GardenFork Radio

Rich Gee, head of The Rich Gee Group - Executive and Business Coaching , joins Eric today to talk about what keeps us from doing stuff we want to do, but can't seem to get going on. We also talk about eggnog and making plywood boats .

Wondering how to intern at a farm? What is it like to intern at a farm? How do i get an internship at a farm? On GardenFork Radio we talk with a former organic farm intern, Sarah, our new GardenFork Producer. We talk about how to find a farm to work at, what to expect when doing an internship, and what the interview process is like. Sarah interned at an organic vegetable farm that has a successful CSA program, where she learned how to drive a tractor, use farm implements, and weed vegetable fields in the hot sun, when is the best time to harvest vegetables, how to harvest lettuce real fast without cutting yourself, succession planting, seeding lettuce in soil blocks and plug trays, building and modifying farm implements to suit a small farm. Constant problem solving in a challenging environment is how Sarah describes it. We also talk about how to roast duck with the barest of kitchens and a dull knife, and what a corporate apartment is. A big congrats to Daniel Delaney for having this video show, What's This Food? named Top Arts Podcast of 2011 by Apple iTunes! You can watch What's This Food on Daniel's site here. You can hear Daniel Delaney on this GardenFork Radio Episode here.   photo by click  

Mike and Eric talk about how to ice fish and other stuff this week.     photo by digitaldunee

How to start an aquaculture farm starts GF Radio today, as Rick has decided to grow vegetables using aquaponics and hydroponics. Aquaculture is a system which uses fish in tanks and plants in trays. Listen as Rick tell us how to start a low cost aquaculture system, aquaponics systems, and aquaponic gardening. The plan is to grow tomatoes in winter with this fish and plant sytem, using available materials. Rick wrote about his new greenhouse aquaculture project on our site. We talked with a GF listener, Eric, about his aquaculture project on this GF Radio show. Eric has a simple aquaculture setup in his home using an aquarium and some grow lights. Rick also tells about a Texas turkey hunt, and why not all wild turkeys taste great. Eric talks about his deer hunting trip to the Catskills in New York State, hunting on NYC watershed land, and why you should have all your permits in order when hunting. We then move on to highway safety, a recurring subject on GF Radio. Driving too fast or too slow can cause accidents. If you have an aquaponic garden or an aquaculture setup , we'd like to hear from you, please leave a comment below or email us, always interested in hearing from you all. photo by iamgoo  

Joel the locksmith joins us to talk about how to fix a frozen lock,  buying or renting the correct tool for the job, how to fix an iphone, and spy photos of prototype cars in Detroit. Joel asks Eric how to fix an iphone, and Eric talks about how he fixed his iphone using Ifixit.com, and drops the hint again that Ifixit.com needs to be a sponsor of GF Radio. One needs a few special tools to open up an iphone, but they are affordable and available online. Fixing an iphone with large fingers takes up more time than one would think in this show, and Mike offers his take on the iphone button and what might be wrong with it. Joel thanks eric and mike for being 'helpful'. We then ask Joel locksmith questions, and he suggest using Tri Flo instead of wd-40 to lubricate lock cylinders. The problem with using WD-40 in a lock is that as the lubricant dries out, it gums up the cylinder again . Joel also advises not to use graphite on locks, it make more problems and solutions. Joel tells us the most common ways someone will break into a home, and how to keep your home from being broken into. We then finally get to how to defrost or unfreeze a frozen car lock. Listen and tell us your frozen lock stories below: photo by mconnors

Mike finishes up his how to fish for largemouth bass talk, ice fishing is just getting started, and there is still time to go out on a river and go fishing. Mike talks more about what kind of fishing lures for when, and why you shouldn't put your tackle box in the back of your truck. We tell you why you should wear blaze orange clothing when hiking in the woods in the fall. We then move on to viewer voicemail, and answer a question about why are there cracks in a listener's new drywall taped corners.   photo by jeltovski

A Broken Rice cooker, and how to fix it & how baking powder works are the main topics of this GF Radio show, but of course we veer into other subjects as well. We've posted the Rice Cooker Repair ,What is Baking Powder and Free Leaf Compost articles that started this topic for Rick, and we started a new category here called Rick's Column. Rick talks about how a rice cooker works and how he fixed his rice cooker. You can buy inline fuses at Radio Shack, bring the old one with you, or search online. Eric made a how-to video about making leaf compost, and here is a neat GardenFork.TV video about how to make a simple compost bin out of a few easily available materials. Rick plans on working the leaf compost into his vermiculture system, aka worm composting system. BTW, to make baking powder, use 1 part baking soda to 2 parts cream of tartar. You can buy Cream of Tartar online instead of paying a fortune for a small amount at the store. For those of you interested in working at GardenFork, here is the link to our internships page. We need a hand, and if you'd like to get some great experience, check out our internship page and see what its all about. photo by Besela    

John Federico and Eric talk about Steve Jobs and his impact on their lives, and his impact on the world and business. Eric talks about a Fresh Air Interview with Steve Jobs' biographer, here is a link to that. A quote from Steve Jobs sums up a lot of what Eric and John talk about in this GF Radio "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new." from Wikiquotes John and Eric then talk about how to make an iTunes audio podcast, and what tools they use to make their podcasts. photo by Nacu

How to fish for bass, bass behavior, and how to catch largemouth bass are the topic of Gardenfork Radio. Mike is a former tournament bass fisherman, and tells us how to find bass in a lake, and largemouth bass behavior throughout the year. Mike gives bass fishing tips and goes into largemouth bass behavior. Bass: Ice-out and spring: After ice out, the bass are still very lethargic. They are cold blooded animals. However, as the water temperatures start to rise, they begin to move and feed after a long sleepy winter. Places to look in the spring: Northern sides of lakes, ponds, and backwaters. The sun is lower in the sky, northern sides of lakes get more direct sun. This is especially true where there are large trees, hills, and other tall obstructions on the south side of the lake. Wind. In short, wind from the north is cold. It cools the surface and pushes it south. Wind from the south is warm. It warms the surface and moves it north. Shallow water warms faster than deep water. Especially when the bottom is dark. Stones. Stones on the shore will pick up heat from the sun and hold it. This is true of sea walls and bridges made of stone as well. Late spring / Early Summer: When the water gets up to around 57 - 60 degrees, Bass will start their spawn cycle. Some areas will close fishing to allow for the spawn to happen. To sustain a fishery, fish need to have a chance to reproduce. Male fish will take up residence in shallow water, typically with a harder bottom, and they will use their body to clear out a circular nest on the bottom. They will become territorial around their nest and will do their best to keep it clean. During this time, females will stage in deeper water adjacent to the nesting area. They will join the males in the shallower water, laying their eggs, and then moving back to the deeper water. Males will fertilize the eggs and stay with the nest until the fry are hatched. For a while, the male will aggressively protect the fry and will eventually leave the small fish on their own and recede into deeper water. Usually, it’s during the spawn and in the post spawn where fishing will die off some as the fish are not up to chasing food because they are spent from the spawn. Any fish caught during the spawn are usually males and it’s usually a territorial and protective strike, not one for food. Summer / Late Summer Bass move into their summer patterns after the spawn. The summer pattern really differs from lake to lake, but there are some generalities that you can work with in order to identify the patterns on your lake / pond. Oxygen is less soluable in warmer water. Backwaters that are shallow and baked by the summer sun have lower oxygen levels, so fish will avoid them. Deeper lakes (20’+ usually) will stratify over the summer. Warmer is water is less dense and it remains at the top, cold water, heavy and oxygen depleted sinks and stays at the bottom. There’s a structure known as the thermocline. It’s where the water changes temperature drastically within a foot or two. On depth finders it will show up as a line. You can feel it when swimming in a lake. The oxygen level below the thermalcline is very low and you should spend your time fishing above that line. Bass are averse to bright sunlight. If there is an area of clear water with no cover, it’s best to avoid that area. Bass relate to things. The things could be trees in the water, stumps, rocks, underwater dropoffs or other topographical changes, and weed lines. Weed lines form because plants require sunlight to live. The depth of a weed line will vary with water clarity. Muddier lakes have shallower weedlines and clearer lakes have deeper weed lines. Some times you can follow them in a boat visually. Usually a depth finder will be needed to identify the line. Once you gain experience, you will be able to do it by feel. Bass will feed in the early morning hours and at sundown, when the sun is low in the sky.

Monica and Eric talk about using slow cookers in the fall, and what phone eric should buy, and who is your favorite dog, all on GF Radio this week. Plus zen thoughts about being busy. photo by crass

How to hunt deer for the beginner, what kind of gear you need to hunt deer, where do you hunt deer? Author Jackson Landers., author of The Beginner's Guide to Hunting Deer for Food (Beginner's Guide To... (Storey))   talks with Eric about hunting deer for food. "Hunting deer is the most inexpensive, environmentally friendly way to acquire organic, grass-fed meat. Even if you’ve never held a gun before, author Jackson Landers can show you how to supplement your food supply with venison taken near your home. He addresses everything a new hunter needs to know: how to choose the correct rifle and ammunition, how to hunt effectively and safely, and what to do if something goes wrong. He includes chapters on field dressing and butchering after the kill, recipes for using the meat, and a chapter on the politics and psychology of hunting. Whether you hunt to be more self-sufficient, to eat the safest and most nutritious meat possible, to protect the environment, or to save money, this book is the perfect guide." Deer Hunting can be an emotional topic for some of us. My thinking here was to allow you all to get into the head of a hunter who is very grounded. Jackson hunts deer to put meat on the table for his family, teaches deer hunting classes, and has been featured several times in the New York Times, and has been hosted by  Slow Food groups to talk about deer hunting, and how to cook venison. photo by matthew hull  

Today on GardenFork Radio, Rick decides iFixit.com should sponsor GardenFork.TV and GF Radio, after Eric tells of how he has used the iFixit.com site and the products they sell to repair his iPhone and replace the hard drive on his iMac . Getting that damp smell out of your crawl space or basement also takes up a lot of this week's show with Rick. How to use fans to vent your basement, do dehumidifiers work? What's a vapor barrier? Rick asks what is the right thing to do when trying to vent your crawl space and get rid of the humidity. How do they figure out where the break is in a sewer line? Rick and Eric are amazed by the technology used to find leaks in sewer and water lines. Rick had a new line installed into his yard, and they used what is called a Pig to ram the pipe through the yard. Rick tells how to make a hot bed in a cold frame using manure, and where the term 'hot bed of political activity' comes from. We then move on to Bees and Beekeeping, Rick tells of  how to requeen a beehive with a new queen, and his travails in actually trying to requeen a hive with a new queen he purchased from White Oak Apiary . Key to requeening  a hive is to have help doing it, eric thinks.  then its Viewer Mail, YouTube comments and more. photo by manimorff

Daniel Gasteiger, author of Yes, You Can! and Freeze and Dry it too; The modern step-by-step guide to Preserving Food, joins Eric on GF radio to talk about how to can vegetables, how to freeze food and vegetables, how to dry herbs and plants, and how to ferment cabbage and more neat stuff. We talk about canning in a pressure canner and using the water bath method. Daniel doesn't think the high pressure canning is that much more involved than hot water bath method. The pressure canner has a shorter canning time, but it takes a while to get up to pressure and you have to let it cool down. We also go in to fermentation of vegetables. Daniel talks about how to ferment cabbage and other vegetables that you wouldn't normally think were fermentable, like chickpeas. I have on the to-do list of GardenFork shows and experiments, fermentation. Not just fermentation of beer, but I want to do sauerkraut, and it sounds like its very straightforward, according to Daniel. Daniel's blog is http://www.smallkitchengarden.net/ You can follow him on www.twitter.com/cityslipper  You can buy his book here Please share this GF Radio episode on Facebook and Twitter by using the links above!

Learn here how to have a tag, yard, or garage sale, from Mike and Eric. Mike is having a yard sale, and tell us how to have a successful yard sale, and his techniques for bargaining with buyers. Then we talk about squash vine borer damage and how to treat them. You can watch our Squash Vine Borer Treatment Video here How to seal your garage or basement floor is the next topic, Tyler is sealing sealing his garage floor, and we talk about how to seal your floor with epoxy. We then talk about how to deal with squash vine borers and tomato hornworms. Eric gets confused about which is which, and we read viewer mail about alternatives to killing tomato hornworms. Mr I Love The Ants linked to some pictures of what kind of moth a squash vine borer becomes , and here are those links: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Plants/WaspMimic3.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Plants/WaspMimic.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v735/mrilovetheants/Plants/WaspMimic2.jpg we end the show with more viewer mail and comments.   photo by ladyheart

Today we talk about hurricanes, weather forecasting, and hurricane preparedness with Tyler, who is the CEO of Allison House, a severe weather data company you can learn more about Allison house at AllisonHouse.com ( a GF sponsor ) We continue with how to predict hurricanes and how the national hurricane Center creates different models using different algorithms make spaghetti patterns about where a hurricane is going to hit land or as they call it in the business, make landfall. Do the TV networks over hype hurricanes rainstorms winter storms? Tyler talks about how TV networks and the media in general could do a better job informing us about hurricanes and severe weather. It's gotten to the point where people think the TV networks and media are just crying wolf, so many times a storm is coming and the media and TV networks make a really big deal out of it and then the storm doesn't happen. Then people tend to become more skeptical and then when the real thing actually occurs they get taken by surprise because we've been numbed to the weather hype. Next up is how to seal the concrete of your garage floor or basement floor. Tyler tells us how he is preparing the concrete floor of his garage for the epoxy paint sealer that he's going to apply to the cement which is one of the last parts of his home renovation. we move on to vegetable gardening and how to keep cabbage months from attacking your cabbage and what to do about squash vine borers and our squash vine borer video. Then how to mulch your vegetable beds with leaf mulch and how you can make leaf mulch and how you can use believes that people put out at the end of their driveway in the suburbs for leaf mulch and why we like raised beds . You can watch our how-to video on how to make raised beds here and we also have a video about how to make leaf mulch by clicking here Next we talk about beekeeping and we are both harvesting honey this fall tyler talks about using a hot night for the first time and how long it takes to harvest honey. Tyler had a very large harvest of honey this year and Eric did not. We've made a bunch of how to raise bees, we call it beginning beekeeping videos on garden fork and you can watch all of them by clicking here if you want to watch the video on how to harvest honey click here Then Tyler tells us about his upcoming trip to Scotland Tyler recommends the website visit Scotland.com which is run by the Scottish tourism board. Eric would very much like to visit Scotland and looks forward to hearing from the Scottish tourism board. You do have a question or comment about garden fork radio you can call our listener voicemail line 860 740 6938. photo by wallyir