Let's Talk About The Home Grown Food Summit

If you checked out the Home Grown Food Summit last week,how many presentations/talks were you able to view and what was your favorite topic? I was only able to view six presentations;last week was Spring Break for my children and I wasn't able to listen to as many talks, but I caught a few from time to time and learned some new things like harvesting rainwater and hugelkultur from Brad Lancaster.  Brad's talk wasn't just about collecting rainwater in a barrel, his talk was more about how a gardener should really consider nature when growing/caring for plants and how to collect rainwater. He says," as gardeners, we must look around at nature to see how to care for our plants." Check out this short video called Free Water with Brad in it. I love the idea of making curbs more circular to reduce downstream flooding, but most importantly it helps to feed the soil and plants around. Such a genius idea, don't you think? Here's another video of him giving an overview of water harvesting at his home. What do you think of the system? Now, I'm not at all on this type of level of collecting rainwater....I just collect rainwater for my garden, but I just like to see what others are doing in the world when it comes to conserving natural resources and Brad Lancaster is definitely a leader in the area of harvesting rainwater. Finally, Brad touched on many things in the presentation, but the word hugelkultur spiked my interest, the word is German and it means soil on wood or basically a raised bed. People that grow plants in a hugelkultur don't have to worry about watering their plants as often because as the wood begins to rot, it becomes a sponge to water, and less irrigation is needed. I might actually try this out in the top area of my backyard;however, I'll have to start it for next year's garden season and work on building the raised bed over the fall when the Atlanta area's weather is cooler to work in. I started of this conversation asking, did any of you check out  the Home Grown Food Summit  last week, and how many presentations did you listen to, and what was your favorite presentation? Well, I already shared with you, that I only got the chance to listen to six presentations, and you probably already figured that Brad Lancaster was one of my favorite speakers too. But, there was another speaker that I absolutely enjoyed as much as Mr. Lancaster, and I'll be sharing his information tomorrow because I'm still exploring his many different websites and videos. Until Next Time, Keep Growing.