On today’s Sustainable Living program we started with a short segment about National Food Day coming up on October 24th. Karen Elizabeth, local food activist and nutrition coach talked about what Food Day is and events in our area. She’s involved with the Plant City Commons Community Garden and they’re having a Food Day get together at the garden in Plant City.
Karen andJon Butts will be attending Pat & Rosalind’s Solar Party, October 18th at their Zero Energy solar powered home east of Tampa off of I-4. There will be a lot of solar stuff set up, including solar cookers–and some of the most knowledgeable people on the topic of solar power and water will be there.
We spent the rest of the show talking about fall vegetable gardening. Our guests were David Whitwam with Whitman Organics, located in Tampa, and one of our favorite garden show guests, Rick Martinez, founder of Sweetwater Organic Farm CSA in west Tampa. We started the conversation with David’s offer of a gift for a pledge to WMNF, a 4’ X 8’ raised bed garden, trellis, vegetable plants and micro-irrigation. He’s built several of these at schools in the Tampa Bay area. We talked a lot about the timing of vegetable plantings, summer rains and insect pressure verses the possible frost and freeze issues with winter plantings. Rick talked about OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute)and organic products, happenings and summer rain problems at Sweetwater, and many other topics.
