Food Garden Life Show: Helping You Harvest More from Your Edible Garden, Vegetable Garden, and Edible Landscaping

The revised fig book is now on Kickstarter
The special hardcover edition of Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t and registration for the October 15 and 22 Fig Camp are available now. A lower-priced softcover will follow this fall.
See the book and Fig Camp options.
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Pawpaw season is nearly here—and this week we’re revisiting a conversation with one of the people responsible for bringing this remarkable fruit back into the spotlight.
Neal Peterson is sometimes called the Indiana Jones of pawpaws. After tasting his first pawpaw, he became fascinated by a fruit that had once attracted considerable attention from plant breeders but had largely fallen into obscurity.
Peterson dug through old horticultural records and tracked down surviving trees from early breeding programs. Those discoveries became the foundation of his own pawpaw breeding work.

In this episode, Emma and Steven talk with Neal about:
His first taste of pawpaw—and why it changed the direction of his life 
His search for nearly forgotten pawpaw varieties 
How pawpaws grow in the wild 
Why pawpaws fruit better in sun than in deep shade 
Pollination and the need for two genetically distinct trees 
Growing two pawpaw trees in a small garden 
Choosing early-ripening varieties for colder climates 
Why wild pawpaws can be very seedy 
How Peterson bred pawpaws with more flesh and fewer seeds 
Growing pawpaws from seed 
Caring for young pawpaw trees 
Managing suckers from grafted trees 
Pawpaws are understorey trees in the wild, but that doesn’t mean shade is the best place for fruit production. Neal explains why trees growing in brighter locations are usually more productive.
He also shares a wonderfully practical space-saving suggestion: if your garden is small, plant two genetically different pawpaw trees only a couple of feet apart.
A 2026 update
Neal no longer sells pawpaw trees or fruit directly. He continues his breeding work, and the Peterson Pawpaws website provides growing information and lists nurseries offering his varieties.

The revised fig book is now on Kickstarter
The special hardcover edition of Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t and registration for the October 15 and 22 Fig Camp are available now. A lower-priced softcover will follow this fall.
See the book and Fig Camp options.
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Bob Duncan showed Canadian gardeners that the line between possible and impossible isn’t always where we think it is.
At Fruit Trees and More, the nursery and demonstration orchard he ran with his wife, Verna, on Vancouver Island, Bob grew figs, lemons, olives, yuzu, loquats, feijoas and many other fruits that gardeners might not expect to see growing in Canada.
Bob was also extraordinarily generous with his knowledge. I wrote about his work in my books about growing figs, lemons and olives—and turned to him many times with questions.
In this special tribute episode, I’ve gone back through recordings from my visits and conversations with Bob. Some were made while we walked through his garden; others come from longer interviews about citrus and unusual fruit.
You’ll hear Bob talk about:
His enormous Meyer lemon tree, which produced more than 400 lemons annually
Why keeping a citrus tree alive is different from bringing its fruit to harvest
His focus on breba figs
Growing olives on Vancouver Island
Why yuzu is especially well suited to coastal British Columbia
The danger of keeping container-grown citrus too wet
The thinking that led him to try growing these unlikely fruits in the first place
Near the end of one of our conversations, Bob summed up his approach in five words:
“So I thought to myself, ‘Let’s try it.’”
Bob died on July 20, 2026. My condolences go to Verna, Bob’s family, and the many gardeners who learned from him. 
You can read more about Bob’s remarkable life—and find details of the August 24 celebration of life—in his obituary.

The revised fig book is now on Kickstarter
The special hardcover edition of Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t and registration for the October 15 and 22 Fig Camp are available now. A lower-priced softcover will follow this fall.
See the book and Fig Camp options.
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Wild food doesn’t have to mean subsistence food.
Robin Henderson, author of The Neighborhood Forager: A Guide for the Wild Food Gourmet, joins Steve and his daughter Emma to talk about what he calls gastronomic foraging: gathering wild plants for the interesting flavours and foods they bring to the table.

Robin grew up hearing family stories about earlier generations who foraged. Later, as urban growth engulfed the area where he lived, he began noticing the abundance of edible plants still growing around him.

In this conversation, we explore neighbourhood foraging, gathering food through the seasons—even in winter—and turning familiar wild plants into memorable food and drink.
Robin shares ideas for:
Elderflower champagne 
Sumac lemonade 
Sorrel paste and sorrel soup 
Spruce beer 
Dandelion salad and dandelion-root coffee 
Lambs quarters 
Winter foraging 
This interview was originally recorded in 2020 and is co-hosted by Steve’s daughter, Emma Biggs.

Book mentioned:  The Neighborhood Forager: A Guide for the Wild Food Gourmet by Robert K. Henderson

The revised fig book is now on Kickstarter
The special hardcover edition of Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t and registration for the October 15 and 22 Fig Camp are available now. A lower-priced softcover will follow this fall.
See the book and Fig Camp options.
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Food plants are usually assigned to the vegetable patch, while ornamental borders are expected to sit there and look respectable. Garden designer Harry Holding sees no good reason for such strict garden zoning.
Harry is the author of Eat Your Garden: Edimentals as a Beautiful, Low-Effort Way to Grow Food. Edimentals are plants that are both edible and ornamental, allowing us to grow food throughout a garden without giving up colour, texture, structure, or beauty. Harry is the founder of Harry Holding Studio, and his School Food Matters Garden at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show received a Silver-Gilt medal and the People’s Choice Award. 
In this conversation, Harry explains how edible plants can create a foraging or grazing experience right outside the door. We talk about designing in layers, using constraints to make plant choices easier, and creating ecologically rich plant communities that cover the soil and leave less room for weeds.

Harry also shares ideas for small gardens, courtyards, balconies, and containers. His approach is to imagine the space planted first, then carve out the paths, seating areas, morning-coffee spots, and evening gin-and-tonic headquarters.
We talk about:
What an edimental plant is 
Why food can be a gateway to connecting with nature 
Combining edible plants with ornamental garden design 
Structural plants, seasonal highlights, and ground-cover layers 
Using colour, texture, height, and growing conditions as useful constraints 
Designing abundant edible gardens in small spaces 
Why annual vegetables sometimes struggle in established perennial plantings 
Questioning gardening rules and learning through experiments 
How to begin adding edimentals to an existing garden 
Harry also talks about some fascinating edible ornamentals, including Saskatoon berries, sea kale, sochan, king’s spear, Korean aster, citron daylily, lamb’s ear, hostas, chives, and bladder campion.

His parting advice is simple: make a little room, try unfamiliar plants, and grow what brings you joy. A garden should not become another stern supervisor. It should be a place that makes your heart sing.

The revised fig book is now on Kickstarter
The special hardcover edition of Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t and registration for the October 15 and 22 Fig Camp are available now. A lower-priced softcover will follow this fall.
See the book and Fig Camp options.
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In this episode, Steven revisits a 2020 conversation with farmer, author, photographer, and urban agriculture pioneer Michael Ableman.
Ableman is the co-founder of Vancouver’s Sole Food Street Farms, an urban farming project that turns city land into productive growing space while creating meaningful work and community connection. His book Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting Up a Successful Urban Farm shares practical lessons from that work, including how to find land, choose crops, build markets, navigate regulations, raise funds, and engage the community.
This is not just a conversation about growing vegetables in unlikely places. It’s about what happens when food growing becomes a way to rethink land, work, dignity, neighbourhoods, and the purpose of a farm.
For home gardeners, there’s a useful reminder here: gardens are never only about yield. They can feed people, yes. But they can also create beauty, connection, routine, and purpose.  
In this episode:
Why urban farming is more than putting raised beds on pavement 
How Sole Food Street Farms uses farming to create jobs and community 
What urban farmers need to think about beyond growing crops 
Lessons from Farm the City
Why food gardens can be practical, social, and quietly radical 
What home gardeners can learn from urban farms, even on a much smaller scale