267 More Garden Tips, LIVE!

Show Transcript

TRANSCRIPT Ep. 267 More Garden Tips, Live!

Farmer Fred  0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

Have you ever wondered how to attract more birds to your yard? Today, we have a tip to bring in the birds, using sound. (07:28)

Are you thinking of removing all or part of your lawn to save water, or you just want to expand your garden area? Now’s the time to take action, and we will show you the way. (10:05)

How about bringing an end to common tomato problems, such as flower drop or blossom end rot? We will tell you how. (20:02)

How much should you water your lawn or garden? We get into that today, too. (40:01)

“We”, would be myself and America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture professor, Debbie Flower. It’s all part of a recent conversation, recorded live, at the California State Garden Club district meeting in Sacramento. And there are a lot more tips too, plus we have audience questions and comments. We’re saving you more time, money and water in your spring gardening efforts!

It’s all in today’s episode 267, More Garden Tips, Live!  It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today, as always, by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

MORE GARDEN TIPS, LIVE! Pt 1

Farmer Fred

We are pleased to be at one of the finest garden facilities in Northern California, The Shepherd Garden and Arts Center. here in Sacramento. Many, many garden clubs hold their meetings here. It's an excellent facility. We've been appearing here in one form or another for decades.

Debbie Flower  2:07

I think one of the first things we did together was here, and it was a California Association of Nurserymen meeting.

Farmer Fred

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Debbie Flower

And then when I was the president.

Farmer Fred

Lucky you.

Debbie Flower  2:19

And you became the newsletter guy.

Farmer Fred  2:22

We are pleased to speak, in my case, for the second time, to the Sacramento River Valley Garden District. Ron Byrd is the district director for the Sacramento River Valley District of the California Garden Clubs, Inc. What are the clubs that are represented here?

Ron Byrd  2:44

We have 14 clubs that make up the Sacramento River Valley District. They're all listed on our website. We have another club coming in this summer, from Rancho Murietta, but we're all part of the state organization, California Garden Clubs, Incorporated. I forget how many districts there are, but we're the district that represents the four counties around Sacramento. And we have a website. It’s SRVD.org . And you can go on the website and find out the things we're doing.

Farmer Fred  3:19

Very good, Ron Byrd. Thank you for that information. Please give a nice welcome to  America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor Debbie Flower!

Farmer Fred  3:36

She is most recently of American River College, along with Sierra College, Folsom Lake College…

Debbie Flower  3:42

Eldorado Center. Yeah, I taught around. I was at the Skills and Business Education Center, which is part of Sac City School District.

Farmer Fred  3:50

And she's a big part of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. I hope some of you have listened to it. However, if you're asking the question, “what's a podcast?” I tell you what: Go to the website, gardenbasics.net , gardenbasics.net. You can find the podcast there, or wherever you get your podcasts. But for those of you that are podcast averse, I understand that. I get it. Technology is moving faster than all of us would like. And the best way around is to just go to gardenbasics.net . You can listen to the podcast there. And, they'll send you a weekly reminder of when the latest podcast is posted. A recent podcast that Debbie and I did was all about cucumbers, which I'd never realized was the number two most popular garden vegetable to be grown in America. Who would have thunk?

Debbie Flower  4:39

They're great vegetables. You know they cool you off in summer. They're full of vitamins and minerals. I ate one full cucumber every day when I was pregnant.

Farmer Fred  4:50

It was wonderful listening to all of you talk about what your clubs have been doing lately in the different presentations earlier. I heard a bit of a recurring theme. It was along the lines of you've got money burning a hole in your pocket, and you can't get kids to take it for scholarships. That can be a big problem. And you're absolutely right. It is the communication factor that lets people know there's college money for kids.  I remember in the old days, you could call Farmer Fred on the radio, and do it that way. Well, it's the 21st century. Try Facebook. Somebody mentioned that Debbie Arrington appeared at one of their meetings. Debbie Arrington is a fine ex-garden writer for the Sacramento Bee. She, along with Kathy Morrison, now does the “Sacramento Digs Gardening” newsletter, which has thousands and thousands of readers. So I would suggest that if you have scholarships available for students,  drop a line to Debbie, and again, you can find her newsletter at Sacramento Digs Gardening. If you just do a search for “Sacramento Digs Gardening,” you will find her newsletter. It's an excellent daily newsletter all about gardening in our area that you should take advantage of.

Debbie Flower  5:54

And when I was teaching, some garden clubs would contact me. So American River College has a program, Cosumnes River College has a program.  The biology departments in other schools, such as Folsom Lake and Sierra College, no longer have a horticulture program, though. Part of the students angst about it was they didn't understand how to get a letter of recommendation. So what do you want? And in that letter of recommendation,  I would help them figure that part out. I usually wrote one myself, but some students, especially at the community college level, some students need that guidance. So going directly to that Professor, by mailing, emailing, or phoning them is just another way to get that information out.

Farmer Fred  6:40

So basically, find out if you have colleges or high schools with agriculture or horticulture departments, find out who the teacher is. Perhaps they have a consultant there.  Contact that person directly with the information, and that would be your best bet for spreading the word. That and posting on Facebook. Anybody here making Tik-Tok videos? That's a great way to do it. No one here is doing that? All right, I guess not.

Farmer Fred

We are here to talk about spring garden tips, how to save time, money, and water in the garden. This isn't the same conversation we had at the Elk Grove Garden Club back in February, because there's just so many ways you can save time, money and water in the garden. We’re going to be talking about this until the end of the year, and never have to repeat ourselves! I heard some interesting things from the group here while you were coming in, Debbie. And one of them had to do with attracting birds to the garden. One thing I discovered about attracting birds to the garden, it's not only having a wider range of flowers, perennial plants, trees and evergreen shrubs for the birds, but also the sound of water. They love the sound of water. If you have a fountain or a recirculating bird bath, something that makes a lot of gurgling noises, they will hear that and they will make a beeline, even though they're birds, they will make a beeline for it and love that water. Recirculating birdbaths are great way to go.

Debbie Flower  8:08

And make a dripper. I have a dripper on my bird bath and it connects right to a hose bib and it has a regulator on it, a valve that you can open and close and it's barely open. It just drips, once every five seconds. When it's cold, it slows down. When it's hot, it speeds up, because of the change in the diameter of the tubing. So I have to adjust it once in a while. But the birds come.  I have to have it fenced off because I have cats that go outside, and there’s cats in the neighborhood. So I have a fence around it. The birds sit on that fence. And a lot of the little birds stand on the dripper and bend over and get their water that way. Another place for them to perch is above, in the power lines. My property happens to be surrounded by power lines. And I was watching as a titmouse flew into a white iris yesterday and grabbed an insect off of that iris, and then went back up to the power lines to eat it. So they watch and listen. Even just putting tall poles in the vegetable garden where they can sit, they will find that tomato hornworm or whatever it is that they're interested in.

Audience Question

Don’t you worry about mosquitoes in the bird bath?

Debbie Flower  9:22

That is something you can worry about. However, moving water prevents them from using it as a place to lay their mosquito eggs.

Farmer Fred  9:33

If it is stagnant water, there are dunks available at any nursery, garden center, or hardware store. The dunks are made out of Bacillus thuringiensis, which will eradicate the baby mosquitoes in that stagnant water. So if it is stagnant water, use the Bt dunks, they're also called “mosquito dunks” that can just float in the water and they're harmless to any bird that might come by.

Debbie Flower  9:55

As well or your dog or your cat or the squirrel or anything that's going to come and get water out of that same container. The Bt is harmless to them, but it will kill the mosquito larva.

Farmer Fred  10:04

I heard another thing here this morning that piqued my interest because  we're coming up to high time for “kill your lawn” season here in the Sacramento area. In fact, it’s for all of interior Northern and Central California. We're approaching our hot months. One garden club member here mentioned that the speaker they had at a recent local meeting was talking about using cardboard, and you can certainly do that. It's called sheet mulching. But there's another way to do it and it's called soil solarization, using clear plastic. And you do it during the hottest times of the year, usually, June July, August. Pick a six week period in there, mow your lawn really short, really, really short. Water it very, very thoroughly. And then spread out sheets of thin plastic, secured to the ground. You can find big rolls of painters plastic and big rolls at major hardware or paint stores, such as Lowe's or Home Depot. Spread it out, secure it along the edges so air cannot get beneath it. Come back six weeks later, and you’ll have a dead lawn. I did this with a 2000 square foot area of Bermuda grass, and it worked like a charm. Bermuda grass never popped up again.

Debbie Flower  11:05

That's pretty amazing. Make sure you bury those edges, dig a little trench and bury the edges. What you're trying to do is trap the heat of the sun under that plastic. And the water helps the soil absorb more heat than just plain air in the soil can absorb. But you got to keep it in there. So with the edges, you have to dig a little trench and bury all four edges of that plastic.

Farmer Fred  11:26

Again, it works only in the hottest times of the year. If you want to do it during the cool season, that's where you'd use the cardboard and the sheet mulching method. If you go online, you can find some great references with pictures about soil solarization and sheet mulching to help you at least reduce the size of your lawn, to save some money  as far as watering goes, even though we all have plenty of water right now. We don't know about next year. This is just a pause in the storm of dryness, so to speak. We've already saved you some money. Good for us!

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Farmer Fred  12:04

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More Garden Tips, LIVE! Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation at the California State Garden Club, recorded live. It’s garden tips to save you time money and water, part two.

Farmer Fred

If you ever go, I should say if Debbie ever comes over to your house, and you're out working in the yard, and you say, “oh Debbie's here. Let me put my tools away, and I'll come inside and talk with you.” But if you don't clean your tools first….

Debbie Flower  14:30

I might get a little rabid. Yeah. I get very upset when I go in my garage and there's a tool there with some mud on it. My husband hasn't washed it off and dunked it in the sand that has oil in it, and then hung it up.

Farmer Fred

Do you make him sharpen it, too?

Debbie Flower

I don’t make him, I will show him and say, “Look, this really helps!” Yeah, sharpening a shovel is a wonderful thing to do. It makes obviously a sharp tip but it makes digging so much easier. It's amazing the difference. So I try to keep sharpening tolls all around.  I don't know about you, I have pruning shears everywhere: in my car, my kitchen, my garage, my back pocket, usually they're everywhere. And a little sharpening tool, I have several of those. With hand shears, it's not as easy to get the whole blade with the little,  handheld sharpening tool that has a “V” in it. You can slide the V over the blade, but I never can get into the jaw. So then you get a single bladed sharpener, and you work with that. Be sure to only go at about a 20 degree angle. People want to sharpen, like this. And I did this with students, and they got a great angle, and they show me what they do with a piece of paper, but that angle is so fine, and so shallow, the sharpened area is going to break off immediately and you're gonna have a dull blade all over again. So you want to go with a 20 degree angle, which is very low, and work that. And you go one direction, over and over and over and over. Then you go on the back and flatten that blade and get all the burrs off of it. And it sharpen tools. Clean, sharp tools make gardening much easier. I don't know about you, but I have arthritis in my thumbs and the sharp edge makes pruning much easier to do.

Farmer Fred  16:17

I have discovered that using an old barbecue brush, a grill brush, works wonders at getting stuck on mud off of shovel surfaces. The hard part is when the dirt gets caught in that curved lip that's usually on the back of the head of a shovel. And for that I keep an old flathead screwdriver handy.  I can clean it out with that screwdriver. And of course the force of water ,by using the jet spray on a hose nozzle, can help clean off a lot of the mud.

Debbie Flower  16:42

But we want to conserve water. So removing the mud physically with another tool is very helpful to conserve water.

Farmer Fred  16:48

But…Yeah, okay. All right. Just make it part of your routine, that when you're done gardening for the day, clean your tools. Another tip that you gave us many years ago on the podcast had to do with how to store your tools. And you talked about what can happen if you take your shovel and set it inside the garage with the tip of its head on the floor.

Debbie Flower  17:11

Okay. I bring in my shovel and clean it. I have a bucket of sand with actual crankcase oil in it. Used automobile oil in it. I dip it in there, take it out.  I have that bucket in an aluminum roasting pan that you would buy at the dollar store, you know you get five for $1. So that I can just let the tool sit there for a minute or a day and drip. And then I hang the tool. And the reason I hang it rather than let it sit on the concrete is that water comes up through concrete. And that can cause the the tip of your shovel to rust. And that's counterproductive.

Farmer Fred  17:47

So you hang the tools upside down with the handle pointed down?

Debbie Flower  17:51

Yeah, I do it both ways. Yeah, as long as it's off the floor. I do it both ways. Because I get  more that fit. You know if you have all the shovels up here, fewer fit. If you have one like this (hung by the head) and one like this (hung by the handle) and one like this and one like this, then they all fit better.

Farmer Fred  18:06

And clean your hand pruners, especially, they can really build up a lot of gunk, especially during pruning season. Have something handy to clean those off before you put them away when you're done with those. Clean them off with a grill brush or something that, which will take the gunk off. But if you use a liquid product with bleach in it, then rinse your tool afterward,s because you don't want that bleach sticking to your tool. That can rust the tool, right?

Debbie Flower

Right.

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Farmer Fred

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MORE GARDEN TIPS, LIVE! Pt. 3

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation with Debbie flower recorded live at a meeting of the California State Garden Club. And of course we had to talk about tomatoes!

Farmer Fred

So how many of you have tomatoes planted already? Good for you. All right, how many of you have tomato flowers? Good for you. Me too How many of you have seen some tomato flowers fall off? You haven't looked lately, have you? Maybe after another 90 degree day or so you'll start seeing tomato flowers fall off. And the nursery will say, “Well, I'll tell you what, let me sell you this can of spray here, to keep the blossoms on. That way, you'll get more tomatoes.” Huh? How does that work?

Debbie Flower  20:34

That works to make money for the nursery. Yes, there are products you can buy. But it's not going to be helpful. There are things you can do to get more tomatoes off of your tomato plants if you're losing flowers that are not pollinating. And that can be a temperature related thing. Tomatoes are self pollinating. Although you get better you get more fruit set if you have them visited by pollinators. The self pollination has to do with the rate of growth of the sex parts inside the flower. And they have to go by each other just at the right time, when the female stigmatic surfaces are receptive and the male pollen is ripe, and then they brush against each other and then the pollination is done. If the temperatures are above 90 or below 50, forget it, it's not going to happen. But you can go out and shake the flowers. Typically the time to do these things is in the morning. So you get up, grab your cup of coffee or tea or whatever, go outside, shake your tomato flowers. And that will help some of the pollen drop onto the ripe stigmatic surface. Even if they're not quite in line, they're not gonna be able to do it themselves. You use an electric toothbrush, right?

Farmer Fred  21:52

You can use an old electric toothbrush or whatever you have handy that vibrates. And I mean, the beauty of tomato plants is they are self pollinating. That flower is a complete flower. And all you need to do is shake it just a little bit to move that pollen around. The wind does that and of course, the insects will visit it as well.

Debbie Flower  22:07

Hopefully, if you got insects in the neighborhood, yeah.

Farmer Fred  22:11

if you go to a nursery and you're complaining about the brown bottoms of your tomatoes, asking, “why are my tomatoes turning brown and my squash and my peppers?” Yeah, it's blossom end rot. And they'll say, “Well, you don't have enough calcium in your soil. Here's some spray with calcium, and just spray it on your tomatoes.” That won't make a dimes worth a difference, you can't spray a tomato fruit to heal it. That tomato is unhealable. You can certainly cut off the brown part, chop up the rest, and put it in a salad, it's fine. But that calcium spray is not going to work. It's not so much a matter of a chemical deficiency in the soil. It's more of a matter of operator error that causes blossom end rot. And right now, there are some tomato varieties that just naturally get blossom end rot. Like a lot of the Italian paste tomatoes can end up with blossom end rot. But generally speaking, it's irregular watering.

Debbie Flower  23:05

Right. It's the calcium not getting to the plant when the fruit needs it. And that would be due to lack of water at that moment. So having regular water can help, but then there is such thing as watering too much (that can cause blossom end rot, too). So keeping track of your water; watering deeply and infrequently. There are very few things that you would water daily. In a California summer, garden containers may be one of them. But not all containers need water every day. But the vegetable garden, if it's planted in any field soil or raised bed that has some depth to it, we should not need watering daily. What watering daily does to any plant is it keeps the roots at the surface level where it gets hot very quickly and it gets cold very quickly, it gets wet very quickly, it gets dry very quickly. It's an incredibly stressful environment for the plant to live in. So it's better to water a lot, but infrequently. Let it go all the way down. And then don't water for a few days. I haven't even turned my irrigation on in my vegetable garden yet.

Farmer Fred  24:06

You're bragging now.

Debbie Flower  24:08

I have planted and watered thoroughly at the time I planted and then walked away. Be aware that water can be cold. If you're planting from seed what you could be doing now, including cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, things like that. Beans, it's a little early for beans, but you might be putting them in. If you water frequently, you're just chilling those seeds every day and  they're going to rot. They're not going to germinate. So watering and walking away from those seeds will help them to germinate. And then watering deeply and infrequently will put your roots of your established plants deeper where it's better insulated, where the moisture levels are more even and the temperature levels are more even. So then the question is. how do you know when to water?

Farmer Fred

I'd get a moisture meter.

Debbie Flower

A moisture meter is a device for measuring soil moisture. They can be inexpensive and they're  just a very simple dial that says wet or dry. If you use one of those, learn how your soil responds to it. Put it in when it's dry, and see where that meter is. Maybe mark it with a marker or a piece of tape or something. And then put it in when the soil is wet. Let it drain and put it in again and see the difference. It depends a lot on your soil and the amount of nutrition in your soil. It’s actually an electrical response to the minerals that are in your soil.  I've put a moisture meter into distilled water, and it will read dry. You have to know where your soil lies in that spectrum. And then you know what's dry for your soil and what's wet for your soil. How deep do you want to go? At least six inches.

Farmer Fred  25:43

Go down six or eight or 12 inches. It depends on how deep your soil can go. And you don't even need a moisture meter, really. If you abhor technology, get yourself a soil probe. It's also called a soil auger, which is usually a chrome device that looks like the letter “T”, with a tube that's maybe  12 to 24 inches long with a T-handle. You plunge that into the ground eight inches, give it a quarter turn, and then bring it up. One side of the long end of that T soil probe is open, so you can see the soil that you're bringing up from eight inches down, or 12 inches. You can feel it, so you can see if it's wet, you can feel if it's wet or not. And the other way to do it if you're really want to be low tech is use a long screwdriver.

Debbie Flower  26:30

Yeah, I did that when I taught at the Skills and Business Education Center on Stockton Boulevard. Its property is the old fairgrounds; now it's part of the UC Davis Med Center. But the students maintained the landscape there.  I told the students that  I'm going to check if you're irrigating deeply and infrequently. And I had a very long shank screwdriver probably, 10 to 12 inches long. And I would just go out and plunge it into the soil. It's amazing. It stops when it hits the dry stuff. Pull it out, and I would perhaps say, “you're not doing it well enough.”

Farmer Fred  27:01

And if you're in love with the feel of soil,  then use a trowel. Dig down eight to 10 inches, bring up a handful of that soil, grab that soil out of the trowel and squeeze it. Is water running down your arm? It's too wet.  If it breaks up completely as you try to squeeze it, it's too dry. If, on the other hand, you can make a nice dirt clod from it that stays together (but breaks apart with a bit of effort), that's probably the correct amount of moisture to have. It’s called field level moisture.

Debbie Flower  27:30

Something to be aware of when you're building a raised bed or you have a raised bed or maybe you bought a house that has the raised bed: when there's a change in soil texture, from let's say the raised bed was filled with bagged material, which is primarily organic material. And the field soil below it may be clay, the water will stop at the clay and so you're only wetting the top portion. The water will stop. And if it's a raised bed, it actually comes out underneath the frame. So if you're making a new raised bed, put a layer of what you're importing on top of the existing soil, maybe two inches, till it in, or turn it in with a shovel. Then do another two inches. So make a transition zone mix. Mix those soils together so that you get the water to more easily move into the field soil and in doing so, you'll actually extend the root zone for those plants.

Farmer Fred  28:24

This brings up another very interesting scenic bypass that has to do with container gardening. And there are people who will say to put a layer of gravel at the bottom of your containers, that will improve the drainage. Or, put styrofoam in there and only use half as much dirt. That way you save money on the soil. In both cases, there are drainage issues.

Debbie Flower  28:45

There are drainage issues. Yes, the technique is used in commercial interiorscaping. So interiorscaping is growing plants indoors, at the mall ,at the local office building, at the bank, whatever. And they'll bring in big, beautiful containers. But the plant only needs maybe at most a foot of root zone in that three foot container. Then they do fill the bottom with something else, like soda bottles, two liter bottles with the lids on so they stay nice and firm. But they're including enough soil to have a good root zone. When you're planting into a container and you want the plant to have the entire container to grow roots, you put nothing in the bottom. You wet your soil before you put it in, and then it won't come out the holes, or very little will come out of the holes as you're planting it up. What happens when you put something else in the bottom of the container is you just shorten the root zone. When the water comes down and reaches that change in texture whether it's from Styrofoam or rocks or whatever it is. The water stops, and it builds up, and it saturates what's above it. And it will only enter that lower area when the whole soil ball is saturated. There's no air in it whatsoever. When you add the next drop of water in, it goes through and it'll push a drop of water into whatever you had put in below, but the soil stays saturated. Roots need water and air to grow. So all that water is a bad thing for the roots.

Farmer Fred  30:10

Now if you are still concerned about dirt coming out of the bottom of the container and like Debbie says, pre-moistening the soil before you add it to your pot is a great idea. I think I have a bucket full of new houseplant soil that is also full of water. The bucket is sitting at home, waiting for me to come home and to put that soggy new soil into a big plant container that has drain holes, so I can let it drain. And then I can use that very moist soil to repot an interior plant in a slightly bigger pot. But I have to know for sure that the soil is wet, because a lot of commercial soils have peat moss in it. And peat moss tends to repel water.

Debbie Flower  30:48

Or forest by-products. You can flip over any bag of material and by law it has to say “derived from” and it'll tell you what the material originated as, perhaps cow manure, forest products or whatever. And I like to look for the bag that's broken. I want to see what it looks like, I want to handle it. But yes, these products can be very difficult to wet. I don't do what Fred does to wet the soil.  I use kitty litter boxes as my potting boxes. Clean ones. Yes, the cats don't use them. And I put the media in there and I always add a rock component because peat moss, or any organic matter, as it breaks down, it gets closer and closer and closer together. The particles get smaller and smaller. So the air spaces and water spaces between gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time. So I put in pumice. But you can only buy it in little bags, or you can get a delivery from a delivery service if you want a big pile  in front of your house. And then there’s perlite, which I'm not a fan of very much, and vermiculite, which is expanded Mica. Vermiculite is fine. You can buy the perlite and vermiculite in giant bags, but I'm mixing in at least 1/3 of the rock component. One-third of those things are a mix of those things, and two thirds is the stuff that comes out of the bag. They say that they have some of those components in the bag. and they do. You'll find a piece of pumice or a piece of perlite. That helps to keep the media open and keep the pore spaces open, and allows the water to travel through much better, much more easily.

Farmer Fred  32:20

Perlite is very good for maintaining those air pockets. But explain your aversion to perlite.

Debbie Flower  32:26

Two things. One, it is very irritating to the respiratory system. I worked with it a lot with students. We did use it, especially with seed starting mixes. We made our media on the ground,  a bale of peat moss and three bags of vermiculite and three bags of perlite or whatever. It was a one to one to one mix of those things. Peat, perlite, and vermiculite is a classic horticultural mix. And we use shovels, and turned it. And if you breathe in the dust of perlite, it is very, very irritating. And it isn't just for a short period of time. The next day, too, you still feel it. So if you use perlite, wet it down before you start pouring it. Or have a second person there spraying it with water as you pour it, to keep that dust out of your respiratory system or wear your mask. We all have masks.

Farmer Fred  33:21

We all have masks. We have plenty of masks and hand cleaner around these days.

Debbie Flower  33:26

Right. And the other thing about using perlite: if this is for a plant that's going into the ground, or even if it's plant in the house and you have it in a pot, the perlite appears to rise to the surface. It is white. And it doesn't rise to the surface. It's just that all the soil particles around it wash away. So, you get this white surface and it's just not pretty. Eventually, outdoors, it gets sort of dirty looking, it’s dyed, and it sort of disappears into the environment. But that's my second reason.

Audience Question

What is the ratio if you’re using vermiculite or perlite or whatever?

Debbie Flower

If you're making your own you can look up the Cornell mix. And that's the classic mix for container media. It’s peat moss, perlite, and vermiculite. And it's one to one to one. 1/3 1/3 1/3. So there’s really a lot of rock in that media. And then you need a little bit of lime to counter the acidity of the peat moss. And you usually use a wetting agent because peat moss is very difficult to wet. In the kitty box I will use my hands and just work it, work it, work it with warm water. It may be a drop of dish soap. It has to be soap, not detergent, to help do the spreading. You can buy spreaders (also known as surfactants), but you don't have to.

Audience Question

How would you adjust that for succulents?

Farmer Fred  34:49

Well, I was going bring that up. Every plant is a little bit different and their soil requirements are a little bit different. In the case of succulents, you probably would want that pumice.

Debbie Flower  34:58

Right. And pumice comes in different sizes, you can get bigger pumice,

Farmer Fred  35:03

And maybe sand, too. Explain the sand that you need for plants, as opposed to the sandbox outside.

Debbie Flower  35:10

Sand comes in a whole range of sizes. And when I was teaching, I had a jar that I filled with all kinds of pennies, little marbles, big marbles, ping pong balls, whiffle balls, all kinds of things. And I’d shake it up and see how they mix together. And what happens is the pennies, and the little balls, fill the spaces between the big balls. So sand will do that. But the big sand particles will be separated from each other, but the spaces between them will be filled with the smaller sand particles and the even tinier sand particles. Sand, silt and clay are defined strictly by their size, their particle size. But sand has the widest range within its own class. And so that is not super helpful if you're trying to open up air spaces in media. So you can buy builder’s sand, or horticultural sand. It has been sized to be just the big stuff. And then it's also been rinsed, because sand typically, but not always, but typically, occurs where there's been saltwater. And so it needs to be rinsed. You don't want that salt in it. So that's what you look for in sand.

Farmer Fred  36:16

And other plants have different requirements. I'm thinking about blueberries, which I think are about two or three weeks from beginning the harvest of blueberries. And if you're going to plant blueberries, they like a really acidic mix. They like a pH around 5.5, which is highly acidic. So if you're filling a water trough or a half barrel with soil  for blueberries, you want it to be like 1/3 of pathway bark, that’s the small bark; 1/3 of a bagged RAC soil - that's a Rhododendron, Azalea, Camellia, soil mix because that tends to have acidic components, and then probably 1/3 peat moss or coir, but peat moss is lower pH than coir.

Debbie Flower  36:56

Right. Coir is kind of relatively new to the industry. And it ranges in pH. Coir is the outside stuff, the brown stuff, that comes off a coconut. So, coir originates at beaches, at saltwater beaches. And if it is not rinsed, the pH can be very high, it can be nine. Butthe industry has gotten better about prepping it. Coir pellets has to be pre-wet, like overnight pre-wet. So you’ve got to plan ahead, which kind of isn't my thing.

Farmer Fred  37:33

But that's important too, for removing the salt from it as well.

Debbie Flower  37:37

if there's salt in it, right. So you want to check that. You can get a pH meter and check your pH as well the the pH of the water to see if you've got coir that's been rinsed. Or, buy it in a bag that tells you it's been rinsed.

Farmer Fred  37:50

If you look on the back of any bagged soil product for specialty plants - there's palm soil, there's succulent soil, there's vegetable plant soil - look at the ingredients. And you might look at those and say, “Oh, I could make this combination at home”.

Debbie Flower  38:04

Cactus and succulent soil has typically some rock, larger rocks in it.

Farmer Fred  38:10

And a good quality compost, a vegetable derived compost, is also good. So if you have a compost pile or a worm bin, that's an important 1/3 of whatever soil mix you might be using.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred

Experienced gardeners have all learned one big lesson the hard way: thin out your vegetables and fruit while they are still young this time of year, using the recommended spacing.

For instance, have you ever been reluctant to snip off five of those six zucchini or pumpkin seedlings that you planted in a circle? And what happened later in the year? You had a zucchini jungle or a primeval forest of pumpkins, crowded plants that were more susceptible to pests and diseases, as well as way too many zucchini, as you probably surmised.

The same is true for the unthinned fruits on your peach, nectarine, apple, pear, or persimmon trees. The end result: smaller fruit, diseased fruit, fallen fruit, and the high possibility of broken branches, the result of way too much fruit on those poor, sagging branches.

Now is the time to get to snipping for a better quality harvest. We talk about that, and tell you how. It’s in the latest Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, “Thin Your fruits and vegetables now”. The newsletter is currently available, and it’s free.

If you are already a newsletter subscriber, it’s probably in your email, waiting for you right now. Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free! Find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast in today’s show notes, or at Substack. Or, you can sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, gardenbasics dot net.

MORE GARDEN TIPS, LIVE! Pt. 4

Farmer Fred

And we continue our conversation with Debbie Flower at a recent meeting of the California State Garden Club, with tips for watering your lawn.

Farmer Fred

Don't water your lawn every day! Honestly, if you think you have to water your lawn every day, you've got a bigger problem. It's sort of like the three left turn lanes going from westbound Fair Oaks Boulevard to southbound Watt Avenue. Why do you need three left turn lanes? It's because there's a lack of bridges over the American River! That's why there's three left turn lanes there. And if you have water pouring off your lawn, onto the sidewalk, or into the gutter, because you're watering every day, and you think, “I have to water every day, the lawn is not getting the water, it’s running into the street, so I have to turn it on again and again.” It’s time to rethink your sprinkler system.

Debbie Flower  40:41

Right. I was just thinking about when my son was learning to drive and it was a manual transmission car. And he stalled out at that intersection. He was there for three lights during rush hour. And the police showed up. That's what that brought to mind.

Farmer Fred  40:58

One thing you can do though, if you have a problem with water running off of your lawn, is to switch to a lower flow sprinkler heads. Hunter has the MP Rotators, which put out thin streams of water. It's very gradual. In fact, some cities even recognize it as an acceptable drip irrigation system. It's water conservation. It comes out so slowly, it allows the water time to percolate into the soil.

Debbie Flower  41:26

The other is to use your existing system, but do surge irrigation. Turn it on, note the time. Watch until it starts to run off. Then note the time. Let's say it ran five minutes before it ran off. Then you take five minutes off, and then you turn it on again. And take five minutes off and do it again. An inch a week is a typical lawn irrigation. So you may have to have some cans out there to measure it. But on and off, on and off, on and off, during one application session will get more water on and it'll go deeper.

Farmer Fred  41:54

That's a very good idea. And one way to test how efficiently your sprinklers are working is to take a bunch of same size cans, like cat food cans, dog food cans, tuna cans, whatever, and spread them out. About six cans around each sprinkler head, at different distances from the sprinkler head. Some cans in the green parts, some cans in the not so green parts of your lawn. And turn on your water for 15 minutes, and then measure the amount of water in each can. That total in each can, should not be different by 25% or more. They should all be within that parameter, within 25%  of each other, the amount of water in each of those cans. And if you don't, then you need to rethink your sprinkler system design. Or maybe cut back that shrub that's blocking a sprinkler head or fix the one that's broken and looks like Old Faithful.

Farmer Fred

Thank you so much for having us here.

Debbie Flower

Thank you.

FLASHBACK EPISODE: 192 EASIER TOMATOES TO GROW

Farmer Fred  42:49

May is tomato planting month for most of the nation. Maybe you’ve had problems growing tomatoes in the past. Or, maybe you’re fairly new at planting, raising, and harvesting tomatoes, which is America’s favorite backyard vegetable.

In today’s Flashback episode recommendation, Don Shor, a true-tomato head who runs Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, California, gives us a list of the easiest tomatoes to grow, along with good advice to make sure that they prosper in your garden, even if you’re planning a long road trip or two this summer.

It’s a Flashback episode worth exploring, the Easiest Tomatoes to Grow. It’s episode 192. It’s from May of 2022. Look it up in the podcast player of your choice. Or, click on the link in today’s show notes or at our home page, garden basics dot net.

Farmer Fred  43:45

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.