236 Heat vs Fruit Trees. Deer Control.

Show Transcript

GB 236 Heat, Mycorrhizae, Deer, Leaf Shredder TRANSCRIPT

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.

Farmer Fred  0:20

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

Many areas of the country suffered through prolonged heat waves in September. And now, your fruit tree orchard may have problems. We have ideas on how to help your fruit trees get through next year’s heatwaves.

You’ve seen the bags and boxes of fertilizers and soil amendments that say, “Now, containing mycorrhizae!” Is that a good buy? America’s Favorite College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, gives her take on that. Also, she has tips for thwarting deer in your garden.

Finally, an outdoor power equipment expert tells us about the latest item that can blow your fallen leaves into a pile, suck them up, and them grind them up, perfect for topping a garden bed in the cold season. It’s a combination portable leaf blower, vacuum and mulching machine.

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 Potsand Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

HIGH HEAT vs. YOUR FRUIT TREES

Farmer Fred  1:38

We're talking with Quentyn Young of Q Young Garden. He's a landscaper in the Sacramento area, also a Master Gardener. He works in the orchard at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, and we're standing there, next to an espaliered Stella cherry tree that is trying to recover from a recent bout of unusually high heat here in the Sacramento area. But it has an interesting story. Q, this Stella cherry, and all cherry trees around here, we've been told, in a Mediterranean climate they need to be pruned in August, in order for those wounds to heal so that it is not infected by any blowing rain-driven spores in the wintertime, exposing it to Cherry diseases like Pseudomonas or botrytis. By the way, in the show notes, we will have links to more information about cherry diseases. So it is true, though, that cherries and apricots are very susceptible to rain borne diseases? Do they need to get pruned before the rainy season starts?

Quentyn Young  2:38

That's true. And that's something that we try to adhere to here in the orchard.

Farmer Fred  2:43

This year was unusual, with a bout of 110 degree heat for several days in a row including a record breaking 116 degrees. And I think that 10-Day bout of heat happened less than a week after this Stella cherry got pruned. It started acting a little odd. It’s a north-south facing espalier here. The north side, the leaves are very green. the South Side. Not so green.

Quentyn Young  3:11

Yeah, you can see it's a really a stark difference between the two different sides. And the South side really got fried with that heatwave.

Farmer Fred  3:20

What's the prognosis for it?

Quentyn Young  3:21

I think it'll pull through. You can see it looks like they even put some fresh trunk paint on some areas that were opened up to the sun when they did the pruning, which is something we also do down in the main orchard. Now that I'm looking at this, I'm thinking maybe next year, we might want to have it set up so that we can maybe cover it with frost cloth or something like that or Agribon. Because it was part of the premise of doing this two dimensionally, both with with the peach and with the cherry tree. If theoretically, we wanted to try to protect it from the Spotted Wing Drosophila, we could net it or  cover it with Agribon, to protect the cherries. And also we could cover the peach tree if we wanted to experiment with protecting it from peach leaf curl. So that was part of the reason for growing these two dimensionally like this.

Farmer Fred  4:11

Yeah, we should point out that on this espalier, there is a stella cherry tree and planted right next to it is an O’Henry peach tree. The O’Henry peach seemed to make it like a champ. But then again, that wasn't pruned. Was it?

Quentyn Young  4:23

Not as severely as the cherry was. Yeah, and we are still behind on pruning the cherry the Multibud cherry down in the orchard. But maybe that's a good thing. I think so. I think we should expect maybe, like you said, maybe waiting a little bit later and unfortunately I think the the estimate is going to be a drier winter until late in the season. So I think we might be safe doing some of the pruning now.

Farmer Fred  4:51

That's kind of the thinking in a drought. When rains do happen, the really heavy rains, it may not be until November or December. But you never know. You mentioned painting the trunks. And that's a great idea because of sunburn or sunscald to newly exposed branches, we saw that the newly exposed cherry leaves turned crispy after they had been protected by that outer layer of leaves that was pruned away. Those leaves turned brown. What about the stems and the trunk? Did you see any signs of sunburn or sunscald?

Quentyn Young  5:24

On the stems, no. And on the trunk? It’s a little bit hard to say right now because they're still sort of covered, covered with leaves. But we did do some fresh painting just to be just to be safe after the fact, or actually during the fact. Sometimes in the orchard when we're pruning in the summer, we'll often have kind of a group meeting:  Do you want to paint this branch now that we've opened up exposing the center of a tree during the heat of the summer.

Farmer Fred  5:50

Painting or whitewashing the trunk on newly exposed branches is a good idea. The whitewash could be simple as 50% interior white latex paint and 50% water. And apply that. I like the idea of covering it when these heat waves are expected. And by having it on an espalier, basically a two dimensional fruit tree. And with the system you have here, it'd be fairly easy to throw a bit of a shade cloth over it.

Quentyn Young  6:16

Yeah. And I think it would be easy , because like you said,  the North side, I think, is fine. The south side, I think we could maybe just cover that side. When we experimented with the multibud Cherry in the orchard, covering it completely with Agribon, what we found in the summer is it made it too hot and it caused the cherries to ripen so quickly that they actually got mushy. But up here, it'd be a little bit different because we would just be covering one side and it wouldn't be creating such a heat box like it did in the orchard. And I think we have that on the website. At the Fair Oaks horticulture website, you can see that Agribon experiment; and, it made it way too hot. But I think it'd be easy just to cover one side here.

Farmer Fred  6:56

What weight Agribon was that? And what weight would you recommend for summer protection?

Quentyn Young  7:01

I would try to go as light as possible. I think what we used was 50%.

Farmer Fred  7:05

Okay, you could have gotten down to 30 weight or less.

Quentyn Young  7:07

yeah, we hadn't realized how hot it was going to turn out. Basically it was just a giant square of Agribon floating on a PVC frame. And it really, it was actually really uncomfortable to work in there too.

Farmer Fred  7:20

in your post mortem in the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center orchard after that bout of record heat, what other things did you notice?

Quentyn Young  7:29

We noticed some fruit ripening faster. We noticed quite a bit of pit damage, like especially with peaches and nectarines. Damage around the pits from the extreme heat. And we noticed a lot of fruit drop too.

Farmer Fred  7:41

I would think that especially with pit burn, that maybe if you have an eye on that long term weather forecast and you notice that a heatwave is coming, maybe harvest the nearly ripened fruit.

Quentyn Young  7:53

Yeah, I think so. And then just try to counter ripen the fruit because  once we had that damage to the fruit, it was really unusable.

Farmer Fred  8:01

That's advice also now for tomato plants, too. If you have tomatoes growing and you know that there's going to be a bout of unusually high heat, the experts are saying to harvest those tomatoes, even though they may not be fully ripe. And let them ripen on the counter. Because high heat can turn them to mush, really quick.

Quentyn Young  8:18

Yeah, we had we had that problem also with plums and pluots.

Farmer Fred  8:22

That's a difficult one because they can be harvested at different times.

Quentyn Young  8:25

Yeah. And then like I said, we're only here once a week. So  we would come here and we would see quite a bit of fruit fallen on the ground. Most of it was unusable because it was already mushy.

Farmer Fred  8:35

I would think, too, that after a summer pruning, even if it isn't September instead of August, would you avoid fertilization?

Quentyn Young  8:43

Yeah, we don't do any fertilizing in the fall here. Until  springtime. I might fertilize some of the fruit trees, like the tropicals, that we have in the barrels. But other than that, we don't fertilize our fruit trees except in the spring like you said.

Farmer Fred  8:56

But in reality, the trees are being fertilized year round because of the several inches of mulch on the ground.

Quentyn Young  9:02

Yeah several inches of mulch, and we also leave all the cuttings there as well. So they get a good mix of carbon and nitrogen.  It's just the citrus trees primarily that we will fertilize in the springtime.

Farmer Fred  9:14

Have you seen an unusual amount of sunburn on citrus fruit this year?

Quentyn Young  9:19

I would say not yet. But I've noticed a lot of fruit splitting.

Farmer Fred  9:23

And that is usually a boom-bust cycle of water.

Quentyn Young  9:26

I think it was that rain that we had was about maybe 10 days ago. The fruit gets wet. It can't expand fast enough, and it just splits open.

Farmer Fred  9:34

All rain is local, just like all gardening is local. And it was interesting that the area around here got over an inch of rain, whereas where I live, it was less than half an inch.

Quentyn Young  9:46

Yeah, it was very spotty here.

Farmer Fred  9:47

So that's the other thing with the changing climate and we're not going to be climate change deniers here. With a changing climate, you do have those storms that are very localized.

Quentyn Young  9:59

very localized. And I think we're gonna see that kind of boom and bust cycle where you're either gonna get no rain or a lot of rain all at once.

Farmer Fred  10:07

Right now, with a cherry tree that is recovering like this, are you doing anything special for it? Are you increasing irrigation or decreasing irrigation?

Quentyn Young  10:15

No, we basically maintain the same irrigation throughout the season, especially since we've picked most of the fruit. So usually in October, we're going to start reducing most of our irrigation anyway.

Farmer Fred  10:25

And one thing we should point out, too, is a leaf can still photosynthesize even though there may be brown portions on it from the high heat, the edges are burned. But don't remove any leaves because of that.

Quentyn Young  10:37

Exactly.  We're gonna leave it be. we're gonna baby it into the fall, then fingers crossed, we have a nice rainy winter.

Farmer Fred  10:44

That same is true with peach leaf curl.

Quentyn Young  10:46

Yeah, we just sort of put up with it here in the orchard. The tree will drop the diseased leaves, and push out new leaves. But as long as they're still on the tree, they're still producing food for the tree.

Farmer Fred  11:00

All right. Any tips for us to get through the winter?

Quentyn Young  11:04

Just keep your fingers crossed for a good rainy winter.

Farmer Fred  11:08

And maybe keep the frost cloths handy. Just in case.

Quentyn Young  11:11

Hopefully . We need the chill hours for our deciduous fruit trees.

Farmer Fred  11:14

Right we need the chill hours. and the frost cloths would be for citrus, not for deciduous for trees.  But I like the idea too, for frost or freeze if you think one is coming to your area where normally you may not get one, would be to whitewash the trunk and the branches.

Quentyn Young  11:29

Yeah, winter is a good time to do it too. In the winter when you can see the structure of the tree, too.

Farmer Fred  11:34

Alright, so you practice Summer pruning here for the most part on all your trees.

Quentyn Young

on all the trees we do very little winter pruning.

Farmer Fred

Right .and it's probably in the wintertime you just notice maybe crossing or rubbing branches you didn't see before because all the leaf cover.

Quentyn Young  11:47

And some are some dead branches too.

Farmer Fred  11:50

We live in interesting times, somebody once said.  And it truly is when it comes to being a gardener. We have to learn to adapt and do things perhaps a little bit differently. What about growing cherry trees? Because they do have a thin bark, maybe plant them where they could get afternoon shade?

Quentyn Young  12:09

I think that would be helpful. I think that it's also true for flowering cherries too. the non fruiting flowering cherries. I usually try to tell my clients to plant them where they're going to get afternoon shade because they're really susceptible to burning on their trunks.

Farmer Fred  12:22

All right. Speaking of clients, tell us about your business.

Quentyn Young  12:26

Basically, I'm doing consulting on installations, specialized pruning, and anything that's kind of related to that.

Farmer Fred  12:33

So if somebody wanted, in the Sacramento area, they're Japanese maple tree pruned.

Quentyn Young  12:38

Depending on the size, yeah. But also a lot of specialized pruning for fruit trees and things like that.

Farmer Fred  12:42

Quentyn Young, Master Gardener, and landscaper here in the Sacramento area. Thanks for getting us through this latest climate shock.

Quentyn Young  12:50

Sure, Fred, thanks for having me on.

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Farmer Fred  14:46

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CAN MYCORRHIZAL FUNGI SURVIVE IN A BAG?

Farmer Fred  15:54

You're seeing more and more bagged soil amendments at the nursery with the phrase, “contains mycorrhizae”. does it ? is it? Let's find out more. Debbie Flower, is here. America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor. Mycorrhizal fungi in growing media seems to be the craze. It seems to be the extra component in a lot of bagged products. But I often wonder, how can something stay alive in a sealed bag, sitting on asphalt in the summertime, outside?

Debbie Flower  16:26

That is definitely a question. Fungus has one little benefit in that it does have a resting stage, which is a spore. So maybe some of the spores have survived. But in general they are living things. this is a manufactured product that's been put in a bag. It has sat in a warehouse, then put on a truck or some other form of transportation, and brought to the store where it is sits outside, or in a not very well temperature-controlled area, and stews, basically, and dies. So a lot of it is probably not alive. I have to say I remember when mycorrhiza started showing up in content, in bagged products, in fertilizers as well. And the cost of those bagged products and those fertilizers went up dramatically. You're paying quite a bit. You may not realize that. maybe you weren't gardening back then when it first started. But you're paying a pretty penny for something that may be completely dead.

Farmer Fred  17:29

I remember when mycorrhiza started to get added into fertilizer. One fertilizer company approached me at the time and said, would you do commercials for us? For that to happen, I told them, I need to test your product. And so they sent me a box of their fertilizer and I set up a test in the greenhouse, testing their fertilizer against three others, and including a control with no fertilizer. And by gum, it worked. I mean, it was the second best. There were good results growing. I used marigolds to grow, and they were the second most lush with that mycorrhizal fertilizer. The first luscious batch of marigolds were grown using fish emulsion. But the results of this mycorrhizal-added fertilizer seemed to work, too. Okay, I told them, I'll do one set of commercials for you. And I did, and it was fine. And I used that product throughout that summer. And then the next year, they sent me another box of the same thing, supposedly the same thing. And when the plants came up, they all keeled over. Oh, my. And I asked them about that. They said, Yeah, we got some formula wrong on the shipments we sent out and yeah, there is a little too much added nitrogen. I think the problem burned the plants. It burned. They were young. Yeah. And so immediately I said, Well,  okay, I still have fish emulsion. I'm happy with that. It varied batch to batch.

Debbie Flower  18:55

Mycorrhizal fungi are very specific to their host, some more than others. And they will not do anything if their host plant is not there. Also, the way they work, you get them in the soil, they're out there in the air, and they find their hosts, they blow around in the spore stage or something. And they find their host plant, they hang around in the soil and need a signal to become active to germinate from their spore stage. And once they get that signal, which comes from the plant, then they grow. Hyphae is like a stem for fungus, except it's a single line of cells. It can have branches, but it's a single line of cells. It doesn't take multiple cells to make a stem of fungus. So it can go really long distances and it can go into really small places. And so the fungus starts to grow and it collects phosphorus and water. Those are the two primary things that it brings back to the plant in exchange for that phosphorus and water. The plant gives the some of the Plant sap to the fungus to keep it alive. So it sounds great, right? Well, there's conditions where the plant will not give the signal. One of those is the plants are really healthy, they are doing just fine. It doesn't need extra water, it doesn't need extra phosphorus. Then whatever the plant exudes from the roots, and we are gaining more and more evidence all the time that plants do exude things from their roots into the soil. That feeds other things. But what it exudes doesn't give the signal that the mycorrhizae needs to grow. So nothing happens if the mycorrhizal fungi happened to be at the right host, happened to be alive, and they're in a bag of fertilizer, they're probably never going to become active because the plant is getting fertilizer and doesn't need their help.

Farmer Fred  20:49

Getting back to the mycorrhizal fungi that's in the bag. Can it help to rehydrate the bag when you get it home, to bring those mycorrhizal back to life?

Debbie Flower  21:00

If there's anything alive in there, it's a spore. And the spore will not germinate. I used to say to my students, I have this theory that when Armageddon happens, if it happens on the earth as we know it , implodes, fire, flood, freezing, whatever it is, fungal spores are the thing that are going to live through it.

Farmer Fred

There are cockroaches, they’ll survive.

Debbie Flower

Well, that's another possibility I hadn't thought of. Those mycorrhizal spores are very well protected against environmental issues. Like freezing, thawing, drying out. They need a little tiny bit of water, but they're like a seed in a packet. And  they're in a state where they really don't consume water. So no, adding water to the bag is not going to help.

Farmer Fred  21:43

Okay, So those spores can survive, though, being in a bag on hot asphalt throughout the summer in front of a nursery?

Debbie Flower  21:57

Potentially some can. Yes. But it's going to take a chemical signal from the plant in order to activate those and not just any plant. It has to be the specific plant that the fungus has a mycorrhizal relationship with.

Farmer Fred  22:02

if you've ever read the Micorrhizal ingredients on a bag, a soil or fertilizer product, you will see a whole host of mycorrhizal species in there. And so I guess it's kind of a crapshoot, you will throw it all against the wall and see what sticks as far as the plant goes. because one of those is bound to work with the plant, right?

Debbie Flower  22:21

Initially when they were putting mycorrhizal fungus into bagged goods it was just one or two different species. And then this information about specific host specificity became better known. Now it's 17 or 27 “live organisms”, it will say sometimes. They don't always use the word mycorrhizal fungi.

Farmer Fred  22:44

Is there a difference between mycorrhizal fungi and mycorrhizal bacteria and the plants that they react with?

Debbie Flower  22:52

I'm not aware of the term mycorrhizal bacteria. There are bacteria,  we inoculate some seeds with that help so the plants fix nitrogen, right?

Farmer Fred  23:02

Yeah. Like that bag of clover seeds sitting over there.

Debbie Flower  23:05

Right. So they're different organisms. Yeah. And for decades, more, you know, longer than I've been alive. That  product has been sold to inoculate your legume seeds, soy beans, and peas, and things like that. And there is some specificity to that. There are fewer species of that. So initially, when I first started buying it, you just bought one packet, and it didn't specify what it was for. You used it on every variety. So it was inoculant. Yes, it's called inoculant. And I assume it had all the species of the bacteria. there aren't that many that did this. and they have a similar relationship with the roots of specific plants, and we know what they are,  the beans and the peas, etc. And they also they take nitrogen out of the air, so it's a different nutrient, and they fix it to fix nitrogen. Nitrogen exists primarily as a gas in the air. To “fix it” means react with a hydrogen or an oxygen atom, so it becomes a molecule, it becomes heavier, and it can be stored in soil or in roots. And so the bacteria actually fix the nitrogen. And then when the roots die, that's another sort of problem with nitrogen fixation. But when the roots die and roots actually turn over on a plant. It doesn't have a permanent set of roots, some of the roots, the feeder roots, which are collecting the nutrients turnover quickly, they have some that we're using today. And then they make new ones and three days later  some die. And so when that root dies, it releases the nitrogen into the soil and then it can dissolve in water and be absorbed by the roots

Farmer Fred

just like us.

Debbie Flower

Yes. So it's releasing nitrogen. Yes, it's a different process. But it has a lot of similarities, yes.

Farmer Fred  25:01

I think what I'm confusing it with, is compost. You have bacterially dominated forms of compost and fungally dominated forms of compost. One is better for annual plants, one is better for trees and shrubs. and I always get confused which is which.

Debbie Flower  25:17

Yes, I know what you're talking about. And that's true with soil. If you mulch your soil regularly with arborist chips as I do, you get way fewer herbaceous weeds, because the herbaceous weeds, whatever dominated soil, the breakdown of the woody product creates does not support the herbaceous weeds as well. And that has to do with the microorganisms that are just living in the soil.

Farmer Fred  25:44

And finding compost that is green waste-based is difficult. Because some of these companies, if you turn over a big bag of organic compost that's sitting out there in front of the nursery, look at the ingredients label, it'll just say “organic compost”, well, fine. Where did you derive it from?  if it's a forest product that's probably only to the benefit of woody plants.

Debbie Flower  26:06

It depends. Sometimes usually there's a “derived from” box  on fertilizer bags. The “Derived from” statement lists what it provides, but on bagged goods I'm not sure if it says the same thing.

Farmer Fred

usually it says “forest byproducts”.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it does. So think about a lawn. We advocate mulch. mowers, mulch, mowers chop the top off the lawn, cut it into pieces and drop it in place. That's a green mulch, right. And it's supporting a green crop and herbaceous crop.

Farmer Fred  26:37

so that would make sense, right? Also, I remember when growing up, there was that time of the year, usually this time of the year, when you could walk up and down the block and smell Bandini steer manure on everybody's front yard.

Debbie Flower  26:51

And that's probably fairly green, as you said,  manures  are considered green. Yeah, part of the compost.

Farmer Fred  26:59

And back then those steer were probably eating nothing but pasture land, right.

Debbie Flower  27:03

So it was good clean steer manure. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  27:07

And that was to the benefit of a herbaceous plant like a lawn right? Science is confusing. Well, that was an interesting bypass. We need more information on this. In general, you're wasting your money.

Debbie Flower  27:18

If you look at bagged goods, and it says it has bat guano and bloodmeal and cottonseed meal, buy individual boxes or bags of bat guano. buy cottonseed meal. Buy whatever I said. you'll save money. There are a few situations where mycorrhizal fungal are beneficial, the homeowner probably will never run into them. One is if the property has been mined, and your living on mined tailings, that's a possibility for a housing development. mine tailings would be subsoil, not the topsoil. Not even this, the second layer below that which is crappy, but still garden rubble. If you get below that, you may have no life in that soil. And maybe adding mycorrhizae will help there. Another case is if it was a farm field, or some kind of field that was hit regularly with fungicide, you may need to reinoculate the soil. But in general, the mycorrhizae is out there, it will find its host and you don't have to do anything. It's even been found in container plants. It wasn't put there.

Farmer Fred  28:27

Well, you raise more interesting questions with that. if indeed the fungicide used by the farmers was destroying fungus, adding more fungus is really going to be one of those tasks.

Debbie Flower  28:37

It's going to take years potentially,  for the fungicide use by the farmer to lose its potency and allow the natural funguses to grow and that's going to make gardening in those locations extremely difficult.

Farmer Fred  28:50

Sounds like it's time for a raised bed.

Debbie Flower  28:53

Yeah. One thing to note, if you're in this situation where you  have soil that has no mycorrhizal fungi in it, for the reasons stated, you could grow brassicas, broccoli, cauliflower or mustard. They have no mycorrhizal fungi relationship. Isn’t that weird?

Farmer Fred

Yeah. How do they eat?

Debbie Flower

Well, they have their way obviously. But yeah, they don't. They don't get the benefit of maybe it's something we don't know yet. I think there's lots we don't know yet. Maybe it's another micro organism we're not familiar with.

Farmer Fred  29:26

So maybe when Armageddon comes, we'll all be eating mustard.

Debbie Flower  29:30

There you go. Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage.

Farmer Fred

There won't be anybody left to eat anything, anyway. Yeah, that's true. So the cockroach is gonna have the mustard.  All right, Debbie Flower. Thanks for the science.

Debbie Flower  29:44

You're welcome.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred  29:54

In areas of the country that have yet to experience freezing temperatures, sweet peppers continue to ripen on the plants, turning rich shades of red, purple, and yellow. The result? Peppers that are sweeter. And probably more peppers than you know what to do with. Here’s an idea Sweet Pepper Relish. It’s the recipe of the week in the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter. Plus, we highlight our favorite sweet peppers to grow, something you might want to remember come next year.

In the podcast portion of the newsletter, we talk with pepper expert Dave DeWitt about growing and overwintering pepper plants. Dave includes his sure fire method for saving your mouth when you bite into a too-hot pepper.

Find a subscription link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter in today’s show notes, or visit our website, Garden Basics dot net, where you can sign up to have the free, Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast delivered to your inbox each Friday. Also at Garden Basics dot net, you can listen to any of our previous editions of the Garden Basics podcast, as well as read a transcript of the podcast episode you are listening to now.

For current newsletter subscribers, look for the “Too Many Peppers? Try This Relish Recipe” in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, now available, in your email. Take a deeper dive into gardening, with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter. And it’s free. Find the link in today’s show notes or at garden basics dot net.

ALL ABOUT LEAF BLOWER/VAC/SHREDDERS

Farmer Fred  31:18

We got an email from Ken in San Jose California who writes us I'm looking into getting a leaf vacuum that you can also shred the leafs with However, I'm not too sure which one to get for a small yard. Any recommendations or brands thank you so much for your advice would never have a beautiful garden without you. Well, thanks for that can I appreciate that. And you're on the road do the right thing by shredding those leaves. What a great mulch that can be for your garden bed. But let's turn to an expert and get some advice about choosing a combination leaf blower leaf vacuum and leaf mulcher.

Farmer Fred  31:57

We're talking with Brad Gay from JB's Power Equipment in Davis. And if you're a gardener, every fall, if you have leaves or if your neighbors have trees with leaves, those leaves make an excellent mulch, they can improve your garden soil, and it's pretty easy to improve your soil. If you don't have a winter garden. When those leaves fall in October, November, December. you grind them up, you put them on your garden bed, stack it up as tall as you want, four inches, eight inches, 12 inches. and then the following spring, you've got improved soil, no question about it. The problem is, all right, how do you gather up those leaves? How do you grind them up? Now in the past what I've done is, my neighbor loves me with a 60 foot Pin Oak tree, but I want those leaves. So I'll go over there, rake her leaves, put them in a metal 30 Gallon Trash Can, stick my string trimmer down into that metal trashcan and sort of whip it around and grind up those leaves. It does an okay job but not really a great job of making all those leaves smaller. There's something on the market that if you want to do that, too, it makes it a heck of a lot easier. We're talking with Brad Gay from JB's Power Equipment in Davis. And Brad, I like the idea of having a tool that sucks up the leaves and grinds them and then I can just dump it onto the garden bed. That sounds pretty darn easy. What are those instruments of destruction?

Brad Gay  33:26

Well, it's a great tool, it's a conversion of your handheld blower is what it amounts to. And they've gone in and adapted the front of the front of the blower that brings in the air for the blower to blow out the pipe to blow your leaves. Well they put a tube on that so now it becomes a vacuum. And the blower exit would you would be blowing has a curved tube to it. that attaches a bag before you put that tool on, look on the inside of that blower there are little metal shredders, something you wouldn't want to touch. You can’t run it with that tube off.

Farmer Fred

So that's a very strong safety feature. But it's a metal, like a mower blade, but a real small version of it. That's a shredder. So now you can go in and suck up all the leaves in these areas. And it goes. It hits that shredder device and puts it in your bag and it's a 12 to one ratio reduction. So in areas like under shrubs that you've got the you can't get to as easily or let's say your around a pool and you're in corners where leaves are collected. In my case I have Sycamore leaves my Sycamore leaves a good portion of the cross and more. So now you got to reduce that To be able to use it. So by using this by sucking that debris up and going through that shredder, it reduces that down. And most of the pieces are about less than the size of a dime, which is pretty good considering how big that leaf was when you got it there.

Brad Gay

I've been very satisfied with it, you save a few steps, you just take it out, dump it. you can use it right then as long as you don't have to go shred it up. I live in a house that has two huge sycamore trees. And before I had a chipper shredder, or had a vac and sack or a shredder vac, I had tarps that I would hold in my backyard and put them on my garden. And it would be I'd have piles back there. Well, it reduced really well but say corn leaves which are a pretty good sized leaf. So in the spring, I'd get out there, get ready to do it. And I'd still be part of the pile there. And there's the bottom of the pile there's still some of those leaves and in their original configuration. Wow, since I've started doing the chipping in the shredding and reducing that and then putting it on a yard. No, it's done it's mulch it's ready to use right then I was gonna rototill right in and there's no big piles anymore. So but that vac and sack, That's a that's a great tool to have.

Farmer Fred  36:00

Yeah, I noticed on your website, JBSpower.com, that the Echo people have one called a shredding vac. And actually, it's three units in one because it's a blower, like a typical leaf blower, it's a vacuum. And it's a shredder mulcher.

Brad Gay  36:18

Yeah, it is that's the whole thing. And it's but it's got a nice bag on it so that when the bag has a strap goes over your shoulder, so it's like you're carrying your it has a rear handle to it. So you can, you know, usually you have an upper handle on a blower or a handheld blower, well, this actually has a rear handle, so you can hold it and the upper handle, so you got two hands on there. And then you have a strap that's on the bag that you put over, like a backpack kind of as a, you sling it over your back. So then you power the leaves in that bag. Well, when that starts getting heavy, it's usually that's about time for you to go dump it. So and it's a, I'm gonna say this about a 30 gallon, you know, like plastic bag container. Not quite that but it's the it's a, it's a good amount that you can pick up and get rid of all that debris in a timely fashion. So you can go do other things in your garden.

Farmer Fred  37:09

Now we're talking here about the Echo shredding vac. But I imagine there's other manufacturers with very similar items.

Brad Gay  37:16

yeah, there is. Stihl has one, there's the same idea. We also sell that is competitively priced. The same thing, there's no difference. everybody's producing stuff like that. But this both of these companies are top of the line. And and they're, they're run by people that if you do have a problem with this piece of equipment, you've got someplace to go to where which is a good thing to fall back on. That's what I meant. Buy the best and cry only once, a little bit. But you generally just don't have the problem.

Farmer Fred  37:53

The Echo unit we're talking about and I imagine the Stihl unit as well, they're both two stroke gas engines, correct?

Brad Gay  38:00

That's correct. Wear a dust mask when you're doing this.

Farmer Fred  38:09

All right. garden mulch. I've preached it for years. It's the one of the best things to add to your garden and you don't have to till it and you can just lay it on top. You can plant around it. garden mulch has numerous benefits. It blocks weed seeds from sunlight so they don't germinate. It promotes better water retention. It provides needed nutrients as it decomposes. It moderates soil temperatures as well. Mulch is wonderful. Why not make it yourself from the things that are around you, that are falling, tree branches or leaves. I think a shredding vac is the way to go for just about every gardener.

Brad Gay  38:46

I've been using it for about three years now. But you know when I'm so glad that I got that I've got a number of friends that have similar landscapes and they have it and they use them quite a bit themselves too. It's really a nice handy tool. There you go. If you need a blower you've got a blower too. So if you want to just blow things around, get it into a pile and then put the bag on there and the other hose and now you can shred everything up out of your pile. So it's a two in one, three and one device.

Farmer Fred  39:16

Well, I thank you and my next door neighbor with the 60 foot tall Pin Oak Tree thanks you as well with this information about the shred and vacuum it like I say if you're going to have one garden tool that might set you back a couple hundred bucks. This would be the one to have to make your own mulch and improve your soil. We've been talking with Brad Gay from JBS Power Equipment in Davis, California. Brad, thanks so much.

Brad Gay  39:42

Fred. It's always a pleasure talking to you.

DEER CONTROL TIPS

Farmer Fred  39:51

No matter where you go in the United States, you are going to find deer. They're visible, They're widespread and they love to munch on your garden. They're a very popular game animal but they're not so fun when they're in your backyard eating your garden, your plants, your annuals, your perennials, your fruit trees and everything else. And it seems like deer populations are increasing in more populated areas, especially those on the outskirts of town, those that border riparian areas and they seem to be getting more and more bold, going into denser population areas because let's face it, we're not coyotes. They're not that afraid of us. Deer. How do you protect your plants? Debbie Flower is with us, a college professor (retired) of horticulture and I would think that in your time as a college professor, especially in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, this question came up a lot.

Debbie Flower  40:46

Yeah, sure did. There are a lot of vineyards in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And for them, it's a big, big problem. Because deer feed on relatively new growth. And they can do a lot of damage, especially if you get a mom who decides your vineyard is a good place to have her babies, then the babies come. Yeah, that's their new home and they will come back and come back and come back. So it's definitely a big problem up there.

Farmer Fred  41:15

I think a lot of people have finally realized that you have to take all these deer proof plant lists with a grain of salt, because like we say, "all gardening is local". Well, all deer are local, and they may have different taste buds wherever they may happen to be in the country.

Debbie Flower  41:31

And if they're starving, they'll eat anything, as a human would do. Starving and you'll eat anything to quell your stomach. So that's very true, there is nothing that is truly deer proof. But there are some strategies we can do to protect the plants that deer love a lot and that we love a lot and hopefully keep the deer from damaging them and keep them maybe out of our garden.

Farmer Fred  41:56

So as we try to do on this program, whenever we're tackling a pest problem is we have to correctly identify the pest. What are the signs that it's deer that are eating your plants?

Debbie Flower  42:07

You're absolutely right. There are many other plants? things that could be eating your plants, rodents, rabbits, and deer being among them. And so you need to have an idea of the what we call the signs of deer the things that let us know the deer have been there. One is the way they eat. Deer don't leave tooth marks on trunks. Let's say you won't see a set of marks in the trunk they have to eat they tear the leaves apart or shred them. They don't have upper incisors. I'm not real good on teeth, but those I think are cutting teeth. Dear lack upper incisors so they can't just bite into something like biting into an apple. They have to grab on to the nice young stems and leaves and tear them off. So that's number one the type of damage you see the location of that damage. deer are much taller than other things that might be eating our plants from the ground, like rabbits and rodents. So the damage could go up this plant to four to five feet. Maybe even bigger. If you've higher if you've got bigger deer around. Then look down look at the ground. Look for their poop. The deer pellets. I'm sure you can find pictures on the internet so I'm not going to describe them there but I can round their boy And around Yeah, and shiny. Yeah. And in a pile, usually. And then their hooves, they have to, I guess it's called a cloven hoof, with indents in the ground. And the whole thing is kind of the shape of an avocado or an egg. And that's the deer imprint in the ground. So you're gonna look for those things.

Farmer Fred  43:48

that it's probably the size of two pennies together, placed end to end.

Debbie Flower  43:53

The from the tip of each close to the back. Right, right. You're saying yeah, yeah.

Farmer Fred  44:00

it's not that big. You would think with a deer that there might be a bigger footprint, but in reality, it's fairly compact.

Debbie Flower  44:09

It is quite small. Yes.

Farmer Fred  44:11

So okay, we've figured out it's the deer. But we should point out too, that male deer, especially in late summer may be rubbing their antlers on tree trunks and limbs, or fence posts. And usually, if it's a mature tree, it's not that much of damage. But if they're rubbing those antlers on smaller trees or saplings, and then there could be a lot of damage.

Debbie Flower  44:32

right, if there's not a lot of cork over the live part of the plant. So cork is what we typically call bark, and the live part of the plant is just underneath that. And that's where all the liquids move around in the plant. If there's not a lot of protection over that the wet part, it rips it right off and exposes the the vascular system of the plant. So yeah, the deer are trying to take the velvet off of their antlers when they're doing that.

Farmer Fred  44:59

I think for the sake of this discussion, we will limit the conversation about deer proof plants simply because it isn't consistent from one area of the country to another. So let's talk about exclusion or modification or a lot of interesting things you can buy at the nursery to  maybe dissuade deer. Right?

Debbie Flower  45:20

There are several categories that we can explore for protecting our garden, as you mentioned, exclusion, modifying the habitat, repellents, and hazing or frightening them. And then in most places where there are deer, there is a hunting season as well, the most effective of all of those, but probably the most expensive of all of those controls is the fencing. And that was something that was explored heavily in the vineyards in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, it's expensive to make a fence and put it up and it has to be minimum of six feet, eight feet is better, and has to go all the way around the property. No holes in it. And deer will also if they can, they'll go under the fence. So you have to be sure that that fence is attached to the ground somehow, if it's a rigid fence, that's fine. But it is less expensive and maybe easier to use some of the softer plastics that are woven, and rolled up and used as fencing around let's say construction sites that might be a place you'd see them, they need to be six feet tall, minimum, eight feet is better. And they need to be rigidly attached, so that the deer can't get under them or well over is because of the height. They can't get over them.

Farmer Fred  46:47

Yeah, or they have to be rigidly supported to say don't knock down the fence too. So you're gonna have to have your support posts much closer together than you would on a normal fence.

Debbie Flower  46:57

Right. So that it's a pricey way to go. electric fences are a possibility too. And I read many different Cooperative Extension sites about deer and some of them you could tell deer was a really big problem, because they suggested turning on your electric fence and then getting a piece of aluminum foil putting peanut butter on it and wrapping it around the live electric fence so that the deer would be attracted and they would get their zapping. That is an extreme I think and electric fences take real regular maintenance because a lot of things can cause that electricity to fail.

Farmer Fred  47:32

Right. I think a good point to that university of california Cooperative Extension makes about if you are constructing a deer fence is not only you trying to keep them from getting in, you've got to give them an easy way to get out. Yes. And that's I would think very important that if you spot a deer in a fence to garden, then if you go to try to get them out, they may end up destroying the fence trying to get out.

Debbie Flower  48:00

right and they're not going to come to you asking you to open the gate or not. So you need to have another place fences need to fence the entire property and it needs to have a gate the gate needs to be the same height as the fence and you probably need a backdoor so that if you go in your gate and close it behind you because the deer may come in when you're not looking and see a deer you can leave by that gate and go around the gate is typically in a place or often in a place where humans Hang out, the deer is not likely to head toward that main gate. So have a backdoor have a back gate where they can leave.

Farmer Fred  48:35

And I imagine, too, on on a slope, you would want that escape gate on the high end.

Debbie Flower  48:42

It probably depends on your property. But that sounds like a really good idea. There's lots of discussion and there was some practice of it in the foothills of using a slanted fence, deer can jump high, and they can jump far, but they can't do both at the same time. And so if you only had a six foot fence, one technique is to slant it away at about a 45 degree angle away from the plant you're trying to protect at about a 45 degree angle. And that combination of distance and height will flummox the deer and keep them out.

Farmer Fred  49:18

I've heard about experiments going on with even shorter fences of four and five foot heights. But having that sloping a second sloping fence pointed outward, as well sort of like forming a V if you will. And as long as they can't get between the two fences and then jump, you might have success keeping them out with a lower fence by having the double fencing.

Debbie Flower  49:44

right. I also saw double fencing of vertical fences and a dog run between them. So with how wide the dog run three foot four foot, and, and so that the second fence inside didn't need to be as high. It just needed to contain the dog and deer don't like dogs. So dogs can be as protection. But of course you need to take care of that dog then that's not a free thing. You feed it, take it to the vet, groom it all of those good things.

Farmer Fred  50:12

Well, that brings up then the thought of using repellents and there are all sorts of chemical repellents that are sold for reducing or preventing deer damage. But I think they're only good until it starts raining.

Debbie Flower  50:26

repellents are a temporary solution. If you've got a crop that is just coming ripe and you realize a deer has found it and is starting to eat it. And you're only going to need this deer protection for a short period of time, then repellent is a possibility. There are lots of recipes for making repellents. They need to either smell really bad like fermented egg, or they need to cause a discomfort to the deer after they've been eaten. And that would be like hot pepper, the capsaicin and hot pepper. There are anecdotal repellents, like hanging hair in the crop or using urine of of what you'd have to buy of a predator of the deer. Those are also suggested but not tested.

Farmer Fred  51:11

I'm just wondering how they collect urine from coyotes.

Debbie Flower  51:15

Yeah, I'm not sure I want to know. I assume somebody I assume it's manufacturers, that somebody's analyzed what's in coyote urine and then put the same chemicals together. But that's my guess.

Farmer Fred  51:28

Now what about frightening devices and noisy objects? You see advertised a lot of motion activated sprinklers. But again, I would think at some point, they will just say, “Oh, it's raining”, and keep on eating.

Debbie Flower  51:42

They're again, short term. When you put them out initially they will keep the deer away. Again, you could use some potentially for a crop that just has a few days to go before you're going to finish with it. But when you're talking about raining, that would be a motion activated sprinkler. Other hazing things would be noises, radios, dog barking, setting off blanks on a some kind of a weapon, a gun kind of thing, but the deer will get used to them so they're not very Effective. One thing a friend of mine did in her home garden, and she lived near in the Napa Sonoma area was made a very narrow garden, only about five feet wide and fenced just that area. And because it was so narrow, the deer could not jump into it. Does that make sense?

Farmer Fred  52:35

Yeah. Okay. And so they're not willing to do a six foot leap into an area that they may not clear, right? But does that work from the get-go? Or do deer learn that after cousin Jim gets stuck at the top of the fence?

Debbie Flower  52:52

Yeah, I don't know about that, for sure. But I would discourage people from putting anything harmful on the top of the fence, you don't want to kill the deer. They talked about wire fencing because it has some flexibility to it. And it is easier to release a deer that gets caught in it or the deer to release themselves not to use barbed wire, because it's you're just creating the barrier, you're not trying to harm the deer in the process.

Farmer Fred  53:18

I guess another solution for people who just want to protect certain valuable plants and I'm thinking of fruit trees would be to individually cage each of these fruit trees. And this goes back to something we've talked about a lot on this program, maintaining fruit trees at a height that are within your reach. In other words, keeping them at maybe six feet tall or so and six feet wide. And that way, you'll still have plenty of fruit for the family. But it'd be much easier to build an enclosure to protect that tree.

Debbie Flower  53:45

Right, that's definitely an option. And also a young tree, we were talking about the male deer coming along and and rubbing their antlers on a tree and it's a young tree with a narrow stem, then it's much more damaging to that than an older tree that has much more much wider stem and much more cork on the outside of that wood. So you just the trunk of the tree can be covered. Either with a very narrow fence, it's only a foot or two across, and just prevents the deer from getting up close to it and rubbing their antlers against it. Or you can use something like tree wrap a plastic tree wrap or tree shelter, something in netting over the tree, something like that, that would keep the deer away. It is not a permanent solution. And it shouldn't be those kinds of of things that are very small and close to the trunk need to be checked regularly. So the plant itself is not damaged. So they're just for starting up for getting the orchard going, let's say and then considering doing the fencing that you were talking about next.

Farmer Fred  54:50

And if you're thinking of using some sort of noisemaker to frighten them off. I love this sentence in the University of California information on deer in their "pests in the gardens and landscape" series. And it says there about if you're thinking of using noisemakers, well in urban and suburban residential areas, deer come into contact with a variety of changing auditory and visual stimuli daily, and often quickly habituate to things that cause them no harm. So for instance, I was on my bicycle today, and I happened to be going down Sunrise Boulevard, which is a very busy street here in the Sacramento area, four lanes of traffic, always traffic, lots of signals, lots of horns. And here's a family of deer just walking down the sidewalk of Sunrise, headed for a residential complex where they had spied some tasty shrubs.

Debbie Flower  55:46

Oh, my goodness, yes. Yes, I've seen them but not in such busy places. But  they were on the side of the road. And it was a family and of many sizes, probably seven or so deer. And they actually stopped and waited for the car to go by.

Farmer Fred  56:04

These deer I saw today, they crossed with the light.

Debbie Flower  56:12

I think they've done this before. Yeah, they've gotten to know their environment. So yeah, this noise stuff. They call it hazing on one website I saw. Yeah, it doesn't work.

Farmer Fred  56:24

Yeah, it's very temporary. I guess if you mix it up a bit, that might help but again, it will be short term. So is there a solution? Maybe, maybe not.

Debbie Flower  56:37

It’s not an end-all solution. We can't eradicate the deer or the damage they're going to do, but we can share with them and I didn't see anybody saying anything about that. If you have enough property, you can put some thing that they like to eat way out in the back 40 somewhere, and obviously they'll still come looking for what else you have  that you would have to protect. An exclusion is your best choice, with fencing.

Farmer Fred  57:04

Exclusion. Deer. They are among us and we will continue to protect our backyard food supply. Debbie Flower, college horticulture professor, retired. Thank you so much for telling us the truth about deer.

Debbie Flower  57:19

It's always a pleasure. Thank you Fred.

Farmer Fred  57:27

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.