White Strawberries
Welcome to White Strawberries, the podcast where gardening meets health and adventure, and sustainability feels joyful—not stressful.
I’m Sam, a permaculture gardener, educator, explorer on a mission to share the joy of growing and living well with the land. In each episode, we explore how to garden with purpose and laziness (I mean efficiency), curiosity, and fun. Eating a diversity of life giving foods in order to live our best in our current seasons. I get to have conversations with experts in their fields around all things nature. I know you'll learn something, and I will too!
May your strawberries be white and your curiosity never ending.
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White Strawberries
Growing Topicals in a Cold Climate | With Steve Fawcett
🌱 In this episode, I sit down with Steve Fawcett to explore Troppo — an urban tropical food forest in Te Puke. Yes, tropical plants… outdoors… in a place that gets frost and hail!
We dive into:
🍌 Bananas as mineral accumulators (and why banana lollies taste the way they do)
🌴 Air layering and how it can trigger early flowering in plants
❄️ Frost protection strategies and mulching like crazy
🌳 Why food forests build deeper community resilience than veggie beds alone
Steve’s casual style hides just how much knowledge he’s built through hands-on experimenting. From Papua New Guinea childhood memories of climbing fruit trees, to creating a lush, diverse, small-space forest garden in New Zealand, this conversation is a reminder of how much joy and abundance plants bring.
📚 Recommended for: food forest dreamers, experimental gardeners, permaculture enthusiasts, anyone curious about growing the “impossible” plants in their climate.
💡 Resources & References: