185 What's Lasagna Gardening? Potato Planting. Fruit Trees vs Lawns

Show Transcript

Ep. 185 TRANSCRIPT What's Lasagna Gardening? Potato Planting. Fruit Trees vs Lawns

Farmer Fred  0:00  

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot. 

Farmer Fred  0:32  

You’ve heard of No-Till gardening. How about No-Dig gardening? Or creating a Lasagne garden? Emily Murphy, author of the book, Grow Now, explains.  In our Question and Answer segment, one listener wants to know if it is too late to plant potatoes, and how to prepare the soil for potatoes? As we like to say on this podcast, it depends. Master Garden Gail Pothour has the answer, with all the variables.  And in a quick tip, we find out why you don’t want to grow your fruit trees in the middle of your lawn.  We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. And we will do it all in under 30 minutes. Let’s go!  

THE NO-DIG GARDEN

Farmer Fred  1:25  

In a couple of recent podcast episodes, we talked with Emily Murphy, author of the book, "Grow Now". Among the topics we covered included regenerative gardening and knowing your nature quotient, how better to understand the rhythms of your plants, how they grow, and everything that interacts with the life of those plants, and that includes your soil. A healthy soil leads to healthier plants. And one technique to improve the health of your soil is to forgo rototilling, which does more damage than good to the underground biology of your soil. It’s called no-till, a practice that has taken hold in the world of agriculture, especially among producers of organic crops. But the practice of No-Till isn’t just for your bare ground. In this chat with Emily Murphy, she explains how keeping your soil undisturbed as much as possible can be applied to your raised beds and container plants. She calls it, no-dig. And she talks about a way to build your soil without having to purchase bags or yards of potting mix. It’s called lasagna gardening.     

Emily Murphy  2:32  

And the other way to tackle no-dig is is not just by growing in the ground, but it's also to use no-dig techniques in raised beds and containers. The idea is that instead of sourcing soil for a raised bed, a larger bed, the typical rule of thumb is to use 50-50 compost to topsoil, that's kind of a general rule of thumb for filling raised beds, that's fine. Oftentimes, soil is sourced from places that have been excavated for building sites and whatnot. So it's already getting moved. But you know, when you think about it, soil does have to come from somewhere, and it's disturbing soil somewhere else, when it's excavated, it releases carbon to the atmosphere, disturbs that soil ecosystem, which is valuable to wherever that soil came from. Instead of moving soil from one place to another which also takes a lot of fossil fuels to move a heavy load of soil. Instead, we can compost in place and use lasagna gardening or "hugelkultur", which is a German word for layering organic matter in place, sort of in situ and planting in that. And I show how to do that in "grow now". It's a really simple technique. It's the same technique I use to fill my raised beds. If anyone follows me on social media, you'll see the garden that I built a year ago this month and I filled them with this lasagna gardening technique and it's composting sticks and twigs on the bottom, followed by a layer of brown material, a layer of green material, then a layer browns, etc. Then I save the fine compost for the top. I did have to bring in compost because it was a new yard, a new garden. And I didn't have time to make any, but I sourced it locally. I'm really lucky I have West Marin compost, not far from here, it's about a mile away. I save that fine compost for the soil surface and planted in it. And three months later I had this incredible start of a summer garden and you can plant intensively and it's so so simple and so empowering. Wow. What a gift to be given to these techniques, to make it so easy and immediately get you off on the right foot towards success in those raised beds.

Farmer Fred  4:55  

Do you even have to fertilize the plants?

Emily Murphy  4:58  

You know, I didn't. The only thing I do is I add  compost to a few places. Otherwise I put in a cover crop of fava beans where I wasn't growing greens, I will add a layer of compost with manures in it this spring and I'm in the process of doing that. I'm a little behind because of the release  of the book, Grow Now, which came out February 1. And as you can imagine, it's been a wild ride with the bookmaking and with anything in your garden, you have to prioritize, you don't have time for everything. And I've decided to focus on since I have the garden, the veggie garden in place, I decided to put most of my attention towards the rewilding project out front, knowing that I can get to the veggie garden with time because I'm in California and the growing season so long.

Farmer Fred  5:50  

Yes, indeed. Well, the benefits of just keeping applying the mulch like you do, as it breaks down, it feeds the soil. And if it's one thing I say a lot on this podcast, you're not feeding plants, you're feeding the soil, which in turn will feed the plants.

Emily Murphy  6:05  

Absolutely, that's exactly what I say as well. And that's what I say in Grow Now. You're really feeding the soil ecosystem, which you'll read in Grow Now. Part of the regenerative process is not just supporting biodiversity, but really beginning this decadal process of pulling carbon from the atmosphere and putting it underground. One of the studies I found so interesting, when I started writing Grow Now, was the study out of UC Davis, it was a 20-year study looking at the reality of sequestering carbon underground. Can we really do it? Does it really work? Do regenerative practices work to sequester carbon and sequester carbon at a depth and sequester stable carbon? And they found over this 20 year study, yes, it does. And they found, Yes, with keeping living roots in the ground, which is a tenet of regenerative growing as well, with the use of cover crops is vitally important. And that supports biodiversity. It keeps living roots in the ground. And those roots feed the soil as well, through the root exudates, which is a big term, but it's described in Grow Now. But more importantly, it was the application of compost of feeding the soil compost that really drove this carbon sequestration process. And what the writers of the research said was, they said that it could even be a half an inch to an inch of compost over a landscape that has the power to sequester carbon. And when we approach our landscapes, with this layer of compost, and a no-dig approach, we're able to maintain those carbon stores underground, in a stable fashion for  many years. Now, it can take time. It's again, a decadal process, but it's possible. And the benefits are immediate, because when we feed the soil,  we're feeding the biodiversity in the soil and the soil ecology, which then feeds our plants, helps us to grow gardens much easier. Soils do much of the work for us, keeping our plants resilient, and feeds the ecology above the ground in many ways, because there's this feed forward loop.

Farmer Fred  6:07  

So I would imagine,  since you talked about lasagna gardening, that this compost layer goes on top of your soil and then you're covering that with some sort of mulch in order to keep flying weed seeds from germinating in that very fine compost.

Emily Murphy  8:27  

Absolutely. And the type of mulch you use depends upon what you plan to grow. So we were talking about rules of thumb earlier, the typical rule of thumb with the mulch you choose is based upon what it is you're growing. So,if you're growing trees and shrubs, particularly native trees and shrubs, the idea is to mulch with materials that are similar to that or  mulch that's made up of materials that are similar to the plants you're growing. And so it can be more woody debris, such as leaves, as the primary source of of compost making or mulch making. But with a veggie garden, you want to use a compost that is more for a veggie garden. When you're prepping for a veggie garden, you want to use a compost that is more in keeping with the plants you're going to grow again. So a compost that's been made out of kitchen scraps, for instance, or kitchen scraps and leaves and other organic materials, a compost that has been fed kitchen scraps. And I think that's a pretty easy parallel to follow when you're considering, "well which type of mulch should I use?" And that's one place to start. And of course, whatever's local is also a really good place to start. Exactly. Yes, you can source it in your own garden or your neighbor's garden if your neighbor has leaves, that's wonderful. Use those leaves,

Farmer Fred  9:44  

Which is why I use the oak leaves that fall every November and December in my neighborhood and grind them up, either with my mower or with a string trimmer and place those on top of my raised beds for the winter. But before I put those leaves down, I put down a layer of worm castings, directly on top of the soil. And then top that with the oak leaf mulch that's been ground up. And you talked about in your book, too, in the book, "Grow Now", you talk about Vermicomposting, basically making that compost you're talking about via the worms, using a worm bin, and the book also has great instructions on even starting a compost pile as well. Now, you mentioned earlier that people can follow you on social media, we need to know where.

Emily Murphy  10:27  

People can find me, Emily Murphy, at passthepistil.com.  That's the name of my website, pass the pistil.com. And I'm primarily on Twitter and Instagram. And sometimes on Facebook, I'm on Facebook too. I do have some Pinterest boards. But I spend most of my time on Instagram and Twitter, talking about all of these, these topics of growing and the power of growing and the benefits of growing not just for our gardens, but for ourselves and for growing resilient communities and eventually then a resilient planet and place for ourselves, our families and our children's children to enjoy and appreciate.

Farmer Fred  11:13  

And we should point out that the pistol you refer to, P-I-S-T-I-L, is the female part of the flower.

Emily Murphy  11:19  

That's right. That's right. That was the play on words. My husband and I, years ago, when I started my blog, that's how I started. I thought, Okay, I want to write a book one day, and to write a book, I have to start writing. And I started my blog for that reason to give myself a challenge or the goal of writing something every week. So I could improve as a writer, we were trying to think of, okay, if I were to have a blog, what would I name my blog, and it went back to and I talked about this in my bio and my website, it went back to something my mom would say that I can't say on your podcast, it was bleep or get off the pot. And it was her way of saying, you know, if you're gonna do something, just do it, just get to it. And I had been thinking about really wanting to return to growing. I'd studied ethnobotany, botany, as I mentioned earlier, but I spent a number of years after college, teaching, and I was a classroom teacher and I reached a point where I really missed working with plants more directly. I love being a teacher, I learned so much from it. I think my years as a classroom teacher, I taught everything from eighth grade math and science to multi age classrooms. But I think that those years as a teacher really helped me take so many ideas and distill them into one book. And Grow Now is so full of a wide range of ideas, and not just the How to, but the why to. And I think that does come from my my background, but there was a time when I realized it wasn't enough and I'd had to get back to the plant world. And that's when I started my blog and I studied garden design. I went to the California School of Garden Design in the foothills, near Auburn, California and learned so much there. And that was really my launch point. But pass the pistil was my way of saying okay, get to it, get to it. Now if you're going to do it, you really want to do it, just do it and start somewhere. And this is how it evolved. Grow, eat, love, and pass it on. Sow what you love and pass the pistil, pass the flower and all that you grow and share it with others.

Farmer Fred  13:29  

Emily Murphy, the author of the book, "Grow Now" has been with us. We've covered a lot of topics. And you can find more information in her latest book, "Grow Now', available wherever you find your books. Emily, thank you so much for spending part of your day with us.

Emily Murphy  13:43  

Yeah, thank you. It's an absolute pleasure.

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Farmer Fred  13:45  

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Coming up in Friday’s Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Newsletter, Beyond the Basics, we listen to some of the things said that caught my attention from the two Garden Basics podcasts released this week, Episodes 184 and 185.

In our chat with Houseplant Warrior author Raffaele DiLallo about cold climate houseplant care, he mentioned that he grows tropical plants, outdoors, at his home in Cleveland, Ohio. That caught my attention. In the newsletter, we hear how he goes about succeeding at that seemingly frustrating task.

In Episode 185, Emily Murphy talked about her new book, Grow Now. Here in the newsletter, we will find out the how and the why of her technique of matching various mulches to particular plants.

Sacramento County Master Gardener Pam Bone will give you a lot of good reason NOT to plant a fruit tree in a lawn. But, if you must, she has some ideas on how to do it successfully. Another excerpt from the Garden Basics podcast in which we do a deeper dive in the Garden Basics Beyond Basics newsletter.

And in the newsletter, I get personal, talking about this week’s anniversary for me: the 10th year after quadruple bypass heart surgery and a diagnosis of full blown Type 2 diabetes. But I’m still going strong, thanks to working in the garden and growing the right, high fiber fruits and vegetables. And riding a bike as well, of course. Of course.

Take a stroll through the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, Beyond the Basics. Find a link in the podcast show notes; or, at garden basics dot net. Click on the tab at the top of that page.

Think of it as your garden resource that goes beyond the basics. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And it’s free. Please subscribe and share it with your gardening friends and family. The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you for listening.

POTATO GROWING TIPS

Kat in Marysville  15:39  

"Yes, I was wondering about something I read online. I'm planning to plant some potatoes. I'm a little late. So I became a little concerned when I read online that you have to prepare your raised bed a month ahead. I was just wondering, is that absolutely gospel? Can I plant sooner than that? I'm just using compost and a little fertilizer. I'm kind of double digging. I'm not using a rototiller, unless you think I should, but I am trying to be gentle, so I can plant sooner. I'd like to be able to plant in like a week. Is that possible? Thank you."

Farmer Fred  16:26  

Well, we just heard from Kat in Marysville, California in the Sacramento Valley north of Sacramento. Gail Pothour is here, Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert. What about Kat and her potato bed? Do you need to prep that a month ahead? And she mentioned that she might be doing it a little bit late for here in our area of California. Winter is potato planting time.

Gail Pothour  16:51  

End of February, March, you can do it into April, it sort of depends on the variety you're growing, if it's an early season, or late season. The ones that were growing at the Horticulture Center, actually is a late season variety, 120 to 140 days from sprouting to harvest. So we're going to be growing them through the heat of summer, which is not ideal for potatoes. They tend to suffer when it's so hot and dry. But the variety we have, we can't plant til early March and it'll probably be harvested in July or August. But you can still plant potatoes through I'd say, mid-April. So about now, as long as it's not a late season variety.

Farmer Fred  17:27  

All right, and what sort of bed prep do they need? Do you really have to start prepping the soil a month? 

Gail Pothour  17:33  

Well, I was curious when I heard that, because I'm wondering if perhaps Kat read some information about turning in cover crops, maybe this article related to cover crops. Because you would want to get that turned under and wait a month before you planted or if it was adding some fresh manure, you would not want to plant right away, you'd need to let it kind of decompose. So I don't know exactly what the article she read was about. In my home garden. And here at the Horticulture Center, we prep the beds and plant right away. So the fertilizer we use is a composted chicken manure that's 4-3-3 or 4-3-2. So it's already composted, we don't have any issues with burning the plants, we add compost, and as long as you have friable soil, nothing to dense or clay-like, it should be fine. And I don't know about waiting a month. It is not necessary unless it's something that you added to the soil that needs to decompose first.

Farmer Fred  18:34  

You're growing all your potatoes here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in either large containers or raised beds, so the soil is going to warm up quicker. The soil temperature plays a key when you plant potatoes.

Gail Pothour  18:44  

It does. Because if it's too cold, they might sit there and rot if it's wet. Potatoes are a cool season crop and they are sensitive to temperatures. So the ideal temperature for soil temperature for potatoes I think is like 50 to 80 with the optimum being about 60 or 65 degrees. One of the problems we're going to have is growing them through the summer. Our soil temperatures are going to get a little hotter. So we'll mulch with straw, maybe provide some shade cloth, keep them evenly moist, not too wet, because they can rot. But you don't want them to dry out, you'll start getting knobby potatoes if they dry out, and then you start watering them again. So soil temperature is critical. The air temperature is pretty critical. You don't want it too cold. As you can see, Fred, we had some really cold temperatures a couple nights ago and so our potatoes got a  little frosted but they should be fine going into the summer. If it's too hot, provide some shade for them.

Farmer Fred  19:39  

What about the quality of the soil itself? Now maybe Kat's problem there in Marysville, since it is a rice growing region, maybe it's a heavy clay soil that stays too wet. I would think potatoes need good drainage.

Gail Pothour  19:51  

They do need good drainage. Because  the tuber can rot. You are planting a piece of a potato in the ground; it's not a seed or a plant. And if the soil is too cold and too wet, that tuber can rot before it starts sprouting, thus becoming a potato plant. So it's critical to have good drainage. We grow in wine barrels for good drainage, or in raised beds, I do the same at my home because I have clay soil. So raised beds with good, good drainage is perfect for potatoes.

Farmer Fred  20:22  

You had mentioned in a conversation with me earlier that you've been conversing with relatives or friends back east, and they haven't even started planting potatoes yet, that their time is coming.

Gail Pothour  20:32  

That's correct. I have in-laws in Wisconsin, and so they are probably thinking of planting potatoes about now. And they can definitely grow them through the summer without any problem. But here we are in the Central Valley, Sacramento Valley, we typically get them in the ground in February, March into early April, and that's about it. Or you could do a fall crop, plant in August or so, and harvest some potatoes by Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Farmer Fred  20:58  

But in the colder regions of the country, then, you're looking at springtime, really mid-spring for planting potatoes.

Gail Pothour  21:04  

Right, I think probably May is a good time to plant if you're in the Midwest or in a colder region.

Farmer Fred  21:12  

And again, it's all about soil temperature too. So, Kat, maybe all you need is a raised bed or a large container and soil thermometer to let you know when the right time to plant is.

Gail Pothour  21:22  

A soil thermometer is key, because with the air temperatures that we've had in Sacramento the last several weeks, it's been in the 80s and 90s. And you get the itch to plant. But the soil temperature might not be warm enough yet. So, growing in raised beds the soil will warm up faster than if you're growing directly in the ground, where it will take longer for it to warm up. If you're growing in large containers, it should warm up soon.

Farmer Fred  21:44  

50 degrees is the magic soil temperature number.

Gail Pothour  21:46  

50, pretty much for potatoes. Optimum is maybe more like 60. But yeah, you can grow in 50. 

Farmer Fred  21:53  

All right, Kat,  I hope that it helps you out and your potato planting mystery there. Gail Pothour, Sacramento County Master Gardener we're here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center where people can browse, as they are today, during the Open Garden Day here at the Fair Oaks Hort Center. Everything that's going on, the planting, the preparation that's going on in the vegetable area; there's the orchard, there's the compost area, vineyard, perennial garden, drought tolerant garden, there's just so many aspects here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. This is really a great place for people to come and learn all about gardening. And of course, there's Harvest Day, which is the first Saturday in August. That's a big gardening event here, and it is free. Gail, thanks so much for your time and effort.

Gail Pothour  22:32  

My pleasure, Fred.

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Farmer Fred  22:40  

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QUICK TIP: FRUIT TREES VS. YOUR LAWN

Farmer Fred  23:51  

Time for a quick tip. We're at Master Gardener Pam Bones' house here in Sacramento County. She has loads of fruit trees and flowering shrubs, and a lawn. Pam,  I notice how much you love fruit trees, but there are no fruit trees in the lawn.

Pam Bone  24:06  

That's because fruit trees and lawns are not compatible at all. You need to keep your fruit trees away from the lawn. Actually, some of mine are fairly close, they're within five or six feet of it. But the crown of the tree is going to be high and dry and it's not going to get wet. They're going to have their own irrigation system as well, which is a drip irrigation system. And the lawn then can be watered a little bit more frequently; the fruit trees, not as much.

Farmer Fred  24:32  

And of course the lawn is going to compete for water and nutrients, too, with any fruit tree that's established. So it's a good idea if the lawn is the only place you have, if that's the only sunny area you have, give any fruit trees a wide berth. Have about a six foot wide diameter clearance between the existing lawn and the fruit trees. Mulch around it out to six feet or so, so that the roots of the fruit tree have a chance to develop.

Pam Bone  24:57  

And another reason for doing that is the "mower blight". People use their string trimmers or their mowers right up next to landscape tree or fruit trees, and unfortunately cause devastating damage to the tree. So I always say that if you have any kind of tree in your lawn area, that you definitely keep a good clear spot like you said. Putting mulch down is really important.

Farmer Fred  25:22  

All right. lawns versus fruit trees. Pam Bone, Master Gardener, thanks for the quick tip.

Pam Bone  25:25  

Thank you, Fred.

Farmer Fred  25:28  

Garden Basics With Farmer Fred comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics dot net. That’s where you can find out about the free, Garden Basics newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you so much for listening.