Gardeners’ Question Time
Format: Horticultural experts travel to a new locale in Britain each week to consult on gardening matters with a scarily informed live audience.
What you’ll hear: “Normally when I hear of sickly oleander, I immediately think oleander scale. But seeing how the leaf is nearly entirely silver, I can say it’s definitely red spider mite.”
Listen: BBC Radio 4 or at bbc.co.uk/programmes.
Homegrown
Format: Pleasant and informative plant talk from Martha Stewart Living gardening editors Tony Bielaczyc and Stacey Hirvela.
What you’ll hear: “Don’t go grab a serving spoon to plant tulip bulbs…. Get a good trowel…. Invest in something that will last, because a long-lasting tool becomes your good garden friend…. I love all my tools!”
Listen: 9–10 a.m. Tuesdays and 1–2 p.m. Thursdays on the Sirius XM Martha Stewart Living Radio channel.
You Bet Your Garden
Format: Former Organic Gardening editor-in-chief Mike McGrath offers advice on earth-friendly plant care, pest removal, and dealing with diseases, all in an equally nontoxic manner.
What you’ll hear: “It’s a phone-call show, cats and kittens, and you know what that means: We’re takin’ that heapin’ helpin’ of your fabulous phone calls…. Welcome to You Bet Your Garden!”
Listen: NPR stations where available, WHYY.org, or at radiotime.com.
Focus on Flowers
Format: Master gardener Moya Andrews introduces her audio essays with a fact-laden flourish. Her sometimes starchily academic tone belies her clear passion and an encyclopedic knowledge of a dazzling array of topics.
What you’ll hear: “Division is an asexual, or vegetative, method of propagating plants, and when a clump of perennials is divided, the divisions yield plants that are an exact replica of the parents.… This is Moya Andrews, and today we focused on taproots.”
Listen: Public radio from Indiana University, or at indianapublicmedia.org/focusonflowers.
The Mike Nowak Show
Format: Amid music, clips from TV talk shows, and the highly distractable host’s ramblings, Mike Nowak’s focus turns to fascinating discussions of urban farming, plants, and animal biodiversity.
What you’ll hear: Worm expert: “What happens to the worms in the winter—red wigglers are not soil dwellers, so they live in organic matter, and in the winter, they’ll go dormant. They tie themselves in a knot and hope that it warms up soon. And so when it warms up in the summer, they estivate.”
Mike: “I used to estivate once, but I pulled a muscle.”
Listen: WCPT radio (820 AM in Chicago) or at mikenowak.net.
