299 Pt.2 2023's Greatest Garden Hits: The Top 5

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GB 299 TRANSCRIPT Part 2 2023’s Greatest Garden Basics Hits: The Top 5

Farmer Fred

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

Farmer Fred

In the last episode as well as this one, we are looking back and checking out which topics and episodes of the Garden Basics podcast really hit home with our listeners in 2023. What were the episodes, and what were the parts in those episodes that attracted the most downloads and listeners?

Last week, we talked about some of the most popular homegrown vegetables, including squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce and peas. And, of course, tomatoes. We had tips for Garden Success, advice for efficiently watering your garden, and how to start a fall and winter garden. Those were some of the most listened to topics of 2023. Go back and listen to the whole episode, #298, 2023’s Greatest Garden Hits, part 1.

But wait, there’s more, he said, channeling his inner Ron Popeil. This week we present, if you will, the cream of the crop. The Top 5 most downloaded episodes and their most listened to segments. They included more about America’s favorite backyard vegetable, the tomato, including the easiest varieties to grow, as well as the best soil mix to use for starting tomato and vegetable seeds. Also, we have advice on starting a container garden, and arranging an array of different plants in a single pot. We’ll save the best for last, the absolute number one downloaded episode, not only for 2023, but for the entire run of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, now entering its fifth year.

So I’d like to share those with you now. They just might be topics that you missed the first time around or you want to refresh your memory on a certain garden topic that got a lot of attention.  And as I mentioned last week, it’s amazing what you can learn with a repeat listen. I always learn something new each time I listen to an episode.

Coming up, the Top 5 most listened to segments of 2023. It’s part 2 of the Garden Basics Greatest Hits of last year.

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!

#5 AMERICA’S TOP VEGETABLES: TOMATOES (originally aired in Ep. 263)

Farmer Fred

First up, we talk with Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour about America’s most popular homegrown veggies.

Farmer Fred

Have you ever wondered what are the top 10 garden vegetables that people grow in their backyards? The National Gardening Association took a survey, and so did the Rapid City, South Dakota Journal newspaper. And together they came up with this list of the 10 most popular homegrown garden vegetables. Gail Pothour is with us. Gail is a Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert extraordinaire. Gail, it's no one's surprise that on the National Garden Association's list of the most popular garden vegetables, tomatoes is number one, with something like 86% of gardeners saying, “we plant tomatoes”.

Gail Pothour

It's number one on every list I've ever seen or in any book on tomatoes I've ever read. So yes. That's probably the reason why a lot of people got into vegetable gardening, was to start growing tomatoes. So yeah, I agree. Number one.

Farmer Fred

And especially with salsa overtaking ketchup as America's favorite condiment, I'm not surprised either that tomatoes are right up there at number one, because frankly, salsa is a lot easier to make than ketchup.

Gail Pothour

However, you can't grow your cilantro in the summer when we have tomatoes.

Farmer Fred

I will tell you a way on how to do it.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah, I would like to know. Mine suffer.

Farmer Fred

Remind me to tell you,  don't let me forget. All right. Let's start with the beginning gardener. If you're growing your first garden and you want tomatoes, America's most popular homegrown vegetable, start with something with training wheels, something that might be easy, and usually, the most seasoned gardeners will advise to start with a hybrid variety. Don't start with an heirloom; start with something easy to grow, start with something that is going to produce a lot of fruit, like a cherry tomato, and go with the tried and true varieties for your area.

Gail Pothour

Right. Especially a cherry tomato, I think they pretty much can be grown by anyone anywhere, as long as they have some sun. Cherry tomatoes can take a little bit of shade. That’s unlike full size tomatoes or indeterminate tomatoes that need to have full sun, at least six to eight hours. Cherry tomatoes are can handle a little bit of shade. And I find they don't stop producing in the middle of summer, like a lot of tomatoes will if we get into temperatures over 90 degrees. The cherry tomatoes will continue to produce. They're easy, they're small, they're great for kids to grow.

Farmer Fred

I think the biggest mistake that beginning gardeners make, when planting tomatoes, is they put in too many plants and they space them too close together.

Gail Pothour

You need some air circulation to  avoid some of the fungal diseases. Tomatoes are a vine. There are different classifications of tomatoes and the types of fruit and the vines. There's indeterminate, determinate, and dwarf. Typically, indeterminates are long vines. If you don't provide some kind of support, they're going to trail all over the ground. And that's when you can run into a lot of trouble with the fruit, and then the foliage On the ground, you can get diseases and insects and that sort of thing. So indeterminate tomatoes need to be caged or staked some way.

Farmer Fred

Exactly. A very good idea is to train those tomato plants. Use stakes or a cage. And you can make the cages out of sheets of concrete reinforcement wire; you can buy cages,  too. But I gotta tell you, if you're gonna buy tomato cages, make sure they're a good size. They should be at least four feet or five feet tall, with a diameter at the top of probably two to three feet, that would be ideal. And that goes back to how far apart you should plant your tomatoes as well, which would be to plant them at least three feet apart, if not four feet apart.

Gail Pothour

Right. I have 12 foot-long beds, and I will get four in there, maybe three or four. So my cages are at least three feet apart, or at least the plants are three feet apart. And when you do it in a cage, you're able to keep all that foliage inside, so it doesn't sprawl all over everywhere, so I get good air circulation. Um, I have found that the four or five foot tall tomato cages generally aren't tall enough for some of the indeterminate varieties. So I have to put an extra piece on top to make it about six feet tall, because they can get six, seven feet tall.

Farmer Fred

What are some of your favorite tomato varieties to grow?

Gail Pothour

It's like asking, who is your favorite child? Well, I'm  in the heirloom camp. So I do a lot of open pollinated or heirloom varieties, mostly for the flavor. I may not get real high yields, but some of my favorite ones that I'm growing this year include “Brad's Atomic Grape”, which is an open pollinated, variety, one that Brad Gates has developed for his Wild Boar Farms. And it's a kind of a grape tomato, which is a cherry tomato but it's elongated, kind of egg shaped,  and it's multicolored. I think it's kind of psychedelic looking. It's got purples and greens and red stripes and streaks all through it. It's very tasty. It's got a good hang time. That means you don't have to pick it right when it becomes ripe. It'll hang on the plant. I've been growing this variety the last several years and it's become one of my favorites.

Farmer Fred

I have so many favorites. I really am hesitant to mention just one or two. I'm going to defer to the vegetable experts at UC Davis at their Vegetable Research and Information Center. Who, when recommending cherry tomatoes, mentioned the “Cherry Grande”, “Sweet Cherry”, the “Sweet 100”, and the “Red Cherry”. For suitable container varieties as far as cherry tomatoes go, they name “Patio”, “Toyboy”, “Better Bush” and “Small Fry.”

Gail Pothour

If you're going to grow tomatoes in a container, you don't want to do an indeterminate one, because you'd have to have a huge container. Anything smaller and it would fall over, because it would become top heavy. So look for varieties that have “patio”  in their name, such as “patio boy” or it has the word “dwarf” in its name, indicating a dwarf variety. That way, you don't have to grow it in such a large container and they'll do just fine. Some of those will need to still have some kind of cage. And I find on those really short container type tomatoes, you can use the tomato cages that you find at the garden center that are cone shaped. I use those for really small tomatoes, peppers and eggplant as well.

Farmer Fred

Yes, indeed. I call them pepper cages.

Gail Pothour

That's mostly what I use them for. But when you asked about my favorite one that I grew last year, I've been growing it a number of years and actually saving seed  it's an heirloom. It's called “Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta” and it's this most amazing terracotta color, It’s kind of orangey or honey brown in color, and it's it's amazing. The flavor is great, had pretty good yields on it. I like “Green Doctor”. that's actually my favorite cherry tomato. It is a green cherry that's prolific and indeterminate, so it's a big plant. And it produces all season. I haven't had any cracking on it. And when it's ripe, and some green tomatoes are hard to tell when they're ready to pick, it kind of turns yellow. So, wait awhile until it  it has a yellow cast to it. One of the hybrids that I've been growing in the last over years is “Purple Boy” hybrid. And I've had really good luck with that. It's kind of a medium sized black-colored, which in the tomato world is kind of a dusky rose with purpley overtones and green shoulders. It's really good and a good producer. And then my favorite one to cook with is “Goldman's Italian American”. It's an heirloom from Italy and it is large. It’s kind of squat, pear shaped red fruit with pleats in it. Accordion looking pleats. It's really interesting looking. The flesh is blood red when it's ripe and really meaty. Not very many seeds which is great for cooking.

Farmer Fred

I take it these aren't tomatoes you found at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Gail Pothour

No, and that's one of the reasons I start all my tomatoes ahead of time from seed, usually early February for transplanting out on your birthday, Fred, on April 28.  And I buy seeds. So you have a whole world of different varieties to grow if you have seeds as compared to what's available as plants at a Garden Center.

Farmer Fred

if you're going to be heading out to the nursery to buy tomato plants to be planting during the month of May or even into June, there's a lot of good hybrids that are tried and true across the country that work really well, that are commonly available, such as  Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, Champion. Those are just a few of the ones that are, shall we say, normal size tomatoes. And if you want a good sized beefsteak tomato, Whopper is a popular one that you're going to find that gets to a good size. One of my favorite big ones, too, is Big Beef. I'm just hesitant to talk about heirlooms because all gardening is local. And if I mentioned my favorite beef steak heirloom tomato, such as Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, I know that somebody's going to try it and not have good luck with it.

Gail Pothour

That is right. I've tried Brandywine, which is  probably the gold standard for heirloom tomatoes. And I can't get Brandywine to grow. I've grown a couple of other heirlooms, such as Paul Robeson and Black Krim, that are supposed to be fabulous. And I got one fruit on it. So yeah, I stick with the heirlooms that I have success with.

Farmer Fred

That was Sacramento County Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour with the fifth most popular podcast segment of 2023, from episode 263, back in April, talking about America’s most popular backyard vegetable, the tomato. But of course, me being a bona fide tomato head, I like to get lots of advice and different opinions about choosing, planting and growing tomatoes. Coming up: nursery owner Don Shor talks about the easiest tomatoes to grow, a perfect topic for not just beginning gardeners, but for any gardener looking to save time and money in the garden, and yet have a bountiful harvest of tomatoes. it’s coming up, as we count down the Top 5 Garden segments of 2023.

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#4 THE EASIEST TOMATOES TO GROW (Originally aired in Ep. 248)

Farmer Fred

Would you like to know the easiest tomatoes to grow? So would I. So would Don Shor from Redwood Barn, nursery in Davis. But we have some ideas for you on some slam dunk tomatoes, that if you think you can't grow tomatoes, these are going to give you the luck you need to have a successful tomato garden. The easiest tomatoes to grow. There's a catchy title for you. Let's pursue it. Don Shor is here from Redwood Barn nursery in Davis, California. Don, you grow tomatoes, I grow tomatoes. We're happy growing tomatoes, we have our favorites. And there are some that do well for us year after year after year. Does that kind of consistency make them easy?

Don Shor

I think easy refers to a couple of different things. One is, do they produce reliably in your area? So if you have listeners all over the country, they do need to find which varieties are suited to their climate. So that's the first thing. Tomato varieties are often very local. But there are some time tested hybrids we are going to emphasize that do well in most parts of the country. And there are just reliable varieties they'll just come up again and again. If you ask a group of gardeners almost anywhere, what are the varieties that do well in your area, there's certain ones that come up almost anywhere: in New England, Mid Atlantic, California, (the South and Midwest) all these different places where tomatoes are grown. But to me, "easy to grow" isn't just yield. It's how easy is it for the gardener to manage this thing in their garden. Because the tomato, as you and I know, is a very vigorous vine in nature, which will grow 10-12-15 feet, and run all over the place. And as someone who sells tomato plants, I really want the person who walks out the door to know how to train it, make it easy for themselves to manage that plant, make it easy for themselves to water that plant, that's crucial here in the arid west; and choose ones that are just time-tested varieties for the region.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, there you go. That's basically all you need. And with the introduction of more and more smaller growing tomato varieties, it's making it easier for those who have limited space, especially limited sunny space, maybe just a sunny patio, where you can grow a tomato bush that only gets two or three feet tall, and yet produces full size tomatoes, or more than likely cherry tomatoes. And I think that might be a key for national success for any tomato variety: Is it a cherry tomato? Then chances are, it's easy to grow.

Don Shor

I think the smaller fruited ones, in general, are going to be easier for most people. The cherry tomatoes, one to two ounces. There are a lot of tomatoes in the two to four ounce size range and a whole lot in the four to eight ounce range. If you've ever grown Early Girl tomato, that's typically 4, six, maybe eight ounces at the bigger end of the scale. As someone who's grown a lot of varieties of tomatoes, I've had more things go wrong, typically with very large fruited varieties, in spite of the fact that you and I like to grow those because they're fun and they're impressive. They're the bragger type of tomatoes. And it really is cool when you get a one pound tomato and you can put it on a scale and take a picture of it and send it to all your friends, posted on social media. But things can go wrong with a tomato that has to expand to that size, to get that full takes 80 days from the time you plant it to ripening, and little more prone perhaps to blossom end rot and some of the other problems. So smaller fruit and cherry types are going to be your first place to go for easy to grow tomatoes. Obviously cherry tomatoes are the best known in that category, arieties like Sun Gold, red Cherry, Sweet 100, Sweet Million, whatever version of the Sweet you're up to this point, and those are all great performers. But there's a lot of other small fruited types out there that are also reliable. They're a little bit different. Juliet is a really good example of a small fruited sort of pear shaped tomato that's more meaty. I'm going to use an Italian name here. Principe Borgheze. It is an Italian variety that's grown primarily for sun drying, and has been a very reliable when it's a one ounce fruit. So if you're a novice gardener and you're buying a bunch of tomatoes, please make sure at least one of those is one of the small fruit of types, whether a cherry type, or one of those other unique ones.

Don Shor

Yeah, we'll get into some more of the names of the popular cherry tomato varieties. But let's spend a minute talking about the Principe Borghese or however you say it. You like that tomato, you talk about it a lot. And I was going through my garden diary that I've kept since 1990. Going through all the April and May records of all the tomatoes I've planted over the years. What is that? 32 years worth of tomatoes? You're just getting started.

Farmer Fred

in 2002, it was voted one of my best performing tomatoes: the Principe Borghese.

Don Shor

Yeah, it's Principe Borghese, primarily used for slicing in half and sun drying. That's it's, you know, the catalog description. It's a nice little meaty tomato. And I've tested this one, grew it in a 15 gallon container. Last year, I grew it in a 15 gallon nursery bucket with good quality potting soil. It grew about four feet up a fence about six feet across the fence, produced at least a couple 100 fruit for me. So it was one that did well in a container and container gardening of tomatoes is challenging. It has been reliable for me every year. It's one that I like to use for sauces and salsa, but also the classic use for sun drying.

Farmer Fred

I think the reason it won for me back in 2002 Was it was producing tomatoes, it says here, in November. So yeah, that's that's a keeper. .

Don Shor

It keeps on going.

Farmer Fred

You touched on a very important thing too, that a lot of gardeners would consider being easy. And that is, it produces early. Because everybody wants that Fourth of July tomato, if you will. And those are hard to come by, considering that most of them have a 70-80 day maturation process, whereas the cherry tomatoes are 55 to 65 days.

Don Shor

Yeah, and you should probably describe what that 55 days means.

Farmer Fred

To me, it means that after I plunk it in the ground after it's a few inches or so, it'll start giving me tomatoes in 55 days, or 60 days or 65 days,

Don Shor

From the time of transplant, and most tomatoes are in the 80-day range. There's always been a very famous earlier ripening tomato, probably the best known one in the world, being Early Girl, which I believe is 60 days . You mentioned Fourth of July. Well, as it happens, that's a tomato variety. It's a very, it's a very early producing tomato variety that I believe it's listed at 45 days or something like that. And so out of curiosity, I've grown it a couple of times and marked my calendar. And indeed it's only about six or seven weeks out that you are starting to harvest some it's about a three or four ounce fruit, very rich red, you know the good color grape flavor on that one. And so this is something to look at when you're buying tomatoes or choosing tomato seeds to start for for your at the beginning of the season. How long do they say to harvest and if it's 45-50, even 60 days that's early, and listeners in places with short seasons will do well. The other thing is even if you're not really good at growing tomatoes and early ripening, one pretty sure to get something to the finish line. Before the plant fizzles out from lack of water or whatever your problem is. Early ripening ones tend to produce very well, very quickly. Early Girl is famous, Fourth of July is famous, but wherever you are, there's probably an early variety that's well known. There's varieties grown in in Europe or Russia or places where they are way to the north, where they have that short season. So there's a lot of cultivars out there. Whenever I ask on a nursery group, what's your best selling tomato, invariably Early Girl on that list, as are the cherry tomatoes that we've mentioned.

Farmer Fred

For our friends who are listening who live in the frigid north, there are a lot of good tomato varieties you can grow that mature in less than 60 days. Bush Early Girl, 54 days;  Clear Pink Early, 58 days; Oregon Spring V, 58 days; Polar Baby, 60 days; Prairie Fire, 55; Siberia, 55; Siletz, 52. And there was one other: Tumbler, 49 days.

Don Shor

Yeah, Tumbler is a great container tomato. It's bigger than a cherry tomato, but not by much. And it, as the name implies, it can be planted even in a hanging basket. Here in the Sacramento Valley it's too hot and dry for that one. But if you're in a place where hanging baskets are an easy thing for you to grow, you can try some of those. There's a lot of new ones out there. This is the thing I keep noticing, as I look at seed catalogs, these companies have figured out there's a lot of people that want to grow tomatoes in limited space in a limited season and the early ones and the more cascading or compact growing ones are really a good way to go if that's your goal.

Farmer Fred

I'm going to throw a curveball into this whole thing because I bet some gardeners are thinking, "well ,yeah, growing from seeds  is nice... but I said easy. What can I go buy at a nursery that's easy?" So that brings up things like Sweet Million, Gardeners Delight, Sweet Gold, Sun Gold.

Don Shor

Really any of those cherry types are going to do well and actually Gardeners Delight is one I'm pretty sure that was an all America selection. Very good tomato for a wide range of of circumstances. Almost everyone who planted it comes back and gives me good feedback on it here. And I've also heard that from more harsh climates, shall we say, we happen to be podcasting this from one of the best tomato growing regions in the world. We have a season that starts in let's say April, and goes all the way into November. So we've got six whole months that we can grow tomatoes and it's very common for people here to have varieties ripening well into November. I should mention those early ones also typically keep going. So Early Girl ,it may stop when it's extremely hot, but if you keep that plant growing, keep it watered properly , it'll put on a whole other bunch of flowers as we get into August. Those will set and it's about six to eight weeks from set to harvest and so you'll be harvesting those August blossom set fruit in October, and typically that's my big month for harvest here.

Farmer Fred

there are two of these cherry tomatoes that I plant every year: Sweet Million and Gardeners Delight . Gardeners Delight I really enjoy because it's slightly bigger than what you may consider a cherry tomato. It's about an inch and a half to two inches. It's a dark cherry red, it's delightfully sweet. They resist cracking, and they produce throughout the entire growing season.

Don Shor

Well and you mentioned the Sweet Million which I believe started out as sweet 100, So now we're up to even higher yield. And  that group has, I believe, pretty good disease resistance. The other top seller still far and away is Sungold. Sungold blew away all the competition when it came on the market a couple of decades ago, continues to be the number one selling cherry tomato out there. It starts yielding 35 or 40 days after you plant it very commonly. It's usually one of the first ones someone posts a picture of, hey, my first tomatoes are ripe. it's usually Sun Gold. That's kind of cheating, but it will produce hundreds and hundreds of fruit under well grown condition,s and at least several dozen even under adverse conditions. And I think that goes for most of these cherry tomato types. I should mention if you're in a region where Brad Gates has Wild Boar Farms tomatoes are sold, his Barry's Crazy Cherry. I don't know if you've grown that one. It produces huge clusters, enormous amounts of fruit, very sweet and people are really raving about that one. So that's turning into a regional Favorite and his seeds are available now in other areas. So those of you listening outside of the Sacramento Valley could certainly find the seed next winter and get that one going in your own garden as well. Barry's Crazy Cherry, I think, will be one of his real legacy tomato varieties.

Farmer Fred

It's an interesting color. It's sort of a pale yellow.

Don Shor

Yeah, I call it blonde. A Blonde  tomato.

Farmer Fred

Yes, it's  not a red ripe tomato. It's it looks more like a grape.

Don Shor

When I brought in bowls of them  three different times, people said, Ooh, this is even better than Sun Gold. So That's high praise.

Farmer Fred

Yes, it is. Now speaking of gold, there is another cherry tomato that is easy to grow. It's very early, and it's an indeterminate. So you're gonna get tomatoes throughout the entire growing season. It's Sweet Gold. And I had great success with Sweet Gold over the years, as well. So if you're at the nursery shopping for tomatoes, and you're looking for Sun Gold, but you see Sweet Gold, don't bypass Sweet Gold. Pick one up

Don Shor

Plant both. Yeah, there you go. So you mentioned determinate, and indeterminate. And of course, that's jargon that we toss off all the time in the nursery biz, and we find that we do have to explain it to people.

Farmer Fred

I think we should.

Don Shor

Okay, so an indeterminate tomato is your typical tomato. It's a vine. A tomato plant is a vine, that will continue growing and continue flowering continues setting fruit under the right temperature conditions, all the way until frost kills. I mean tomato plants are not true annuals, they're subtropical plants that as gardeners in frost free areas know will continue to grow and produce even right on into the winter if they can. So these are big plants. And this is one of the parts of making tomato growing easy is how you're going to manage the plant. Stick it, cage it, train it somehow and plan for that when you buy the plant. Not a month later when it's running all over the ground, plan ahead for this large plant. But if you want to have an easier experience and you're not a full on avid tomato grower, you just want to try it out. Perhaps for the first time look for the determinate types, or the dwarf indeterminate types and let's back up here, determinate tomatoes tend to grow to a certain size, about three to four feet, typically flower a whole lot, set a whole lot of fruit. And then they're pretty much done. I'm out here in Yolo County, near Solano County, where tomatoes are still one of the number one crops. These are what you see in the field, they grow to a certain size, they only get a couple feet by a couple feet, they flower, they fruit all at once, machines come through and harvest them. They're done for the season. They do produce typically a lot of fruit, all at once. And so if you're into canning, processing, freezing, all that kind of thing. Planting determinate tomatoes, if you're limited for space especially, can be a real simple way to get a reasonably good number. Process them all, pull them out and plant your brussel sprouts, you know that's mid July, early August, it's time to move on to another crop. You don't have to worry so much about staking or caging Ace tomato, which is a classic large fruited, very good quality, very sweet tomato typically grows to about three to four feet, produces a pretty good crop of 20 to 30 fruit, all in close to three quarters of a pound, sometimes bigger. And that's generally almost, yet I'm not saying they completely stopped, because they can flower and produce a few more but they tend to be all at once in the season. And that can be very handy for someone who just doesn't have a giant wire cage or structure to train all these indeterminate vines on.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I think Ace is a good choice for a large size tomato that's easy to grow. But ultimately growing is local. So like you said earlier, Don, wherever you live in the country, check with your local nursery and find out which are the big tomatoes that people are raving about in your area.

Don Shor

yes, everybody's got a favorite. And then when he got to limited space, but you want him to continue, you look for this rather more complicated term. The dwarf indeterminate tomatoes, the Husky series, are well known for this. They continue to grow. They have short internode distances, which simply means they're more compact plants, which means that those tomato cages that we sell at garden centers that most normal tomatoes would grow out of by the middle of June would hold the Husky series.

Farmer Fred

You mean the pepper cages you're talking about?

Don Shor

Tomato Cages 32 inches tall? Yeah, no tomato is gonna stay in that typically, except for a determinate tomato or one of these dwarf indeterminate tomatoes. This is kind of a new category in some ways. The Husky tomatoes have been around for a while: Husky red, Husky gold, there's a couple of them. They're great. They're  about four ounces of fruit, good flavor, nice compact plants, but there's a whole bunch of new ones that I don't even know that well yet that my growers have them, the wholesalers I buy from, and they've got these funny names. I'm growing Little Sicily and Little Napoleon this year . I have never grown them before. I'll give you a report next year. They supposedly grow about three to four feet and continue to flower and produce so this is the difference. They don't stop like Roma does or Ace does, like those canning tomatoes out in the field, but they stay relatively small plants and continue to produce right through the summer into the fall, or even here, sometimes almost into winter.

Farmer Fred

On the subject of cages, we should point out that part of having an easy to grow tomato is making it easy for the tomato to grow. And one of the ways to do that is to put it in a cage. Now, these cylinders that they sell, and the big box stores like  Don says is like, Oh, they're perfect for peppers, they're only two or three feet tall. Most, of these big box stores are getting wiser now and they're stocking more of the tomato cages that are five feet tall, six feet tall, those are the ones to get.

Don Shor

Minimum 48 inches. 52 is a pretty common size. Look for heavier gauge wire, be prepared to spend more money on a better quality tomato cage, but it will last for years. Most of us at some point, go out and buy concrete wire and then make our own five and six foot cages because we want something even more substantial, but that's a pretty big undertaking. So just look for the bigger ones, those small tomato cages just make me laugh every time I see them a tomato that would fit and that doesn't need to be caged. I've grown Roma, for example, which is a very compact plant, it's  a cool little tomato, people like it for sauces, it gets about two to three feet by two to three feet, you can just plant it like a bedding plant, maybe get it up off the ground, so the fruit isn't touching the soil, a little bit of straw or something underneath it. And it'll produce just as a freestanding little plant. Bigger tomatoes, particularly any of the indeterminate types, I've actually let them grow across the ground to see how big across they would get just as a curiosity, a 12 foot diameter circle. So that's not real practical for most home gardeners. And going vertical is the easy answer to that.

Farmer Fred

I have reached the age where if I was considering leaving a tomato to sprawl on the ground, I would immediately start counting in my head, all the pairs of reading glasses I would lose that would fall out of my pocket and get buried underneath a tomato plant.

Don Shor

Yeah, that's a big plant. In nature, these are plants that are at least six to 10 foot diameter and sometimes bigger. So we're just trying to suggest getting the smaller plants. and then really the main thing is, plan at the time you buy it, or at least within about a week, how you're going to cage it, and how you're going to water it. Customers plant them and then they come in, you know, two or three weeks later, the poor plant is struggling and  they put them in a raised bed. So it's drying out so quickly now. Most of us go to a drip irrigation system. And when I say that I see eyes glaze over. And people think oh, big project, complicated. This is now getting beyond what I really wanted to do. It's not. Drip is easy. It just pushes together. There's nothing complex about it. But you don't have to use a drip system, Fred and I both do. And most people here do eventually start going over to drip for their vegetable gardens because it's just simpler to be able to turn on a hose and let it run for X number of minutes or hours. But you can make a nice wide basin, two to three foot diameter basin, around the tomato plant so that you can set a hose there at a moderate flow and give it at least a couple of gallons of water. That's really key. A good, thorough, soaking each time you irrigate it. Filling up that basin. that is not complicated. doesn't cost a lot of money. But it does require that you go out there and move that hose from plant to plant. So it's easier, obviously,  to put in a drip system or a soaker hose or something, we prefer that you not be spraying on the foliage. So it's better if it's just watering at ground level. And you can certainly do that with a hose or a ditch or whatever works for you. Just make sure you plan at the start how you're going to water it deeply. And increasingly deeply, as the season goes along. A 12 foot vine has a root system that we know could go four feet deep and five to six feet out or more. And if you're not watering that root system, you're not going to get the vine, and you're not going to get the yield. So the most common problem we have here in the valley where it's completely dry from April through November and sometimes more, is people not watering adequately, not watering deep enough when they do, and they have made it so that it's complicated for themselves to try and keep things watered. In other words, having to set a sprinkler, that's not great. Having to move the hose from plant to plant, well that's okay, but  it takes time, so you have to plan for that. Drip irrigation is simpler in the long run and is really pretty easy to install. You do yours yourself. You don't even  probably paid someone to come in and do a drip system for you.

Don Shor

People think it's complicated. It really is something simple that a homeowner can do and you can even buy kits that are already great.

Farmer Fred

And there are battery operated water timers that you can hook up to an outdoor faucet, hook up your drip system or your soaker hose or your sprinkler or whatever to that. And the water will come on automatically for a set amount of time on the schedule that you set: twice a week, three times a week, whatever. And I think that is one of the big problems  with a lot of new gardeners: they get the burr up thir butt to garden in April or May. And then comes July and August, and it's too hot to go out there, oh, we're going to France or whatever. And so they kind of lose interest in the garden. At least if you've got an automated watering system, it will keep those plants alive till you get home.

Don Shor

Yeah, even avid gardeners would have trouble hand watering their whole garden consistently. And that's the key thing is consistent, deep soakings. Tomatoes can take less frequent irrigation as the season goes along. You can water them deeply and infrequently if your soil allows that. And that's really a crucial thing. I'm in an area with great silty loam, I'm not gloating, I'm just happy. I can add, I can put a whole week's worth of water on a plant all at once, a good deep soaking. That's all I need to do. But as I've learned as a retailer, if I'm talking to someone, and I'm talking about giving a deep soaking, and then all of a sudden it clicks in my head to ask, do you have a raised planter? Because if you have a raised planter, you've got Fred's problem:  water runs through very quickly and doesn't spread out very much. And so you do need to learn how your soil is going to hold water, how you can apply it effectively, you may have to water more often, if you have a raised planter bed, you almost certainly will have to, the first year or two when you just bring in that fancy soil that you filled it with. And that's where that drip system was really going to make your life a lot easier. So I really do recommend it's more of an expense at first. So maybe skip the first year if you just don't want to spend the money. But I think in the long run, you'll get better results, better yields if you do put in at least a simple soaker system whether you go to a full on drip irrigation system or not.

Farmer Fred

When you're looking for a drip irrigation system, look for inline emitters, the emitters are already built into the tube, you can't even see them. So you're not going to be spending half the time punching these emitters into a half inch tube. they're already built in, it makes it much easier. There's no chance of you weed whacking them off because you can't see them. they're built into the inside of the 1/2" or 1/4" pipeline.

Don Shor

I've never done that. Turn on the system and see the fountain over there. Yeah, that's right, I mowed those weeds. I will mention one thing about that. There's some great brands out there. They're very well known. They have some different models. And I want you to save the box that you bought them in and put it in your garage so that when I ask you what's the output of the emitters on that inline tubing, you can answer that because it'll determine how long you run it. Most common is a model that has about a half gallon an hour output. It's actually a little less than that. And I've calculated this with people that they're going to need to run that for either about 35 or 40 minutes every single day, or an hour and a half to two hours every few days in a typical raised planter bed in order to give it adequate watering, that drip irrigation is great because it puts out water slowly. So it's efficient. It soaks in, it penetrates the soil. But the drawback to that is that you have to run it for a long time. And when I tell people an hour, an hour and a half, they're aghast because they're imagining their lawn sprinklers. It's a very efficient way to water but you have to use it correctly. How long, for example, do you run the drip system on your raised planters?

Farmer Fred

I have improved the soil slowly but surely in my raised beds, so the moisture is remaining there for a longer period of time. I've amended it with a lot of compost, a lot of mulch, and it does well. The drip lines, the parallel lines in a four foot wide bed, there are four lines in that parallel line system in that four foot wide bed. So basically they're overlapping the water footprint by about three to four inches in that water footprint. So I'm getting equal coverage by putting in 4. You don't just put one line down a four foot wide bed, you shouldn't have more than 12 inches between parallel lines.

Don Shor

Yeah, and you probably have to run in the first year when you first fill that bed. And this is a very common situation we ran into during the pandemic. A lot of people jumped into gardening, built raised planters, called the rock yard, had them deliver something called topsoil or something called planting soil or who knows what, usually sandy loam soil with some compost added, and they would put two or three lines down the bed and they'd run it and they'd have two or three strips of wet soil. You don't hydrate the whole bed when you do that. So you have to add one. You have to improve the soil and its ability to retain moisture and you did all the right things by adding organic material. I believe growing cover crops makes a big difference because the roots actually contribute to the organic material. One thing that I'll throw in is, cut the plants off, typically at the end of their season, rather than pulling them out, except perhaps to inspect the roots. Mostly I just cut things off. Let the roots disintegrate right there and they add to the soil, the soil moisture retention and then top dressing if you got some in it and it doesn't really matter at that point, good inexpensive compost you buy in bulk wherever, another inch or two on the surface, regularly shading the soil gradually working its way in. You can go from having to water daily, the first year, hey, you notice it holds water better the second year, the third year so in two or three years in you're getting something that's more akin to actual soil. If you don't water deep enough, and I get pictures of this  every summer about mid July is typically when they start coming in, they're showing me pictures of plants that are getting drought stressed every single day, they're not watering deeply enough. So the poor roots of that tomato can never penetrate 2-3-4 feet as they would like to do. And so their poor plant is just barely eking out an existence, and they tell me, I only got five or six tomatoes at the end of the season, the roots couldn't develop. And so you do need to water deeply to get those roots down, and hopefully even down into the native soil below if you can possibly water that deeply. Or if you have that opportunity, or if your soil allows that kind of thing. A Slight digression: I have had conversations with the customers who are doing Square Foot Gardening, you're probably familiar with.  It's a wonderful way to get started with gardening and in the Sacramento Valley, and places like that it works great for your winter vegetables. But it's a mix of I don't know peat moss, vermiculite and compost, I think is one of the iterations of it, that's going to dry out very very, very quickly. And it's only a foot deep. So that's basically growing something in a container, which you can do, I do a lot of that. But I can tell you, it's not the easiest way to grow something as big as a tomato plant.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, exactly. By the way, Don, I don't know if you noticed or not. But we're in the 21st century now. And they have this nifty device that I keep in my soil. It's called the Rainpoint Bluetooth Soil Moisture Meter with Indoor Monitor. Basically, it's about a four by five inch blue rectangle, with three spikes on it about eight inches long, you stick that in the soil, you go back in the house, you look at your indoor monitor, and the indoor monitor tells you how wet is the soil. And it also gives you the soil temperature. So you don't even have to go outside and pull down your pants and sit on the soil to see what the temperature is, this device does it for you. And there are many other devices that are Bluetooth enabled. And they can be internet connected as well. And they even have systems that you can hook up to faucet to turn the water on when the soil actually needs the water.

Don Shor

So for those who are listening and don't know why your teeth should be blue, you can also just take a trowel after you irrigated, dig down there and see how far the water penetrated. That's the old school technique. But water moisture meters are really a very handy way to deal with this problem that you have with the raised planters and  what you might call the artificial soil mixes. Now native soil, if you've got good garden soil, that is by far the easiest way to go, because you can give a good deep soaking, and go several days between waterings. But in any event to make it easy for yourself, plan ahead for how you're going to water. And I love your idea of a timer because that really can make it simpler just to have the whole thing happening automatically. Obviously check on the soil moisture, make sure it's working. Because I always say when someone's buying drip irrigation and stuff, the plant performance is your best guide to whether things are working. That's some calculation you did or your engineer friend who told you what the evapotranspiration rate is and how exactly  long it should be running and all that kind of thing. The plant performance and a little inspection of the soil will be your best guide whether you're watering deeply enough and whether the plant is getting what it needs.

Farmer Fred

The proof is in the tomato. Well, I think we've exhausted the topic of what are the easiest tomatoes to grow. Don Shor is with Redwood Barn nursery in Davis, California, Redwoodbarn.com. He has a slew of information on a website that looks about as old as farmerfred.com. ,

Don Shor

Yep, been around for a while. There's a lot of articles there. Yes. Old old classic HTML coding.

Farmer Fred

yes, indeed. And hey, it works. Just like growing cherry tomatoes works.

Don Shor

I've got one more thing out there for novice gardeners: hybrid tomatoes are going to be reliable. So be sure when you're going out and choosing your varieties, you get at least one or preferably more of the garden hybrids because they've been bred for yield, performance, and reliability. And the heirloom types, as fun as they may be, can be very challenging. And just lots of feedback that I've gotten over the years where that heirloom didn't produce well or you know, my Brandywine only gave me two fruit, or I tried this variety and it just didn't do well. We know Champion will work, we know Early Girl will work. We know Celebrity will work. And there's a reason that they are so popular. They work in a wide range of conditions and they also tend to have built in disease resistance.

Farmer Fred

That's right, hybrid tomatoes. For the easiest tomatoes to grow. You can't beat them. If you're looking for something strange looking with maybe incredible flavor try an heirloom or two.

Don Shor

Yep, balance your portfolio.

Farmer Fred

Good financial advice from Don Shor from Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, CA. Don, love to talk with tomatoes with you. Thanks a bunch.

Don Shor

Thanks very much.

Farmer Fred

That was nursery owner Don Shor talking about the easiest tomato varieties to grow, originally aired in episode 248, last January. Coming up, we talk with noted garden author Pam Farley, known far and wide as the Brown Thumb Mama, who has tips for you small space gardeners, especially: It’s all about Container Gardening Basics, #3 of  the Top 5 Garden segments of 2023 on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.

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#3 CONTAINER GARDENING BASICS (Originally aired in Ep. 256)

Farmer Fred  
There's a new book out. It’s called, “The First Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening.” It contains all the know-how you need to grow vegetables, fruits, herbs and other edible plants in pots. It's written by Pam Farley. Although the title page of her book says the author is Pamela Farley, I have a funny feeling she's only called Pamela when her mother might be mad at her. Pam Farley has been gardening and writing, usually not at the same time, since she was in grade school. Those interests collided in 2009 when she started the website, brown thumb mama.com. I bet that name rings a bell with you. She's been documenting her home and garden tips for millions of readers from around the world, who visit her site to learn about vegetable gardening, easy recipes and, making a non toxic home. And when she's not gardening or writing, she might be out camping or reading or otherwise avoiding housework, just like she's doing right now, talking to us about container food gardening. Pam, this is exciting. A book!

Pam Farley 
Thank you. It certainly is. 

Farmer Fred  
And it's a book that is very necessary in the 21st century, what with smaller yards and new gardeners. You combine the two and what do you get? A lot of new container gardeners.

Pam Farley 
Absolutely. It's the easiest way to get started. 

Farmer Fred 
If you know what you're doing. And it doesn't take much. And your book is a good guideline to get started with container gardening because there are sure a lot of myths about container gardening. And we may get into some of that later on. And certainly in your book, you cover just about every type of food you can grow in containers. How about some  general guidelines about growing in containers? What do you look for in a container?

Pam Farley 
There are some important things to keep in mind. And if you're on the internet at all, you'll see a lot of suggestions that are probably not safe for growing food. There are important things that you want to think about when you're picking out a container. Your container can be a soup can or an old wheelbarrow, or a fancy pot that you bought at your local garden center. But you want it to be big enough for the mature plant. So you're not going to plant a lemon tree in a soup can for example, you want it to be food safe. Now this means, for example, that I don't recommend that you plant potatoes in a stack of old tires. Because there's just too darn many chemicals in those tires. And third, you want to make sure your container has good drainage. Because if your seeds or your plants are in a pot that's full of water and the water can't drain out, then everything's just gonna rot and you're not going to have any vegetables.

Farmer Fred
I think for the beginner gardener who is starting off in container gardening, it might be easiest to start with greens because they grow quickly.

Pam Farley
They don't take up much space. They're very malleable. As far as being successful, they don't require too much sun or too much shade. But like anything in a pot, it requires drainage. And a little bit of chard will produce and produce and produce. You better really like chard.

Farmer Fred
To me, chard is one of my favorite greens because in our hot climate here in USDA zone nine, it's one of the few that will successfully grow in the shade in the summertime. And with swiss chard you can have year round greens in your salad from the garden.

Pam Farley
That's right. And I actually have several chard plants in the front and the backyard right now.

Farmer Fred
I like one piece of advice you give in the book about choosing containers. You say if you wouldn't eat out of it, don't grow in it. So kids, don't eat out of paint cans.

Pam Farley
Exactly. Just because it's on Pinterest doesn't mean it's a good idea, folks.

Farmer Fred
That brings up a good point though, and that is, if you're creative, you can use a lot of receptacles around the house for your containers, as long as they have drain holes.

Pam Farley
Absolutely. I have started seeds in a rotisserie chicken container from the store. Or when we first got married and didn't have two nickels to rub together, I grew herbs, literally, in soup cans on the windowsill. I just pounded some holes on the bottom with some nails. You can use a nail to punch holes in the bottom of cartons, any kind of old colanders, things that you are going to donate or toss out, there are lots of ways that you can repurpose them and use them for your garden.

Farmer Fred
I would think if there is one general rule of thumb when it comes to choosing a container, it's I would rather have a deep container than a wide container.

Pam Farley
That's very true. There are some times when, if you think about the shape of the food, you could get away with planting radishes in a shallow container. But of course carrots are not going to work. I have not found an occasion yet where a container was too big, but you can't have a container be too small. That doesn't mean the plant is going die right off the bat. It just won't get as big as it could have. And it may not last as long, may not live as long, as it would have because it doesn't have enough room to grow and get nutrients from the soil.

Farmer Fred
One of the problems of growing a small plant in a large container, though, sometimes there can be  way too much water in that container for that itty bitty plant. And so it better be an easy draining soil for it to succeed.

Pam Farley
That's true. And another good point is you don't want to scoop up garden soil and plop it in a container. I should say for most of us, because our garden soil is pretty heavy. In this part of the state it's got a lot of clay, and it doesn't drain well. It’s better to mix up or purchase specific container gardening soil that's a little lighter and  drains better.

Farmer Fred
The one lesson I've learned after all these years of using potting soil is, like you say, it really doesn't matter the brand. You can choose your favorite potting mix or the least expensive potting mix as long as it works. Just be sure it is moist before you plant in it. It is very difficult to moisten dry, commercially bought potting soil because one component that's probably in it is peat moss, and peat moss is very difficult to get wet unless you pre moisten it. And one thing I like to do is, if I'm using a bag of seed starting mix, which I really enjoy doing, especially this time of year, I will dump it into a bucket. There are no drain holes in the bucket. I fill the bucket full of water with the seed mix in it, walk away, do something else, come back either later that day or the next day, and transfer that wet potting soil or that seed starting mix into black plastic pots with drainage and let them drain a while. And then I grab a handful of it and throw it into whatever pot I am going to use to plant in.  One thing you pointed out in your book that I would like to emphasize is a lot of people are in the habit of having a large container and maybe it's one of those large, lightweight containers that look like they're terracotta, but they're not terracotta, they're really foam. And they're really light and easy to move. So maybe they don't want to put a full bag of potting soil into it and they'll throw Styrofoam peanuts or pot shards in the bottom of it, just to maybe save some money. There's a lot of things that can go wrong and not the least of which is you just created a serious drainage problem.

Pam Farley
So this is one of those things that's all over the internet. And holy smokes, everybody thinks this is the best thing since peanut butter and I'm going to put some empty two liter bottles or some packing peanuts in the bottom of the container. And this is a common garden myth that has absolutely been busted. And there are some important reasons why you do not want to do this. For starters, your plant will not have enough soil to get enough nutrients. The roots will reach down and then if the roots touch that two liter bottle and the packing peanuts, they're going to be like, “Well I don't know. Okay, I give up.” It's going to change the balance of your pot so it'll be a lot easier to tip over if there's wind or things like that. And the most important part this is the science part. The soil has a specific density and the filler material below does not pull the water. It doesn't want to travel between the two  porosities. The water is going to try and stay in the soil. That leaves the soil waterlogged, which is what you were trying to prevent, and that is detrimental to your plants. You do that partial mix because you are concerned about having a heavy, hot, heavy immovable pot that you need to put on little plant skateboards called plant taxis that you can set it on before you fill it with soil and you push all it around wherever you'd like.

Farmer Fred
Here's a lesson I learned the hard way on that. I was doing a demonstration for some old garden show on the HGTV network years and years ago and I was demonstrating how to plant in a wine barrel, a half barrel. And I was drilling the holes and filling it and they brought along one of those plant caddies with casters on it. And I looked at it and think, “It’s  kind of small, but we can give it a shot.” So I set the empty barrel on top of the casters, fill it with soil and the tree, and I’m going to demonstrate how easy it is to roll this around with soil and a plant in it. And I think I moved it about six inches when the whole thing just collapsed. So the lesson I learned is: if you're going to put a half-barrel on casters, get yourself something really heavy duty like a furniture dolly to put it on. 

Pam Farley
Yes I've got at my local garden center I got a plant dolly or plant casters that were made specifically for wind barrels and cost as much as the wine barrel. It’s base is the right diameter and it's got like six or seven legs, each with a caster, and they are spread out , so it's very sturdy. 

Farmer Fred 
That's nice.

Pam Farley
It was very sturdy and very expensive.

Farmer Fred 
And if you do planting containers, that's another benefit of planting in containers on a platform with wheels. If you have a citrus tree in there, and there's a frost expected, you can roll it closer to the house to get a little bit more heat at night. And that is probably easier than covering it and uncovering it or trying to figure out if your Christmas lights can keep it warm enough. So tell us about the containers that you use in your food garden.

Pam Farley
I have just about every different kind. One of my favorite containers that I have quite a bit of in the front yard are Smart Pots, which are sturdy fabric pots with handles, and I have them lined up next to the driveway where they get the best sun. I've got some chard and some broccoli in those right now. I've got a few shallow terracotta containers, things the folks next door gave me when they moved away. And I've got green onions in those at all different stages of growth. I have harvested green onion seeds for ages. So every few weeks, I fill up another container and sprinkle some green onion seeds in there. So I'm I'm always prepared. Of course, I have half wine barrels. Let's see, I have an orange tree in one. I've got a couple with blueberries. And I do have some of the traditional resin containers, the pretty decorative containers, but mostly Smart Pots. So I would say, by their numbers, they win hands down.

Farmer Fred
And they last for years. And yes, Smart Pots is a sponsor of this podcast. But like I tell you every week in the commercial, I use them, I've purchased them, I would purchase them again. They last for years. And they don't create root problems either. They air prune because of all the microscopic holes in them. And I just did a test comparing Smart Pots to a ceramic pot and a fiber pot growing roses. And I grew roses in them, a rose plant in each of them for a year. And then I mercilessly pruned those roses back to short stumps just a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to pull the plant out of the pots to see the roots of the plant. And the root system of the Smart Pot-grown rosebushes had four times the weight of the others, and that's just the root part of it. So it encourages roots, you don't get any circling roots. And they don't find their way out and anchor themselves in the ground either. So I was also impressed with the size of the roses  that were grown in the Smart Pots versus the fiber pots as well.

Pam Farley
Awesome. Yes, I have used Smart Pots for years. And yeah, I wouldn't have mentioned them specifically, except that I'm real, real happy with them.

Farmer Fred
Like I said they last for years. Some gardeners  have been using them for 20 years or so. 

Pam Farley
Cool. Yep. Well, that'll be me.

Farmer Fred 
I'm still using the original ones I got eight years ago. So there's that.

Farmer Fred  
We are talking with Pam Farley. She's the author of the brand new book, “The First Time Gardener: Container Food Gardening”, and she has more tips for planting in containers for both your backyard and your front yard. Getting back to the subject of drainage and using pots, one of the big problems with using pots is because of their weight, and you set that pot on the soil, there's a good chance it might clog those holes with that compressed soil below. Or if there's concrete below it, there's a chance that those holes could just become clogged, period. And you have some ideas on that, as far as using maybe pot feet or pot toes. 

Pam Farley
Absolutely. So there are a few different reasons that the drain holes can get clogged. Of course, there can be roots or the soil just gets compacted or you know, there might be some bugs down there clogging up the holes. And there are a few different ways to handle it. There are fancy little lift gizmos called pumps, toes or pot feet, that you can use that raise the container up off the ground just a little bit, a half an inch is all you really need. Or you can use the very fancy “Piece O’ Brick” which is a highly scientific method or little scraps of wood, things like that. If you raise up the pot, and you find that the water still not draining right, then the soil could be compacted. You probably want to gently tip the container over, than use a chopstick or an old pencil and poke the drain holes a little bit from the bottom up to break up the soil and get things to drain better.

Farmer Fred
Let's talk a little bit about container aesthetics. Now I have no sense of design. But I know most people do. Where would you use cylindrical containers or square containers or rectangular containers in the garden for it to look nice?

Pam Farley
So I confess that I am also… Well, let’s just say I am a vegetable gardener and not a landscape designer on purpose because my key criteria is, will the food grow in this container? So I actually had to consult with some friends who know what they're doing in that regard. And there are some things that can help you arrange your vegetable garden so that it looks the best. Obviously, there are a bajillion different sizes and shapes of containers like you've talked about, including the soup cans on my windowsill. And there are beautiful decorative containers at the garden center. And there are five gallon buckets from the bakery. So there's all different shapes and sizes. There are some things that you can consider for aesthetics and placement so that your garden looks as aesthetically pleasing as possible, especially if you're doing container food gardening in the front yard. And you might be concerned about what's the folks across the street or the neighbors walking their dog might have to say. So if you have a cylindrical containers, like the half barrels, the pretty decorative urns or containers from the garden center, those look great in the corner of the yard. Or may be if you don't have a tree in the center of your yard. You can use one very large, striking container as a focal point. If you have several wine barrels, you can use them as a border. That’s a more rustic look. So square containers which sometimes if you're upcycling different things or if  you're building your own wood boxes, because they're square, they have to be placed more precisely. They can be, depending on the material they're made out of, they can be more modern looking, more sleek. But with some styles of houses, it would look discordant to have a craftsman style house with a metal watering trough planter or sometimes it's just an incongruence.

Farmer Fred
I'm glad you mentioned metal watering troughs, because it is one of my favorite containers to use for growing blueberries. Since blueberries require an acidic soil mix, it’s easy to do that with a cattle watering trough that you may have purchased at a farm supply store, as long as you put drain holes in it. But I've been seeing a lot of people using those containers as all their containers in the front yard. And if they're unpainted, if they're at bright silver, it's kind of garish looking. What's nice is that those metal watering troughs can usually be painted with tractor paint. It sticks better to metal. There are like three or four good colors when it comes to tractor paint. You've got Ford blue, John Deere green, International Harvester red, Kubota orange. Things like that. And it just adds  some nice, bright colors to those rather stark-looking watering troughs.

Pam Farley
Exactly. And I haven't seen this around town, but I have seen online folks that have ripped out their entire front yard and put it in these industrial cattle troughs. I'm not quite that brave yet, but it can be done.

Farmer Fred
One thing we should talk about when it comes to containers is the fact that maybe the darker colored ones might just be absorbing too much heat on a hot summer day,  especially here in zone nine, where we're cooking  all summer. What can a mother do, what can a gardener do, for lowering the temperature on a hot summer day? Not a black plastic pot, I hope that you’ve moved beyond black plastic pots. But if that's all you have, I understand, but there are some mitigations to bring the temperature down in those containers in the summertime.

Pam Farley
I would say yes, if all you have are black plastic containers, perhaps you can put them inside a larger decorative container and use a cache pot, which is the term for the fancy outside container, which disguises a more plain inside container.

Farmer Fred
And that would certainly bring the temperature down. Especially if you're trying to bring down the temperature of a black plastic pot in the summertime and not cook the plant that's in there. Because they can reach 140 degrees in as little as a half hour, if the sun is hitting that black plastic pot on a hot summer afternoon. Putting it inside a larger pot is a great idea. Even better is to put it in that larger pot and then fill that gap, that air gap, with wood mulch to give it some more insulation from the heat. Now there are some people who will wrap the outside of the containers with a reflective substance like aluminum foil. And that will work, that will keep the temperature down in the pots. But then again, your neighbors may think that you're signaling in the UFOs, telling them where to land.

Pam Farley 
That can be a problem.

Farmer Fred 
In your book, “The First Time Gardener Series: Container Food Gardening”, you have some great pictures, lots of great pictures as a matter of fact, but you have a good set of pictures that delineate exactly how to drill holes in the bottom of a wood barrel. And you can refer to that if you want to figure out how to do it. I always get confused though, about when somebody gives me a pot that doesn't have drain holes. All right, I'm gonna have to put a drain hole or two in this. How do I do it? Which drill bit do I use?

Pam Farley
I know my way around power tools a little bit. But I tell you, it pained my hubby greatly to be taking the pictures while I was drilling these holes, because he was like, “Oh, oh, oh, what about oh, hey, oh.” But there are different kinds of drill bits that you need to use and different techniques. Wood is pretty easy. You just use a standard drill bit but if you're drilling like terracotta you need a masonry bit. My best suggestion if you're doing glazed ceramic is only buy them if they already have drainage, because they're very expensive. And if you drill through with your expensive diamond tip drill bit and then you break the pot, you're going to be mad, mad, mad. And of course if you're doing the big metal trough, like I've seen, then you need a metal bit and you have to go really slowly because it's going to heat up. It's tricky, but it can be done.

Farmer Fred
Yes and wear eye protection.

Pam Farley
Absolutely. That is a yes, it needs to be said every time.

Farmer Fred
My wood boring drill bits are my best friends. They hang on the centerpiece of my pegboard in the garage. And they range from about an eighth of an inch diameter up to one and a half inches. And for wooden barrels, I like to use the three quarters inch bit. You talk about, I think, using half an inch, and that's fine if you do enough of them. And the nice thing with wood barrels is you're not going to break the bottom of the wood barrel (usually) with a drill bit.

Pam Farley
Exactly. yes.

Farmer Fred 
Any first time gardener is going to have issues, and that's okay. You're gardening. It's fun. And for a lot of people, the first garden is their favorite garden no matter what happens. But you may have issues. And in Pam Farley's book, “The First Time Gardener Series: Container Food Gardening”, she has a troubleshooting guide. And Pam, your plant problems section tackles problems with the plants and not only the issue of a lack of production, but also diagnosing issues with stems and leaves and what they look like. Exactly. So one of the things that was really important to me in writing this book was that I wrote it for the beginning gardener as a beginner. There are so many people have come to me and said, “Oh, you know, I think this is a silly question”. But there's no such thing as a silly question. There's no question that's too basic, which is why in the book I talk about how do I plant a seed? I show pictures, step by step pictures. How do I plant a seedling or a transplant from the nursery? Not everybody knows that. And there's nothing wrong with not knowing it.

Farmer Fred
If you've never done it before, how could you expect to know?

Pam Farley
Exactly, exactly, I was talking with a friend who's an expert seamstress and I needed her to replace a zipper. And she said, “Oh, that's easy. That's not a problem at all. You don't know how to replace the zippers?” And I said, oh, good heavens, no. All I can do is hem things. And then we were talking about gardening the next time we got together and I said “well, you know, just put it in your compost bin.” And she said, “I don't know how to make compost.” And I thought, well, that's as easy as pie. You don't know. And that's okay. I still don't know how to replace zippers, either. But that's all right. That's why God made Velcro. That's why we have friends that know how to do these things.

Farmer Fred 
It wouldn't be the same if everybody knew everything. 

Pam Farley
Right. And that would be boring.

Farmer Fred
In your experience with first time gardeners, what are their usual panicked questions?

Pam Farley
A lot of the time, online and with friends, I hear from them the first time a corner of a leaf changes color. “Oh, no. The corner of this leaf. It’s, it's yellow! And what am I going to do? Is my plant dying?” No, actually your plant has like 500 million leaves. And it's going to be okay. But I've included some pictures of leaves and sick plants and sick leaves. So if you think, “Oh, my zucchini plant. It looks like there's flour or white powder on the leaves of my zucchini plant? What's that?” You can look in the troubleshooting section and it says, “white powder on leaves. Well, that could probably be powdery mildew or another fungal infection. Here are some things you can do.” Another common question is, “there's squiggly lines on the leaves of my pepper plant.” Well, you can look up squiggly lines. That is probably a leaf miner, which is just a bug that likes to go through and munch through the leaf and makes little squiggly lines. It’s not the end of the world, it’s not going to kill your plants, unless they get carried away. That's something that's different with this book:  you don't have to know what the problem is before you look in the troubleshooting section. You don't have to look at this and say, “Well, maybe that sunscald or maybe it’s blossom end rot or maybe…”. You don't have to know those things. You can just look and say, “there's this white spot on my bell pepper”, and you can look it up that way.

Farmer Fred
What I like too about your solutions is you start with the least toxic alternatives and integrated pest management approach. Always, always, always, always. And your garden hose could be your best friend when it comes to controlling insects, like aphids. Just spray them off. Let's start with the least toxic alternative. And unfortunately, a lot of people, when it comes to garden problems like a yellowing leaf or some sort of spots on fruit for example, they may say “oh, the plant needs water.” Not necessarily. Always, always check the container for moisture. Get yourself a moisture meter or stick your finger down there and see what the moisture is like eight inches down where the roots tend to be.

Pam Farley 
And one of the things that surprised me when I was researching blossom end rot is it is something that comes up in the summertime. It’s where the base of your tomatoes gets black or leathery. And I learned that sometimes, not always, sometimes it can be caused by fertilizer that has too much ammonia. That interferes with the way that the plant takes up the water in the soil. And so if you can use a organic fertilizer like kelp or fish emulsion, it's going to be easier on the plants and you'll run less risk of OD’ing on chemicals.

Farmer Fred
In the world of horticulture. When discussing blossom end rot we usually like to say it's an abiotic disorder. And what that means is, it's probably your fault, because it's too much water, not enough water, too sandy of a soil, wrong pH of the soil, too much fertilizer. There's a lot of reasons that it could be turning leathery on the bottom of the tomato.  And  I can tell you don't own a nursery because you haven't tried to sell anything yet to solve these problems.

Pam Farley
That's true, I just take the offending tomatoes and chuck them in the compost bin and think, “doggone it”. 

Farmer Fred
Those are the salad tomatoes, you cut off the bad portion and eat the rest. You can very much do that. I liked the fact that you put in there not to add Epsom salts, eggshells and antacid tablets or anything like that in your container garden. It's not going to fix blossom end rot.

Pam Farley
I would like to have just printed out on the cover in 50 point font, but they frown on that. There are some garden myths that I just can't stand and that's one of them.

Farmer Fred
We have done entire episodes on this podcast about blossom end rot (Episode 189, for example), you can look it up and listen for yourself and realize that oh, I'll just live with it.

Pam Farley
Yes, it is not the end of the world and going around here. tomatoes grow so well that if you if you lose one or two, you're going to be okay. 

Farmer Fred
That's right.  And congratulations, you have put in a picture, a really good picture, of a teenage Ladybug, which looks totally different than the mature adult Ladybug. Most people know that ladybugs are good guys and gals. You want them in your garden to be eating the pests like aphids. But that teenage Ladybug. I always like to say it looks like an alligator in a San Francisco Giants warm up jacket.

Pam Farley
It's a black and orange dragon or a dinosaur. Yes. They're super cool looking. But if you don't know what they are, you might think “oh my gosh a bug!”.

Farmer Fred
Identify all pests before you take action is a wise decision, especially in their younger stages, because they can look totally different. And it's usually just like in real life. It's the teenage ladybugs that eat the most aphids.

Pam Farley
Teenagers. Yes, I can. I can confirm this with the teenagers in my house. The teenagers eat more than everything.  So another thing that is really helpful for new gardeners as you might be, you might look at your vegetable drawer in your fridge and say, Oh, we go through a lot of cucumbers, green beans, and lettuce. Oh, shoot. Now I have to try and figure out what kind of containers to get and how big and what if they go together and what if they don't. And so the book has like a quick planting guide for vegetables, fruits and herbs. So you can think about what your family uses. And you can look at this cheat sheet and say Oh, well, you know green beans, we need a three gallon or larger container, and they're going to need full sun. So okay, I know that I don't want to plant them with chard because chard is going to need a little bit of shade. And I definitely wouldn't want to plant them with something that needs full shade. So you can look at the chart, figure out what kind of containers you need. So you're ready  when you go shopping and you know when to plant everything, what size container it needs, whether you want to plant it from a seed or a seedling or transplant. Some plants they don't grow as well when they're planted as a transplant or a seedling. The garden center will still sell them to you but they might not survive and then you'll feel bad and it's not your fault.

Farmer Fred
Yes, that's so true. Yeah, the quick garden guide is excellent in your book because you go on a plant by plant basis describing the container size that's needed, when to plant, whether you can plant from seed or whether you need to grow from a transplant, how much sun it needs, how much water it needs, fertilizer it may need, and also how long it'll be until harvest. And that's always important.

Pam Farley
Very important. Yes. And it's worth pointing out that this is a book for beginning gardeners. So things that I at least find more challenging to grow like broccoli and jicama are not going to be in this beginner guide, but I do talk about them on my website (BrownThumbMama.com).

Farmer Fred
You do write about fruit trees, as well.

Pam Farley
I do, because I have eight, at last count ,in my city garden. 

Farmer Fred 
Congratulations. How tall do you keep your fruit trees? Are they in containers?

Pam Farley
Some of the citrus trees are in containers. There’s the apricot out front. I just got a couple of apples and some of the citrus are in the ground and some are in containers and they all top out at about eight feet.

Farmer Fred
Good for you, they are pretty trimmed. That's called backyard orchard culture, where you keep the trees no taller than what you can reach while standing on the ground, because any fruit that's out of your reach is for the birds.  And you even have instructions on how to grow an avocado tree. You're an evil, evil person for suggesting that.

Pam Farley
I know it can be done because Carri Stokes has one.

Farmer Fred 
Yes, she does. Oh, avocados. Where do I begin? I tell you what, folks. If you live in Santa Barbara, if you live in Oxnard, if you live in San Diego, Go ahead, grow your avocado trees. For anybody else in California, find the warmest spot possible that doesn't get a lot of wind, or a lot of summertime reflected heat. And you, too, can grow an avocado tree in USDA zone nine and 10. But there are times when you just can't do it. And it really depends on the layout of your home and your yard. And can you grow avocados indoors? Go ahead and try. Who am I to stop you?

Pam Farley
Well, we do talk about microclimates in the chapter about sun and locations. I would argue that you need a very specific microclimate to grow avocados in zone nine.

Farmer Fred
Or you buy the home that's for sale next to Oprah in Santa Barbara.

Farmer Fred
There you go. You can read it in real life. You can then touch it and feel it; or, you can stare at it on a screen. It's “The First Time Gardener Series: Container Food Gardening” by Pamela Farley, that’s F-A-R-L-E-Y. You want more information? I bet you can find more information about the book at BrownThumbMama.com

Pam Farley
Absolutely. 

Farmer Fred
Pam Farley. It's been a treat talking to you.

Pam Farley
I'm tickled to be here, Farmer Fred. Thank you so much.

Farmer Fred

That was Pam Farley, the Brown Thumb Mama, discussing her book Container Food Gardening. We move on the second most listened-to segments of 2023 on the Garden Basics podcast. It’s from episode 258, originally aired last March, Ten More Garden Quick Tips. And the tips from that episode that garnered the most interest included nursery owner Julia Oldfield talking about how to accomplish the spill chill thrill effect when grouping plants together, especially in a large pot. And, from tomato seed company Wild Boar Farms, Brad Gates has advice on planting tomato seeds and transplanting those young plants into the garden.

#2 QUICK TIPS (Originally aired in Ep. 258)

QUICK TIP: SPILL, THRILL, CHILL

Farmer Fred

If you want to add some pop to your garden this fall, especially in USDA Zones 7 through 9, how about doing a little “spiller, chiller, thriller” display. What is that all about? Julia Oldfield has the answer. She owns Big Oak Nursery in Elk Grove, California. Julia, what exactly is a spiller, chiller, thriller arrangement?

Julia Oldfield

Well, I'm glad you asked Farmer Fred. Because fall is a great time to add some pops of color around in your yard. As your trees are turning red and your leaves are falling and things are going dormant. It's a great time to add maybe a pot on your patio or even a flowerbed that can be arranged this way. “Filler” is something that would hang over the side of the pot or trail along the ground. We like to use new...well,  it's not new anymore, but it's something that not a lot of people know about. They call them “Cool Wave” pansies. If you know what a “Wave Petunia” is, they are these giant petunias that will hang over the side of your pot. And they've developed pansies that will also trail the same way, so it'll hang over the side of your pot. Then you have your “chiller” which just sits in the center and its primary job is to fill the pot up in the middle and just chill and sit there and be beautiful. We like to use ornamental kale. They come in shades of purple, pink, and white. You can even add some calendulas, in orange and yellow. Those are good fall colors. The orange calendula with the purple kale is absolutely stunning together. Finally, you'll have your “thriller” which is the plant in the center that sticks out of the pot and just pretty much waves at your neighbors, because it's so beautiful and so tall. We like to use the taller Snapdragons. They will just bloom and bloom. And they come in all the different colors, so you can really get a mixture of colors or your favorite colors together. And it just really fills in your pot and  makes your pot look full and absolutely stunning. You can do it in your flowerbed too. You can have the trailing pansies in the front and then a medium plant like a calendula. And then in the back, you have your tall snapdragons. And that way anyone driving by can see the three layers, because you have them arranged by height.

Farmer Fred

What a great display of color for the gray days of Fall. A spiller chiller thriller of cool season plants. The cool wave pansy in the front trailing over the pot or in the front of the garden. The chiller, which has standout color that lasts a long time such as the ornamental kale and the calendula. And then that big plant in the back or in the middle of the pot, the thriller, such as those snapdragons that can get 24 to 36 inches tall. Julia Oldfield thanks for explaining spiller, chiller, thriller for us.

Julia Oldfield

You're welcome Farmer Fred.

QUICK TIP: TOMATO SOIL AND TOMATO PLANTING TIPS

Farmer Fred

If you're in tomato planting mode, maybe you're starting seeds, maybe you're transplanting tomato plants into the garden, how deep should you plant them and is there a substitute for a very expensive seed starting mix. Brad Gates and Wild Boar Farms has some suggestions.

Farmer Fred

Frankly, for the home gardener who's transplanting little tomato plants into slightly bigger containers, you could just use a good quality potting mix from your favorite nursery.

Brad Gates

Yeah, that's when I'd use regular potting mix. That's what I would do. You can top off the trays and if anything is bigger than say your pinky fingernail, pick it off the top. You can also run them through like a quarter inch screen just regular high quality potting mix, just screen it at a quarter inch and it makes perfect seed starting mix.

Farmer Fred

Excellent tip. And of course as the tomatoes grow in that three and a half inch pot, they can get kind of lanky, too, but if you give them full sun like what you have here in this greenhouse, they will tend to be fairly upright but do you find you have to prune them?

Brad Gates

No. If you give them plenty of light and that's why I like the cool nighttime and then not too hot during the day and that will make them a little bit stockier. Sometimes when you mass plant like you're saying, put even up to 10 seeds or more in a small cup and plant them they can fight for the light a little bit so they can get lanky. The good things with tomato plants is you can always bury the plant and a bunch of the stem and it will readjust itself so to speak.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, just like if you bought a tomato plant at a nursery if somebody bought one of yours at a nursery and decided to transplant it into the yard like they should, they would want to plant it deeper than where it was planted in the pot at the nursery.

Brad Gates

Yeah, my general rule of thumb is plant about 20 to 30% of the plant, no matter how big it is, if it was a little seedling when I transplant, I'll plant them about 20 or 30% of the stem underneath the soil. Once I get a nice transplant that's ready for the garden. Same thing I'll trim off any leaves or suckers that are below where I'm going to plant and then I'll bury about 20 or 30% of the stem that keeps the potting mix it's planted in from drying out that keeps when the wind in the spring is blowing your plants around. It makes it little further down in the soil so it can handle the wind and it will also regenerate roots on the stem where it comes in contact with the moist soil.

Farmer Fred

Quick Garden Tips from Julia Oldfield of Big Oak Nursery and Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms, the second most listened to episode from 2023, episode 258, from last March.

It is no surprise to me that the most listened to episode of last year featured America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture professor, Debbie Flower. What did surprise me was a) the episode was not only the most downloaded garden basics episode of 2023, but also the most downloaded episode in the first four years of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. And the second biggest surprise? The topic: How to Grow Cucumbers, which just happens to be the second most popular backyard vegetable in America, according to the National Gardening Association. Here it is, the Number One, most listened-to Garden Basics segment of all time: Cucumber Growing Basics.

CUCUMBER GROWING BASICS (Originally Aired in Ep. 266)

Farmer Fred

Awhile back we were talking about the top 10 vegetables that are grown by gardeners in these United States. And I was surprised to learn that the number two most popular vegetable grown in the United States are cucumbers. Who knew? I thought it would be peppers, or maybe zucchini. No. Zucchini was number six; sweet peppers were number three. Cucumbers were number two. I'm not a big fan of cucumbers. But I know someone who is.

Debbie Flower

Yeah. I love cucumbers!

Farmer Fred

That would be Debbie Flower America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, who loves cucumbers.

Debbie Flower

I do.

Farmer Fred

But my heavens, cucumbers have a lot of problems. And I bet sometime this summer we're going to hear from people who say, “What happened to my cucumbers? The flowers look funny. The fruit looks funny, it tastes bad.” What's going on?

Debbie Flower  2:43

What's going on? Well, cucumbers are a vine. And so they need some space. They are in the cucurbitaceae family, so they have boy flowers and girl flowers. And that's part of the pollination problem. That, and they need regular moisture. If you let the plants dry out between irrigations, that's when your fruit tastes bad. There's more and more breeding going on to prevent that. We're getting closer to the season of erratic watering, but basically the soil needs to be moist, not wet, but moist, all the time. So cucumbers are a warm season plant, a warm season annual. They need soil temperatures to be quite warm when you seed them. And you typically want to direct seed them, not start them ahead of time.

Farmer Fred

Sounds like zucchini.

Debbie Flower

Like zucchini, like melons, like pumpkins. Those plants are all similar in that when they get root bound in a container, it dwarfs them and they will never grow very big. You do it once in your gardening life and you’ll remember it. It's such a disappointment. So, I just tried my second time planting my cucumber seeds. Yesterday, I planted some old seeds and that might be my problem. In general, you don't want to keep seeds more than two years and these were two year old seeds. And I stored them correctly, dry, in the refrigerator, over the two years, but they just didn't germinate. So yesterday I planted fresh seed. So I would advise starting with fresh seed, planted directly when your night temperatures have settled at 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. They need six to eight hours of sun, that's considered full sun. They need well drained, fertile soil and regular moisture.

Farmer Fred

Can you grow them in containers?

Debbie Flower

You can. There are some bush type cucumbers that are smaller and can be grown in containers. But the containers should be pretty big, 15 to 25 inches tall and across, or a half barrel. Make sure the pots have drainage holes and if they are dark color on the outside, wrap them in aluminum foil or paint them white or put something some with a lighter color on the outside somehow.

Farmer Fred

According to the Cucumber heads at UC Davis, they recommend for container-grown cucumbers these varieties: Pickle Bush, Potluck, Park’s Bush Whopper, Salad bush, Spacemaster, and Bush champion.

Debbie Flower

Notice the word “Bush” is used a lot.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, that tells you something about it. I would think, though, that much like zucchini, some early season disappointments with cucumbers would be: you see the flowers, you get excited. But either there's no fruit, or what fruit develops, doesn't look very good.

Debbie Flower

And doesn't last. Yeah, it's very small and it turns yellow and falls off. That's because it has two types of flowers,  the male flower and the female flower. And the flowers themselves, to the untrained eye, look exactly the same. But when you look at the stem that attaches the flower to the plan, you get a clue. Male flowers attach with a straight stem, and  female flowers are attached to what looks like a baby cucumber. And that's  the fruit that will form if it gets pollinated. So actually, the insides of the flowers are different from each other. One has the pollen and the other one has the stigmatic surface that receives the pollen and allows the pollination to occur and the fruit to form. So it's a morning job for the pollinator, which can be bees, or it can be you. They worked on solving this a lot in breeding, so it isn't quite as pronounced as it used to be. But the first bunch of flowers used to all be males. Now it's the first few. And there were no females in sight, but the pollen has to be ripe. And the stigmatic surface has to be receptive. And there has to be a pollinator there to move the pollen from the boy flower to the girl flower. So it's a morning job. You can get up, go outside. I take off the male flower, take off the petals, and touch the tip of the male flower to the inside of the female flower. And that transfers the pollen and then you're going to get fruit.

Farmer Fred

You don't even need an artist’s brush.

Debbie Flower

No, you don't.

Farmer Fred

That's pretty nifty, if you are doing it  that way. I would think, though, that weather plays a big part in successful pollination. These flowers are only going to develop when the temperature is in a certain range,

Debbie Flower

Right. These are warm season crops. And so, if you have very fluctuating temperatures, you may not get them.

Farmer Fred

If it's too cold or too hot. Either the male or the female won't cooperate, right? It's probably the female that is uncooperative.

Debbie Flower

I'd say the male. I know they always want to play but…

Farmer Fred

Yeah, we're always ready. But no, if it's too hot or they get headaches or something. I don't know. Blossom end rot. I wouldn't think blossom end rot would be a problem outside of tomatoes and peppers.

Debbie Flower

I've seen it on squash. Yeah, I had one growing in a compost pile. I just let it grow. And it got blossom end rot. And you will read that it is due to calcium insufficiency in the fruit. And that's probably what it is. But in most cases, there's enough calcium available in the soil for plants to take it up. There's just not a regular source of water to take it to the plant roots. And so it comes back to regular watering again,

Farmer Fred

When choosing a cucumber variety, we talked about what's best for a container, the Bush types. But for consumption, what is the difference between a slicing cucumber and a pickling cucumber?

Debbie Flower

As far as I noticed, it’s size. The pickling cucumbers tend to only grow to be cigar size or smaller, a few inches, four to six inches and not really fat. I don't know if anybody else remembers getting the cucumber out of the…barrel in the local store.

Farmer Fred

For a second there, I thought you're gonna say Crackerjack box.

Debbie Flower

I never got one of those in a Crackerjack box! If you had that barrel experience, you can picture the size of the cucumber. What we buy in the store now is all cut up in various ways. But I have pickling cucumbers that are regular slicing cucumbers, and I probably didn't get the texture that would be what the pickle connoisseur might look for, because of the amount of water in the fruit, etc, etc. But I just would pick them young and pickle them or slice them; or, pickle them when there were a lot left.

Farmer Fred

One nice thing about cucumbers, because they require a warm soil in order to get started, they actually mature rather quickly.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, they're fast growers. They take off once they're out of the ground, as long as they have nutritious soil and about an inch of water a week. So, they’ll mature in about two months or so. Two months to get a fruit.

Farmer Fred

All right. So you could plant in June and have cucumbers by the end of August.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it's cucumber planting season.

Farmer Fred

Do you plant them the same way that you would plant zucchini or summer squash, six on a hill? And then thin them out to the strongest one? Or, as some people do, ignore them at let them take over the garden.

Debbie Flower

On seed packets I don’t see a discussion of the hill as much. But the packets do mention to plant several in one location and then thin them out. And you need to space them, depending on whether you're going to trellis them or not. They could be as little as 12 inches apart if you're going to grow a vine and cucumber on a trellis, although I find that to be a little close. Or, you could let them sprawl across the ground, in which they need to be five or six feet apart.

Farmer Fred

That brings up another good point. We have received a lot of emails in the past, from people who grow cucumbers on trellises. And they seem to really like that.

Debbie Flower

I like that, too.

Farmer Fred

Tell us about that.

Debbie Flower

Cucumbers have tendrils which occur in the leaf node. That’s where the leaf is attached, and they can wrap themselves around something thin, but they can't wrap themselves around a piece of bamboo, for example. That's a little too big. But something thin, like a cattle panel or string. Some people make a structure and have string hanging down from it. And when the tendrils touch it, there is a plant response to touch. The tendrils wind themselves around the trellis. If you don't have the right diameter  for the  tendril to twist around, you can always use old stockings, which I don't wear anymore, to encase the fruit and tie it up or to tie the plant itself to the structure that you're using as a trellis.

Farmer Fred

You're in the 21st century now. We now would use out of date USB cables.

Debbie Flower

There you go. Yes. I've seen baby underwear, children's underwear, to cradle the fruit. That's clever.

Farmer Fred

Out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, they have repurposed some old umbrella frames. You know how umbrella fabric get torn in the wind, but the frame is intact. So they have mounted these umbrella frames in the soil, and run strings down from the bare arms. They anchor the strings or small rope into the ground and allow either beans or cucumbers or whatever to spiral their way up to the top.

Debbie Flower

Nice.

Farmer Fred

I would think I would want something stronger. Like you mentioned, a piece of cattle fencing or some sort of 12 gauge wire or six inch mesh, maybe even concrete reinforcement wire, but that might be a little flimsy right? But you could still do it that way.

Debbie Flower

I grew it on a trellis that went above my head, and of course the plant grew up there. And then I couldn't reach the fruit. So beware.

Farmer Fred

Okay. I wonder if it would work on a pallet that has been placed on an angle and supported by T-posts? We talked about that method with Gail Pothour, Master Gardener, recently. She was using it to grow Butter Belly squash. And it had no trouble attaching to the wooden slats. They crawled right up. Now I don't know if a cucumber would do that. Because you said it couldn't grip it.

Debbie Flower

Yeah. But squash typically has a tendril, as well. So maybe the roughness of the wood leaves little splinters that they can wrap around.

Farmer Fred

Both for the plant and in your hand.

Debbie Flower

Yes.

Farmer Fred

Let's talk about some cucumber pests that might come your way. According to the University of California's Integrated Pest Management site, among the invertebrate pests that can attack your cucumbers are: aphids, armyworms, crickets, cucumber beetles, cutworms darkling beetles, dried fruit beetles, earwigs, flea beetles, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers, leaf miners, loopers, nematodes, seed corn maggots, snails and slugs. Also Spider mites, squash bugs, stink bugs, thrips, whiteflies, wire worms. What are your favorites on that list?

Debbie Flower

Wow, that's a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of those are sort of, I want to say, generalized pest problems, such as aphids that you'll see on many garden plants. Cutworms just like seedlings. And so when you plant the seed in the ground, you put a collar around it of some sort. I have this box of mini Dixie Cups in my house, and I came across this recently and thought, what do I have these for? Well, I used to pop the bottoms out and push the little cup into the soil around the seedling. Cutworms travel near the surface of the soil over to the seedling, and chew around the stem.

Farmer Fred

Do earwigs do the same thing?, Earwigs get a bad rap because they are usually going after dead organic matter and are only going to go after a plant if there's nothing else there. Right?

Debbie Flower

If you don't have a lot of organic matter for them to eat, then they'll go after a plant.

Farmer Fred

So a Dixie cup would solve that issue for earwigs, too.

Debbie Flower

I suppose so. I don't think they can get into it. But they could climb that you know. You find them in buds and things but I don't know that they could climb a Dixie Cup. The other thing my mother used to use was half an empty toilet paper tube, when the toilet paper is gone.

Farmer Fred

And that's another way to trap earwigs as well.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it is. But moist.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, moisten it up, and stick it in a dark place near where they are. They might just crawl in.

Debbie Flower

They would go in there during the day. Yes, that's a possibility.

Farmer Fred

However you bring up an interesting new sport that may take off in fraternities. It would be to take a Dixie cup, and have earwig races to see if they can crawl up and in. Place the Dixie cup upright over a plant. That way they'd have to sort of have to climb up and outward.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, they'd have to climb out. Right. And it's waxy. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

And you know, you could toughen it up by having a moat below that of vegetable oil that they would drown in yes.

Debbie Flower

If they fell, that would be the end of them Yeah. There are traps for earwigs. For aphids, you hit him with a spray of water. If you're growing on the ground, they are always on the back of the leafs. They may be in other parts of the plant too. But if you've got aphids on a cucumber, they're going to be on the back of the leaves. And that's a hard place to spray with water if you're growing on the ground.

Farmer Fred

Cucumber beetles seem aptly named.

Debbie Flower

Yes, they do. But I can't say I've ever had them as a problem.

Farmer Fred

But they also have a lot of close relatives as well. The squash bugs go after the plants as well. And the problem with cucumber beetles, is it just glancing at it, you might say, “oh, look at the cute Ladybug”. And it's not a ladybug.  It's a Western spotted cucumber beetle.

Debbie Flower

Right. And there are there are spotted ones and striped ones. And they can introduce a bacterium into the plant. So that is one that you really want to have some control over.

Farmer Fred

Now it says here, according to the University of California, that most older plants can support substantial numbers of pests without serious damage. The best strategy for most vegetable gardens may be to place protective cloth over emerging plants and remove it when the plants are old enough to tolerate damage. There you go. Row covers.

Debbie Flower

Row covers. Yes, yeah, that would work for a lot of pests. Yes, it does. Keeps them away.

Farmer Fred

Well, since we're on the subject of Bad Voodoo for cucumbers, the diseases that can strike cucumbers as they're growing in your yard have sad names like damping off, powdery mildew, downy mildew phytophthora, root rot. Wow.

Debbie Flower

Cucumbers are susceptible, obviously. But yeah, root rot is a soil borne disease that in areas where there's too much water. And we talked about having to water those cucumbers a lot. And there are some issues with it. One would be Phytophthora. Another would be fusarium and verticillium, which are also soilborne. And if you know you have those problems, especially the fusarium and verticillium, you can get resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred

So look for letters such as V and F on the seed packet.

Debbie Flower

To avoid diseases, right. Yeah, the phytophthora, many plants get that, but you need a lot of standing water. Another plant problem for cucumbers is Alternaria or leaf spot. The older leaves will turn brown and get crispy and start to fall off. And that's due to free water. And many diseases do. Both bacterial and fungal diseases need standing water. That means a droplet of water on the plant in order for the spore of the disease to germinate and enter the plant. And so if you're irrigating overhead, and I do I use micro emitters in my garden, and so it sprays on the plants. The plants do get wet, and so that wetness can allow the diseases to form. But I make sure that I water very early in the morning. And I live in a very dry climate. And so by the time the sun is up, I've just watered. It dries up so fast that these diseases can't infect the plants. If you're in a much more humid place, that's not going to happen necessarily, you're not going to get that drying to happen. And you're probably gonna get more rain, which  can cause that water to be there for the diseases to form. And so you may need to increase your spacing, so that the plant can get more airflow. Trellising would be a really good idea so that the plant can get more airflow, and it can all dry out. Also,  look for those resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I'm surprised at some of the recommendations on the back of some seed packets for cucumbers where talk about spacing, to thin them out so that they're five feet apart.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, that would be if you're not trellising them, right. Although the plants, you know, we put them in, and we got these little tiny plants, but they get big by the end of the season.

Farmer Fred

Well, there's that too. And then there's the process of thinning them out much like zucchini. People may be reluctant because they don’t want to hurt that little plant, right?

Debbie Flower

People don't want to thin. Thinning should be cutting the plant at the soil level with a sharp tool, such as scissors. Or pruning shears. Leaving the roots alone, so that you're not disturbing the roots of the one you're keeping. And I don't know how many people that I've said that to. And then I watch them pull the plant out and move it to someplace else. Survival is sometimes, yes, and sometimes no. Yeah, people don't want to kill the plant. And I understand that completely. But realize, I don't plant according to the package directions, I don't plant three to a hill and then take two out or whatever. If I'm suspicious that my seed is is old and not going to grow very well or it's something that's difficult to get to germinate, I will plant more than one. But then I'll come back and cut that puppy out, the extra one.

Farmer Fred

By the way, she doesn't literally mean a puppy.

Debbie Flower

I'll cut that plant out. But I don't like some seed packages. It will say, “plant one every two inches and then come back and thin to every 12 inches”. Like really, why should you regularly get rid of all these extra plants?

Farmer Fred

They're in business to make money.

Debbie Flower

They are. Realize that when you read the seed packet. Seed packets are wonderful. They have so much information. They're so worth reading. And I love reading them. But some stuff like that irritates me.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I can understand that. One of the more common complaints about cucumbers though, is as they mature, and folks go to bite into it, it's bitter. What causes the bitterness and how the you get rid of it?

Debbie Flower

It's the irregular watering that causes the bitterness. And I've heard all kinds of things. And I don't know if they're all old wives’ tales, or what. But it's pretty difficult to get rid of it. Removing the skin can help. I had a friend who said cut off the end, just a little bit of the end, and then rub it back and forth over what's left and you get this frothy stuff and that gets rid of the bitterness, I'm not sure about that.

Farmer Fred

There is something to cutting it off. Cutting off the ends and taking the skin off.

Debbie Flower

Yes, that helps remove some of the bitterness. Not always all of it, though. So the bitterness occurs mostly in the stem end. So that's the end of the fruit that was attached to the plant. And take off the skin. So if you do get a bitter cucumber, and I've actually purchased one or two from the grocery store, and then found them to be such, you want to take that stem end off and a little bit of the fruit and then peel the cucumber completely. And if it's still bitter, maybe peel another layer off.

Farmer Fred

So the stem end would be the end that doesn't come to a point. That would have a scar on it. Right?

Debbie Flower

Yes, yes. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

And I would think, too, that harvesting when they're fairly young might help mitigate bitterness.

Debbie Flower

Because it's a chemical that forms over time in the in the fruit. And the longer it stays on the plant, the more of that chemical that can form.

Farmer Fred

So slicing cucumbers, probably eight to 10 inches is harvest time?

Debbie Flower

Right or not. I grow Chelsea Prize and they can get to be 15 inches.

Farmer Fred

if you disappear for a day.  And the pickling types, even small ones, eat those about when they are three or four inches long?The little ones? Yeah, okay. I imagine cucumbers do not play well with weeds either. So you do want to weed any patch where you're going to plant cucumbers, right? Especially if it's bindweed or Bermuda grass.

Debbie Flower

The cucumbers are heavy feeders and they want everything to themselves. They don't share well.

Farmer Fred

You haven't mentioned all your favorite cucumber varieties.

Debbie Flower

I've grown Straight 8 quite a bit. But my favorite is Chelsea Prize. I try other ones periodically. And then I come back to Chelsea Prize.

Farmer Fred

When we were talking to Gail Pothour, local master gardener and vegetable head, a few weeks ago about cucumbers, she likes to grow heirloom cucumbers and her favorites were Green Fingers Silver Slicer, Alibi Armenian cucumber.

Debbie Flower

I don't like Armenian. I grew them one year and I didn't like them at all. I don't know what it is about me and that one.

Farmer Fred  6

Burpless cucumbers. Is there such a thing?

Debbie Flower

There are many that are marketed as burpless. I don't have the burping problem. I can't attest to how effective they are.

Farmer Fred

Cucumbers, though, if you're fond of them, you can grow it, and then when you harvest it, I guess you can eat it fresh, put it into stir fry, or make pickles.

Debbie Flower

Or salads. There are some good cucumber salads, with dill and yogurt.

Farmer Fred

ew. Why don't you just throw tuna in the mix?

Debbie Flower

Oh, that sounds good.

Farmer Fred

All right, anything else on cucumbers?

Debbie Flower

If you're growing the cucumber, either trellising it or if growing them on the ground, mulching the soil is a good idea. It helps retain the moisture that you have applied to the soil, and slows down the loss of soil moisture from that soil. And we know we want that even moisture for the plant so that we don't get the bitterness. The other is, if you are allowing the plant to grow on the ground as a market farmer might do, because it takes more time and effort to trellis the cucumber. But you still will want to go around and maybe put some straw underneath each fruit so that they do not rot from touching that moist soil.

Farmer Fred

I'm waiting for your annual vegetable buying advice: when you go to a nursery how to pick out a cucurbit plant. It's not easy.

Debbie Flower

I prefer to direct seed them. Because if there are too many leaves, true leaves, on the plant, it's an indication the plant is rootbound. And it will never grow very big. So what's that mean? Often they're sold in a three or four inch pot, that's the distance across the top of the pot. And they often look like they've just germinated. So they will have what are called the cotyledons. On those initial leaves, teach one looks like a half of a bean. That's the seed food that that came in the seed, that the plant had started from. And then they'll have what are the true leaves, which tend to have pointy tips to them, and they might be hairy. And three, I wouldn't buy anything with more than three true leaves. So it would be the cotyledons plus three true leaves in a three or four inch pot. And if I'm feeling bold, I'll just knock that puppy out of the pot carefully, correctly. Putting my hand over the top and my fingers around the stem, tipping the whole thing over as if I were pouring it out, squeezing the container, pull it out. The media will be fairly well knitted together by the roots. And I will look at that root system. If there are lots of roots on the outside of that bunch of media that I just poured out, I won't buy that plant.

Farmer Fred

Especially if those roots are going round and round. Can you really untangle a squash plant or a cucumber plant? Or does that damage the roots?

Debbie Flower

It would damage the roots. Cutting the roots, which I do with great regularity on anything I plant would also damage the roots and they just can't take it. I did it once. I probably started it myself in a container and put it in the ground and the leaves never got bigger than my my hand and cucumber leaves can get very big and the vine never got more than three feet long.

Farmer Fred

So again with cucumbers: plant directly from seed and apply regular water. Is very irregular watering a reason for bitterness as well?

Debbie Flower

If it was irregular watering, yes. Irregular watering and blossom end rot would be due to irregular watering. But you don't want it sitting in water. You want it well drained. So if you have soil that retains a lot of moisture, like clay soil, make a mound and plant on the top of the mound.

Farmer Fred

I tell you what; those container-grown cucumbers sound better and easier.

Debbie Flower

Especially for the moisture, it’s hard to keep a container moist.

Farmer Fred

yes, it is. But again, a pot inside a pot. That can help. Alright, cucumbers. It's the number two most popular backyard garden vegetable grown. You might want to give it a try this year. Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie Flower

Thank you Fred.

Farmer Fred

There you have it, the top five Garden Basics with Farmer Fred conversations of last year. Thanks for listening to the podcast, as we enter year number five. Next week, we are talking about choosing bare root roses at your local nursery, with tips on how to spot the good ones, and what to watch out for.

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays.  It’s 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 find transcripts of most episodes, as well.  Thank you so much for listening…or reading.