Tech Table Thursday, March 27, 2014
March 27, 2014
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise, it’ll be easy to digest.
Justin: It’s Thursday, Diana.
Diana: It is Thursday.
Justin: Here at the Tech Table we like to bring you fun and refreshing things on Thursday.
Diana: Different themes, different topics.
Justin: So today is Garden Hacks. I don’t really know what ‘hacks’ refers to. Is that like, ‘I’m a hack’?
Diana: Remember Lifehacker? When we talked about Lifehacker dot com?
Justin: Oh, yeah.
Diana: Basically secrets, tips.
Justin: Hints.
Diana: Ways to get around stuff.
Justin: When I was a kid we had a garden, a big garden out back on the farm. It was always great until you had to go out there in the sweltering heat. Mom would make me pick all of the green beans. It was even worse when Grandma oversaw it because Grandma was like all about, ‘You missed one. You missed one there. You missed one.’ You had to get everyone. It was intense.
Diana: You don’t want it to go to waste.
Justin: No, I know. I realize that. It seemed like hard time to me though when I was eight years old.
Diana: It means you’re a better person.
Justin: We tried to have a garden.
Diana: Doesn’t go very well.
Justin: You wouldn’t know. You’ve never seen it.
Diana: Oh.
Justin: No. It’s true. But I didn’t have time for it either and then Mom ended up coming over taking…
Diana: Taking care of the garden.
Justin: Exactly. So it just did not work well but people do enjoy gardening. And I think it’s a great thing.
Diana: Oh, yeah.
Justin: But it does take time. It’s almost time to plant that garden, it’s springtime. So we’ve got a few web finds here that maybe will give you some tips we’ve found.
Diana: Do you have limited sun? Here are 15 plants that need only four hours of direct sunlight. You might have a garden back behind a shed or something. Here’s the list: kale, beets, parsley, cilantro, scallions, lettuce, garlic, spinach, bok choi, mustard greens, chard, parsnips, carrots, potatoes and arugula.
Justin: Arugula. I always like arugula. I always like to say that.
Diana: Those will be okay if you have limited sun.
Justin: I did not know that about lettuce.
Diana: I didn’t either.
Justin: Interesting. What kind of lettuce, do you know?
Diana: I don’t. It just said lettuce.
Justin: Just lettuce.
Diana: Maybe any lettuce.
Justin: I don’t know. We had romaine and it did really well but it was mostly sunny. I don’t know. So you want to keep mosquitoes away?
Diana: Yes, please.
Justin: Put a couple of containers on your deck with this combination of plants and these are known to repel mosquitoes. So instead of burning citronella candles and all that stuff that they have which, frankly, irritates me.
Diana: You can just grow stuff.
Justin: You might as well have a bonfire. I don’t know. You can do a citronella geranium. I love geraniums. Marigold, a variety of the lemon gem will get rid of mosquitoes. That’s interesting. Lemon grass, catnip.
Diana: Good old catnip.
Justin: That’s really interesting. And then lemon thyme also. Interesting. So those will help repel mosquitoes. So if you put those in a nice pot on your deck they’ll help to repel the mosquitoes. Very cool.
Diana: Here’s a cool thing that would be helpful for people like us who don’t have time to do a lot and eat things immediately. Freeze fresh herbs in olive oil. Toss them in a pan when you’re ready to use them and never waste fresh herbs again.
Justin: I’ve seen this. Exactly. So when you grow the fresh herbs then you put them in olive oil and freeze them and then you toss them in the pan when you need to use them and they’re like cubes and it just works beautifully. I’ve seen that. I love that tip. There are a lot of tips on the web so take a look around and find some of these garden hacks. Until next time.
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table is brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at askMPA.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments please send them to questions@askMPA.com. That’s questions@askMPA.com.
Justin: And thanks for listening.
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