Cultivating Life: New Show on KUEN

While I was playing with my son and waiting for my wife to come home from work, I started flipping through the channels. Normally I don't like to watch commercial television in the evenings, because nothing seems to keep my interest anymore. But tonight, at 9:00 PM on KUEN (Channel 9), I found a show that really interested me. It's called Cultivating Life, and appears to be a fairly new show on Public Television.

It started with images of ducks and geese walking on a lawn, gardens, beautiful pictures of rubarb plants and other excellent vegetables. Naturally, this piqued my interest. The show seemed to be something of a mix between Martha Stewart, Essence of Emeril, and This Old House. There wasn't a lot that seemed to be relevant to my projects, until they interviewed an urban farmer in the New York area. It was just a quick interview, but it was enough to get me to check out their website.

Once there, I only saw one gardening project that seemed really interesting. That is Vegetables in Containers. It basically takes a tomato plant, an eggplant, and several Basil plants to build up a nice little garden in a pot about the size of a whiskey barrel. The yield was rather good, and I love each of those plants.

Why did this interest me? Because square foot gardening is the best way to get a high yield of food within a small space. And with the loss of my greenhouse, I need as much space as I can get. Whiskey barrels are well suited for this type of gardening, and by seeing the project done elsewhere gives more of a sense of surety of investment in the overall project.

There are a lot of other projects that are there for the more "crafty" person, perfect for a craft night. The gardening projects are also interesting, and I think they can be easily duplicated using more natural materials (i.e., a-frame supports for tomatoes can be made with willow wicker, instead of metal fencing). Anyway, If you are interested in small-scale gardening projects, I recommend you check out the website or watch the show. It's really quite interesting, and the recipes they offer sound really good! ^_^