274 Can You Plant in Straight Compost? Clover Lawns

Show Transcript

GB 274 TRANSCRIPT Plant in Compost? Clover Lawns?

Farmer Fred  0:00

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

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

Farmer Fred

America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture professor, Debbie Flower and myself tackle more of your garden questions today.

Have you ever wondered, or even tried, planting into a container filled with straight compost? It might work for awhile, but eventually, you’re going to have problems. We have solutions to that issue. (01:40)

Gardeners and homeowners in just about any section of the country that has faced a drought may be rethinking their water-thirsty lawns. Is there a successful turf substitute? For some, the answer just might be a lawn created by clover. We talk about the clover varieties that might be the most successful at serving as a green area, especially since it is somewhat drought tolerant and resistant to dog urine. (35:52)

It’s all in today’s episode, number 274.

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: CAN YOU PLANT IN STRAIGHT COMPOST?

Farmer Fred

We've talked a lot about compost on this program. But we need to do a little clarification about exactly what compost is. Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. And the question comes up every now and then. Can you plant in straight compost? And I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you at home also had that urge, looking around for some soil, or a bag of something to put it in a pot to plant something and all you find is this half a bag of compost? Can you plant in that straight compost?

Debbie Flower  2:10

Some people will say, “Absolutely! I have a potato coming out of my compost pile or I have a squash plant growing in my compost pile.”

But the short answer is “no”.

Farmer Fred  2:21

Compost. To quote the Garden Professors of Facebook, compost is not soil. It's a component of soil, correct?  We've talked about this in the past too, about how compost acts. And one thing it does is, it breaks down. And when it breaks down, does that not impede water flow and air?

Debbie Flower  2:41

Yes, we've talked a lot about soilless media or soilless mix. When you buy a plant that's been grown in a container it has been grown most of the time in a soilless mix. And that is what is recommended in the nursery industry, the production industry. You might say it is compost. Well, it may include compost as the organic component, but it also includes other things to more closely imitate field soil. And those other things are rock components, perlite, vermiculite, sand, pumice, as they keep some of the pore spaces open as the compost or other organic components break down.

Farmer Fred  3:21

There was a report online about that. And the author of that report suggested that you could use straight compost in a container if you put in that rock component for air. But the more I thought about it, the problem as I see it is: will that compost ends up getting smaller and smaller and smaller? And that reduces the air spaces. The rock, I would think, would come up to the top.

Debbie Flower  3:44

No, it doesn't come up to the top. Sometimes it appears to. It's because the organic component which could be compost washes away. It gets smaller and smaller and washes away. Perlite is notorious for that. It looks like it comes to the surface. In a production situation we do use compost or other organics. And they do break down over time. But that's why it's so important to get a plant out of that container and into another one or into the ground before that media breaks down so much that it becomes, let's say, hydrophobic. It can dry out a lot. You think you're watering the plant that's in the pot, because it goes in the top and comes out the bottom. But the problem is that it just went around the root ball because of the compost or organic component of that container has shrunk so much and that it's so tightly bound. Because the particles are so small there's no space or very little space between them for water to flow.

Farmer Fred  4:42

One way for a gardener to tell if that might be happening is to water your container plants by hand. If the water comes out immediately, there are some issues that may not necessarily be compost. It could be the heat that has caused that soil ball to contract, allowing the water to float down the sides and immediately out. But it certainly could be a situation where if the compost had dried out, much like peat moss, when it dries out, it's not going to water anything, it's just going to roll right through.

Debbie Flower  5:11

Right. So soil is made of 50%, open space, ideal soil. And about 40% of that, let's say seven or so percent is sand, silt, and clay. Those are pieces of rock that have broken down to different sizes. So that's the number one thing that distinguishes sand, silt and clay, the way you identify it, if you're looking at a soil sample and trying to figure out what it is, is by putting it through different size screens, and the clay goes through the smallest sized screen; the sand goes through the biggest, and the silt through the middle screen. And they're designated sizes that they have to go through in order to be categorized that way. And then the little bit that's left, that is one to 3% or so is the organic matter and that's where the compost would be what is compost. Compost is decomposed organic matter, organic matter that is decomposed to a point where you cannot identify its components.

Farmer Fred

Hopefully.

Debbie Flower

Yes. It's not compost if you can still see leaves or sticks.

Farmer Fred  6:15

Then there are those who would sift through their compost pile to get that fine product. But is that a good idea?

Debbie Flower  6:23

It depends on your use. If you're going to be making a seedling mix, when we're trying to start things from seed, in a flat or a small container, we want a small size particle to establish that seed and that young plant. Because the seed in many cases is small, and the plant coming out of it is small, that plant can't push large particles out of its way. And so we use small particle sizes for starting seeds. We also use small particle size, maybe we've got the seeds in a different mix, but we're just going to put it over the top to cover the seeds.

Farmer Fred  7:00

And like you always emphasize, while you're slapping the 12 inch ruler in your other hand, be sure to premoisten that soil mix.

Debbie Flower

Yes, that would be very true.

Farmer Fred

With the compost, in order to get it wet in order for it to stay wet, it is just like a dry sponge: water rolls off. And it's not until it's moistened that it will actually absorb water.

Debbie Flower  7:18

Right. Water moves through soil and compost by attaching itself to another water molecule. And those water molecules are attaching themselves to the soil particles, compost, or rock particles. And that's how it moves through soil. It doesn't drop through the spaces like we think of in rain, but it moves along the surface of things.

Farmer Fred  7:41

Oh, I hear listeners on the other end. They're yelling at their smartphone right now. And they're saying, “Well, what about this bag of compost?  I need a soil mix.” Well. Okay, so what do I mix with it?

Debbie Flower  7:53

A very good question. And what you mix with it is some rock component. You want to somehow create 50% airspace in there. And so you need to spread out that compost and you want some soil-like particles and so that's going to be your rock component. So sand which would be horticultural sand, which is washed because sand in many cases occurs where saltwater is or used to be. We don't want that salt in our container media. So washed horticultural sand, perlite, vermiculite, pumice, they all come in sizes. So you pick the horticultural size. And I go as much as 50% of that, 30% in a lot of cases. And it creates the air spaces among the compost that allow the roots to get air. Roots have to get air.

Farmer Fred  8:45

One more note about using the sand, horticultural sand, it's all been screened. So it's all the same size.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it's sized as well. You're right.

Farmer Fred

Okay, because if you had a mix of sizes, then it could form a very compact mix. And air wouldn't get through. That would be true, I guess, if any of it was perlite or vermiculite, or even pumice?

Debbie Flower  9:03

Yes, they all come in different sizes. And so  you want to get the right size. And when you grow in the container, if you want to keep the plant in the container forever, fine, but you're going to have to deal with that soil. Ideally, once a year.

Farmer Fred  9:17

You're referring to the combination of compost and rocks and that soilless mix.

Debbie Flower  9:21

Yes, you're right. I was wrong in saying that.

Farmer Fred  9:26

I can't see that compost lasting forever. It's going to shrink.

Debbie Flower  9:29

It shrinks, right. And so you if you're going to the nursery to buy a plant and you're picking out among 10 of the same thing and you're trying to pick the one that is the best. There's a whole list of things you're going to look for, but one of them is that the media should still be close to the top, not at the top, not over the top, maybe a half inch down, quarter inch down. If it's much lower than that, then that plant has probably been in that container for a long time. So it's got a limited rootball, the roots system has not developed as well as it could have. And it probably is root-bound. For that, you wouldn't have to knock it out of the container to look at it.

Farmer Fred  10:08

Yeah,  I think a lot of people are in the habit of when picking up plants at the nursery, they're going to turn that pot over to see if there were roots coming out the bottom, which is always a good technique. I think we both like to kind of pop that soil ball out of that plastic container to see if there's roots going round and round.

Debbie Flower  10:24

Right, and you always pour the plant out, you don't pull it out. If you are pulling it out, you can do root damage.

Farmer Fred  10:28

Turn it upside down, stick your hand over the soil ball at the top, and then gently bring up the plastic container. So you can take a look.

Debbie Flower  10:37

Right. And you might see some circling, if they're very fine roots. That's okay, you can cut those and you should cut those at planting time. If you see thick roots going round and round, that's a little dicey.

Farmer Fred  10:50

If you planted in a container using nothing but compost and a stone material, do you have to repot that plant at some other point?

Debbie Flower  11:01

Right. About once a year is the recommended time go up in size or you can do either way. It depends. If you want to go up in size, then yes, go up in size, the next pot size. It should be a maximum of two inches wider across the top, the opening of the pot should be a maximum of two inches wider across the top than the one you are taking it out of. And at that time, you're going to slit the roots, and some of the media is going to fall out. And then you're going to use fresh media to fill in the spaces that the new pot provides and the loss of media that the old root ball provides.

Farmer Fred  11:35

What if you don't have the matching media to go into that pot the second time?

Debbie Flower  11:40

Yeah, you want it to be as close as possible to the previous media. If I purchase things, and I'm going to hold them in a pot, for some reason, I find what I purchase typically does not have as much of the rock component as I like. The mix I make and pot that new plant into is more open than the one that it came in. And then you have to watch your watering very carefully, because the water does not readily move from one texture of soil to the other. And so until you get some roots into that new media and that can take a month or more, you have to make sure that you're getting water in both the new media and the old media.

Farmer Fred  12:22

Some would say, maybe scrape off all the dirt or shake off all the soil, or whatever you want to call it around that plant, wash off the roots, and do a remix.

Debbie Flower  12:33

There is definitely a bunch of people who say you should do that to every plant you buy in a container, when you're going to plant it, whether it's into the ground or into another pot, you should wash off all the roots and and observe the root structure, especially if this is for woody plants, and do some root pruning, so that you avoid circling girdling roots, which are a problem with plant production in containers. And I think there's legitimacy to that. However, I don't think it's going to catch on everywhere. Number one, it's very time consuming. So the industry, the landscape industry that plants 1000s of plants, a day,  I believe, they are not going to do that. And places where there's not a lot of water, like California, this year, we have a lot of water, but it's not gonna last forever. I'm sure it's difficult for me to rationalize using water to wash off all the roots on the plants that I purchase.

Farmer Fred  13:29

You mentioned it's only for hardwood plants, like shrubs and trees.

Debbie Flower  13:34

So root pruning of the circling girdling roots. Yes, because they develop wood on their roots also, and their roots get fatter and fatter, just like a branch gets fatter and fatter and the plant can actually choke itself to death.

Farmer Fred

What about annuals?

Debbie Flower

Annuals I don't worry so much about. I am so in the habit of cutting roots that I actually do even a little six pack. I'll go around and snip the bottom in both directions only up maybe a little quarter inch from the bottom just because the roots will not change direction because you put them in the soil. But if you cut them, then right behind the cut closer to the plant, you will get a new set of roots you'll get up it's as if you tip prune to the top of the plant and then you get a whole bunch of new shoots, you'll get a new bunch of root shoots. And that'll send the roots in all kinds of directions. And that's helpful for establishing the root system in the ground.

Farmer Fred  14:21

I have dirt under my fingernails because I don't cut roots. I scraped my fingernails through the root ball.

Debbie Flower  14:26

And that's a legit way to do it. Yeah, yeah. And I do that with every plant.

Farmer Fred  14:30

And sometimes you get lucky.

Debbie Flower  14:34

Sometimes you don't.

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DAVE WILSON NURSERY

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CAN YOU PLANT IN STRAIGHT COMPOST? Part 2

Farmer Fred

In a not so scenic bypass to this, you'll like this. I was at the nursery the other day. Boy, do they have a lot of cucumbers and pumpkins and squash that are growing like crazy in those little pots.  Would you buy one of those?

Debbie Flower  18:07

No, no, no. So the reason is those plants so we're talking about: the squash, cucumber, melon, watermelon, pumpkin, which is a squash. Once they become root bound in the container it inhibits the growth for the rest of the season. And I've done it . I’ve planted them, maybe I started them myself, I don't remember. But I’ve planted a plant that has at most three true leaves, in some references talking about five true leaves. So when the seed germinates, you get the smooth round-tipped leaves, the cotyledons. They’re seed leaves, so I'm not counting those. The next set of leaves are the jagged tipped ones. They are the ones that are more cut, they might be hairy, might be slightly greener, they're going to be a different shape. That's a true leaf. So I'm looking at three to five of those, max, in a four inch container. If the plant goes beyond that, even five is iffy for me, the plant will grows but it only grows maybe two feet and you don't get any production out of it. I saw a list the other day of plants, and I can't remember who wrote it. It was a list of plants that like to be direct seeded, or transplanted, or plants that can go either way. And the cucumbers, the squash, the pumpkins, and the melons are listed as going  either way. That surprised me, but I was having trouble getting my cucumbers to germinate this year. Because the site was a very wet site over winter, and very heavily mulched. I think the soil was too wet and too cold for a long time. I kept planting seeds and nothing would happen, planting seeds and nothing would happen. Three times nothing would happen. The fourth time I was frustrated. So I put some seeds in a pot and I planted some in the ground. Two in the ground, two in the pot. All four germinated! So now I have a cucumber in a pot. Fortunately, my neighbor came over to visit me today. I knew she told me she didn't have any cucumbers in her garden. She brought me a squash. She's already got a squash harvested. And I so I gave her my little one that has cotyledons and the beginning of one true leaf and she said, I'll plant it right away.

Farmer Fred  20:13

You left out one little detail. When you did your first batch of cucumber seeds, weren't those older seeds?

Debbie Flower

Yes, the first batch was yes.

Farmer Fred

And the last batch was new seed.

Debbie Flower

The last two batches were new seeds, okay.

Farmer Fred

And seeds don't last forever, right?

Debbie Flower  20:29

Good point. The bigger the seed, the longer it tends to live because it has more food inside of it. I used to do a seed germination lab with the students. I had old seed. I had them all labeled for the dates. And I had 10 year old Anasazi bean seeds and they terminated 100% at 10 years old, so it's very variable. But yes, you know size is only a guide. It is not a end all and be all. Bigger seeds will last longer, period. End of story. It depends a lot on the cultivar and and what's going on in the seed.

Farmer Fred  21:01

And how you store the seed? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And you store yours in the refrigerator. In the crisper?

Debbie Flower  21:07

No, it's in the door, which is is not the best climate control, but that's where they are, in a plastic bag.

Farmer Fred  21:14

Okay. Now, the only reason we're talking about this when the subject was compost, was we were talking about roots. And the roots of the Cucurbit family, once they get stressed, it's like they give up.

Debbie Flower  21:26

They do. Yeah, yeah. And you put them in the ground and they just don't grow.

Farmer Fred  21:29

The other thing I saw at the nursery that you'll be thrilled with, was the sweet corn, in the six pack, with about three corn stalks coming up in each of the little containers. And I'm thinking… seeds are a lot cheaper.

Debbie Flower  21:49

Yes, and you want your customers to have success. I was surprised. One year, I assigned students the task of seeds to start and how to do it and all that good stuff. And then the other, they could do one six pack of whatever they wanted. And somebody did corn. And I was nearly bowled over. Of course Iread all this stuff, I had all this information in my head that this student didn't. And it sold at the plant sale, but it was one corn stock  per cell. So they had separate root systems. And I have no idea if that six pack of plants survived when they got to their new home. But corn, in general, is what we call a heavy feeder. It needs soil that has quite a bit of nitrogen in it. And if you had three corn stalks per location, it would be very difficult to keep them fed well enough. And typically plants that are too crowded, if you have a tomato, you know that fell to the ground last year and now you have all these tomato seedlings in the garden. If you don't space them, if you don't thin them, you will not get fruit. The plant has no reason to fruit . The purpose of fruiting on the plants point of view is to make offspring. If it's got all these offspring around it, there's no reason to fruit.

Farmer Fred  23:04

The one thing I forgot to do when looking at the six packs of sweet corn that had germinated in many to a cell, was if there were directions on the stick that basically said to thin to six inches apart. Like I think it's about the minimum for corn is six inches.

Debbie Flower  23:19

I would hope Yeah. Yeah. And does the buyer know what one corn stalk is?

Farmer Fred  23:26

And how do they remove the others without hurting the original, right?

Debbie Flower  23:30

It's not set up for success and  that's a problem.

Farmer Fred  23:34

Well, if you do have that situation and you bought a six pack of corn and in the six pack of corn seedlings, there are 12 or 18 stalks coming up, you don't want to pull it. You'd want to cut it.

Debbie Flower  23:47

Yes you want to cut  them down, which I did with the cucumber I gave to my neighbor. I had done it before she said she was coming over. I pinched off one of the babies with my thumbnail and left the other one. The reason you don't pull is that you will do root damage to both plants, the one you are readily willing to give up, but the one you want to keep will also have root damage if you pull the other one out.

Farmer Fred  24:11

What a long strange trip it's been, from can you plant in straight compost too corn in a six pack? Yes. But you know, that's gardening. It is all right because you go out to do one thing, you end up doing 10 other things

Debbie Flower  24:23

And you're out there many hours longer than you thought you would.

Farmer Fred  24:27

Well, there you go. And we always talk about a successful garden soil being composed of sand, silt and clay. Well, sand obviously is the rock component. What are silt and clay?

Debbie Flower  24:39

Silt and clay are also rock components. So rocks break down over time, the force of wind and rain and frost and acids from algae, algal growth in that kind of thing, to different sizes and some types of rock will only break down to the biggest soil particle of sand. Some will  continue to break down to silt and down all the way to clay. And so the mineral component of sand is different than silt and clay. The size of sand is different than silt and clay. But all three are rock components.

Farmer Fred  25:12

Well, that clears that up. But I forgot that sand, silt and clay are really minerals. But there's other components to soil, but you can't go to the store and buy a package of those other things to mix in with your compost, because you just might be adding more compost. If you  go out and buy a bag of planting mix to blend in with your compost. What's in that planting mix? Forest byproducts?

Debbie Flower  25:35

Right, which is compost, basically compost. And field soil, we don't use field soil in containers. And we don't use compost or the soilless media in the ground. Some people will often say, “I got rid of the bad dirt.” So  they're gonna plant a tree. They dig a hole, they're gonna get rid of the bad dirt, which is the sand, silt, clay, a little bit of organic matter and the open 50% space. And they put in the good dirt, which came in a bag so they're replacing the field soil with container soil, and that doesn't work.

Farmer Fred  26:08

So how do you build up the nutrients in the soil? For that, I think we gotta go back to the gentleman who wrote that original report about compost and using compost and he wasn't a big fan of compost. But he's a big fan of mulching.  And if you put down mulch, a true mulch, which is basically many different sizes of shredded and chipped tree parts as a three inch or four inch mulch, that's going to be feeding your soil.

Debbie Flower  26:35

It breaks down over time with the help of micro organisms, macro organisms, weather processes get washed into the soil with rain, animals digging for insects, like skunks, and Yeah, so they get some mixing done and, and yes, that's how the nutrients from the mulch which is plant material get into the soil and become available for  other plants.

Farmer Fred  27:00

Yeah, worm castings too. Worm castings. Again, worm castings probably should be mixed into the soil. But mulch should be on top of the soil.

Debbie Flower  27:10

Yes. So what we put on top of the soil we call mulch, what we dig in, mix into the soil, we call an amendment. We are amending the soil. We are changing its composition or adding to its composition. Hopefully for the better. Not always. Yeah, there aren't a lot of laws. I don't know if there are any laws regulating the sale of bagged compost and bagged container media.

Harvest Day 2023

Farmer Fred  27:39

Coming Saturday, August 5, It’s Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Put on by the U.C. Master Gardeners of Sacramento County, Harvest Day features speakers, education tables, garden vendors, food trucks, and your chance to explore the one acre garden that is designed for you, the backyard gardener, to take home ideas that you can use in your own yard.

The Fair Oaks Horticulture Center was built and is maintained by Sacramento County Master Gardeners. It features areas dedicated to growing berries, herbs, fruit trees, vegetables, a vineyard, native plants, water efficient plants and a lot more. Plus there are sections dedicated to composting, including worm composting.

On Harvest Day, each area is staffed by Master Gardeners who are eager to answer your garden questions.

At the dozens of education tables, you’ll get information from professional nursery p