Davis Garden Show
The Davis Garden Show is a live call-in radio program (created Thurs at Noon, re-airing Sat. at 9:00 am) on KDRT-LP (95.7-FM), featuring Don Shor and Lois Richter chatting about gardening in Davis and answering questions from listeners. Folks can call in, ask a question thru the show's email, meet up with Don on the street, ask Facebook questions, or leave a note at the DavisWiki's Garden Questions page. Each radio show re-airs on Saturday morning at 9:00am and is always available — archived at KDRT.org and DavisGardenShow.com and podcast thru iTunes.
2020-2021 note: During the CoViD-19 pandemic, the station has been closed and shows are produced at home -- so there is no "call-in" available. Instead, people send their questions to [email protected] and Don'Lois read them into their recording later.
Don Shor and Lois Richter first started chatting on DCTV (Davis Community Television), when Lois asked Don to come next door and talk about plants on her hour-long tv show. (The station is next door to Don's business, Redwood Barn Nursery, and for years he has been helping decorate the sets of various tv producers.) After having done about a dozen gardening episodes as part of Lois' "Thoughtfulness" television show, the opportunity came up for them to join in the brand-new local radio station — KDRT-LP — and the Davis Garden Show was born. (That was supposed to be a temporary name while we came up with a catchier title, but we never found anything better. Sort of like how the Davis Fire Crew ended up with its name!) Lois got so wrapped up in doing WEEKLY radio, that she has stopped doing the monthly tv show altogether.
Lois was designing websites when the radio show got started, and had heard about a new (3-month-old) tech-thing — a 'podcast' — and so she set up their show as one of the first RSS podcast feeds around. Podcasts are still available (as are MP3 files) on the Davis Garden Show website. Now KDRT also has 'streaming radio' so the show can be heard LIVE around the world. (Starting KDRT radio streaming means downloading and opening the file http://davismedia.org:8000/kdrt.m3u )
The biggest problem with radio? It is sometimes hard to "describe" plants over the air, although Lois is always willing to try! So Don added to the original show website and has created a place for a photo each week — usually a 'featured plant'. Occasionally there will also be a link to some other site that has been featured on that week's show.
Suggestions for topics are always welcome. As are questions.
(this article written by co-host Lois Richter)