I’ve been writing about garden myths for about 15 years, and there are still many more that need attention. I have over 300 started posts that could be finished.
However….. I am also interested in a wider range of myths and it is time to widen the scope of my myth busting.
You might have noticed I have started writing about food and food nutrition myths, and even climate change. So far I have dabbled in these but now it’s time to follow this interest more deeply.
I have decided to start a new venture called Reality Time.
Reality Time
Reality Time will focus on a wider range of subjects including food, health, nutrition, environmental science, climate change and we might even touch on social issues such as government regulations, trade and finance.
For example:
- A lot of health information is complete garbage and not science-based. We know almost nothing about the gut biome, and yet companies are making all kinds of claims.
- The Dirty Dozen (contaminated fruits and veg) are perfectly safe to eat.
- Did you know the tongue map is a myth?
We’ll be publishing new material through a new set of channels so that we don’t dilute the gardening information at Garden Myths and Garden Fundamentals.
You can find Reality Time in the following places:
- YouTube
- Substack (a type of blogging platform)
- Spotify is our main podcast platform (also on iHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts)
I Need Your Help
To get this project off the ground, I am going to ask you for some help.
If you like my work and want to continue supporting me, please:
- Go to our new YouTube channel and watch a video, and subscribe. By subscribing, you feed the YouTube algorithm, which will then promote our videos to more people.
- Subscribe to our Substack Channel. This will keep you updated on new releases. I plan to keep Substack free for all users and all I ask is for you to sign up.
- Podcasts. If you prefer receiving your information via podcasts, please sign up for the above anyway. Getting our subscriber numbers up, does help us to promote the work.
Thank you very much for all your support over the years.
What About Garden Myths?
I will take a couple of months off and focus on Reality Time, but then I will return to writing about more garden myths. There is a lot more work to do in the gardening genre.
Robert,
I’ve learned a lot (or actually, un-learned a lot of misinformation) from your blog and books.
I know that you have many topics that you’d like to write about, but here are some additional suggestions:
* Medicine. I’m not talking about weird “alternative medicine” but about conventional doctors who expose the side effects of many drugs (or how their effect is only marginally better than a placebo.) Two books you may want to review: “Confessions of a Medical Heretic” by Robert Mendelsohn ,M.D. (1979) and “The Great Cholesterol Myth” by Jonny Bowden, Ph.D. and Stephen Sinatra, M.D. (2012.) Both are out of print but you should be able to buy a used copy or borrow one through interlibrary loan (ask your local library.)
* Religion. Two religions, founded in the U.S., advertise themselves as “Christian” when in fact their beliefs are much different than what Christians believe. My criticism is not of their beliefs, but of the way they hide them when trying to gain new converts.
I’m providing my email when posting this. Please do not publish my email or put me on an email list. Thanks.
Hi Robert,
One area where you could really help is to provide a timeline for what to do, and when. For example, I live in Minneapolis, north of you in Ontario. So it would be great to learn how you put your lawn and gardens to bed for winter…and when.
I consult the University of Minnesota’s website for information, but it’s often too vague. For example – lawn mowing. Much of the internet claims it’s best to mow northern grasses lower on the final mows of the season – various reasons are cited. But others, including the University of MN., say it’s best to stay consistently at a 3″ cutting height. Again, reasons are cited. What do you recommend?
Most websites advocate core aeration for heavy clay soils. Yet some academic websites claim the benefits are minimal to none, and that the heavy machinery actually compacts the soil further. So I’ve stopped. I’ve saved money and effort renting and transporting the heavy equipment, and see no ill-effects from not aerating. What say you, Robert?
I have a vegetable and flower gardens. I cut the plant tops off onto the soil but leave the dead plant roots in place to decompose, and then add leaves and compost to over-winter. Some of this decomposes over the winter. I use the remainder as mulch for Spring planting.
Thanks to you, I’m generally a no-dig gardener.
Please provide us northern gardeners with your advice on what to do and timing, Robert.
All the best,
-Steve-
https://www.gardenmyths.com/does-core-aeration-on-lawns-work/
Robert,
I and others don’t watch you tube, podcasts, etc. and like to read the printed word. I’ve looked at the substack webpage and it’s loaded with all kinds of photos and what-have-you which consume bandwidth (I use a cellular data plan.)
Have you condidered just having awritten transcriptas your current gardenmyths. com blog?
I think you are confusing my sites.
1) Reality Time Substack articles are delivered to your email account and contain no images, unless you have images turned on, in which case you get the one or two images that are part of the article.
2) If you go directly to Substack and look at an article you will see the same as #1 with the few images in the article. For example: https://realitytime.substack.com/p/gmo-myths-understand-the-truth-about
3) If you go to my blog GardenMyths.com you will see advertisements. Those ads help pay for the cost of running a website, which is no longer trivial.
One of the reasons I selected Substack for Reality Time instead of a blog, is to eliminate the need for ads.
Will you have a separate newsletter and/or rss feed for this new endeavor? I hope so, as that is how I follow things, and I don’t see that in the list of options you’ve presented.
Garden Myths, Garden Fundamentals and Reality Time will all be separate.
If you subscribe to Reality Time on Substack you will get new articles as emails directly into your email system.
If you subscribe to Reality Time on YouTube, and select the bell, you should get a notification from YouTube when new videos are published.
You can subscribe to substack here: https://realitytime.substack.com/
For YouTube, watch a video and subscribe at the bottom of the video.
Have you noticed the decline in bees and other bugs over the last how ever many years? Do you believe that chem trails are affecting our gardens and do you believe, fill on the blank, is doing geo engineering experiments on the world as a whole? Side note, hundreds of predictions concerning global warming, cooling, climate change have been presented and not one has come true, we may be warming a bit, yes but ready to burn up and die and must give my money to stop it, not a chance, what is your take on this WEF subject for control of humanity
“Do you believe that chem trails are affecting our gardens” – no. But building your home and street are having a huge impact.
This is the most complete quality information I’ve found on growing food plants in raised beds. I was floundering around with fake, incomplete, non credible sources of junk info. When I found this channel, everything changed. Following the guidelines and reading the books, I started growing so much food, I had to give it away because I couldn’t preserve it fast enough. And I haven’t even scratched the surface of what I can learn here. It’s like taking a college course on agriculture. Truly a wealth of knowledge that’s immediately useful. Get the books, watch the videos, read the emails. The education you get here, from what I see, is invaluable if you want to learn about plants, agriculture or anything connected to it. Don’t take my word for it, just get started, find out for yourself,
Thank you very much.
If you will be writing about nutrition, have you already encountered Zoe? If not, you might like to check it out.
I have been watching Zoe. Seems to be valid info, but I’ll still check what they say.