231 Joe Lamp'l Vegetable Gardening

Show Transcript

GB 231 Joe Lamp’l. Cinder Blocks for Raised Beds. TRANSCRIPT

Farmer Fred  0:00  

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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  0:31  

Today, we have a wide ranging discussion with nationally famous TV gardener, Joe Lamp’l, about his new book, the Vegetable Gardening Book, as well as cool season gardening tips. But we also venture into the warm season garden when he talks about his tomato cages, which are built to look good and last a lifetime.

In the question and answer segment, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, has warnings worth heeding if you will be building a raised garden bed out of cinder blocks. 

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. Let’s go!

JOE LAMP’L PART 1

Farmer Fred  1:20  

it's cool season vegetable planting time. What are you going to plant? Well, let's get some tips. We are talking with Joe Lamp’l. if the name sounds familiar, Joe has been on TV, he has a garden podcast, he's done a lot. And he has a new book out called “The Vegetable Gardening Book, your complete guide to growing an edible organic garden from seed to harvest.” And reading about you Joe, I am impressed. It's like you are my brother by another mother. I should say, you're my younger, more industrious brother by another mother. You have a very impressive website, JoeGardener.com , People have seen you on TV, on “Growing a Greener World.” You have a podcast and so much more.

Joe Lamp'l  2:02  

You know, it's  funny, Fred, when people ask me all the time, those I haven't met before, maybe aren't aware of me. They say, Well, what do you do? And then I don't know. Why 30 years later, I still struggle to answer that question. But I'm trying to figure out how to do it succinctly. So that it doesn't take 30 seconds. But it's kind of diverse, but it's all related to gardening and gardening education. So through all forms of media.

Farmer Fred  2:26  

You got it all going there. You've moved on from blogs to Instagram, and other things. And you're even  hosting a trip to Europe next year.

Joe Lamp'l  2:38  

Yeah, my second in a row, we're going to different places. My first trip was this May to England,  to London and all about. it's been interesting, having gone to England for the first time ever, just a couple months ago. And standing there,  on the Mall of Buckingham Palace. And all of that was fascinating. But we want to make up for lost time. And I say we, my wife and I, because forever, I’ve been traveling for my television shows domestically all over the country, but rarely taking my wife with me because we're in work mode. And that just takes a different focus. And it's not like being on vacation. Let me just say that,  because I sometimes forget where I even am. So now in the latter years,  we're making up for that, and doing some garden tours through a company called Earthbound Expeditions. And each year I can pick where I want to go and how many trips I want to take and they organize and take care of all the details. So my wife likes that. And I like that. And so we're gonna go to  northern Italy, southern France,  a year from now. 

Farmer Fred  3:40  

Oh, very good. That's nice. I think if I was going to do one of those, I'd want to go to Scotland, but it would then turn into tours of single malt scotch distilleries. So probably not.

Joe Lamp'l  3:49  

Well, there's some of that mixed in you know, they it's not just gardening. 

Farmer Fred  3:53  

 Your schedule exhausts me. You're always doing something. I'm amazed that you had time to write a vegetable gardening book that profiles 40 of your favorite crops. But what intrigues me about the book the most, is the first half of the book, and all the things you do. Your basic theories of gardening and practices when it comes to gardening. There's just so much there. And I listened to the podcast that you hosted but you were the guest on,  talking about your new book. And right towards the beginning, you uttered a phrase that raised a flag in my mind, and you said “the soil food web”. And immediately I thought of Elaine Ingham and the Soil Food Web. And if people don't know who Elaine Ingham is, she's a microbiologist, who has basically promoted, shall we say, kinder, gentler use of the soil. In a lot of situations. She's the one that convinced me to get rid of my rototiller and get a chipper shredder. Which makes perfect sense  when you're trying to build up the soil.  And a lot of what you talk about on the TV show, and on your podcast, too, it's very familiar to me. Because it's all about the soil.

Joe Lamp'l  5:16  

It is all about the soil. I say for every dollar that you have to spend on your garden, put 90 cents of it into the soil, because you want to feed the soil. You want to provide the nutrients to the soil. Because that is the soil food web. That's a living network, a whole other community down there with billions and billions of organisms that are creating the environment for the plants to thrive. But we need to give the soil, the microorganisms in the soil, what they need to thrive, or at least help them with that. And so building up the soil health and maintaining a constant focus on that is really one of, if not the most important, jobs we have as organic or no till gardeners.

Farmer Fred  5:54  

Yeah, no till gardening and cover cropping is now becoming very big in California Agricultural circles as it should be. But for the home gardener, how practical is no till gardening? because they're doing it in limited spaces.

Joe Lamp'l  6:10  

I think it's very practical. Because even in a raised bed environment, which is where I do most of my food growing,  I've got these nice big raised beds. But it's hard not to sometimes disturb the soil even a little bit. But I certainly don't see the need to bring any sort of tiller in there. And to the extent that I even mess with my soil, is I use a broad fork, which is just kind of a wide, thick pitchfork, essentially. And I just open up space in the soil once a year prior to top dressing, and then I come in right behind it with some good homemade compost, which goes down into those openings I just created. But I'm not tilling because when I'm tilling,  whether I'm doing it in an in-ground bed or raised bed or wherever that may be, you're really mixing up that soil to a fine texture. And so you're releasing a lot of the nitrogen that was in the soil. Plus, you're disturbing the networks that have been there, and you're burning up that carbon and just too many things that you don't need to do. When you're feeding the soil, the microorganisms will come get what you put on top. It's like a cake, where you put an icing on top. But in this case,  the icing works its way down into the cake part via the micro organisms and the earthworms and the soil foodweb and all the organisms that are there. And that's what you want, those deposits that we make with our compost are working their way down into the soil thanks to the help that we have from all those living organisms. And we need those deposits every year. Because if we don't, our bank account, which I liken it to, would be depleted, because of all the withdrawals by the plants of the nutrients. And so we're coming to provide reinforcements with those soil amendments each year. I do it several times a year.

Farmer Fred  7:48  

I've been hearing more and more from people who are adapting the strategy of matching the compost to what they're growing. If they're growing annuals, they're going to use a bacterially based microbial product like food waste, kitchen compost, whereas if they are growing trees and shrubs, it's chipped and shredded tree branches.

Joe Lamp'l  8:08  

it is intriguing, I find that to be a little potentially intimidating for people. For many of the people that I work with, just getting them to compost is my first priority. And for many people, they don't compost because they're intimidated by just what you said, you know, gosh, oh my gosh, do I need to do fungi based or bacterial based? And how do I do that? And what about those ratios? And is it three to one or, what? Which is which, the greens and the browns? What I'm trying to do for people is demystify and uncomplicate the whole process. And if it's a matter of just breaking down organic matter from the kitchen or from your garden into a homogenous biodegradeable mix that has plenty of both beneficial fungi and bacteria, so that whatever the needs of the plants are that's in the soil, then that's good enough. And that's really the method I subscribe to myself, because I would love to have the time to be a little more refined and how I do it but with the results that I get, I'm not complaining and it works for me. And I want people, to get back to my book, Fred, and what I wrote, I want people to to be encouraged, not intimidated, by the process. And I want them to feel like it's doable and accessible and not intimidating. And so I want them to do as I do, not do as I say. What I do is try to keep it as simple as possible. Certainly I could go more complicated but I haven't found the need to, yet. And I don't want to make people feel like they do, either.

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JOE LAMP’L PART 2

Farmer Fred  11:41  

Let's get back to our conversation with TV gardener Joe Lamp’l.  One of the simple things you do, nd it's something I've been doing for years, and it really works, and you talk about this in your book. It is your mulching process. It's just ground up leaves that you put on top of your raised beds.

Joe Lamp'l  11:57  

Gosh, it brings me so much pleasure every time I go to the leaf corral, which is what I call it, which is the collection point for my fall leaves that I've just shredded up from the collection of about three weekends in November of my neighborhoods in the area where I'm loading up their brown recyclable bags, because all the homeowners associations around here require that they get their leaves off their property and out of sight. I guess at least for me, fortunately, they are putting them in these bags that are on their curb, and then it's free for the taking. And I let people know in advance if they want me to come pick them up to let me know. And on those Saturdays, I have their address in my phone and I'll go pick them up. And literally Fred, in a weekend, I can have 300 bags in the course of half a day,  just making lots of trips close by, it adds up fast. I get 20 bags a load. And if they're a mile or less away,  I'm there and back in a few minutes. And next thing you know, I'm on to the next one. And before you know it, it adds up. But anyway, I shred those, I put them in my leaf corral. And I let those break down over the following five or six months and then in spring  they get top dressed in my garden as the mulch. And  by then I just love the feel of semi composted shredded leaves. And I love the look of it. I love how they work. I love how they spread into the garden, how you can manipulate them and how they already look like they're going to work the moment they hit the soil. So it's an effort and it's free, by the way, that's not a bad thing. And you're keeping them out of the landfill. Because all of those bags were destined to the landfill. Unfortunately, they're not even going to a recyclable or compostable facility. They're going straight to the landfill. So I'm doing something good there, too. So it's all good.

Farmer Fred  13:36  

I take it one step further than you, because I have more free time than you do. I will actually go to my neighbor's house and say can I rake your leaves? They say, “Sure, why not?”

Joe Lamp'l  13:45  

I've had plenty of people where I put the ad out to say can I come get your bag leaves? And I say it that way on purpose because I'm tired of getting those same emails. “Oh, you can come get my leaves that are not bagged, but you can feel free to come rake them up.” Not that I would mind that. But it's not practical. So good for you. That's good exercise, for sure. Especially in the fall. It's great time of year to do it.

Farmer Fred  14:05  

Well. You're in the business of gardening. I'm doing this for fun.

Joe Lamp'l  14:11  

 there's that. 

Farmer Fred  14:13  

In your book, which is a wonderful book, too. I love the pictures in the vegetable gardening book. You have many many pictures of your raised beds. Tell us about your raised beds, how big are they, what are they constructed out of, and then we'll get into tomato cages.

Joe Lamp'l  14:29  

Yay. Okay. So the beds themselves are untreated cedar timbers, and they're six by six, so they're nice thick, bulky. You can sit on them. They are timbers and they stack three high, so that's an 18 inch high bed and the length is 12 feet and the width in most of my beds are four feet wide. And four of them are three feet wide so it fits perfectly, the way my garden is laid out. It's perfectly proportioned that way. I just love the dimensions of those beds and somebody sent me a mesage the other day on Instagram and they wanted to know about my beds and then I send them the information and they said, “Well, now that you've had them for 10 years, what would you do different?” And, it was an easy answer. I said I wouldn't do anything different. I love the layout. I love the beds, I love everything about my garden. The one thing I would have done that I wish, one thing I wish I would have done, is put hardware cloth across the bottom because two years ago, moles started finding their way in, burrowing underneath and into my smorgasbord of earthworms and so forth in the soil. And now they think they've got an all you can eat buffet, and it's to my detriment. But anyway, those are my beds, I love them. And they've served me well .super productive and would not change anything else about them.

Farmer Fred  15:39  

Do you have drip irrigation in those beds?

Joe Lamp'l  15:42  

I do . I love to hand water. So I have them all configured with individual custom individual spigots in each bed. Each bed has a dedicated spigot, and so depending on what I'm growing and when I'm growing it, I have the opportunity to put in soaker hoses or drip irrigation depending on what I'm planting in that bed. And they each have individual battery operated timers so I can customize each bed according to what I'm growing. But in the fall, I usually don't even hook it up. I'd take it down because I'm going to be doing that anyway for the wintertime. But in the fall  we get a decent amount of rain, and I'm not traveling as much in the fall and I'm home to  hand irrigate with my watering wand, which is my favorite way to water because I'm out there with the plants and I'm looking and I'm standing still and I'm paying attention and I'm giving the plants exactly the water they need. So all of the above Fred. Drip, soaker and watering wand. 

Farmer Fred  16:33  

We should point out that you live outside Atlanta, Georgia. tell us about living in USDA zone eight , what sort of weather patterns do you have?

Joe Lamp'l  16:41  

For right now, tomorrow it might be zone eight, currently it is still seven B, last time I checked. You could easily be 8, it feels that way this summer. And you know, the beauty of it is we were able to grow year round. That's all only probably gonna get easier. But you know, the summer is tough here because you have the heat and you have the humidity. And you got those afternoons thunder showers. And so if you like growing tomatoes, even as a champion of growing them, you kind of get tired of maintaining them in July because you know the diseases have come on by then the pests have found them and you're spending more time maintaining your tomatoes than anything else. And that said,  I still grow 60-something  tomatoes every year. Not sure why, but I just can't stop myself and I never regretted except in the midst of dealing with all the cutback but then you forget about that. So that's the summer. It is challenging mainly for the pest and diseases because of the heat and humidity and it's in for me, working in the garden every day because we film for my television show and we film for my online gardening Academy. We're doing online course videos all the time  throughout the growing season, which means we're out there in the summertime. This year, Fred, it was hotter than any other year that I can ever remember. And this is me filming for television gardening, hosting for over 20 years, every day, in the summertime, for these three series that I've hosted for my life in television. I've been outside in the midst of the heat down here in Atlanta all those years. But I've never ever felt like I did this year outside in the heat. It was oppressive this year, more than anything else. So it was weird. I remember telling my crew that many times this summer, I’d say, “I can't believe it's 830 in the morning and I'm already dripping wet” Im in a t shirt but it is what it is. That said, it all goes away in the fall. It's  cool, the pest and disease pressures gone, the humidity is gone. You get to grow your cool season crops. And those are some of my favorites. Most of the My Favorite Crops are actually cool season crops with the exception of  the tomatoes in the summertime and the peppers. I love the fall the best. And so we're thankful. I'm thankful that we have that time. And then because our winters aren't that severe, much of what I grow for my fall season, I can overwinter even without cover. But if I want to add some, you know frost protection, I can do that with  fleece or whatever. They're still going strong in the spring when they start to bolt and they're going to seed. I have to pull them out to make room because it's time to plant summer  crops again. So it's not a bad problem.

Farmer Fred  19:11  

Yeah, here in the West, we don't have the humidity issues you have back there. But certainly the heat and the sun issues have certainly changed gardening and we're seeing that currently with tomatoes and peppers especially, there's more sunburn. There's more sun-related diseases. there's cat facing going on.  And you're wondering, okay, how do we deal with this next year then? Do we plant in more shade? What do we do?

Joe Lamp'l  19:35  

Yeah, that's such a good question. And it's interesting that this question is coming up a lot more lately and you know, with our online gardening Academy, we have a lot of students and we have weekly zoom calls. We call them office hours, but we have students all across the country, many out in the west coast, and the Southwest , desert Southwest and Texas especially. And everyone is just struggling. This was a really hard year for a lot of people because of the heat. And so this conversation was coming up all the time, and many people were resorting to shade cloth around their plants to try to knock down some of that heat in the middle of the day. And they were experimenting with that for the first time this year. And you know, there were some aha moments from that. And many people thought that they would wrap their plants with the shade cloth and only to find out that it actually exacerbated the problem, because the shade cloth was eliminating the airflow, the free airflow, and it was actually holding in some of the heat that wouldn't have been there had they provided some spacing. And so they rectify the problem in the course of the growing season by finding a way to suspend the shade cloth over the plants with some free flow air in the meantime. And that that seemed to really make the difference. And they were using roughly 50% shade cloth. And it knocked the temperature down. I think the average was five to seven degrees. And it made a big difference. And so that's one of the things. and then of course, more frequent drip irrigation. pinpointing  the water where you want more, and for longer periods of time. We're learning as we go,  it's more than we ever have had to deal with. What do we do now?  So we're figuring it out as we go, I guess that is the point of what I'm trying to make here.

Farmer Fred  21:25  

I can see more PVC structures over raised beds in the future, to be able to give you that airflow and yet provide more shade.

Joe Lamp'l  21:34  

Yeah, yeah. In fact, I even tried, I almost did that myself this year. And fortunately, I wised up because I was going to do it on a Saturday afternoon when I was trying to get some protection over some plants, at the same time was buying some livestock panels to provide some deer protection around the plants. And then I just started thinking, Well, why don't I just suspend the livestock panel because it's very flexible and you can create a hoop out of it over the top of my plants and then just drop shade cloth over that. So I basically killed two birds with one stone with that, accidentally. But you know, it worked. To your point, I think the PVC is going to be more ubiquitous than ever in the garden here around in the wintertime for  the frost protection and then in the summertime with a shade cloth, from hardening off all the way through knocking off a heat in the middle of the summer.

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JOE LAMP’L PART 3

Farmer Fred  23:40  

Let's get back to our conversation with TV gardener Joe Lamp’l. For probably the last 30 years, I've used the same tomato cages, which are made of concrete reinforcement wire. it's sold in four by five foot sheets, you just bend it into a circle and secure them. And they last forever. You've taken it up a notch with your tomato cages by using livestock panels, which is a much thicker metal. And you need bolt cutters to cut it.

Joe Lamp'l  24:08  

Yeah, but if you get a nice sized bolt cutter, it cuts like butter,  because you have those long handles and they're not so thick that you can’t.  Even somebody who would say that they are not strong at all , can still cut right through it. I did that, Fred, because I had those same challenges that you had, and they weren't great. When you have 60-something tomato plants, and each one needs a cage and  at the end of the season, you've got to put those things somewhere, and they've got a memory. So if you try to uncouple them and lay them out flat, they want to roll back up. And then you're stacking 60 of those things, however you can wherever you can and for me,  I don't have that ability. And then for television and all the media we create, I really wanted something that stood out that had kind of an architectural appeal to it too. So these, because they're galvanized metal, they don't rust. They're square When you put the two 90 degree panels together, they come together as a square. And  they're super strong, they are not going anywhere, because the way that you cut the bottom they make stakes that go into the ground, nothing's going to knock them over. And they are amazing. And from the feedback I've gotten from people that have seen the posts from around the world, and they've built them in their gardens, nobody's complaining. and they rave about them. And it makes me very happy to know that people are really enjoying these things, I did it out of a need to just say, I'm tired of messing with cages, I need something that really works. And living on a small farm, I had those livestock panels around, I just grabbed one of them one day, and I said, I thought I could do something with this. And I'm not a very creative person, but give me enough time and I can come up with something. And  that's what came up, these tomato cages. And that's one of my best non-regrettable moments in the garden, was coming up with those cages.

Farmer Fred  25:53  

And you can find directions on how to do it on page 242 of Joe Lampl’s book, “The Vegetable Gardening book”, for instructions on making the ultimate tomato cages. One thing that you stressed in the podcast talking about your book on your own podcast was cleaning your tools, and how fastidious you are about cleaning tools. But if you're trying to reduce diseases in your garden, before you put your tools away, you better clean them,

Joe Lamp'l  26:21  

you really should. Having a sharp blade, having a rust free tool, having one that doesn't overwinter pathogens on it. And it may be hard for people to get their head around the fact that that can happen. But it can. It’s a really good practice, when you feel like you're going to put your tools away for the year or for the season, knock the dirt off, get your steel wool out, whatever it is to clean them up, shine them up. First time I really did that fastidiously was when I was doing a video for somebody that wanted to have a demonstration on how to de-rust your tools and clean them up. And so I pulled all my tools,  because I had plenty of them that had a little bit of stuff on them. And I was so happy at the end of that process, showing the different ways that you could clean them up and you get the rust off with various processes, and they almost look brand new again. And it was just a proud moment to know that when you have good quality tools, and you take care of them, they'll literally last a lifetime, if you don't lose them. And besides the fact that they're clean, and they operate well, because you've sharpened them up to get the rust off and remove the potential pathogenic issues on there, that gets you off to the best start going forward. Not only mentally. You are really feeling good about your tools, and they're easy to work with. And they're not stiff, and they're, you know, lubed and all that. They're clean. That's the best thing you can do, one of the best things you can do, at the start of the season. You don't want to handicap yourself going in.

Farmer Fred  27:43  

Yeah, and maybe wrap yellow or red electrical tape on the handles so you can spot them laying on the ground. In your book, you talk about your super simple, seven step maintenance routine. And I really liked the one about keeping some big containers handy around the yard for you to throw stuff in.

Joe Lamp'l  28:00  

Yes, yes! I'm pausing. Because it just seems so simple. But it's such a thing. Let's face it, we're going to have weeds that we need to get out of the garden beds, we need to cut back dead or diseased material. And it's got to go somewhere. For a lot of us, there's only so much time that we have to spend in the garden when we're out there. And when we're in the moment, we've got that momentum and want to keep the pace going. But when you stop because you don't have that place to put that stuff in the moment. Well, now you're putting your tools down, you're heading off in a different direction, you might see something else you need to do. And then you get off on a detour, or a tangent, or that chasing of that squirrel. And next thing you know, your hours have gone by and you never got back to where you started. And it just makes a big difference. To me, the momentum is a big thing and just feeling like you've got what you need when