of Texas by Nicole Telkes; and Coopers BBQ in Llano. 

The Horticulturati: Five Seasons Total Landscaping

Crossover alert! This Horticulturati episode is a twofer. In part one, we check in about the busy fall planting season over chocolate bread and mulled wine. After many months of Zooming, we’re back to in-person, social-distance recording from Colleen’s backyard! As we test out our new remote podcasting equipment, the conversation drifts from orthopedic inserts to bulb-mania to the monk parakeets of Austin. Part two is our guest appearance on an episode of another great planty podcast, One To Grow On! Hallie and Chris Casey interviewed us about one of our favorite topics, Xeriscaping! Subscribe to One To Grow On for stories of how food production impacts our world, and if you haven't heard our interview about Sustainable Food Center and soil health with Hallie Casey, check that out here.  Visit our website for show notes! Email info@horticulturati.com  Leave a voicemail: 347-WAP-HORT 

Horticulturati/One To Grow On crossover

On this mega-episode of the Horticulturati, we’re tackling garden design--our approaches, our anxieties, and our gripes about “expert” sources of mystifying advice and misleading photography. Garden design books are rife with the jargon of art theory. How well does this translate to the living medium of plants in the landscape? Google Image Search puts pictures of every plant imaginable at our fingertips, which is great...but also not so great. Hashing it out at length, we agree on some basic aesthetic tenets, then throw the rest out the window. Maybe it all comes down to climate, maintenance, and solving problems with plants. First up, Leah describes a real-life botanical nightmare that sends her down memory lane. Last, Colleen shares a listener letter from a Buckeye gardening in the southwest. Leave a voice message on the new Horticulturati Hotline! The number is 347-WAP-HORT.  Or drop us a line on our website.  Mentioned in this episode:  The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg, here’s the illustration Leah’s referring to, and her 1991 home video of her interview with Chris Van Allsburg; Landscapes in Landscapes by Piet Oudolf; Gardens of Japan by Tetsuro Yoshida, and his excellent illustration of balanced grouping of stones; Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond Volume 2 by Brad Lancaster; Texas Wildscapes by Kelly Conrad Bender.

Horticulturati: Garden Design

Why are we putting explosives on our plants? On this episode, Colleen charts the history of ammonium nitrate, the synthetic fertilizer that propelled the rise of industrial agriculture in the 20th century--cheap to manufacture, but spectacularly costly in terms of lives lost. This highly explosive compound has caused some of the worst industrial accidents of all time (Oppau, 1921, Texas City, 1947, Toulouse, 2001, West, Texas, 2013, Tianjin, 2015, and Beirut, 2020) and was the terrorist weapon used in Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.  Nitrogen is critical to all life, and as any farmer or gardener knows, is the first ingredient in fertilizers (the “N” in the N-P-K). Plants can’t naturally pull nitrogen out of the air without the help of soil microbes; it wasn’t until the invention of the Haber-Bosch Process in 1910 that humans found a way to cut out the microbial middlemen and provide nitrogen to plants in synthetic form.  We discuss the role of nitrogen in plant life, the disastrous toll of the Beirut bombing, Trump’s rollback of EPA regulations on fertilizer facilities, and how going organic (“teaming with microbes”) can help save the planet.  ...And then, to lighten things up, we read a listener letter! Horticulturati fan Mike has a bone to pick with us about our Xeriscape episode and pooh-poohing of “Martian landscapes” filled with rocks, but we agree his use of rocks in dry-creek bed design is the exception that proves the rule.  Drop us a line at www.horticulturati.com Here’s a YouTube playlist of the ammonium nitrate explosion videos discussed and a YouTube playlist of Leah and Colleen’s Central Texas Gardener appearances on KLRU-TV.  Mentioned in this episode:  “Arson Blamed For West Fertilizer Explosion,” Texas Farm Bureau (May 11, 2015); “West unveils memorial six years after fertilizer plant explosion killed 15,” The Texas Tribune (April 17, 2019); “Trump EPA eases safety requirements enacted after West explosion,” The Texas Tribune (November 5, 2016); Beirut blast: How does ammonium nitrate create such devastating explosions? Live Science (August 5, 2020);   Organic Manifesto by Maria Rodale (2011); “Fertilizers: A Long HIstory of Risky Business“ in Modern Farmer (April 2013); “Many Fertilizer Plants are Poorly Located And Regulated, Says Report,” New York Times (January 29, 2016); “Extension Corner: Strike Fertilizer Facility Explosions Off Worries List,” The Gadsden Times (May 15, 2013);  “EPA Delays Chemical Facility Safety Regulations Inspired by West Fertilizer Plant Explosion,” Texas Monthly (June 15, 2017); “Texas town holds no grudge against exploded fertilizer plant owner,” Reuters (April 23, 2013); Teaming With Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis (2006).  In remembrance of James Hand (1952-2020). Thank you a lot, Slim, for your music.    

The Horticulturati: Ammonium nitrate

Turtle rabbit. Shell possum. Roadkill. Whatever you call it, the nine-banded armadillo is a mysterious, ancient, and unfairly maligned mammal. Find out everything you ever wanted to know (and more) about this Texas icon. Leah traces the armadillo’s bizarre migratory history, its role in medical research, and its rise as a symbol of the Austin music scene. We’ll bust some armadillo myths, meet some famous champions (including naturalist Roy Bedichek and artist Jim Franklin) and discuss the intractable problem of armadillos in the garden. So, spark up a spliff and fill your pantyhose with worms! The next time one wreaks havoc on your flowerbeds, you may just have a little more appreciation for this humble critter.  Songs: “Dead Armadillo Song” by the Lost Gonzo Band; “Spanish Moss” by Doug Kershaw; “Armadillo Stomp” by Commander Cody & the Lost Planet Airmen;  “You Look Like the Devil” by Willie Nelson; “London Homesick Blues” by Gary P Nunn; “Beautiful Texas Sunshine” by Doug Sahm. Here’s a Spotify playlist.   Mentioned in this episode:  Pink Fairy Armadillo; Adventures With a Texas Naturalist by Roy Bedicheck; The Amazing Armadillo by Larry L. Smith and Robin W. Doughty; The Armadillo World Headquarters: A Memoir by Eddie Wilson Jessie Sublett ; The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock, by Jan Reid; “The Rise and Fall of the Armadillo World Headquarters” doc; “Poster Art of the Armadillo World Headquarters” doc ; A Poem is a Naked Person, a film by Les Blank; Franklin’s story about “You Look Like the Devil” told on Pick Up The Tempo podcast; “Armadillo Man,” (The New Yorker, 1971). Managing Armadillo Damage (Texas A&M Agrilife Extension). 

The Horticulturati: Armadillos!

Yes, it's another cross-posted episode! On this Horticulturati, we dive into the "seeds from China" story and discuss the implications and ramifications in the context of the political moment, which brings us back to an endlessly debatable question: is garden "nativism" xenophobic?  Please subscribe to the Horticulturati feed to get all the episodes! For more info or to drop us a line, visit our website.  Mentioned in this episode:  Central Texas Seed Savers; Press release from texasagriculture.gov; “Mystery Seeds Mailed From China” by Reese Oxner (Texas Tribune, 2020); Sid Miller talks about seeds (Texas Department of Agriculture Facebook page); “Against Nativism” by Michael Pollan (NYT Magazine, May 15, 1994); Sid Miller’s 2020 Texas GOP Convention video (his Facebook page).

Horticulturati: Bad Seeds

Hothouse is returning from hiatus! From here on out this podcast feed will be all Hothouse, so if you want to keep hearing The Horticulturati, please subscribe to that feed HERE (for Apple Podcasts) or HERE (for Spotify).   Crape myrtles are blooming all over the place and Leah is DISGUSTED. What’s triggering this Lagerstroemiaphobia? Perhaps it's not about the crape myrtles at all, but rather the lingering demons of her past in exurban hell. Next, Colleen reports on a storied gourd that vine borers can’t touch: the cushaw squash. Domesticated some time around the dawn of agriculture, the obscure cushaw took on special significance to African American foodways as a “slave food” staple. We discuss plants and memory, the merits of “folklore,” and the importance of heirloom seeds as “living archives” of cultural information. Happy belated Juneteenth! See photos of Colleen’s cushaw plant and drop us a line at www.horticulturati.com.  Mentioned in this episode:  The Botany Coloring Book; The Crape Myrtle Trails of McKinney; Neil Sperry on topping crape myrtles; Nandina ‘nana”;  the “Pool Party Incident” of 2015; Homestead Heart (YouTube); “The Seeds of Survival” (NYT); Kathe Hambrick-Jackson, The River Road African American Museum (Louisiana); Michael W. Twitty, The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty; Farming While Black, by Leah Penniman. 

The Horticulturati: Crap(e) Myrtles & Cushaw Squash

Please donate to The National Bail Fund Network! On this Horticulturati, Colleen teaches us the best way to build a compost pile. Leah forages far and wide and lives to tell the tale.  Visit our website for images from this episode.   Mentioned:  The City of Austin’s Home Composting Rebate Program; Mantis Compostumbler; Soil, a novel by Jamie Kornegay; The Telluride Mushroom Festival; The WIld Wisdom of Weeds by Katrina Blair; Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango CO; Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons

Horticulturati: Compost Clues & Urban Foraging

Hothouse is a podcast about design, ecology, and the way we garden now. Host Leah Churner sits down with experts and enthusiasts to talk about permaculture, the urban landscape, and how plants sometimes give us the feels. A meeting of the minds for plant people and the horticulture-curious, Hothouse is a different kind of gardening show: less of the how-to and more of the who, what, where, when, and why.

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Hothouse

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