Chicken, Bees & Soil –  Urban Permaculture Gardening

okay so I wanted to Quick ask so how many have had experience with honeybees bees native bees okay and um permaculture anybody with any much kind of understanding of it this is exactly this will not be a total um class in it I use some of the the strategies and techniques of permaculture um I've gone to classes on a number of things but I I'll go into permaculture in a little bit and chickens you know I know how he put that down too anybody with chickens here all right I had Chien yesterday yeah um okay we could go with that if we need to so um this was something I pulled out of this um I I do like this if you're permaculture they have this magazine that'll come out I don't get it regularly but um so it said um learning to slow down and reconnect with your bio region and we have many bio regions here in Denver as a Front Range we've got Desert High Desert Wind and we're going to experience it later on I'm afraid um it says our awareness of the seasons the climate the plants animals and fellow people that inhabit our areas can enhance our lives in many ways and I started out talking about that because you know I grew up in a small town western Nebraska and you had a sense of community there and involvement with what went on and we we yearn for that sort of thing you know making connection whether it's with our neighbors but a lot of connection with the land we miss out on or flowers plants insects whatever that is so when I ended up buying this house little house in Golden in um 2000 the end of 2010 it has about a would say a fifth of an acre which is a small lot as Urban Lots go 12200 foot house um and it was just Turf in the back in the front was all landscape fabric a lot of it was with 6 in of the gravel for various things and and the other part of it were you know you have like a non-fruiting crab apple tree that kind of landscaping which you know growing up the way I did you had food everywhere but you also understood how we interact with the land and how important the soil is and when I bought it I really wanted to um take on this um understanding and one of the first books which I'll bring up and I'll have a if we end up with a table or someplace we can set some of these out but gaia's garden and we can pass it around if you want or we'll have it set up but it's a simplified look at the permaculture the they have a um ethics strategies that they they introduce and a lot of it is looking at what your microclimate is like where the wind channels where your sun energy is where too much or where it's not quite enough where how your water comes so understanding this in your yard or wherever you're growing is really helpful for how things grow now I'm not going to go into a heavy amount of permaculture actually um the design features and so on but I would recommend if you have any interest at all and you can see with this book I mean you you know a book's been handled a lot when everything's a little bit dog ear and checked off and you know the list of um plants that I saw in there all went into what I did with my my space so as I rehabilitated the soil and strategies I used so I'm going to talk about that in just a second I I remember my first Garden which was in North Plat Nebraska and there was just a little Garden area and I moved in there and thought a garden area I can plant my own and everything grew huge and I thought oh gardening is really easy and then I found out this is a gardener that had taken care of the soil he' amended it you know everything was perfect that year and somewhere after this I moved to 8,000 feet in Pine Colorado I that all Garden I said and you know you have decomposed Granite um you you praise dandelion because they're they're green and yellow right and and non-toxic but it was what really grew that in rhubarb I in Pine Colorado I ended up being part of the first uh fundraising kind of day for the North Fork volunteer fire department and we had two things that grew a lot that we could name the the pine Festival rhubarb and lilacs so we went with rubar because you couldn't eat lilacs and so anyway understanding what grows where grows is a big help I got my first green tomato ripened at 8,500 feet took me a lot of energy and I stopped doing Tomatoes there but anyway after moving to this area I was really excited to do all these things so after looking at what insects could be attracted what was beneficial to my own use but to the land and this is where bees come in because everything I decided to grow had to be be friendly soil friendly friendly to us we also graze on all of our plants on our herbs and things like that I have spent a lifetime just interested in medicinal herbs so you know it was a great experiment to grow as many things as I possibly could so I wanted to you'll understand I got started so right now in my little space I have four 4x8 raised beds built with 2x6 Pine I have four hugle culture beds does anybody here know what those are they're from Germany um it's a forestry technique of using branches and wood products that are um have fallen that can be pat p stacked up or used so what we had decided and I I have a I have a group that we Garden together and support each other in this but all the every time we get our spring um storms the branches that are everywhere so I stack them all up stomp them all down throw a bunch of wood chips on them get some um nitrogen sources whether it's manure or leaves you know anything that's green you you anybody who's composted you know you have that mix of brown and green to get that activated and so I have about four or five hugle culture beds I finally this year got a little carried away with all of our storms I'm having somebody haul off some branches and sticks it's hard for me to do but I cannot make another one of these piles of luckily I have a son who who I is happy to like jump on them and break them all down so I have the four beds like that I have the four hugle culture beds and the rest is a area that I did by making um it's called lasagna gardening um deep Mulch and we did it put down a nitrogen which in this case there's a horse farm not too far um I think it's called Sil silver quarter stables and they do not medicate or treat the grasses and what's on there or the and the hay they bring in is clean you have to make sure there's not contaminants in that but I will use that manure so on this land we did I mean on the backyard um a layer of the manure a thick layer of cardboard um a little bit more manure and then 13 in of wood chips literally sometimes even 15 inches so anybody who tries to do this strategy with three or four or five inches it's not really going to work and and after the next year I grew stuff the next year better stuff it breaks down you know you get that but I have no bind weed in any of this I have no thistles in any of it I choose what I'm going to grow in this area maybe it's a I don't know what do you think a backyard is 30 30 feet by 40 feet or something um and you know growing around what our yards can be like as far as the thistles or bind weed now in the edges where I didn't do any of this stuff I have plenty of bind weed you know it's very happy to be rehabilitating all the soil over there but I have created uh by um conscious effort a soil system that will support the um microbes and so on which brings me up to this little book here teaming with microbes and I I really like this because it kind of went in depth of why it's so important to support all of the growth in that the mycelium which takes the nutrients from the compost feeds it to the roots of the plants plants can break down in a healthy cycle so everything that I do in this yard that started out with I hope I can finally grow something after all these years um and working to I guess I it was part of one of the focus I said when I decided to do some of this I wanted to help the bees you know support that and I wanted to heal the soil because I feel like we've come so far away from understanding what holistic uh connections to Nature is to we can do it in our yards and we can do it but it helps us to understand how it works and how important it is and how how we can be important in that cycle so I get things like this and things like these were probably the first two I have a few other favorite books that I like um and then my brought this along because I wanted to use one story it says can fungi which ALS also can be pronounce fungi everybody gets their own choices save the bees now what they found is bees and I actually saw this firsthand that bees feed on the melium that is growing in the wood chips and things and it it supports their digestive systems their immune systems and I was watch out front where I have sort of a compost pile or mini place what I do and I saw all first of the season and I saw these bees down there and going back I thought there's no um pollen there there's you know nothing there sweet meet that they're going after what is it that they're doing and um and then I came across this Paul Stam if anybody does any right reading on that um has done great research in that area but it was it was exciting to be part of the process to see it to question it to understand that all the things that we don't realize are making such a positive impact on whatever's going on so it's a little hard to accept all Critters into your holistic Gardens um for instance like who knows what tomato horn horn worms look like anybody they're like the size of your finger and they're green and they have these little places on the tail that looks like a horn which is where horn worm comes from and they're very freaky but it turns out there the hummingbird moth is the moth that turns in I mean that comes from this tomato hornworm which can strip a whole tomato plant or a two or three pepper plants in a couple of afternoons I mean you can't see them because they're so camouflaged they're the perfect modeled green color that matches leaves on your tomato plants and I'm the only way I find them is when I'm looking for tomatoes right don't we all do that and we're down like this and then all of a sudden you'll have this like guy like he's like looking at you and you do the you do the jump back and for a while I did try to like let them be let them be but after like I found three of them and they like completed one I thought I'll throw them into the chickens so I kind of you know I do feel bad about it but it's nature uh so so I kind of flicked this thing in the middle and it's a pretty good let's say 10 by 12 area and I saw a chicken go up to it it moved chicken jumped well like like four hours later maybe six I don't know all I remember are the sometimes all we remember are the events I came back over to the chicken the fence and found that horn hornworm climbing up the fence to get out nobody had eaten it and it was escaping this is when you start seeing some of those old horror movies in your head of alien and stuff um I think I probably did something else with this worm I may have tossed him back in there but it's it's a hard story anyway appreciate them understand because we love the hummingbird moth and they're they're Exquisite and what are you willing to trade for that and the hornworm sort of took me to the edge at any rate so after I got started with this and I read this book and they have all these they call them food forests right that you like to have and all these perennial Edibles that you can just plant and grow for years and Gilla played a role in accumulating a few of these like Cale which is a perennial comes back 10 to 14 years I guess we'd have to say and and um it's just gorgeous you know it got these beautiful white flowers it's all edible the leaves are all edible you only have to plan it once so um she she was one of the things that got me started on that a having AV available that you can buy them at the she bought them at a what was the um place that you got the Cale that's out of business yeah yeah they used to we they used to have a lot of good choices but this is where you make friends in a community because I also get volunteers that come off of mine and that's where I got Gillis was a volunteer so if you I'm going to have a sign up list um for a tour at my place because I'd love to have any of you that can come we'll do it the middle of May or something um and if creating sort of a community around people together you can share what you have someone has this you can use this someone's had this success you can try that out you can ask what climate it grew best for them and then you can look at where your microclimate is you can understand a little more sun wind some areas will be drier just because of how porous the soil is so here's what my yart has now I have in my perennials Oro that came from Gilla which is a green that's also called Mountain spinach it's very lovely Lage which is a a large perennial that's in the parsley family but it has a celery like flavor and it's um why I love anything that just comes back you know it's just so much more fun than stuff that dies um so I have I have Lage I have rhubarb which does grow well around here generally for people let's see the seale onion and garlic chives these are all the edible things that are great and then under the medicinal and Bee friendly herbs I have one called sweet siisy which has a Anis flavor it's also I think in The Parsley family um and it makes wonderful teas things like uh like that I have Ana cissp thyme B balm Yaro lemon balm lavender ASA horseradish Fu lemon balm wh Hound catnip cat mint kenela chamomile Teragon parsley oregano and some oh and comrey I had to walk through to find I kept missing one or two or three so um after that I have fruit trees I have three apple one peach one Cherry I have raspberries thornless blackberries black currants Gooseberry Arona Berry service Berry and a jberry which is such a fun name isn't it I always wonder who came up with that it sounds like jberry it's actually spelled j o s ta yes and the one I got from Gilla I planted in not the best spot so it never quite gets what it needs and I am going to transplant it one of these days but it's just a ber I just um so one of the things that's mentioned in permaculture are uh herb Spirals and that is a it's a teaching technique that's really lovely I'm not sure how totally effective it is but you will create a spal um that's you know wide and then build up maybe with rocks Stones um some other manner of what you have available and then you look at what you plant where you get sun here you get shade here when it's hotter at the top drier at the bottom you know you it helps helps you to understand I don't know how totally effective it is to actually growing the best things but it's fun to learn about um the idea and when you're landscaping and you're wanting to add features that draw draw the eye to what's going on so I do have I have an herb spiral and in that I have lots like most of the herbs already mentioned a couple that didn't work out I found out that Angelica is way too big to put into a herb spiral that has like and um yes and then I I the other thing that I wanted to do was a pond because I love water sounds and they'll talk about zones in permaculture too like you put things that you're most going to use the kitchen Gardener Garden or um a pond perhaps because you'll maintain things more that are close by that you see all the time so I have right to the South out you know outside my where I have a little deck I have a pond that's probably two feet deep that's maybe 5 feet by four feet or something and a waterfall that comes down um and I love it every time you know it's I just got it started back up again I'm going to reintroduce fish in it by the way it's another learning curve because I found out that garter snakes eat baby little pond fish you know when I first put it in I was so excited I got a little group of fish and all of a sudden I see swimming and I think wasn't that interesting I didn't even know I'd never seen a little snake now you know they live there right and I thought this is fine sort of and then on the side where my pond is there was a couple Flat Rocks I had done for a design feature look like little steps and I look over and that snake was jumping out with a fish in his mouth jumping up those little steps that go Feast on him which I thought was very rude I mean you know i' done a lot of work to have the essence of little fish and water fall and isn't this lovely so since I don't want to do damage to things I caught the snakes and I took them over to my friend Dave who we'll talk about in a second who has a place over here that's bigger and he doesn't have a pond I mean anyway I relocated and I do have people that laughing at me and it is laughable you know when you do get a nut and you get a couple snakes up in there and they're jumping around trying to get out and people make squealing sounds but it was worth it it was worth it to me the the another funny story about sometimes you have neighbors that are a little more Curious or nosy calm and my neighbor I went to ask her if it was okay to have chickens and she said you won't have roosters will you because they're noisy I want to tell you hins are way noisier than roosters I mean I didn't really realize this I grew up with chickens but I didn't realize it I do now um so I said said no and we'll just have hins and we can have six and and then I got them from Dave and Janette they live right down here again he's um was able to get an incubator and he has Rhode Island Reds and raising chickens and I could get the babies and I got six babies from him and one turned out to not be a girl right so all of a sudden anybody have raised with chickens and so they when they before they really grow they start making this oh you know something like that and I thought oh darn because you know they don't really get to live a whole lot longer roosters in our climate people are always putting on Facebook I have a rooster you want them no we can't take nobody can have roosters so I went to tell my neighbor that by accident I got a rooster with my hin he's young and I know he's starting to make noise and I will take care of it and she says oh that's okay what about the Ducks I said I don't have Ducks he say no I looked for the fence and I saw a Mard and a hen wandering my driveway and so what about the Ducks and I realized that my fish had been very spooky the last couple of weeks hiding under things and those Ducks I'd seen little poop that I didn't know what it was but it turned out to be ducks and they didn't stay real long but you know those are the funny things that when you do talk to your neighbors and build community you find out stuff that you didn't know about I just really really remember that look well okay I understand you're not going to have a rooster but what about the Ducks you have um okay let's see where I was getting on most of my list here it was nice on what I was doing because I was unincorporated Jefferson County which is a little easier if you do live in a HOA you know what you plant is going to be problematic um I have other people that city of Arvada a good friend that was doing permaculture in her front yard but it was too wild looking and she kept having the neighbors call and complain and they she' they'd come up and say I realized some are opening up because for a while it was you couldn't have vegetables growing in your front yard you could only have grass or um trees strubs stuff like that flowers so um it it matters where you live on what you can choose to do I I did will say because of doing the garden stuff I met somebody who did bees and then I had a friend who was getting swarms and she said couldn't you take a swarm and I said I don't want bees and then she said I have a lot of swarms I said okay explain what swarm swarm means do you know what it means when they I do I mean I find out so every spring if you have a healthy Queen and you have a healthy Hive they will go into once the pollen starts appearing or the nectar with be beef feed out in the nature they were will uh feed up the queen will all of a sudden go from not laying very many to get through the winter to laying lots of new bees and then at a certain point usually it's between I think mostly April May but maybe the beginning of June but in there when that Hive gets so full of extra bees the cluster of them will leave with the current Queen and they'll leave usually they'll do that when there's been a a a a larva that the that the certain bees will decide it's time to feed up that larvae and it will turn into a queen bee and then hatch out of that Hive and then that queen bee after the Swarm is left she'll hatch and it's not always consistent on this sometimes they'll get two or three and then the Queens are not happy with each other um but basically that Virgin Queen will fly and mate with a bunch of you know the drones or the male bees and she'll come back and then that that's the only time she'll fly and then from then on she'll be an active um Queen laying the eggs in your hive so the process in the spring of reproducing is that a swarm will leave and they'll some of you have met some of you seen swarms have you ever seen a swarm well it can be sort of intimidating all of a sudden there's a whole lot of bees and they they'll stay with the phermones of the queen and then they'll get onto a tree branch and you'll see that form and they'll all be hanging around where she's at and then they'll send out Scout bees looking for a new home might be in you know a tree and opening your attic things like that and that's when you know a lot of the bee clubs and my friend April was part of this they'll get the call it swarms there and they'll send someone that's in the club that understands how to collect a swarm and they'll go out and do their thing get them in something it's a whole another story but if you're really into bees we'll talk about it I've gathered a few swarms but um but she brought I finally said yes and I got the bee stuff and I had honey bees for about nine years I think and it worked well I mean I love getting the honey I um I did reach a point where I understood that actually honeybees are a European you know brought in they did not evolve here but they're actually they are uh competing with our native bees for what's available out there so too many honeybee hives can actually be difficult for the native bees to um gather the whatever they need um to continue on and and Native bees it's a whole you know new topic on there are bumblebees we know and leaf cutter bees with maybe some of you know about they they can put um find a hole in a a concrete wall or in a wooden structure and the the the queen will lay her eggs in there and tap you know tap it fill it with mud or stuff like that they'll wrap them in the leaf and if in the spring when all of a sudden you go out and you have these rose bushes and you'll see a perfect little three4 circle cut out on all the leaves have you ever seen that on your leaves before that's a leaf cutter be and I actually got to see one once we all have our high points all the time looking you know but there I mean it literally that she just would and that was that was it and that little hole and then that would go in and a little egg would go in there and it' all get rolled up and stuffed in that and then spring comes and they'll all hatch out as they go and some of you have seen some of these tubes and things they'll put in little houses it's a thing that people sell at the craft fairs and they're they're cute they do it can work you have to be careful because if they're closed off at the end and they be cleaned out naturally they can hold um parasites molds things that can damage the viability of the the baby larva when it's going to hatch out are you here just to talk about Gardens stuff and no okay come [Music] here um so anyway back to we so on the bees and he asked the question question of swarms and I'd be glad to talk anymore and my friend April with some other U folks are part of establishing a bee Club in Jefferson County and Bee clubs are great places to go and learn from and they'll have speakers and I would tell anybody who's interested in honeybees to go through um a year of going to classes and understanding about it because there's there is a commitment to doing it right which will help your bees survive perhaps more I mean it is a tricky thing if you have a neighbor that sprays um pesticides on everything your bees can fly over there and they'll and you can lose a whole bunch of them there's a much longer conversation around this stuff so you'd be happy to ask me questions um I can give you the website or the Facebook place and and go go to the club and find out more information but I find that there's a fine balance you can spend your time understanding what grows where what native plants can be um introduced that will be um that'll work well you know you want the ones that are easy that but kind of stay in their place some of them you can get want to spread they take over then you have to um work things out with that so I guess I don't know that I've got anything else is there specific questions anyone would like to ask right now and then I know Martin talked about breaking and then coming back but I'm not sure with time where we're at yeah yeah so questions here from anybody on yes um you know I I never did I think that the ex County extension office will you can get test kits there I really went on the I guess in some ways the organic stack up a whole bunch of great stuff and be patient um because you can test in one area and there could be a minor contaminant there I've come to really appreciate it's one of my other books but I some of these you just can't read all of them let's see which is another pul stamin one mycelium running but it really it it gives you um an insight into how much we need a healthy melium in our in our soil systems because they can mitigate chemical damage they've um found besides like the bees finding them to increase their um um their systems as far as being protected against um other invasive diseases and so you know if you can build up a really healthy system now if you're in an area that questions contamination you should D you know you should get a um a soil test if you're just testing like does this soil have the right calcium nitrogen phosphates what kind of things you need I kind of put everything in it and see what grows well and well I guess I'm worried about contaminant trying toow stuff in the backyard at e I'm just wondering there any yeah I I would talk to the County extension office or something find a place to you know I was pretty sure where mine was that I wasn't there wasn't any um construct I mean commercialized um places that might in in in infect it or impact it yeah landscaping rocks say that again landscaping rocks rocks toxic well I've never heard of the Rocks I find like concrete thingss rocks yeah I've never seen a problem the the concrete blocks and things that sometimes they'll use to line a a bed with you would not want to do and if if you're using wood you would not want that have any kind of paint or stains on them that could leech into for they are treated yeah and specifically a lot of people like these big um uh Big Blocks that are used for uh Railway um railway tracks those are absolutely poisonous so just stay away from them they are really really bad and Germany got really deadly sick because he put them in his house uh to um you know enhance his living room um space and he put them under the ceiling and nobody knew for quite some time what was wrong that stuff is so poisonous and you can imagine when you have it in your garden and your plants take in that stuff that's really really bad ties right yeah yeah yeah that's you wanted to talk a little bit about Dave B Dave bra Brens yeah yeah so before I mean I guess we're still in an okay time frame here living systems Institute Dave Braden and he had actually started out calling it Applewood permaculture um but because he didn't get the design certificate the permaculture design certificate which is part of how you know they train but it's also design because he did it on his own he didn't have that certificate so they wouldn't let him use permaculture in his name so we were talking and we decided he liked it and I liked it that we call it living systems Institute and I'm on the board there he is um he's ill now he has cancer and we have a a group of people part of our uh board that um are going to continue on with some of the work that he does and one of the things I wanted to mention here is that we have we call The reinhabit Cooperative or Co-op and so sometimes you have homeowners that would like to do more um regenerative um gardening and but they don't have the time energy but maybe they have the resources that they could pay somebody who like who likes to do that sort of thing so we have a Cooperative where you know the the homeowner might match up with a gardener person and and then a little bit gets donated to systems institutes to the that or organization to keep it um able to make whatever marketing available or information so they have a website reinhabit do Coop or at whatever they say must be at and and you can sign up and you know you could match with somebody but they're also going to have on May 4th which I I'll mention it uh like a a potluck gathering over and it's just like um like might be like two blocks it's on the other side of the ccle yep right before the traffic circle there on your right I have his address so at Four 3 4 o'clock and we'll do tours then and we'll talk about different gardening techniques for a while there we were able to get a group together that made chicken CPS and did some um making some be boxes is he was making some ones that you could put in the tree and ironically his one in his tree was the only one that ever got a swarm the rest of us all got these boxes in our trees that every year you know every spring you go out and hope for that swarm to find your B box but doesn't matter it was an effort that's been fun and let's see what so we we he does a lot of uh David done a lot of experim showing people classes on drip systems on deep mulch gardening on this hugle culture technique and so on and they're still doing all of that stuff so um ask me more questions about that okay uh the reason I asked about this for is because it's about permac culture yes and um on YouTube at least I I've seen some truly amazing um uh projects where permaculture is applied and in the desert creating um uh unbelievable results within 6 months it involves manual labor but often doesn't involve a lot of cost because they reuse all manner of of stuff that you may already have yeah there I mean that's that's the whole idea is to use what you have available to you to work with the system that you have uh one of my favorite movies to watch that just gives you hope and it's called green gold and it's by um a director his name is Dennis Lou Li i u which that does make sense it'd be Li IU he's talked so fast that I used to have and think but he um he started up uh this is called ecosystem restoration and they go into large damaged ecosystem and have found you know with planting the Rocks the trees the bringing back the the growth here you bring that umbrella that has the soil that they've seen Springs that have come alive out of doing these kind of ecosystems and uh treat you know whatever getting the people involved in it they've done places in Africa they might have like 20 different restoration camps that are going on now but a nice thing he's working also to get get an urban ecosystem restoration to get people with houses to be a part of that to look at that soil that there's a thing when when you've put that deep of lasagna gardening or wood chip thing that you cover an area that that'll hold water equivalent to a lake that's six inches deep so you know plus it's carbon sequestering when you add these pieces back into the soil systems the carbon stays there and you know evolves as it did which is why we have oil and gas that all of those type of systems but a healthy soil ecosystem and having grown up on a on a a farmers sort of seen the progression of the damage to the soil systems en llarge but we here in the cities you can you know you can rehabilitate your areas and make a make a difference what did you say the name of the movie was green gold green gold yep and it's just on um it's a on YouTube and you can see some of his other stuff I actually every now and then I'll see you John John Dennis Lou his name um and he during covid he got stuck in California and he was bored and couldn't do anything so he was just doing a live chat and I actually yeah called in or whatever and got to talk to him um for a while about the urban ecosystem um there's a I know there's a area in California that evolved I just feel like there could be something here too and I think with David's living system Institute it's it's a local way of trying to encourage people to get together to ask questions to support each other and to care about the land soil bugs everything except for maybe those horn worms yes Peggy to what extent is buoy which is wildlands urban interface um uh criteria affecting the permaculture uh culture is it is all because I understand with buou there are zones to protect the main home on the property from fires oh that are so much a part of our environment and it probably will be going forward I just wonder to what extent wo is affecting the permaculture I would have to look deeper at at that you know I mean with with you know permaculture for sure you would I mean where your trees are matter but it it also matters for things like fires and I mean right now I have too many fences around my area I mean my house it came with them um now it does stop the wildlife habitats that might wander through but I also don't have deer eating everything like my neighbor does although the deer do jump the fence and try to wander through but between my raised beds and the kind of things that I have supporting my tomato plants they don't they can't do much damage yes CSU extension in conjunction with the Colorado State uh forest service has also it has done a great job in bringing together a little package about that on their website but they also publish lists of plants that are low flammability and that's interesting for me to learn about oh okay you think a wild a living green plant is going to enhance the as you said you know the water content around the home but I guess there's more to it yeah I think that's a big lesson there's there's a lot more considerations do you guys have any questions on anything you two up front here there's a social justice aspect also of many gardeners over produce but I know a number of gardeners also in Community Gardens we have one in Golden I hear there's one in weedd and they give produce to um food banks forance yeah there's I mean there's so many benefits I started up a meetup group of um called a golden organic Gard gardeners and I I did it for a couple years you know it's expensive on one hand but the the funny fun the enjoyable part of it in some cases was everybody that came were all new to Colorado and they all came from like South Georgia places and they would all come in with this wide-eyed how do you grow stuff here you know and you know all of us have been suffering with these things for I've come to you know understand that they have their own issues right with mold and stuff but it was sort of humorous like yeah yeah it's tough yeah it's not easy we have to be committed to get stuff growing other questions I was wondering if you could address uh watering are you using City water or do you use water catchment or even grve water okay so Colorado doesn't allow us to accept in you can get a rain barrel but it's only passing through you are not you are not saving that water in bulk for your own purposes you can't put a tank down that you can draw water off of gray water you can I had a couple friends that were doing or gu was doing a lot of that which is I love the idea of gray water they only want it really to feed trees and things not your vegetable garden so you're always aware of that I have a couple of um um attachment to my h pose that does take some of the chemicals that are in our drinking water out when you're putting them into a pond for fish or sometimes your Plants and Things um so you you always have to think about these things so is that kind of answer your question a little bit it's always great to find out any way you can use this last storm I mean the big one when we out here we got that two feet of wet wet snow which my sun pumps are really wanting to keep running we don't want power going out with this storm um so much water Colorado we tend to get the dumps and then have a month of desert right and you just oh if we could just save it but there part of the time you're just needing to get it away from your house so that you're not soaking up your basement any other questions one question annuals compared to perennials be friendly planting is they're some better than others have a list of you know things to plant that on that pollinator thing you know what I would do what I did was go into nurseries and the ones that had bees on them were the ones that I took home if I wanted to or I help me to identify ones that bees liked and then you you know most of your herbs bees love those and oregano bees love you know we have different and you can find a list in a lot of places um but but not a real difference in annual to Perennial as far as you just need ones that haven't been hybridized to be you know double Le Leaf where there's you know there's no place for the bee to go in and get the pollen you know there's lots of things like that did you want to say something G um and one final remark about today's event what I got out of it is um uh sometimes people think of Garners as um reclusive people who don't uh like um company and that's that's why they're toiling but that's actually not true there's a a lot of community involvement here because you have stuff you need to learn from uh from fellow gardeners whove been uh where you are now five years ago yeah and um so you start making these connections every day that's why we love gardening you always have hope and you can always learn something new so okay so could I have a final round of applause for thank you thank you everybody

Channel: Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES)

Views: 54

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Id: nt22PxvPSok

Length: 50min 58sec (3058 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 21 2024