257. Questions? Answers!

Show Transcript

GB 257 Q&A TRANSCRIPT Mar. 17, 2023

Farmer Fred

Today, I’m joined by America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, and we are going to spend the entire episode answering your garden questions. We will be going into mind-numbing detail as well as frivolous scenic bypasses over such queries as:

• What’s the easiest way to apply fertilizer around fruit trees when the area is covered with mulch?

• What are some lawn alternatives that are low maintenance and drought tolerant?

• Why aren’t my carrots sweet? Did the rain do that?

• And the question for which there is no definitive answer: How can I keep the squirrels out of my garden and orchard?

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!

Q&A, Pt. 1 Applying Fertilizer: On Top or Under Mulch?

Farmer Fred

We'd like to welcome America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower, to the abutilon jungle here in suburban purgatory to help us answer garden questions. In today's episode, we're going to answer your garden questions. There are a lot of ways to get your questions into us. You can call or text us the question at 916-292-8964, that’s 916-292-8964. If you go to gardenbasics.net, there's a  contact box where you can leave a question. Email? Sure, I'm old fashioned. Send it to Fred at farmerfred.com. And one of my favorites: we'd like to hear your voice, too, if you leave us an audio question. You don't have to make a phone call. Go to speak pipe.com that speakpipe.com/garden basics. And leave us a question there.

Debbie Flower

I love it when you get questions. It's always fun to hear people's voices and their concerns and it's illuminating to know what's going on in other people's gardens.

Farmer Fred

And our first question comes from Bakersfield, California, which as the caller will allude to, is kind of a hot place.

Jill in Bakersfield

Hello, Farmer Fred. This is Jill from Bakersfield, Zone “surface of the sun”. And I have a question about fertilizing fruit trees. On the directions of granular fertilizers, they always say to apply directly to soil. However, I surround my fruit trees with a thick layer of wood chips. So if I want to fertilize them, do I have to remove all the wood chips or can I just sprinkle the fertilizer on top of the wood chips and the fertilizer will get to where it needs to go? I look forward to your response and I sincerely hope that it involves the least amount of work on my part.

Farmer Fred

Your wishes been granted? Here's Debbie Flower with the easy answer.

Debbie Flower

Yes, I am a lazy gardener when I can be. And when I fertilize my fruit trees which are also mulched with arborist chips, I just throw the granular fertilizer on the surface, the bag will tell you how much for how many square feet or number of trees or whatever. And I just throw it on the surface. The caveat is it needs to be watered in. Granular fertilizer is soluble in water in general, or this type that we're talking about is. And you want to get it down to the soil so that it can get into the root zone. So after throwing it on the surface, I will water it in or hope for a great rainstorm.

Farmer Fred

Now here I am with the harder news for you. It involves a bit of work. Why do I want to waste fertilizer on mulch? I would rather that the fertilizer feed the soil. So I will rake it back. And since I got the rake out, maybe just lightly score the soil a little bit, put down that fertilizer. If it's a granular fertilizer, I'll water it in. If it's a liquid fertilizer, I won't do anything except put the mulch back over just like I would with granular after getting done watering it.

Debbie Flower

Probably the number one reason I don't rake that away, obviously is laziness. But the root zone of a tree is two and a half to three times away from the trunk as the plant is tall, that's on average, obviously, it's only going to grow where the roots get water and oxygen. So if you only irrigate out to the drip line, there will only be roots out to the drip line, especially in a hot dry place like Bakersfield, California. So if you know where your roots are, raking the mulch away from the root zone can be a fairly economical way of doing it. If you don’t, and the roots are traveling, they'll travel to the neighbor's yard. If there's water and oxygen over there, they'll travel to the next tree, if there's water and oxygen over there. So I can put fertilizer in more places more easily by just putting it on top. And we're both assuming, I think, that  these trees are being irrigated with a drip irrigation system, not a spray irrigation system.

Farmer Fred

I wouldn't bet on that.

Debbie Flower

Okay, if it's a spray irrigation system, then broadcasting the granular fertilizer on the surface and turning on the irrigation system would wash it in. But you're right. Some of those nutrients will get tied up in the mulch. The mulch is an organic component. It has what's called a high cation exchange capacity on its surface. And that will hold on to some of the nutrients and it may increase the rate of decomposition of that mulch.

Farmer Fred

There is a widespread practice here. Maybe it is where you live, as well. It's called backyard orchard culture, where you're keeping your fruit trees about five or six feet tall and wide. Will your roots stay upon a fruit tree, if you do that?

Debbie Flower

Above the surface, there is a relationship between the size of the canopy above the surface, the canopy being the top of the tree, and the roots below the surface, it is not necessarily one to one and they don't mirror each other, you might have a lollipop tree above ground, you don't have a lollipop set of roots below ground, there is an amount that the top of the plant provides the food to the roots, the roots provide the nutrients to the top of the plant to make the food that go to the roots, back and forth, back and forth. And so the amount of one influences the amount of the other. So yes, if you keep the plant smaller, you will have a smaller root system.

Farmer Fred

And of course, this begs the big question, which is: if you're mulching under your tree, why are you fertilizing the tree?

Debbie Flower

Well, that's a good question. Fertilizing is done to stimulate growth. Fertilizers are often applied when you see deficiencies, which we have in citrus here and in Bakersfield, you could have citrus issues as well. And citrus will often show deficiency symptoms. And there are special citrus fertilizers that address the nutrients needed to correct those symptoms. So deficiency symptoms and when the plant shows new growth, those are the two times that you could apply fertilizer. But if you have an organic mulch that is breaking down with some speed, then that mulch is releasing nutrients to the soil. The problem in hot places is that the organic mulch will break down and a lot of the valuable nutrients which are primarily nitrogen become gas, they volatilize. If there's regular rain, if you live in a place that gets summer rain, winter rain, all year round rain, the mulch is breaking down and the nitrogen is being given off as gas or some of it is. When the rain comes that washes it back to the earth. In a hot dry place like Bakersfield, a lot of the nitrogen that breaks down becomes a gas and floats away. That's what Nitrogen does. It is what Nitrogen does. So it might mean there is a need for fertilizer. But again, I would want to see it when I see nutrient deficiencies. In the case of nitrogen, the old, growth turns yellow. So the growth that's closer to the main stem, closer to the inside of the plant turns yellow and the new leaves which will happen regularly. That's how plants grow. That leaf used to be in the sun, now it's in the shade. So it's not doing the plant a lot of good, The plant will strip it of the nitrogen in it and drop the leaf. But if a lot of them are turning yellow. And the new growth is very small, smaller than characteristic, that's a nitrogen deficiency. If you see deficiencies, that's the time to apply fertilizer. If you're not getting as much new growth as you want, you can apply fertilizer. But in backyard citrus culture, we're not looking for a lot of growth.

Farmer Fred

I would imagine mulch doesn't break down as quickly in a dry environment like Bakersfield. I think their annual rain total is somewhere like seven or nine inches.

Debbie Flower

That's the limiting factor. If they water that mulch regularly with an overhead irrigation and it's hot, it'll break down faster. But if they don't water, if the mulch is not wet and hot, it will break down slowly. Right. So you may not get the nutrients you need out of it. Unless you're using a water sprayer again, unless you're using spray irrigation.

Farmer Fred

So there you go. Hope that helps. We probably raise more questions than answered, but call back. Yeah, call back. Thanks for using SpeakPipe, too.

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Q&A, Pt. 2 Lawn Alternatives

Farmer Fred

We're answering questions on today's episode of the Garden Basics podcast. Here's one sent by email from Joanne of Sacramento. She writes in: “we no longer have a lawn but we would like a small grass-like area. Do you have any recommendations for lawn alternatives that do not need as much water and are low maintenance? One we could use a weed trimmer to trim it down?” Oh, that's a question that's been plaguing me for the last six years, trying to get 250 square feet of something that is not a grass lawn.

Debbie Flower

And my husband also wants the same thing and I tell him he's looking for a unicorn.

Farmer Fred

Especially if you have mitigating factors like I do, which are two dogs.

Debbie Flower

Yes, you have dogs and I tried what's called a “no mow lawn”. And it was kind of a twinkle in people's eyes at the time. There were no pre-made seed mixes yet when I did it, this was like 12 years ago, they were just beginning with sod. There was a sod available. My husband didn't want to go sod. He wanted to go seed. So I sourced the individual types of grass that were used in the sod. And they are all fescues. Fescues are tough grasses. They are relatively drought tolerant. There are fescue’s that grow in shade, and fescues that grow in sun, but they are a bunch grass for the most part. They are bunch grasses, meaning that they send a shoot up in the center. As it gets older and older,  it gets more and more shoots around that center shoot. Other grasses are what we call stoloniferous. And I used to tell my students that means “they steal space”. So they send a stem out across the surface of the soil root at places and send up leaves at places so they take over a lot of land relatively quickly. And some are also what we call “rhizomatous” which means they have a similar stem that travels under the soil and sends shoots up from there, so our lawn ended up being all bunch grasses. And now it is many years later, and it is a lumpy mess. Lumpy. Yes, it is not something people choose to sit on, or walk through. My cats love it because there are low spots and high spots. So they hide in the low spots, and then they jump out at each other in the high spots. Looking at it for the most part, it’s pretty. But when it gets very hot and dry, not so pretty. Fescue is our cool season lawn here. That's the other thing to know about grasses. Some are cool season. They look beautiful when the weather is cool, but when it gets hot, they go dormant. Others are warm season. They look beautiful in the summer, and when it gets cold, they go dormant and dormant means brown.

Farmer Fred

In the old days here in California when people had primarily Bermuda grass lawns - speaking of stolons and rhizomes - it was a warm season grass, it would turn brown in the winter, so they would overseed it with either a perennial rye or an annual rye for it to remain green throughout the year. That was one sort of solution. The problems with rye grass, especially perennial ryegrass, is if you the humidity goes up, you end up with a rust problem. These are orange spots that you can easily transfer to other parts of your yard.

Debbie Flower

And it's a more needy of water and fertilizer.

Farmer Fred

Right.  So people have shied away from Bermuda lawns. And as a result, they don't have a use for rye as much anymore. So they're looking at what you planted and I had tried it, too, without much success. And you're right, it's very lumpy. I have seen these no-mow or mow-free varieties in mass at a mature stage. And from a distance, they look nice. But I imagine they can't take foot traffic.

Debbie Flower

Well,  you can walk through it. It's just not comfortable. Because it's so uneven. You could twist your ankle, right? So a lot of breeding has gone into improving Bermuda grass, to make it a finer texture. The sort of wild Bermuda grass that we have as a weed in our gardens here in California and other warm places, it is a warm season grass, and is kind of rough looking. And so a lot of breeding has gone into creating what they call tetraploid, which means they have four sets of chromosomes and so that's what they've ended up with. And most of the higher quality, heavily bred Bermuda grasses that have a finer texture and a longer green season, that can take hold better, start with the word “TIF”.  There's TIF, green and Tif this and Tif that. The University of Georgia did a lot of that breeding because it's a warm place. They get more rain than we do here, but it's a warm place. Another grass that the University of California has been working on is buffalo grass. And I've been trying to convince my husband that we should at least interplant our no-mow lawn with buffalo grass. So the low spots and the bare spots have something in them. I haven't gotten through to him yet. But the one thing I've been looking at is the flower and they don't discuss much about the flower because the flower on Bermuda grass, on regular weedy weedy Bermuda grass, can be annoying and very bad for allergy sufferers. In the tetraploid, the TIF Bermuda grasses, they don't have pollen in their flower. They do have a flower but they don't have any pollen so it's not as much of a allergy problem. And then there are other non grass substitutes, right Fred?

Farmer Fred

Let's back up a minute here. Buffalo grass turns kind of ugly in the winter.

Debbie Flower

True. It has a dormancy.

Farmer Fred

It's all warm season.

Debbie Flower

All grasses have a dormant season. All lawn grasses.

Farmer Fred

I beg to differ with you. The putting green my wife wants is green year round.

Debbie Flower

Tell us about that. It's like the one I see on at my neighbor was on the way to the gym.

Farmer Fred

When we had acreage and she wanted a putting green, that was no problem. We call it hardscaping. And it was artificial turf. And it really maintained its color, its shape, its uniformity and resistance to dog damage for years and years.

Debbie Flower

And there has been a lot of improvement in that as well. They used to say they're incredibly hot and they've addressed that in the artificial turf industry. So as for a small green area, as the one I pass on the way to the gym looks, it's quite pretty.

Farmer Fred

Poor Joanne, we haven't really given her a positive answer yet. It’s a tough one, but we're weighing the pros and cons of it. So we've talked about buffalo grass. We've talked about the Mow-free or no mow fescues which are clumping grasses. And then there was the latest miracle, Kurapia,  which is just a modern name for Lippia.  And if you ever had Lippia, or your parents had Lippia, they could tell you tales of how it would grow at night and strangle miniature poodles.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it does take over if it is allowed. So that edging would be very much required. There might even be some pulling involved.

Farmer Fred

Tell me about it. I planted it. It didn't want to grow where I wanted it to grow. But it loved to be in the mulch, and it grew towards the raised beds, and all of a sudden, It crawled under the raised beds, through the raised beds. But you're right, you can grab a handful of it and pull a big bunch of it all at once. Because it really is quite,  as you would say, stoloniferous

Debbie Flower

Stealing space. Yes. And it does just that.

Farmer Fred

And it has little flowers, too, that attract bees and that, for some people, that's a drawback. But you can mow it more regularly to keep the flowers down.

Debbie Flower

Does the flower have a long season?

Farmer Fred

In the warmer times of the year. I noticed that when the Kurapia would bloom, it tended to bloom most in the summer when the bees are most active.

Debbie Flower

Yes, they need warm weather to be active.

Farmer Fred

But Kurapia was touted as the ultimate drought tolerant ground cover that could be used  in extreme weather, on heavy slopes. It could take Irregular watering, irregular pH, and foot traffic.

Debbie Flower

in Zone  7B and warmer

Farmer Fred

in USDA zone 7B and warmer. Yes exactly. Now what it doesn't list is dog damage. It would have been perfect if it did resist dog damage, but no.

Debbie Flower

dog urine is powerful stuff and  maybe if you trained the dogs to go elsewhere.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, you could build a dog run and keep them isolated to one spot. Or, you have a new full time hobby of following them around with a watering can.

Debbie Flower

Or they wear diapers.

Farmer Fred

Yes, all right. So that's it. It really does like full sun, and there was just too much shade where I had it , too.  I think it was slow to take off. And it where it did take off was going towards the raised bed,  where there was more sun.

Debbie Flower

And probably more water.

Farmer Fred

I think so, especially under the mulch. Yeah, there would be more water there.

Debbie Flower

It is insulated under there.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. And and a lot less dog urine damage.  We're doing some work on the raised beds right now, and I'm pulling the Kurapia away from the raised beds, just getting it out of the way.

Debbie Flower

So once you have it you always have it.

Farmer Fred

Could be.

Debbie Flower

Like like potato patch.

Farmer Fred

If I didn't like a neighbor, I guess I could go over at night with a bucket full of it and just scatter it on their yard.

Debbie Flower

Another plant in that same vein is perennial clover. That's available as pelleted seed from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply in Grass Valley, groworganic.com. And it's pelleted. That is important for Clover because they need to be inoculated with certain bacteria. And so that's already in the pellet. So you can start it from seed, but it is stoloniferous at first. Not as aggressive as the Bermuda grass is stoloniferous. At first it does bloom, it blooms white and it does attract bees, clover uses less water than grass does. It does need some summer irrigation and it may die back during very hot times of the year. So depending on how much shade you have in summer, you may have some dead spots.

Farmer Fred

If people follow me on Facebook, you know that my neighbor's giant 60 foot cedar tree fell into my yard and destroyed a perfectly good looking experiment going on in that patch where I had Clover growing through the cool season. I planted it last September and it looked good all winter. And it seemed to resist dogs. And I was anxious to see what it would do in the hot weather. Now we won't know, because of  cleanup and repairs to damage and things like that. And also there's a lot of cedar saw dust around. But things have changed. I got a lot of free mulch.  Well, It's not free.

Debbie Flower

It was chipped and you have to pay somebody for that.

Farmer Fred

Well, when you have to have somebody remove the tree from the yard, you end up with mulch.  There's that. Any other solutions? Yes, a putting green.

Debbie Flower

The manmade plastic one. Yes. I have a plant called Dymondia. I have it growing around my greenhouse. The only way I know it's available is in small containers. And so I bought a few small containers, put them in bigger containers, grew them on and then put them in the ground. Now it's getting some water because of the irrigation system in the greenhouse. It goes on, right now, only once a week, but it's getting that water. And there is a drip system that is actually turned off right now. But in the summer, it gets drip water and it gets some shade. But we had it at school in an irrigated full sun planter, and it took over. It knits very tightly, you can walk on it. I walk on it all the time. It stays very low. Although it does need some water. It is drought tolerant in that the leaves are fuzzy and they're sort of gray colored especially on the back and it blooms with little yellow flowers. I am not aware of bees visiting.

Farmer Fred

It almost looks like ice plant without the flowers.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, it's  a gray ground cover.

Farmer Fred

Is it walkable?

Debbie Flower

I walk on it. Yes. I don't walk on it daily or play kickball on it or anything. So it can take some foot traffic. And I don't know how it reacts to dogs. It for USDA zone nine and higher. So it is not for a lot of the country. But it is evergreen. So it's green in spring, summer and fall and I tried it in parts of my lawn and it just didn't establish, probably because I didn't irrigate it correctly at establishment, which is always a problem when plants go into the ground.

Farmer Fred

Reading about Dymondia  briefly here on the internet,  which as you know, knows everything. “Dymondia as a ground cover for lawns requires full sunlight or light shade. It performs best in sandy, well drained soils, it performs poorly in boggy, poor draining soil. It is susceptible to gophers.”

Debbie Flower

And in the Sacramento area there can be gophers, Joanne said she has clay soil. I wouldn't let that stop me from trying something that does best in well drained soil, you just have to adjust your irrigation so you don't have standing water in the clay which means you put a little bit of water on, let it soak in, put a little bit more on, let it soak in. And this is all done in one day. Put a little more on, let it soak in, until you've got water down at least six inches, a foot would be better, because the roots of the plant will go where the water and oxygen are. And the deeper they go, the more protected from drought and heat they will be. The last suggestion would be a meadow or a mix of plants included including some grasses, some Yarrow, potentially, I don't think thyme would do well in your situation because it definitely needs excellent drainage. Walk on thyme? To me, you can't walk on thyme. Yeah. So some sort of mix. You could include clover, a variety of things, but  it's not going to be a smooth look. It's going to be lumpy and you'll have flowers in places at times and flowers in other places. And then things like Yarrow, of course, the flowers die back and you have that stalk sticking up. So it takes a little more maintenance.

Farmer Fred

Going back one second to Dymondia. That article from the University of California about the popular variety, which is Dymondia margarita, that “it is named after Miss Margaret Dryden Diamond, a horticulturist who first discovered it beside a road along the Western Cape of South Africa in 1933.  And Silver Carpet is it's common name. It is showcased in coastal gardens.” Well, there's a hint for you.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, I agree. I have been to South Africa. And it gets warm at the Cape, I'd say warmer than the California coast, but higher humidity.

Farmer Fred

It was humid. Okay, so maybe this plant likes it humid.

Debbie Flower

Maybe I have it in part shade. And it's done extremely well. And as I said, we had it in full sun at school and it started there were some raised beds, a student project, a student built raised beds out of cinder block and it started climbing the cinderblock, but that was irrigated so I think to use it here in the Sacramento region in full sun, it needs regular irrigation, whatever that is, and for Joanne that's going to be infrequent surge irrigation. Surge meaning water bearing, letting it absorb watering, letting it absorb watering, letting it absorb, you need a good timer that allows you to turn on that station three, four or five times in one day with time in between each onset so that the water can be absorbed in.

Farmer Fred

It says here on this University of California publication, Dymondia, that it tolerates both heat and light frost, but temperatures below 28 degrees can be fatal.

Debbie Flower

Hmm. Okay, that's why it's the zone nine and above. Yeah, yeah. But where she is in Land Park in Sacramento, I would think that would not be a problem. Most of the time, it is going to be warmer from all the asphalt It's an urban situation, you're gonna have a lot of reflected heat at night. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

Joanne. I really like this putting green idea.

Debbie Flower

If it's just a little green spot you want to look at, I think that's a great idea as well.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. And they're much more natural looking. I know there are people hating me right now for saying this. But I think it has its place, especially with water becoming harder to obtain and more expensive for what you can obtain. It's going to become a more likely scenario. I'd certainly not do it for a whole landscape. But a putting green, yes. It's hardscaping.

Debbie Flower

It's a hard scape.

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Farmer Fred

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Q&A, Pt. 3 Why Aren’t My Carrots Sweeter?

Farmer Fred

On that note, let's go to the next question. All righty.

Unknown Speaker

Hi, Fred. I have a question about this rain which kind of wiped out the carrots. They're very pale. They don't have a lot of flavor. If one just leaves them in the ground longer, will they return to normal? Or is it just a lost crop? Thanks.

Farmer Fred

Well, we didn't get a name or an address. But we kind of figured out a lot by the rain clue. And we did have lots of rain here in Northern California and Central California and Southern California.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, over the last month or so from Christmas on for about eight weeks. We got 11 inches of rain here in Sacramento, something like that. It’s a lot of rain for us.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I would think