Hi, I’m Linda. Thanks so much for checking out the February 2025 edition of my Linda Be Learning newsletter. If you are just discovering me, I encourage you to check out my website to learn more about the work I do in the field of learning technology and innovation.

This year, I am being more intentional in how I’m designing this newsletter. I have worked in the tech industry since the 1990s, but I was already coding learning programs a decade before that on an Apple IIE. I’ve seen and learned a lot about this industry in terms of hardware and software, as well as technology hype and folklore. Much of what I have learned and continue to learn is just how much damage the tech industry is responsible for, and how we collectively can help turn around that damage and instead use our technology superpowers for good.

Last month, I introduced themes around this call for tech for good, looking at specific technologies and their intersections with human learning. In the January edition, the theme was terraforming, and how learning technology - machine and human learning - can be leveraged to assist with the climate change crisis.

This month, I am combining my professional work with one of my life’s great passions, and that is growing my own everything. In this month’s edition, we’ll explore technologies, teachers, and learning practices around the restorative practice of gardening.

Tech to Get Excited About

I am always discovering and exploring new tech. It’s usually:

• recent developments in tech I have worked on in the past,

• tech I am actively using myself for projects,

• tech I am researching for competitive analysis or other purposes, and/or

• my client’s tech.

This month, we’re going to look at some exciting tech used for growing individual plants and gardens. Because now more than ever, anyone who wants to should be able to grow their own food and whatever else they desire to grow, regardless of whether you have land to grow on.

Keep It Watered

Over 20 years ago, Steve Koontz received a free packet of gourd seeds and successfully grew them to abundance in a small patch of ground in the front of his house, igniting his passion for gardening. Today, Steve is an indoor gardening specialist who specializes in growing edibles on a soil-less gardening system called a Tower Garden. Tower Garden systems work well indoors and out and through his company Keep It Watered, Steve helps schools across the country purchase Tower Gardens and trains teachers how to effectively use them in their classrooms.

“The Tower Gardens have been a wonderful educational tool for our classrooms,” says Dr. Hoffert, Superintendent of Warsaw Community Schools, “and I appreciate Steve’s work greatly!”

If you are a school or business interestered in the soil-less systems or training that Steve provides, be sure to check out the Keep It Watered website for more information.

Harvest Wall

The Harvest Wall is an indoor vertical grow wall that lets you maximize your food production by making the most out of your growing space, empowering people to grow leafy greens and vegetables in a controlled environment. Harvest Wall plants grow organically with 97% less water and no usage of chemicals and pesticides. The best part of the Harvest Wall is that its scalable feature allows you to transform an existing space into your very own indoor farm.

Upon purchase of the Harvest Wall, you also gain access to the The Global Food & Farm Community by Jill Clapperton. Through this social platform, you are able to build relationships with farming experts and other farmers in the same community, helping you understand healthy practices for farming.

To learn more, check out the Harvest Today website.

Plantagotchi

Perhaps you are not yet ready to take on a whole garden, especially if you’ve had difficulty keeping houseplants alive. Enter Plantagotchi, an AI smart planter that combines the charm of a Tamagotchi with plant care. Using adorable facial features, your plant tells you exactly what it needs, whether it’s water, light or nutrients, taking the guesswork out of growing even the most challenging houseplants.

Technology for Good

In keeping with the gardening theme, this month’s Technology for Good segment features eco-friendly pest control technology and smart irrigation systems. Let’s start with pest-control technology.

As someone who has frequent wildlife guests sharing my property, I’ve had to be creative in how I keep my wild friends fed while still being able to feed myself and my family.

Organic pest control methods are generally less environmentally damaging, and less toxic to non-targeted insects, mammals and aquatic life. Always seek to use the least toxic method first, starting with creating the most hospitable growing environment for your plants. A healthy garden is the single best natural pest control there is.

But once a problem has occurred, begin by identifying the offending pest, and target a control method that only affects that pest. Microbial insecticides, insecticidal soaps and oils, diatomaceous earth, neem oil, and botanical insecticides like pyrethrin are some examples that produce excellent results when used correctly.

But what about unwanted visitors, such as birds and small animals, who might be interested in sharing your garden? Let’s look at some of that tech.

Solar Yard Guard

Solar Yard Guard is a high-tech, ultrasonic pest repeller powered by the sun, providing a humane means of keeping pest animals out of your garden without poisons or traps. It uses high-frequency soundwaves (silent to most humans) to irritate and annoy common yard pests, making them seek calmer, untreated areas. With its water and weather resistant body, it can protect up to 3,000 square feet. The Solar Yard Gard also has an optional flashing LED light and comes with a USB charging cable.

Smart Irrigation Systems

In addition to using technology to keep pests away from crops, farmers also have used technology to address water shortages, which demand an advanced irrigation approach to conserve water and reduce environmental impact. Smart irrigation is essential to enhance crop yields and maximize resource usage. Smart irrigation systems that apply the right amount of water to plants at the right time are critical for healthy plant growth.

With the increasing demand to save water, AI-based smart irrigation systems provide sustainable solutions to growers facing the challenge of increasing yields while conserving water. According to reports, AI integration in irrigation systems helps reduce water usage by up to 25%. Moreover, the use of AI technology in precision farming has maximized crop yields by 20 to 30%.

To learn more about dripline irrigation, smart irrigation systems, and their benefits, check out this blog post from DripWorks.

Tech Retrospective: Farmer Bill

In his book, “The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire,” Tim Schwab discusses Bill Gates’s efforts in monopolizing agriculture and farming, first with his experimental GMO projects in Africa as well as his buying up of American farmland. Let’s begin with Tim’s take on Africa, starting at 3:12 in the following video.

The Continent published one of the stories featured in the video, which outlines how problematic Gates’s approach has been to African agriculture. From the article:

“Bill Gates and big agribusinesses are playing god,” said Durban-based cleric Bishop Takalani Mufamadi. “They claim to be messiahs of the hungry and the poor, but they have failed dismally to deliver because of the industrialisation approach, which degrades soils, destroys biodiversity, and values corporate profit over people. It is immoral, sinful and unjust.”

Two years before the Continent’s report, the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa wrote an open letter to Gates addressing the same issues, and a year prior to that, Scientific American published an opinion piece urging Gates to stop telling Africans what kind of agriculture Africans need. Independent research substantiates and supports these positions.

In addition to the shockingly problematic efforts Gates has caused in Africa, he has been making similarly concerning inroads impacting American farmers and farmlands as well. Rather than feeding more people or helping small-scale farmers, this transactional, tech-first, industrialized approach to agriculture is one that slowly but surely transfers knowledge, agency, and ownership over food production away from farmers and into corporate control.

Gates is also contributing to the concentration of power over a key component of the U.S. food system: the land itself. Americans lose about 2,000 acres of farmland a day, giving corporations and billionaires like Gates an opportunity to consolidate even more power over our food production.

In his book Controligarchs, author and investigative journalist Seamus Bruner uncovered Gates’s efforts to buy up American farmland and invest in synthetic dairy and lab-grown meats in the name of preventing climate change. He also argues that in doing so, Gates is doing more to inflate his net worth than eliminate carbon emissions. The chapter of the book focused on “the war on farmers” and monopolizing the nation’s food supply was the topic of this 2023 article from the New York Post.

So how do we combat such efforts? Legislatively, of course, but also, and more on topic for this edition of the newsletter, is learning how to grow your own food. And in the next section on learning theory and learning technology, you will be introduced to a few more experts who can help you with your efforts.

Learning Theory and Learning Technology

Earlier in the newsletter, you were introduced to an indoor gardening specialist (Steve) as well as technologies to help you learn how to grow food indoors. But if you are looking to grow your garden outdoors, whether in an urban or rural space, two other experts immediately came to mind. Let’s meet them!

Ron Finley

Back in 2010, Ron Finley saw the neglected dirt patches next to the streets in his South Central neighborhood parkways and decided to do something about it —he started planting vegetables in them, and a horticulture revolution began.

His TedTalk and Masterclass brought greater awareness to the work he is doing, his vision of “a world where people know nutrition and where it comes from. Where all ages embrace the act of growing, knowing and sharing the best of the earth’s fresh-grown food.”

Through The Ron Finley Project, Ron teaches communities how to transform food deserts into food sanctuaries, and individuals how to regenerate their lands into creative business models. Check out Ron’s website to learn more about his work, how to get involved, and the various ways you can learn how to garden from him.

Jenn Ponder

Jenn is the owner and president of B.L.L. Culinary Gardens, a business specializing in organic culinary garden installation, consulting and coaching. She offers comprehensive in-person or virtual consultation to help you design, plan, and implement your organic culinary garden, teaching you how to prepare raised beds, start seeds, and grow your own organic food. She also offers seasonal garden coaching, teaching you what to grow with the change in seasons, so you can have fresh, seasonal produce all year round. And because she is also a professional chef, she provides in-person or virtual private chef instruction to help you fully utilize your harvest and learn new culinary skills.

With expertise in plant selection, garden design, and maintenance, Jenn ensures each garden enhances her clients' lifestyles and brings nature into their homes. She collaborates with skilled craftsmen to create sustainable gardens that yield fresh produce and vibrant blooms for families to enjoy.

In this excerpt from a recent webinar, Cultivating Together: Building Wellness Through Gardening and Community hosted by Dr. Chantell Frazier, Jenn discusses the importance of composting and using organic fertilizers and methods of pest control when growing a culinary garden.

Upcoming Learning Offerings

This is the time of year that I usually buy fruit trees, and I am doing a peer learning session locally on how to grow dwarf fruit trees with a community gardening group in the coming weeks. This article describes how to grow 20 different types of fruit trees indoors. Depending on your climate and gardening zone, you may be able to grow some or all of these outdoors as well.

While that session is a private group session, registration is now open for my first live public learning session of 2025, An Introduction to Peer Learning, scheduled for February 20th at 9 am PST. In this session, you will be introduced to an intentional methodology for designing peer learning for internal teams, the same methods I’ll be teaching the gardening group.

Be sure to register early and secure your spot! And if you want to see recordings from some of my previous live learning sessions, check out and consider subscribing to my YouTube channel.

That’s all for now. I hope you have enjoyed this month’s focus on gardening and coexisting with the natural world, two of my biggest passions.

See you next month!