373 Greatest Garden Hits of 2024

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373 TRANSCRIPT Greatest Garden Hits of 2024

Farmer Fred   

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

Farmer Fred 

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

Farmer Fred

Today’s episode presents the garden interviews that were the Top 3 topics that drew the most interest from you, the listeners, in 2024. 

Leading off, myself and Debbie Flower, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, have the tips to start your first garden along with advice for having a successful, productive garden. 

Also, we talk with three experts who’ll delve into the knowledge you need for growing what just might be your favorite fruit - blueberries.

And to wrap up this trilogy of popular garden topics today… Well, as I am fond of saying, the healthiest food you can eat, is the food you grow yourself. So, what are the healthiest garden crops to grow and eat for a healthier heart? We talk with noted doctor and gardener, The Fresh Physician, Doctor Laura Varich, about the heart healthy garden.

It’s all in today’s episode number 373, the Greatest Garden Hits of 2024. 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! 

FIRST GARDEN? TIPS FOR SUCCESS

Farmer Fred  01:30

Always a pleasure to welcome Debbie Flower, America's favorite college horticultural Professor, into the abutilon jungle here at Barking Dog studios to talk gardening with us today. We're going to tackle your first garden. What are some tips for establishing a first garden? But first, I'd like to establish some of Debbie's credentials. I mean, what does it take to become America's favorite retired college horticultural professor? Well, let's delve into her ratemyprofessor.com comments that her students left her a few years ago at the college that she was teaching  at the time. And she received a 100% rating of students who said they would take it again. 

Debbie Flower 

Wow. 

Farmer Fred 

So congratulations on that. Your level of difficulty was 2.5.  I have no idea what that means  or your gymnastic skills? I'm not sure. Anyway, some of the comments. One writes, "Such a knowledgeable person of the field, I learned so much from her. She always clarified in a clear manner that could be understood, in my opinion, by any mind.  Sad that she retired because I can't take a class with her again, but excited for her as a person for the freedom to work on her garden and explore the world." And hang around the abutilon jungle.

Debbie Flower  

right this part of the world. Yeah.

Farmer Fred 

I appreciate that. Another says, "Debbie is a great professor. She explains everything very well. There were things that I didn't know. I really enjoyed her class." Another gives you an A plus and says, "Professor Flower is amazing. She is a plant expert and conveys her passion for horticulture to the class. She was very organized, everything we did all semester was in the syllabus. If you do the work and study for the exams, you should do well. But if you miss a class, you're going to miss a lot of information." Another says, "She's great. She has an infinite number of years of experience. 

Debbie Flower 

I'm old. 

Farmer Fred 

And I'm fairly sure she knows everything you ever wanted to know about anything in the horticulture field. But please do not take this class if you are simply looking for an easy 'A'. There is homework, and it's always a packed class. So save some space for the horticulture enthusiasts that are there." 

Debbie Flower 

Yeah. 

Farmer Fred  

And another says, "A truly amazing teacher, very dedicated and devoted to the field. Another says, "If you didn't love plants before, you will now. She's a great teacher." And another wrote, "The good part is, she's easy. I hate horticulture, but it's not her fault. I just always never really liked it. I mean, really? plant business? WTF! The bad side is she is obsessed with plants." Yeah, she's a hort teacher.

Debbie Flower  

That's the way it goes.

Farmer Fred  

Also, she says, "I did good on all her tests. But the Final is different." And another warns, "Take this class elsewhere for an easier A. And she spends too much time walking."

Debbie Flower 

I walk when I talk. Yes. Can you see me here?  I need to move. I will use my hands. 

Farmer Fred

I brought you a fiddle wire. 

Debbie Flower 

Yeah. I have to move and  be doing things. 

Farmer Fred

There's a fiddle wire in the corner for you.

Debbie Flower 

Thank you.

Farmer Fred 

So anyway, somebody responded to that comment that you spent too much time walking and to take this class elsewhere for an easier A. And somebody responded, "Well, if you're into plants, this is the course to take and the professor to teach it. Come on! Her name is Flower!

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, that's my real name.

Farmer Fred  

So there you go. Your students loved you, 

Debbie Flower

Oh, thank you. 

Farmer Fred  

And we love you here, too. 

Debbie Flower

Thank you .

Farmer Fred  

All right, where are we? Oh, the first garden? What do you do? First thing I did when I established my first garden because I didn't know jack about gardening way back when, back in the 70s. We'll just clear out some of this bermudagrass and plant stuff. Oh, it was a beautiful garden,

Debbie Flower 

Your Bermuda grass garden?

Farmer Fred 

Yeah, I was in there a lot, you know, pulling out the Bermuda grass as it was growing in there. But I think because it was just a lawn before, the soil had never been touched.  I didn't think this at the time, I had no idea. But all the plants, it was like a jungle. It was like a tomato and pepper jungle and I go, "Hey, this gardening stuff is easy". Then in the next year, I did the same thing. "Oh, no, it doesn't look so great this year". And by the third year is, "I don't know about this, maybe I'll build raised beds." And so I built raised beds. And then eventually, I got more knowledgeable.  But I guess for the first garden,  if I knew back then what I know now, and I'm starting a first garden, it would be different. And actually, I got to do that here. When we moved here, six, seven years ago, eight years ago, I said, "we can plant in pots for the time being. But let's just live with this place for a year and see where the sun goes. Let's see where the water goes." 

Debbie Flower 

Very good. 

Farmer Fred 

Where's the shade? Where's the sun? And it works, as long as you keep track of where the sun is. You can figure out which areas will get the most sun. Because those instructions about plants liking full sun or part shade or full shade are kind of important. 

Debbie Flower  

Yes, they are. And you can get very academic about it and read about it. And they'll say, you know, there's less sun on the north side. And there's less sun on the east side. And it's cooler sun. That's a misnomer about on the east side. But that's not always true.

Farmer Fred 

And a lot of people plant too much, too soon when they get to it. 

Debbie Flower 

Start simple. Your point about the first garden, you removed the grass and it grew very well.  I've experienced that more than once. And I think that's very true because the soil has not been depleted of its nutrients. The plants do very well that first year. And I think the hardest part about gardening over and over and over again in the same place is replenishing your soil nutrition. 

Farmer Fred  

You may hear me say, feed your soil. This is what gardening is all about.  It's all about the soil, it's about replenishing the soil. It's about replenishing the nutrients that are in the soil. Because it's not fertilizer that's feeding your plants. It it has to feed the soil first.

Debbie Flower  

Right. And think about a forest. Does anybody go in that forest and spread fertilizer? 

Farmer Fred  

Bears? 

Debbie Flower 

Yes, there is some of that. You're right, animals and whoever is living in the soil, like worms that are living off of the plant debris that's falling to the ground. So the plants are dropping their own mulch, dropping their leaves and dead branches and such which is mulching around their base. The micro organisms and the macro organisms like worms are coming in and eating that. And then they poop. Everything poops, even micro organisms, and their poop becomes nutrition for the plants to then use to grow.

Farmer Fred  

As our friend, organic gardener and expert Steve Zien would say, "it's the poop loop".

Debbie Flower 

Yes it is. The poop loop. It's absolutely true. 

Farmer Fred  

And that's  how things grow, ladies and gentlemen. That's just the way it is.  One of the things you have to do is to ask yourself a lot of questions before you turn that first shovel full of soil when you're going to plant a summer vegetable garden. What does your family eat? 

Debbie Flower  

Right. and so my vegetable garden has become smaller and smaller because my husband eats fewer and fewer vegetables.

Farmer Fred  

How do you feel about that?

Debbie Flower  

I love vegetables, but  there's always the farmers market. So yeah, like you said, you need to observe  the area around you. A vegetable garden needs full sun, meaning unobstructed sun for a minimum of six hours a day during the growing season. It can be longer hours of sun  that are maybe interrupted a little bit by some shade from a tree above or something, but a minimum of six hours of unobstructed sun. You want to start small. So you can talk to those who are going to eat from your garden, and find out what they like, and grow a few crops. 

Farmer Fred  

One thing you've done is by  reducing the size of your vegetable garden, you have flowers. You enjoy flowers. After all her name is Flower. 

Debbie Flower  

And that's nice. What I've turned to in my garden, but  yours is full of edible raised beds for edibles, and that's one way of doing it. I've reduced mine to one, four by eight raised bed, and I plant some stuff around the base of it. Not right next to it but in that area of the yard right into the ground as well. But I like to plant for  Nature, for the birds,  and the insects. And watch them come and be part of my environment. 

Farmer Fred 

The whole trick to eliminating or reducing the amount of chemicals used to control pests in the yard is basically "surfing with "Mother Nature", and putting in a lot of plants that attract the beneficials, the plants that attract the pollinators, to your yard. And they're pretty flowers.

Debbie Flower 

They are. And I have spent some days outside, sitting under a sunflower and just watching who comes and goes, just because it's fun. 

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, I do that with the California buckwheat. I sit up there on the short brick wall and watch them flit about, and see if I can identify them. 

Debbie Flower 

Yep, there's so many of them. It's difficult, right. 

Farmer Fred  

And that's the idea, you bring in the good guys, and they can help you control the bad guys. And that's very important. The design of the garden is very important too, in that you need room to walk between your plants without stepping in the area where the plants are. And so that means wide pathways. And not crowding plants together.

Debbie Flower 

Spacing plants. That's the number one error I see in new gardeners' gardens, is that they plant plants too close together. They're cute, they're small, and I got them at the nursery. What you need to know is how big are they going to get when they're mature? And you want to plant them so they have enough space to get mature without touching the plant next to them. Because if you touch it looks nice when you touch the plant next to him. But that allows water and bad insects to get trapped. Water-causing fungus and bacteria to develop in the plant and the bad insects are protected from the good insects. And so you start to have problems in your plants. When they're too close together. 

Farmer Fred  

You got too much shade, you got less wind. So you have more disease issues. You also have more hiding places for the bad guys, too. So yeah, and those instructions are usually on the seed packet or on the stick that came with the vegetable plant that you bought, as far as spacing in the garden. And it could be you, for tomatoes, 36 inches of space between tomatoes. For peppers, 18 inches. Squash? Good luck. It takes off. 

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, it takes off. But you could get away with one.  and you plant it  near an edge not right in the corner. But I'd like to plant it in the corner and let it go over the side and take off down so I'm still giving it nutrition in the raised bed, but it's growing away from the raised bed.

Farmer Fred 

But then there's the age old question. Okay, which ways do I run my raised beds? east-west or north-south?

Farmer Fred  

a little further north than that. 38 degrees.

Debbie Flower  

It depends on your latitude, where you are between the north and south poles. Where we are is about halfway. Halfway is  in Salem, Oregon.  Okay, here in the northern hemisphere.  Yeah, I did this exercise with my students, I did this exercise. It doesn't matter where we live, we're about 25 degrees latitude. 

Debbie Flower  

And we can position our beds either way and get enough light on all the plants. The sun rises in the East and sets in the west. It's only overhead right at June 21 or 20. And then it's in the southern sky. And so if you are in Minnesota, where my son is, and you plant your beds east to west, and the plants on the southern side are going to get more sun than on the northern side. Well that's okay if you put your taller guys on the northern side of the bed and your short guys on the southern side of the bed.

Farmer Fred  

So there's your planting tip. If you are going to put in fruit trees, you'd want the fruit trees on the north side of your garden areas so they won't be casting shade on your raised beds, if the plants that are going to put in there require full sun. But we have a problem in the 21st century and that's too much sun, too much heat. And I'm beginning to think that tomatoes here at least would benefit as well as peppers, in order to avoid sunscald problems and a premature death. Give them some afternoon shade.

Debbie Flower 

Right. And your yard is set up for that because your property slopes to the east down to the east and your house is on the west side. And it's a tall house. So as the sun is setting, your beds in the back are starting to get shade.

Farmer Fred  

The beds that are closest to the house will start being in full shade by two o'clock in the afternoon or so. 

Debbie Flower  

Perfect. Yes. six hours. The sun comes up in the sky by six in the morning in the summer. That's your six hours. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  

The other thing too. I remember when we lived out in the country when I had a basically a bare landscape. "Okay, I'm gonna do it from scratch. Let's see what happens." And so I put in my raised beds, maybe 50 feet from the house. and then about 50 feet beyond the raised beds to the south, I planted young trees, oak trees, some scarlet oaks and red oaks. And they get big, in 15 years. The raised beds that were closest to the trees and still 50 feet away, we're getting afternoon shade from those 40 to 50 foot tall trees. So consider the trees. And this is why I like to say, live with the yard for a full year, take regular pictures of your yard  on a seasonal basis or on a monthly basis at different times of the day, 9am, noon, four o'clock. And do that on a regular basis where you can see, just how much sun does that area get on a month to month basis. And you'll have a better idea of where the full sun really is. 

Debbie Flower 

you've decided where to plant, you're gonna have to prepare the soil, you don't necessarily want to rent a tiller, and tilt it up massively, you just need to remove all the weeds. If you have the time to solarize it a year ahead of time, that would be great. But that means you're planning a year out. That takes a growing season out of your time. But solarizing is a very effective way to kill not just the weeds you see, but the seeds that are in the top four to six inches of the soil. Assuming you have prepped the soil, meaning you've roughened it up and watered it and then you put down your clear plastic  in the hottest part of the year, for six weeks. Ideally, the times I've done it, the plastic breaks down before that, but till the plastic breaks down, and then you remove it. And everything in the top four to six inches will be dead. So the first thing you plant will take over.

Farmer Fred  

But that goes back to living with it for the first year. You could do that in your first year. Solarize the soil and it's a great idea to do that. Just to kill off anything that you didn't want. Let's say you had a Bermuda grass lawn. If you mow it really, really short  in May and early June, and then give it lots of water, and then put the plastic down. Clear plastic, it's usually two mil plastic, it could be a roll of painters plastic from the big Home Depot or Lowe's store, or a little bit thicker. You don't want to go too thick, maybe four mil  clear plastic. But seal down the edges. You have to almost dig a trench around the border, bring the clear plastic into that trench and secure it with boards or rocks, or soil. So that air cannot get underneath that plastic cover.  if the wind gets under it, it could rip it much easier.

Debbie Flower  

Right. Energy  from the sun itself will break down plastic. And that's how I was losing mine. I did bury my edges. And you're doing that to trap the heat. What's happening is the sun is going through the plastic as the sun is hitting the soil, and turning into heat. That is what happens to sun when the sun comes through your living room window. Very bright light hits your floor, it becomes hot, it's a hot floor. Your cat likes to lie there. That's how it's happening. Now that's happening under the plastic and the plastic is trapping that heat and it heats up to over 140 degrees, which is the temperature at which living cells die. So you can solarize. If you don't have the time to solarize, because you want this garden now, you want it this year. Clear the soil, rough it up a little bit, loosen it, water it and allow things to germinate. Treat it like it's a garden already. Water it regularly, you're gonna get the weed seeds that are at the surface to germinate. Go through and take them out. Maybe with a reciprocating hoe (hula hoe).  You don't want to dig deeply anymore. Every time you dig deep and bring new soil up, you're bringing up more seeds. You just want to kill what's on the surface. A reciprocating hoe will cut them at surface level. Do it again. Water it. Treat it like a garden, let the weed seeds germinate again. Cut them off again, it'll probably take a third time. Do it a third time. This will be a three to five week process if the weather is right for seed germination, and then you've gotten rid of a lot of your weed problems.

Debbie Flower

And this goes back to if you're solarizing the soil is like I mentioned, you want to water the soil thoroughly first because as that sun hits the clear plastic that warmth will go down deeper. The water will take it down deeper.

Debbie Flower  

Right. Water can absorb more heat than air can. That's a chemical thing.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, that's a chemical thing.

Farmer Fred  

But it works, but it works. 

Farmer Fred 

Yes. what option two is, is to put plants that you want that first year in pots and just do a big container garden for the first year. And then realize where the sun is. The beauty of using some lightweight pots like Smart Pots is maybe you don't know where the sun or shade is going to be. You can at least pick them up and move them.

Debbie Flower  

Or put them on a rolling base. But use big pots. Because the pots are a more stressful environment to grow for the plant and for you to maintain the plant because  it's a limited amount of media  in the root zone. It heats up quickly, cools off quickly, it accepts water quickly and it dries out quickly, you have to spend a lot more time out there watering and weeding and, and taking care of fertilizing, the roots can't go as far to get nutrients. So it's a more intensive type of gardening. The bigger the pot more those problems are reduced and less stress on the plant. 

Farmer Fred  

The benefit  of having those big pots is you can use a potting mix, a soil mix to start off with. We should be dissuading people from filling those pots with their native soil, right? Because what's in that native soil? Weeds, for one.

Debbie Flower 

Right, lots of live things that can harm your plant. And also the water relations of field soil are very different than container soil. And you need the water relations to be correct for the container, thus use container soil. 

Farmer Fred  

Right. And again, going back to pathways, I would make your pathways at least four feet wide. So you can take wheelbarrows through without compacting the soil around the plants. What area of the plant roots do  you need to protect  as it spreads out? Would you want  a demilitarized zone that you don't want to be stepping on and not compacting the soil? Two feet? a foot?

Debbie Flower  

Well, it depends on the plant, I think you need to know how big is that plant going to get? 

Farmer Fred  

If it was vegetable roots, they  don't get that spread out, right?

Debbie Flower  

They don't have the time, for one thing. It's just an annual plant in an ornamental garden. If it's very deep, I just have what I call  "gardeners' paths". And they're just big enough for me to walk through. And I mulch heavily, which helps distribute weight, so that I'm not harming roots as much. Wood mulch is good for paths for that reason, for many reasons, but that's one of them. I think you can do the same fora  vegetable garden. You could make every other path that width, if you had a whole bunch of raised beds next to each other. So itwould  looked like a couple of long lines. You could have a four footpath on one side and a very narrow path on the other side of that raised bed between  that one and the next one, then another four footpath so you can get the wheelbarrow to just one side of the raised bed. Did we mention why you don't want to compact the soil? 

Debbie Flower

No, no, you should. 

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, air will disappear if you do that. And for some reason, roots like air.

Debbie Flower  

Roots like air, they have to do respiration, it's called. Plants make food and they store it in their pantry, which is all over the plants in the stem. It's in the leaves, it's in the roots, it's everywhere. And when they need to do something, anything, they need to eat. And so they go through a process called respiration, which is when they get one of those food packets, and they break it down so they can use the food. Roots store food, and they do respiration to break it down so that they can grow new roots.

Farmer Fred  

There is a situation that gardeners sometimes endure, especially first time gardeners, and that is sort of an exhaustion from gardening, and it usually happens sometime in late summer, when they're tired of harvesting, tired of eating the same thing.

Debbie Flower 

And the weather is getting less conducive to being outside and enjoying puttering.

Farmer Fred  

So, you have to sort of motivate yourself to get out there. And one way is the placement of the garden. You've tangled with landscapers on this one, right? 

Debbie Flower  

When I first designed my yard, it came partially with some vegetation. But the landscaper wanted to put the vegetable garden in a place where I couldn't see it from the house. And I said, Absolutely not. I need to be able to see it. So that I know what's going on out there. I can't see it from many places. I can see it from my bedroom. And I can see it from my patio. And that's enough, but I need to know that. Last summer, the irrigation timer broke. 

Farmer Fred 

Yeah, you want to see some browning leaves as a warning. 

Debbie Flower  

You want to know that things like that happen so that you can fix them before you lose everything.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, ideally, it should be visible from the kitchen window, to remind you to go out there and pick crops. Or see what's there. 

Debbie Flower 

And just plan dinner. Oh, look, the asparagus is ready. We'll have that tonight. 

Farmer Fred  

The healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow yourself. And tasty. the tastiest  is  the freshest food. The next best option, like you mentioned earlier, was a farmers market. Right? And that's the greatest way I know of is to taste what the real taste of food is, not something that's been sitting in a refrigerator for months, like some supermarket fruits do. But something that was picked that morning, right? Yeah, if you're curious about what to grow, that's the other thing, is to visit a farmers market.

Debbie Flower 

Or join a CSA community supported agriculture service. that's where you get delivery of a certain amount of vegetation, edible vegetation. Vegetables, well, some flowers are edible, too. 

Farmer Fred  

Yes, they are. Watering your garden. That's important. You don't want to be lugging a hose 50, 60, 70 feet, right? So when you're planning your garden, you want it to be near a watering source, or to set it up ahead of time. If you're going to build raised beds by putting in drip irrigation systems, and hooked up to a faucet or its own valve and on a timer. 

Debbie Flower 

Right, or both. You set it up near a faucet and then that faucet can be come the source of water for that system that will fit into your raised bed.

Farmer Fred  

But watering is not an event you set by a calendar, right? Watering is an event that you set up based on the day's weather and the week's weather and the consistency of your soil. Raised beds tend to drain a lot quicker. They also drain a lot narrower. But if you have heavy clay soil, that water tends to spread out and can cover the entire root zone of a plant it might be 18 inches wide, as that footprint  descends into this heavy clay soil. In a raised bed, that soil is so loose that the cylinder-shape of the water footprint, if you will, might only be eight inches wide or even less.

Debbie Flower  

The water footprint is like a carrot, it'd be like a carrot shape, if the media is very open. 

Farmer Fred  

So, don't skimp on emitters. If you're putting in a raised bed, take a look at some good information about drip irrigation systems and garden layouts. One of the best I know is a drip irrigation company called Drip Works. It's based here in California, you can go to dripworks.com. And they have  plans and information and very good tutorials about setting up a drip irrigation system in a garden.

Debbie Flower 

You and I use different types of irrigation in our raised beds. I like  spray irrigation,  it's a micro spray. But it allows me to plant anywhere in the bed. You use the tortuous path emitters that are embedded every six inches or a foot in the half inch tube. So it  emits water at only at that location.

Farmer Fred  

It's a good name for a band, Torturous Path.

Debbie Flower 

I use the tortuous path emitters in my landscape, but I don't use them in my raised beds.

Farmer Fred  

And remember too, that the listed gallons per minute on emitters may not be true if you don't have the pressure, or you are running the lines too long. A  lot of people like to use the quarter inch tubing which is really small. And if you've got emitters spaced on those quarter inch lines a foot apart, you're only going to get that one gallon per hour release based on a maximum run of 17 feet.

Debbie Flower  

Right I did mine at 10 feet. And I had supply lines on both ends in case something happens in the middle.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, exactly. If you're going to run quarter inch tubing around your plants in sort of a spiral fashion, have it come off a main line, a half inch line and limit your  runs. But we're getting into a whole different topic. It's still important to know. That's why purchasing a moisture meter is not a bad idea.

Debbie Flower 

right. but you got to learn how to use it so you need to calibrate it. You need to go out to your raised bed when the soil is dry. Stick that moisture meter in and see where it reads. Then soak the raised bed and let it drain. And stick that moisture meter back into the same depth, and see where it reads. Moisture meters really read electrical conductivity. If you then did a third test by adding a bunch of ammonium sulfate to the surface and watered it in, or used chicken manure would be another source, water it in, let it drain and put the moisture meter in a third time. It would read wetter than it did the second time. And that's because it has more salts in it. And the salts come from fertilizers.

Farmer Fred  

And again, we should reinforce that weeding never ends. If you do it before you'll do it during and you'll do it after harvesting.

Debbie Flower  

You try to get the weeds when they're young. I taught my students BISS. Before It Sets Seed. Pull the weed before it sets seed. Because weeds are weeds, in part because they produce lots and lots of seeds, which successfully germinate when they find a new place to grow. 

Farmer Fred  

One of the things we should stress. though. If you're planting from seed, and you've got the little sprouts coming up, and you see weeds popping up as well, maybe instead of pulling those weeds out where it might disturb the soil around  that new plant that you want to keep, you may want to just cut off the top of the weeds.

Debbie Flower  

Right, If you never gardened before, and you are direct seeding, you might want to put a few seeds in a pot indoors and care for them. Just to see what the seedling looks like. So when you go out to the garden bed, you know which one is the desirable plant.

Farmer Fred 

And start off growing something easy and dramatic, especially if you have kids, like a sunflower plant. Some flowers, too can grow quickly. If you're looking for a real quick vegetable to grow, and you can use it as a marker plant, use radish seeds. Because radishes germinate in, what, 10 days?

Debbie Flower 

Yeah, so they're harvestable in 20-30 days, probably.

Farmer Fred 

But you can use those radish sprouts to remind you that's where you planted the carrots, too. Because the carrots might take three weeks to show up.

Debbie Flower 

And they have tiny seeds.

Farmer Fred 

so, if you want to do that, you can. But basically start with training wheel plants. Plants that grow quickly. And the beauty of a vegetable garden they're usually annuals, right? So there's not that much care with  them. If you're growing something like asparagus, which is a perennial, you need to learn how to care for asparagus. 

Debbie Flower 

 I don't think I would, if I was a first time gardener. I don't know if I'd want to start off with asparagus. 

Farmer Fred  

For one thing, don't  plant it as a focal point of your garden. It's damn ugly during the summer. 

Debbie Flower 

it is, yes.  it's pokey too. 

Farmer Fred  

Its Pokey and Ferny.

Debbie Flower  

Beans are good with kids. So is corn, I planted corn with my younger son and his friends one summer and you have to plant corn in a mass, not in a row for it to pollinate and create corn kernels.

Farmer Fred 

They still need separation though.

Debbie Flower  

They need separation. 

Farmer Fred 

Yes, like six inches, right?

Debbie Flower  

 But not a row. You need a minimum of three by three feet square.  Yes. And that's a really small minimum. And these were  were probably sixth graders. So how old is a sixth grader,  10 or 12? Something like that. And those boys came back wanting to know, wanting to see their corn. 

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, I don't blame them. That's why I grow popcorn, to get them interested. And it's dramatic. All right.

Farmer Fred  

You've always stressed that cucumbers are easy to grow from seed. I mean if you're looking for dramatic plants to grow quickly. It's hard to beat zucchini right?

Debbie Flower 

But you also want something they're going to be willing to eat. Now if you talk it up, they'll eat it. "Oh, you grew that? You're gonna love it!" They'll eat it. But consider that if you have a very picky eater and you're trying to garden, have them choose something that you can get them to eat.

Farmer Fred  

One thing that you've always said about a garden is spend time in your garden. Walk it every day. Get out there. Become friends with your plants. Check the leaves. check under the leaves. Talk to them. pull weeds.

Debbie Flower  

Yes.  I always carry pruning shears with me, because if I don't, then I start breaking things. I walk the paths in the garden, there are certain places where I have dedicated paths, and they need to be kept open. My neighbor has a Wisteria vine on the fence which grows toward my property, so I'm often cutting there. So just for the health of the plants, I carry pruning shears with me. Sometimes I carry a bucket with me to put the prunings in. But you notice the beginning of an aphid problem or, in my case, the Wisteria growing and twining up on my side of the fence. The weed patch that's taking off. These are things you can deal with immediately. It only takes 10 minutes, and if you left it there, it would take you hours to fix later.

Farmer Fred  

I often say mulch, mulch, mulch. And that's true of the garden as well. Because mulch, especially natural mulch and organic mulch such as chipped and shredded tree branches, for example, does a whole host of good. It maintains soil moisture at a more even rate, it moderates soil temperatures as well. It inhibits weeds from forming and as it breaks down, it feeds the soil.

Debbie Flower  

Right. There are certain plants that will not survive in a heavily mulched soil. It creates an organic soil that holds moisture better than one that has less organic matter in it. And  the plants I'm thinking of are drought tolerant natives. If you don't have drought tolerant native plants, then mulch your whole yard. I have one little area , we call it the hump. One little hill of soil that is not mulched in my yard. And I have some California natives growing on that. Natives are plants things that need soil that dries out more quickly. 

Farmer Fred  

One of the downsides of using leaves as mulch is the fact that it can kind of form a pretty solid mat that does make that soil just a little too wet for too long. Which is why I like to take the leaves that have fallen in November and put them in a metal trash can . Then I stick my weedwacker down there and break them up into little pieces. Or I run over them with a mulching mower. Because those smaller leaf portions tend to break down quicker and feed the soil and don't necessarily form that thick mat.

Debbie Flower  

And put those around your plants. Not on your paths. My husband, bless him, put them on the path, and they stick to my shoes, then I track them in the house. It's annoying. So put them on around the plants and put the wood on the path.

Farmer Fred 

So I hope he isn't listening, but I have a neighbor who made very kind offer a year ago. He said, "I've got this bale of straw, if you on it". Yeah, I like straw mulch. You know, that's fine. I'll take it. And I took it. I broke it apart, a very  big bale too. And I spread it around on the walking areas and in some of the raised beds as well. Guess what? It wasn't straw it was hay. 

Debbie Flower  

oh, no, which means it's full of seed. 

Farmer Fred  

It's full of seed. And it's germinating now. And if you'd like to join me in the backyard, and pull the sprouts, you're more than welcome.

Debbie Flower 

oh boy.

Farmer Fred  

but it, too, can form not only a mat, but also, like you experienced with leaves, it could stick to your feet, and you drag it in.

Debbie Flower  

I had students tell me about using those bales of straw however, not hay, as the sides of their rised beds. And, you know, the first year you can sit on them, you can put tools on them. And you fill in between with your media that you're going to grow your plants in., And then at the end of the first year, they leave them and they start to break down. And then they would use them as mulch on top of the bed and get another set for the following year.

Farmer Fred  

We should mention things of convenience. Such as, you carry your shears with you out to the garden every time you go out there. They are probably placed near the door that you normally exit to go to the yard. 

Debbie Flower  

Yes. 

Farmer Fred 

All right. Well, that's a good idea and a good habit to get into. Some people I know use old rural mailboxes on a post to store some of their smaller tools. And they have it right there in the garden. So they can just reach in the old mailbox and pull out their shears. But have things handy so that you remember to do things. This begs the question too. Which is, how much time do you have for the garden? This isn't a instant, "set it and forget it" type of experience.

Debbie Flower 

It's not. These days, I work in two hour shifts, so to speak. I'll go out and I don't time myself, but I find that after about two hours, I'm ready to go in, get a drink of water. Take a break. And I'll do that . Probably only at this time of year, I'm doing it once or twice a week and that's all. So I'm spending two to four hours a week in the garden now.

Farmer Fred 

Yeah, we tend to automate the things we do. So then you have less work. But as any experienced gardener will tell you, you have a list of things to do when you go outside to do, and something else pops up.  You get distracted. And,  hours later when you're coming back in,  you realize, oh, I didn't go out there to do what I intended to do. So you might want to write it down.

Debbie Flower 

I do start a list and that's pushes me out the door. I have one in my head right now for my garden.

Farmer Fred 

Also keep a garden diary. And that means basically writing it down in some sort of book or keeping track of it on your handheld computer or smartphone, just to remind you of what you planted, when you planted it, how it performed. Because, if  you think, "oh, I'll just put the little stick that it came with next to it and always know what it is." Well,  not necessarily. Those sticks disappear as the plant grows. 

Debbie Flower  

Yes, they do. Snails  break them. They disappear for whatever reason. 

Farmer Fred 

So yes, keep an interior record of what you've done in the garden. I have one book on my shelf. I have books, you know. 

Debbie Flower  

I noticed that yeah. I have books too. 

Farmer Fred  

I've shelves of books. And one of those books I'm going to reach for it right now. It comes from 1990 and it was just a blank calendar book for 1990, but I  have used it to write down everything I did in the garden from 1990 to 2016. And so I can tell you, for instance, back in January 1997 I planted a Fuyu persimmon tree. That was the time of the year because bare root trees are usually available in California in January. I love the persimmon tree. I also planted Conadria fig and a Black Mission fig. 

Debbie Flower

Wow. you were busy. 

Farmer Fred  

I was busy. Yeah. I also replaced a dead, all-in-one almond tree.

Debbie Flower 

Oh, wow.

Farmer Fred 

So anyway,  having a book like this not only serves as a record for what you've done, it serves as a reminder for maybe when you've grown something successfully. For instance, you'll know that 20 years ago you wrote, "I planted a Dr. Wyche tomato. It was really good". And over the years,  you forget about Dr. Wyche, you've moved on. And then you go back to this book and go, Why am I not planting the doctor? I  should plant it  again.  You can use any blank book. Make it a garden diary.By the way, it will be jam packed in April and May. Right?

Debbie Flower 

You call it the holiday season for the gardening industry.

Farmer Fred  

Yes, Christmas time for nurseries. Anyway, keep a garden diary. Do it in pencil. All right, so we've written it down. What else should we do for a first garden?

Debbie Flower  

Well, let's see. We talked about weeding it. Prepping the soil. Spacing the plants correctly. Choose to keep it simple,  at first. Right plant  in the right place.

Farmer Fred  

I think too, we should stress if it's your first garden, choose the training wheel plants that are easy to grow with great results. Things like cherry tomatoes. You're gonna get a lot of fruit quickly with cherry tomatoes. Varieties of vegetables that just grow quickly that are dramatic and will produce quickly. Beans, for example. Cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, if you got the space.

Debbie Flower 

I did that one year with my kids and let them put them in the wagon and walk up and down the neighborhood and sell them. 

Farmer Fred  

By  the way, you too, have had experience in pawning off excess vegetables with neighbors who have grown tired of them. They lock the door when they see you coming.

Farmer Fred  

Food Banks will accept garden produce if you have excess produce.

Farmer Fred  

Thank you for mentioning that. AmpleHarvest.org is a great website to go to in order to find the food bank, the food pantry nearest you that will take your excess produce on a regular basis. Whenever you have excess produce. AmpleHarvest.org . you enter in your zip code and it'll tell you where those pantries are nearest to you. You may be surprised how close they are. After moving here, I discovered there was one just a couple of blocks away. Wow. So that's nice. Yeah.

Debbie Flower  

And you could use your produce for helping people out. Yeah, use it. 

Farmer Fred  

You grew it. Now eat it. And so it's always nice if somebody in the house is the chef who wants to gather the harvest. Or, you can gather it for them if necessary, but just come up with recipes right for it and also preserving the food.

Debbie Flower  

One thing that is relatively easy to grow and that I really appreciate especially having a smaller vegetable garden is growing my herbs. Basil is an annual, and I have  sage in a pot. I have oregano, thyme, marjoram. No parsley, at the moment. Okay, obviously it's a biannual. It's a biannual right and I get the timing wrong. So if you get the timing right. It will last two years. I get the timing wrong, so I keep having to replant it every year.

Farmer Fred 

The parsley does last over winter for one year, but in the second year, it blooms. It blooms and then it gets ready to die. Yes, but it's still harvestable in that second year, despite the flowers. And I like to leave it on there with the flowers because it attracts beneficial insects. 

Debbie Flower  

Yes, that's one of those that attracts many wasps that don't sting humans, but eats the bad bugs in the garden.

Farmer Fred  

That would be something else to to consider too, when you're gardening.  Don't be in a rush to tear out those plants, because a lot of them, especially the cool season plants that you might put in, such as the lettuces, the cabbages, the broccoli, the cauliflower. The others that like it when the weather is cool, they'll tend to bolt or develop seed heads as the weather warms the following spring. And you may go, "Oh, I better get rid of that it's getting bitter". Well, leave the flower heads for the bees.

Debbie Flower 

I have arugula now, that is growing actively right now. And it has flowered and seeded around. And so then the arugula patch gets bigger. So I'm doing two things, I I'm allowing it to flower and allowing the insects to feed on it. And I'm getting seed that is germinating. That doesn't happen with my parsley, the seeds aren't germinating, but sometimes you can get a two for one punch.

Farmer Fred  

There's a lot of good information online about establishing a garden. There's a lot of poor information online about starting a garden, one of your best resources, as I'm fond of saying is, all gardening is local. Choose a resource that's based near you. And that's usually a university or a college that has a horticulture department or a master gardener program, a cooperative extension program in your county or state. So basically, end your online search about gardening with the letters.edu. It is going to bring up results on the first page that have been not only tested, but verified. As opposed to some people out there who just are following the advice of their grandmother, as well intended as it may be. 

Debbie Flower 

And yes, you don't know that's the problem. You don't know what's good or bad. But the colleges do test it before they put it online. Right. end your search with the suffixes .edu and .org.

Farmer Fred  

Some botanical Institutes or botanical gardens are usually dot.org , and have a lot of good gardening information as well. 

Debbie Flower  

Yes. If you were an aficionado of a particular type of plant begonia plant or something, that would include societies with people that know a lot about those things.

Farmer Fred  

And probably locally too. That's the other thing, too. Join a local garden club. Yes, hang out with the Master Gardeners if they have a garden, a public garden and get answers from them. If your neighbor can grow it, you can probably grow it too. That's another thing I always say. If you're just thinking, "what plants can I grow in my yard?" and you just moved to a new area, walk your neighborhood, strike up conversations with somebody who has obviously spent a lot of time in their yard working. They will love to show you their garden. They will try to give you plants Yes, yes. Take advantage of that for heaven's sake. I'm done. 

Debbie Flower  

Yeah, I am, too. 

Farmer Fred  

All right, it's your first garden. It's a fun experience. You're gonna enjoy it. Get the whole family involved. It's a lifetime hobby. It's good exercise. And like I said, the healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow yourself. Debbie Flower, thanks for your help on this one.

Debbie Flower 

You're welcome, Fred.

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Farmer Fred

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BLUEBERRY VARIETIES AND PROTECTION TIPS

Farmer Fred:

You know who really likes fresh-picked blueberries, besides gardeners? Birds. Squirrels. Rats. Your pet dog. How can you protect those ripening blueberries from those marauders? We found one good solution at the Sacramento County, California Master Gardeners’ Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. 

Farmer Fred

We are here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center on a workshop day in January. It's not raining, it's cloudy. It's threatening rain, but it's still a beautiful day. And we are enjoying the winter interest, if you will, here in the blueberry patch of the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Blueberries are a great tasting, small berry to grow. I have probably a third of a cup of blueberries every morning with my breakfast and it's very healthy for you. Blueberries, grown in the ground or in containers, are a great way to go. We are talking with Master Gardener Anne Moore. Anne, let's talk about all the different varieties you have here. e're in USDA zone nine, where southern highbush blueberries are recommended. So why don't we start on one end and work our way back and talk about each of these varieties of blueberries you are growing?  Now, usually the harvest time for these blueberries here in USDA zone nine is probably May into June.

Anne Moore   

They are ready in May. And we actually harvested into July last year.

Farmer Fred    

All right. Well, the first one we come to is one of my favorite early and mid season blueberries. It’s a southern high bush. I guess first of all, we better explain the difference between southern high bush and northern high bush blueberries. Southern highbush arethe easiest to grow here. Northern highbush, I guess, are the ones you would find in Michigan or Washington or back East. Correct? 

Anne Moore    

Right. And they need a little bit more chill hours usually than the southern highbush.

Farmer Fred    

And maybe not 100 degree summer temperatures like we get here.

Anne Moore   

Yeah, though you'll see we've had success with some northern highbush varieties. And I can tell you which ones those are.

Farmer Fred   

Okay. So stay tuned for that. So, this first one is one of my favorites that I have had in my garden for over 25 years or so. And that's Jubilee.

Anne Moore    

Correct. Now this is just a one year old plant. So I we don't have a lot of experience with it yet, but it's real common in the nursery and it's really recommended for our area to do very well. 

Farmer Fred    

 If you start growing blueberries, you'll realize that one of the criteria is you really want to choose a blueberry variety that produces pretty good size blueberries, because they're a lot easier to pick than the really small ones. Jubilee blueberries are a pretty good size. Next up on the list here in the blueberries section at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center is the Star Blueberry. Tell us about the Star.

Anne Moore    

It's been here quite a while and done very well. It fruits early in the season. So we'll see this one starting ripening in May. And it is a southern highbush, and does very well. Very tasty. And I think it is a good size Berry.

Farmer Fred    

Also, here in USDA zone nine, we should point out, that not all blueberries lose their leaves in the winter. Some varieties have leaves that persist. And the Star blueberry has these now reddish leaves clinging to the plant. A lot of winter interest there. 

Anne Moore

Yeah, they're really pretty. 

Farmer Fred

So that's one thing to consider, too, about the blueberries. Do they lose their leave or not. And if it doesn't, well, it’ll be something to look at in the winter. 

Anne Moore

Correct. 

Farmer Fred

All right, moving down the list here. Another one of my favorites is Sunshine Blue that you have here. Look at all the buds on it! Here it is, January, and it's got buds; and yet it is a mid season variety.

Anne Moore  

Yeah, now this is also a very young, a relatively young plant we planted. It's probably just coming into its third year. So we're expecting to start to see a good amount of berries on here. We have just been kind of nurturing it and even taking the berries off until now to just get it  stabilized. I mean it's a beautiful green and really lush looking, and we're going to prune it, but we probably won't prune it hardly at all, since it's so young. Next month we'll  take out the old branches or dying branches. But as you can see, it's just really beautiful, I don't think there's much that we need to do to it.

Farmer Fred    

Let's talk a little bit about pruning blueberries. What you want to do, as you suggest, is remove the old wood, usually it's the three year old wood or greater of age, because they get less productive as they get older.

Anne Moore    

Absolutely. And if you just want to keep encouraging new growth, and that's where the life is in the plant, your plant will live a lot longer if most of the plant is young wood versus older wood, as well.

Farmer Fred   

 And when you take out an old branch, you take it down to ground level

Anne Moore    

That's absolutely right. And then you start seeing the structure of the plant. That really helps you figure out if you need to make any more pruning cuts or not.

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, and that is, again, best done probably in wintertime?

Anne Moore   

Yeah, we hope to prune next month if it's not too rainy and crazy,  but in the next month or two is when we should be doing it. And you can see there's already buds on these plants. So we don't want to be cutting into it  now. So we're not cutting off some or all those future berries.

Farmer Fred    

And moving on here is another evergreen blueberry, a Southern highbush variety called Abundance. I have had no experience growing Abundance. Tell us about that?

Anne Moore    

Well, we've had this plant for a long time, and it truly is abundant. It's  putting out lots of new plants. And actually, in past years, we've lost some plants, we've actually been able to take some new babies from this plant and put them in and regrow them. So it's very abundant, though it's got lots and lots of berries, good size, really tasty. But I do have to say I think this is a hard one to find. A few of our plants here we've gotten from real special sources, and  we really can't help you find them, you'd have to go online, if you're really serious about it, I think this is probably three plants here right now that we've just allowed to grow. And we could dig them up and plant them somewhere else. And they would do fine. These actually have come up from the root.

Farmer Fred    

What time of year would you do that?

Anne Moore    

I think either late fall or early spring is when you want to do stuff like that.

Farmer Fred   

So you dig out what you can see as a new plant coming up and just sever the roots. Leave some roots on but just enough to get it out of the ground, and then put it in a new home. 

Anne Moore    

Absolutely. Our experience with blueberries show that they are really forgiving plants. I mean, they can take a lot of pruning, they come back after a hard pruning a lot of times, as well as after a hard summer. So they're really hardy plants.

Farmer Fred    

Let's talk about the home for a blueberry. They like acid soil.

Anne Moore    

Absolutely. That's probably one of the most important things when you're growing blueberries, I think. It’s one thing that people sort of don't like to do, but they need a low pH, acidic soil pH, between four and a half and five and a half. And that pH is what allows them to actually absorb iron from the ground, which is what they need to produce really great berries. So if you're planting in the ground - and I wasn't around when we planted all these plants that are in the ground - but you actually need to go out a few months ahead of time and actually mix in some additives. There's a whole formula that we have on our website, mix in some additives of soil, let it break down, so that you can create more of an acidic environment. And then every year after that we're always measuring the pH of all of our soil and adding soil sulfur, to constantly manage the pH of the soil. Because our soil here in Sacramento tends to be around seven, and they need four and a half to five and a half. Now, when we're planting in barrels, it's a whole lot easier because then you can just buy a big bag of Azalea soil mix which is made for acidic plants and plant in that. Or you can get a recipe on on our website of what you can mix together. Different kinds of soils and soil additives to make the soil that they like.

Farmer Fred    

You have to be patient with soil sulfur when you add it because it takes a couple of months for it to actually start lowering the pH.

Anne Moore    

Yeah. And  we're going to measure in March, we do it in March of every year. We note that number, and we'll add half of the soil sulfur in March and then another half in the fall. So we're kind of pacing ourselves because sulfur is a slow release additive. And we just really want to make sure you have a steady pH.

Farmer Fred    

You mentioned the soil mix recipe, if you're growing it in containers. Use big containers like cattle watering troughs, for example, with holes in the bottom. They are a great way to go for growing a plant like a blueberry, to get it up to its eventual height of four feet, five feet or more. But usually they're around three, four or five feet. But that mix, as I recall, and  it's the mix I use on my blueberries, would be 1/3 of that Azalea soil mix, 1/3 pathway bark, and 1/3 of a an acidic soil amendment like peat moss, for example. Just make sure it's all thoroughly wet before you use it. That's a good combination to use. The other thing too about growing blueberries in containers: does it need to be revitalized every few years? Should you empty that container out and put in fresh soil? 

Anne Moore    

Well, we haven't had our barrels that long. So we're certainly not at that stage. But I do have barrels at home that I've had for seven or eight years, and they're doing fine. I do really pay attention to how much I fertilize them. Because I think over time, when you're in a container, the plant additives get kind of leached out. So you might think over time of changing your fertilizing regimen and maybe fertilizing more often with a mixture of kelp and fish, or something really diluted, but just to help keep replenishing that soil.

Farmer Fred    

You mentioned my favorite fertilizer formula there. Fish emulsion and kelp meal. It has a  full array of macro and micronutrients. But apply it in little doses. Unlike a lot of commercial products. I think some of your favorite blueberry growers may shy away from synthetic fertilizers just because of the salts in them. And they prefer organic fertilizers for growing blueberries.

Anne Moore   

We do that as well here. 

Farmer Fred    

Alright, now this next one in the row of blueberries here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center is a northern highbush and again, the northern highbush blueberry plant is a favorite in cooler climates like Washington, Michigan, and back East. Tell us about this Northern highbush, the Duke blueberry.

Anne Moore    

Well, this plant is really really vigorous, we prune it really severely every year. And if you could see this plant right now it just has so many stems, it's just got probably more dense growth than any of our other plants. It has a really nice, medium size light blue berry, and  it does well every year and it has no leaves in the winter.  But it's getting buds. You can see lots of buds. I think we're gonna have a really good year here.

Farmer Fred   

And it's an early producer.  What time of year do you usually harvest this? 

Anne Moore    

This is an early season. So like I said, we usually start in May, every year is a little bit different. Depending on the weather, we were a little bit late last year because  even though we had a lot of sun, it didn't come to us as soon last year, but by mid May, we’re usually seeing berries.

Farmer Fred    

What's nice here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center is there's information about each of the varieties of plants that are growing here, and usually a picture of them too when they're in full production. And this picture and description of the Duke blueberry. Those look like good sized blueberries.

Anne Moore    

Yeah, yeah. And they're really good. Our favorite. 

Farmer Fred    

Now, here's one. And it's an interesting variety. It's called Pink Lemonade blueberry, but it's not necessarily a southern highBush, not necessarily a northern highbush. It's something in between. 

Anne Moore    

Yeah, it's a hybrid, a variety called a rabbiteye. It's the only example here of a northern highbush mixed with a southern highbush. And it's a really interesting plant. This was new to us, it is just coming into  its third year. We haven't had many berries yet, but I think we will this year, the berries are pink. People just love them because they're really beautiful. I'm not sure that they're as tasty as some of the others. But I think it's just really an interesting plant that you see a lot of in the nursery, so we just want to grow it so we can have an example.

Farmer Fred    

The picture on the label of the berry itself, it almost looks like a pyracantha berry or a toyon berry. And that would take a little fingers to pick them.

Anne Moore    

Maybe you're right, and actually the plant picture was taken by one of our members and that's from her yard, so you can see she she's getting a good harvest there.

Farmer Fred    

Well, we knew the weather was going to change today here in January, at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. And it's starting to drip. So we'll finish up quickly here with the blueberries. Here's another northern highbush one called Northland. Tell us about Northland.

Anne Moore   

Once again, this is doing really well. It's a plant we've had quite a long time. You can see it's got a lot of growth on it. It has had a little bit of stem blight in the past, but we were able to just prune it out and it seems to be coming back just fine. It does really well, it has a really nice berry on it. It's a midseason blueberry, so it's a little bit later, probably June  before we start to get a good harvest. But it's been here a long time and we're really happy with it.

Farmer Fred    

All right, and finally, a Southern highbush variety here on the end. Another variety that I grow year after year, called Sharp Blue.

Anne Moore    

Right. Now this is once again just coming into its third year, but look at how lush it is. It’s got lots of green leaves and lots of blossoms already on it. It's one that does really great in our area. We expect it to become ripe, probably in May in the early season. And we chose this because it's really known to do really well in our area. It's something that's readily available to the public and so we just really want to be able to demonstrate that here.

Farmer Fred  

I will agree with what it says on the sign here. It produces large berries with good color and excellent flavor. Sharp Blue is probably one of my all time favorites too. 

 You know, as we were walking through this row of blueberries here, it just so happens, there's another row of blueberries behind us. Well, let's talk about these. All right, I forgot. Yeah. Georgia Gem. That's a southern highbush. Yeah.

Anne Moore   

This is really a favorite. They're not the biggest berries in the world. But in the past when we've had tasting tests, this has often been a favorite public release. The public really likes this berry. It's an early season Berry. We've had it quite a long time. And it's done well, survived some serious Sun issues, and just popped back, and seems to be doing well. It is a plant that's sort of hard to find. You'd have to really search for it, but we're really happy with it.

Farmer Fred    

The Georgia Gem blueberry. And next to it is a another tried and true variety here in USDA zone nine, the southern highbush, Misty.

Anne Moore    

Yeah, this is one we've had for a while. I think it's actually had some serious challenges in the past because it was planted in an area that, we discovered, wasn't getting water as much as it needs. But look at it, it looks beautiful. It's just like I said, a blueberry plant is a really resilient plant. And it's looking really beautiful with lots of  leaves. And we see some blossoms already. It's an early season plant and has really great berries. It's one of those  that does really well here and it's really easy to get a hold of.

Farmer Fred   

And I think this is the last blueberry. Yeah, it's the Ozark Blue.

Anne Moore   

Once again, this is an unusual one. But people really liked the flavor. They're really tasty. And so it's worth it if you want to do something out of the norm, it's worth finding. But you'll have to search. It’s a  mid-season berry. So it's a little bit later in the season, but prolific and we've been very happy with it. We've had it quite a long time. 

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, we should point out that blueberry plants here in California are one of the first fruit varieties to hit the nurseries, usually in late December and January. But as you go to colder climates, they'll start appearing in your nurseries a little bit later in the year. But shop early for best selection. 

Anne Moore   

Absolutely. They're there now here. And yeah, they do sell out sometimes. 

Farmer Fred    

Wow. We've learned a lot about blueberries today. From Anne Moore, a Master Gardener here in Sacramento County. We're at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. Well, now the rain is getting serious and thank you for braving this with me.

Anne Moore    

You're welcome. Thank you.

MORE BLUEBERRY TIPS FROM TOM AND PHIL AT DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred

Blueberries are very forgiving plants, including how you prune them. As I am fond of saying, “If it works for you, fine. But keep an open mind.” Here, to expand your mind about pruning, selecting and planting blueberries in containers, are Tom Spellman and Phil Pursel from Dave Wilson Nursery, from one of their You Tube chats.

Farmer Fred

One of the easiest plants for beginning gardeners to grow our blueberries. But there's a lot of conflicting advice out there. Tom Spellman, along with Phil Pursel, work with Dave Wilson Nursery. They got together and did a little talk about when to prune blueberries, as well as  how to plant them and how to take care of them. One of the things Tom mentioned that I didn't know:  you should prune your blueberries after harvest in the summertime, not in winter. Tom will explain:

Tom Spellman    

I’m Tom Spellman with Dave Wilson nursery. it's second week of August up here in the Central Valley. And we're out evaluating our new crop of berry plants coming on for this fall. We'll be shipping these in late October, November, early December. This is Sunshine blue, blueberry, look how nice that plant is. That's just absolutely a beautiful finished product. But we're going to pinch these one more time we're going to cut them down about six inches or so and one more nice flush of growth on them. All that growth that they finish off with this fall. That's going to be production wood for this next season. That's what's going to bloom in February and March and April and produce berries in May, June and July. So blueberries are kind of an anomaly in the fruit World. If you prune blueberries in the wintertime, you're every cut you make, your pruning out fruiting work. So you want to do all of your pruning on blueberries in the summer after the end of the crop season. So when the plants are done fruiting in July or early August, that's when you want to do your, your shaping. Let that next flush of growth come out. And that's what's going to be production wood for the next year. So no winter pruning on blueberries. So this is another one of our unique blueberry varieties. We're growing about a dozen or so different varieties in our farmer's market favorite program all in this four by nine inch pot. So these are one year plants, they're ready to be lined out, they're going to be productive their first year in a container. This is a variety called pink lemonade. So as opposed to a blue blueberry. This is a pink blueberry, it's a little more acidic, it's a little more tangy and flavor. And they mix this a lot with other blue flesh varieties to be used in desserts. The dessert chefs love this variety. This on top of a cheesecake with a couple of blueberries will make about a $20 dessert.

Phil Pursel   

 So many young people now are getting into gardening, but it's a little overwhelming. what we think is the best entry level fruit to get into, especially in this small patio, is getting into blueberries or getting into you know, small bush plants and trialing there and from there going and expanding. So blueberries perfect. You plant three in, in a wine barrel and you can plant one in a nice  container. And it's an easy way for someone new to gardening to really experience and be successful with, you know, with edibles. What the bushel berry adds into this mix is for example, this right here is the baby cakes, BlackBerry, when everyone thinks blackberries along the roadside, they're thinking you know, the sprawling vines and the thorns. This is a thornless bush blackberry that's made for containers, it's going to get covered with fruit. Really easy to maintain. It doesn't get big, you just keep it trimmed and nice little bush. its counterpart is known as raspberry shortcake. It is a raspberry that's a bush raspberry as opposed to cane perfectly for container gardening. And you'll get nice good fruit off of it. So you know, if you're not really sure about you know, dedicated a lot of room started with the bush home berry line and go ahead and put them in pot. So speaking of pot, right? What do you think about soil, especially blueberries, everyone's a little freaked out on what to do. But we have a simple, simple recipe.

Tom Spellman  

there's two things that are essential to proper blueberry care number one, fast, fast drainage, okay, we don't want any water to sit in that pot at all the drain and an acidic soil condition. Okay, so you want to make sure that you don't have a high pH you don't want a pH any more than about 6.5 max. Okay, so if you used a mixture of say a good Sandy potting soil  about one third peat moss or coarse grind peat moss, okay, and about one third pathway or walk-on bark, and mix those all three together. That's going to give you the perfect mix for blueberries or for most container plants in general. So these little bushel and berry variety go dry and raised right in that same minutes

Phil Pursel    

and it sounds a little daunting, but the way I do it at home, I get a wheelbarrow, get a bag of nice organic potting soil, set that there bag of peat moss and a bag of a pathway bark or even orchid bark. Yes orchid bark, you know, you get this container, scoop, one scoop, the other scoop, mix it up, you're ready to go. As simple as that. 

Phil Pursel  

It really is not complicated at all. And it makes the perfect mix. there are almost equivalent mixes that you can buy pre mixed or pre bagged but I really like being able to mix those three elements together and come up with that finished product. Right? So what we're saying is if you're new to gardening, little intimidated, don't be. great starter plants blueberries if you want to expand and maybe get a blackberry in your you know patio or raspberry in your patio, look into the bush home berry line of plants. What's nice about ours is ours and little orange containers right so they're inexpensive at your your garden center. You know put it in a nice pickle jar, you know, decorative pot, use the planning mix, and you're gonna have fruits throughout the summer. So, you know hopefully this kind of helps people are a little intimidated. Understand, it's simple. It's really is.

Tom Spellman  

and so rewarding. I mean, we were picking blueberries this year beginning about maybe March 15. And we pick all the way up until last week, first weekend off. Yep. So just go to our harvest chart, they got early, mid late season blueberry, and you're set. And even though all those blueberry varieties are listed as being so fruitful by planting three individual varieties together to sell one, you get so much more production, probably 10 times the amount of production, right by having those cross pollinated.

Phil Pursel  

 any other questions, you know, just go on to Dave Wilson dot com. And you know, just look at the varieties and make the choice. Go down to your independent garden centers this fall and pick them out.

Tom Spellman    

And we're here for you. We want your gardening experience to be successful. We want you to eat plenty of fresh fruit and that's why we're providing these high quality plants. And all this information on our website.

Farmer Fred   

that again from Dave Wilson nursery, Tom Spellman and Phil Pursel talking berries, and for more information do check out their website, Dave wilson.com. 

PROTECTING BLUEBERRIES FROM BIRDS and MORE

Farmer Fred    

You know who really likes fresh-picked blueberries, besides gardeners? Birds. Squirrels. Rats. Your pet dog. How can you protect those ripening blueberries from those marauders? We found one good solution at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center in Fair Oaks, California., with Master Gardener Shenna Mealey.

Farmer Fred  

When people come here to the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center and see the blueberries, they're going to be amazed at your netting system here. talk about this netting system. It's a system anybody can put in at home.

Shenna Mealey  

 It's very simple. If you don't net your blueberries, the birds will eat them before you get to them. Blueberries turn blue about a week before they're actually ripe. But as soon as they turn blue, the birds will eat them gone. So if you want to protect them and have some yummy ones left for yourself, you need to net them. What we have done is we have a PVC pipe that's about four or five feet tall with a tee at the top and then that PVC pipe is actually over a piece of rebar. The rebar is in the ground. It's about a four foot piece of rebar. We poked in the ground about 18 inches PVC pipe goes over that a string has gone around through the PVC pipe tees. Up at the top. Yes. And then the netting is over that so that it's really just a support for the netting.

Farmer Fred    

Yeah, that string we should point out is actually like a white nylon rope.

Shenna Mealey   

And it could be anything it could be yellow, it could be you know, whatever. This year we actually painted our PVC pipe green. So it's a little less obtrusive. It actually looks really fabulous. And it's half inch PVC pipe too.

Farmer Fred  

Yes, so that's very inexpensive.

Shenna Mealey    

It’s very  easy to do. It’s something that anybody can do with a little you know, saw and and some spray paint if you want. The netting that we can buy locally is not as wide and it's kind of stiff and not as easy to work with. So we have netting that we found. Can I say where we get it from or apply? It's actually Wilson orchard and vineyard supply might be saying that backwards has never been available. The The netting that they have currently available is black, but it's also soft. It's wonderful to work with it comes in 50 foot wide amounts, so you can have a big expanse and and they will cut it to size. So that's the best resource we found around here to get your netting and they do mail order. So then the other part that's essential is you have to pin the netting down to the ground because those sneaky birds will actually climb under the netting eat your berries, break your leaves, trying to fly out they won't be able to fly out and then they'll just kill themselves and die. So we don't want that to happen. And consequently we have used (garden) hose. you can use anything actually. PVC pipe, old wood, something to secure the base of the netting around the entire side. We pin that down with irrigation clamps and that keeps it so that the birds cannot get in.

Farmer Fred   

So are these the longer bobby pins, about the six inch or eight inch?

Shenna Mealey    

Yes, yep, they're like one inch wide to go over enough to go over a big hose right and about six inches long.

Farmer Fred    

So basically you just have like 100 foot garden hose along the base of the perimeter and then pinned it down and that holds the netting in place. So squirrels or dogs or whatever, and birds can't get underneath it to get the berries. My question is how do you get in?

Shenna Mealey  

you have to lift it up, you have to unpin it, you have to lift up the netting from under the hose. The netting then just kind of flops up over the supports and you pick underneath there and then put it back down.

Farmer Fred    

What section opens up? how wide a section Do you have open up?

Shenna Mealey    

It depends on how many berries are... you can open up, you know even the whole side if you want to, can be opened up we usually open up maybe you know six or 10 feet at a time. Just depending on how many berries are ripening, which bushes need attention at that time.

Farmer Fred

Shenna, I've learned a lot here. Thanks so much for your time.

Shenna Mealey    

you're welcome.

THE HEART HEALTHY GARDEN

Farmer Fred

What are the healthiest foods you can grow to reduce the chances  of developing metabolic disorders? The Mayo Clinic defines this as a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Culprits could include clogged arteries, elevated blood sugar levels, stress, and more, all things that can lead to heart disease. To put it simply, you need to grow a heart-healthy garden! And, what are those foods you can plant that are best suited to help reverse what might be going on around your ticker? We talk with Dr. Laura Varich, the Fresh Physician, about those foods that can do you a world of good. It’s the Heart Healthy Garden.

Farmer Fred

The Heart Healthy Garden. That's a topic that's close to my heart. Literally, after being diagnosed with four cholesterol jammed heart arteries way back when in March 2012, I underwent quadruple coronary artery bypass graft surgery, CABG as the surgeons like to call it, back in April of 2012. And by the way, at the same time as they're wheeling me into the operating room, they were saying, oh, by the way, did we tell you you have full blown type two diabetes with an A1C of 10 .4? Oh, well, thank you. The surgery went well though, and the long road to healing from heart disease and diabetes began. 

And I have to tell you, a shout out, to cardiac rehabilitation nurses. They do a fabulous job of curing you. Doctors tend to fix things, rehab nurses tend to cure you. And I had an excellent cardiac rehab nurse who showed me the way of eating correctly, of eating the right foods. And it was a big help to...where I have ended up 60 pounds lighter. The arteries that now service my heart are still cholesterol free. Blood sugar levels can be a challenge sometimes because sometimes life just gets in the way, but I've figured out basically how to bring them back down. And I'll be glad to share that with you today. Also sharing with us today is Dr. Laura Varich. And she is the Fresh Physician who truly believes that you can make yourself a lot better if you just eat right and give up ultra processed foods and eat the healthiest food possible. And as you know, a favorite saying of mine these days is the healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow yourself. So this sounds like a match made in heaven. Dr. Laura Varich, welcome back to the program. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Hi, Fred. So glad to be back. And you're right. You're right. The healthiest food that we can eat is what we grow. No doubt about it.

Farmer Fred

It is more flavorful, for one thing. It is certainly more convenient and it's darn more nutritious than store -bought food. But if that's all you can get, I would suggest a farmer's market as your first alternative and then the supermarket as the second one. And growing your own food, it's not cheap. It's not easy. But you know, the not easy part is good exercise. You can burn up to seven calories a minute out in the garden working. So there's that. And as I'm also fond of saying, shut your mouth and move your feet. I like the way you put it. Basically, you can eat your way to health. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, that is absolutely true. You know, my journey into being certified in lifestyle medicine, now speaking to people and educating people on their health through nutrition, mostly through lifestyle, but mostly through nutrition shows us that we can prevent disease, we can halt disease, we can even reverse a lot of these chronic diseases that we have.

So that is pretty amazing. Talk a little bit about your journey to where you were and where you are now, because a lot of it is personal in regards to your own health, but a lot of it too is what you were seeing as a clinician. And it's like, yeah, there's something strange going on when young people are coming down with diseases that used to be the purview of older people.

Dr. Laura Varich

Exactly. And that's really what got me looking into this because I spent my career as a pediatric radiologist. So I was out there at Stanford and that's when I first ran into your work and became a listener. And then we moved out here to Florida. It became very obvious over my career that the health of kids changed very, very dramatically. Even just in the last 10 years, it was obvious that I was seeing all kinds of disease that kids never had. If we saw a case, we'd say, this is weird. And now we were seeing it every day. And one of those things was that really struck me was auto-immune diseases because we have a lot of in my family. I have it too. And the inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are very big in my family. And to see kids being diagnosed with those now at the age of six and seven.

That's a very hard life for those people. Those are tough diseases. So I started to look into that and what it was all about. And when I did, I saw that it really is about our lifestyle and primarily about our diet. I decided at that point to leave my practice and start just letting people know that there's so much we can do. And that's when I got my lifestyle certification. So this is very, I'm very, very passionate about this work. I think we all need to know that we have a lot of power over all this.

Farmer Fred

All you gotta do is eat as many natural whole foods as possible. It's so very true. It's amazing though how the quality of life has really worsened for ourselves and our families. In your website, freshphysician .com, you point out that the development of 10 of the top 15 major diseases affecting Americans today include things like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol levels.

And of course, the two leading causes of death, heart disease and cancer. And that is the unintended consequence of a Western diet that is heavy on ultra processed food and not too big on eating fresh food. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, absolutely. That is correct. This sort of epidemic of overweight, obesity and chronic disease that we're seeing now really began back in the 1940s or so.

These diseases really started escalating. And that was at the time that really these ultra processed and convenience foods came on the market. And now we know that about 70 % of our diet in America is ultra processed foods. What's an ultra processed food?  Those packaged convenience foods with the long list of ingredients. The thing that really ticks me off is if it has a long list of herbs and spices in it, I'm happy with that. But if it's a long list of ingredients of things that you have never heard of before, you don't know what they are, you wouldn't find them in your kitchen, that's an ultra processed food. And of course it includes our junk food, our fast food, all that stuff. But it's amazing that 70 % of our diet in America is these foods now. And so this is where our health has really been put in jeopardy. And unfortunately, fast food, it's certainly not cheap and it's not getting any cheaper, that's for sure.

Farmer Fred

But it's convenient and I think people are so stressed for time that they option for that instead of cooking a meal. But there have to be easier ways. There have to be easier ways to consume healthier food and that's been one of the tenets of your website, freshphysician .com, because you include a lot of recipes.

Dr. Laura Varich

Right. I include recipes, a lot of recipes on there. And what I've really done is try to make them as healthful as possible. One of the main ideas there is to keep the saturated fat low and the sodium low. So those are a couple of the main things that we need to be watching out for in our diets. And also to make them simple because like you said, they need to be simple. And there's lots and lots of ways to simplify the making of meals, such as batch cooking ahead of time. We need to get a bigger freezer maybe, but we can do a lot of cooking ahead of time and then storing some for future use. There's lots of ways we can do it. We have lost the art of cooking. It's sort of going to be going back to some of the traditional ways that we used to cook and the things that we used to eat. That's sort of the way to think about it. But there are lots of ways to make it more simple and we do need to make it part of our life because otherwise we pay the price

in the time we're going to spend later in the hospital and the doctor's office and the money we're going to spend on medicines and all these things. So it's important to start spending a little time and give food the respect it deserves. It's the only fuel of our body. 

Farmer Fred

And eating as healthy as possible, as often as possible can be achieved. And it's not a diet. It goes right to your title, lifestyle. It's not a diet.

Dr. Laura Varich

Right. And I love the way that you that you said that because  I try to tell people  that it's really important to just have your goal in mind and to keep moving in that direction, and just to do the very best you can. There is no perfection. And this isn't a diet, like you said, because it isn't that if you ate something bad today that wasn't on your healthy food list that you're done and you have to quit. And I just can't do it. This is too hard. You just start eating healthier again at the next meal, right? And it's just gonna be, this is how life goes. Things get in our way and maybe trip us up, but we just keep getting back on track and just keep trying to do better, having more of those whole plant foods. That's what we're looking for. 

Farmer Fred

I couldn't agree more. In fact, I have this big whiteboard with sticky notes on it. There's something like 50 sticky notes on it just to inspire me to keep eating right and to keep exercising. And, The number one sticky note on there, in the upper left hand corner, says, “write it down”. And that is so important for helping you keep on the track you're on. When you use a program like MyFitnessPal or Calorie King or even just a notebook, writing down what you eat. And what's beautiful about the computer programs is they keep track of the calories, they keep track of the protein, they keep track of the carbohydrates, the sugar, the fiber, and all of that. It’s to help you say, whoa, I better slow down here with the cookies. It really works to get you to lose weight. And that's just a habit to develop that you do day in, day out. And the beauty of writing it down, when you flip the page, when you go to tomorrow, it's a blank slate. It's a brand new day. You're starting perfectly.

Dr. Laura Varich

Oh, you know, I really, really like that. What a great idea. You're right. Because every day we need to look at that. Maybe every meal we need to look at that as a blank slate. We're starting over. We can start fresh and do better and better and better. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, we're human and we're going to be chowing down sometimes when we shouldn't be. But again, the words on the paper or the words on the computer can help you dial back a little bit. And of course, there's always exercise.

Do you subscribe to the belief that you can consume more calories in a day the more you exercise? 

Dr. Laura Varich

Well, I guess you could look at it that way. You could also look at it as  you could lower your total calories for the day by getting some exercise. But one thing we know for sure is we cannot out-exercise a bad diet, right? It takes a lot to burn off 100 or 200 calories. That's a big, long workout, right? And we can eat that in one minute, two minutes. We really have to focus on, especially if we're talking about weight loss, we have to focus on what's going in. Exercise is critical for our health, no doubt about it. It keeps our vessels flexible and strong to allow the blood flow to our organs. Exercise can help to control, heart disease and Alzheimer's disease and stroke and all these other things. So exercise is critical. Weight loss, it is not gonna be the key. The key is gonna be what goes in our mouth. 

Farmer Fred

Exactly, and what it's amazing what healthy eating can be doing to the inside, to help your body help itself. It's amazing what we're learning about the microbiome and what's going on in our gut and all the good things that can happen when you eat right. In your latest newsletter called Making Heart Choices, where you talk about heart health being the number one cause of death in our country. The good news is that even though the primary cause, which is a buildup of cholesterol in our blood vessels, develops over decades, we can halt the progression and even reverse this process. And you introduce us to a new word called phytosterols. What are phytosterols? 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, phytosterols are a really interesting chemical substance. A phyto means a plant. Phytosterols are plant sterols. It is a version, the plant's version, of what is the animal type of cholesterol. So what's really neat about phytosterols is that when we eat phytosterols and they come in our plant foods, we are going to actually be able to block cholesterol from being taken up into our bloodstream from our intestinal tract.

And the really great thing about this is that it blocks both the cholesterol coming from our food as well as the cholesterol our own body is making. Our body makes a lot of cholesterol. 70 % of the cholesterol that we have circulating in our bloodstream has actually come from our body itself. And our body makes all that it needs. All the cholesterol it needs is made by our body. Anything extra we take in is extra cholesterol, and that's what can cause so many problems with heart disease.

But about 70 % is what our body makes itself. So if we eat these phytosterols, they actually block that cholesterol our own body made and puts into our intestine, which would then be reabsorbed back into our body later on, blocks that even from getting taken up. So it really can, these phytosterols, really can lower our cholesterol. And this is why plant foods are so important for being able to lower cholesterol. They actually block the uptake.

Farmer Fred

The other thing about plant foods is they have a lot of fiber and fiber actually hides some of those components like cholesterol and some of the fats and even some of the sugars in our food and carries it out of our body. So we have these couple things working for us from plant foods that help to lower our cholesterol. And you can see why if we're not eating a lot of plant foods and we're eating more ultra processed foods and more animal foods, our cholesterol is gonna go up. In my old blog page, The Farmer Fred Rant, I wrote years and years ago about the Heart Healthy Garden, and it was based on the crops that you can grow in your backyard garden that have the most soluble fiber. A lot of people think of fiber as just something that helps keep you regular, and that's insoluble fiber. But soluble fiber is part of fiber.

It's a type of fiber that dissolves in water to form a gel -like material. I know the Mayo Clinic has studied this extensively. And soluble fiber can help lower blood cholesterol levels by reducing the LDL, the low density lipoprotein, or the bad cholesterol levels. And soluble fiber has other heart health benefits such as lowering blood pressure, blood glucose levels, and inflammation. Going back to my big white board of inspiration, another sticky note says, “eat more fiber, eat less sugar.” And when you eat more fiber, it's probably gonna have some soluble fiber in it, which a lot of plants do have, that is going to reverse the cholesterol buildup in your body and lower your A1C numbers if you're a diabetic. And I'm living proof of it here, 12 years later, that it works. Yeah, that soluble fiber is really important. Yeah, most plant foods, really all plant foods, contain both the soluble and the insoluble types.

Dr. Laura Varich

So yeah, anytime you're eating plant foods, you're getting some soluble fiber. There are some particular foods that are really good and really high in soluble fiber, and those are going to be our whole grains, right? And we think of oats, because we've heard about oats over and over again for heart health, and this is one of the reasons they have a lot of soluble fiber in them, but other whole grains also. Our legumes, you know, our beans and peas and chickpeas. Lentils, those have a lot of soluble fiber also. But really you're getting some in almost any plant food you eat, so you just need to get more of those in. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, whole grain can be kind of a deceiving title, because in some cases, whole grain is not whole grain. I've gotten into the habit of buying my bread not from the bread aisle, but from the freezer section because I know that freezer bread must contain some sort of living organisms that are better for you as opposed to what's sitting on a shelf for who knows how long. And that is the true whole grain. Maybe it’s the bread that you would find in the freezer section. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, I like that tip a lot. And I also have another tip for your readers, because I think a lot of people are very confused about this whole grain thing. Harvard Medical School put out a guideline for us not that long ago that is really helpful. If you have a whole grain bag in your hand, say you have my favorite whole grain, oat groats. You have that in your hand. That is a whole grain. You don't have to worry about its proportion of things. So that's a whole grain product. But if you have a bread or a pasta, everybody wants to advertise that it's whole grain because we're thinking about that. But is it really a whole grain product, or is there just a little bit of whole grains in it? The way that they talk in the article about figuring this out is a really helpful and easy to remember. It is this: if you look at the label, what you're looking for is the carbohydrate to fiber ratio within that food, being 10 to 1, or even more, of the fiber. So carbohydrates ten, to fiber, one. So you can compare those two on your label and just see how much fiber it has, because that's what a whole grain would have, a 10 to 1 ratio. 

Farmer Fred

Oh, that's a great tip. All right. The 10 to 1, carbo to fiber ratio. I like that. That can help us out a lot when when shopping. Bring your magnifying glass with you when you go to the store to start reading the small print on those labels. And it's really ticking me off that some products now are saying, you want more information? Here, scan this code and go to the website. No, I want the information right there on the bag. 

Dr. Laura Varich

I agree with you. Who has time for that? Yeah.

Farmer Fred

You brought up a point earlier that a good shopping point, and that is that a lot of the ultra processed foods are in colorful packages. And so if you just shop the perimeter of a supermarket and avoid all those aisles with the colorful packages, you can find a lot of healthier food, usually on the edges, maybe not the fresh vegetables and fruits, which tend to be towards the middle. I mean, if you can just try to spend as much time as possible in that section. But when you got the fresher foods, along the edge that are usually refrigerated, that is a healthier sign that there's stuff in there that has a limited lifespan and it's better for you.

Dr. Laura Varich

Absolutely, I totally agree with that. The foods that you're going want to get more of are all along the perimeter. Now, if you do wander into those middle aisles though, read your labels because it can be pretty amazing the difference in some different products that we might find. Some might have just tons of chemicals and emulsifiers and other things in them, and others right next to it may have just only a few ingredients. So it's really important just to take a look at those labels. And one of the main things, especially if we're talking about heart health, that really we're finding out as sort of in general for health, we want to lower our saturated fat intake. That's probably the best thing we can do for our health, preventing Alzheimer's disease, stroke, cancer, heart disease, on and on, is to lower the saturated fat intake. So really look at that on your labels. And we want to keep saturated fat levels down,  as low as we can, really.

So I compare products and try to find the ones with the lower saturated fat. A lot of products are putting it in. Saturated fat gives things a kind of buttery taste, right? Butter has a lot of saturated fat in it. And so they'll add some oils with a lot of saturated fat to get us to feel like this is a really delicious product. 

Farmer Fred

That's one reason I like to use the MyFitnessPal food guide on the computer to keep track of what I'm eating because you can follow at a glance up to six different categories of nutrients that you're trying to either limit or increase. And I'm following calories, sugar, fiber, sodium, protein, and saturated fat. And I always try to make sure that in the summary of the day at the bottom of the page, that the amount of saturated fat that I have consumed is less than the daily goal.  And I just keep it under that. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Oh, that's a smart way to do that. Yeah. 

Farmer Fred

Then you can really keep your eye on it. I don't think we can discount exercise in helping you get back on the road to wellness. And it doesn't have to be really heavy exercise. Now, some would say I'm an athlete. I am not an athlete. I'm just a guy that likes to ride my bike. And I do ride my bicycle about 100 miles a week. Usually it's over 100 miles a week. And I think that's what basically delayed me from having serious heart issues until I was in my 60s. But like you said, you can't out exercise a bad diet. But with exercise though, you are burning up that cholesterol, that sugar and other things and just what it does for you mentally. And I have found one key in the last year or so that has really helped me out because I have decided that OK, it's fine to ride your bike 100 miles a week, but maybe include a little workout within that workout to be even better for you. And that's where high intensity interval training comes in. And there was a book I was reading called “The One Minute Workout” that talked about a Scandinavian interval training program that was researched by doctors at Norwegian University of Science and Technology that found that a four minute. 60% effort followed by a three minute 30% effort, repeated four times can do so much good for you, and it doesn't matter what age you are. And in fact, they found it specifically very helpful for sedentary middle-aged patients to avoid diseases, as well as cardiac rehabilitation patients would work out just fine with this exercise program, the 4-3-4. They also call it the Norwegian workout. And they found that not only did it trigger improvements in athletes, but they've done studies on numerous other populations, including those who had cardiovascular disease and the overweight. And in one 2008 study at the same Norwegian Institute, they applied the protocol to this group of middle-aged men and women with metabolic syndrome,

which is a precursor to heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, and had them repeat this 4-3-4 interval training three times a week for 16 weeks. And the format was able to actually reverse the symptoms of metabolic syndrome. In fact, the interval group increased their VO2 max, which is a critical marker of health, by 35%, which was more than twice as much that the group that performed continuous moderate exercise.

So it really has a lot of benefits in sedentary people who want to reverse the risk of metabolic syndrome. And again, it was called The Norwegian. And the book, again, is entitled “The One Minute Workout” by Martin Gibala, who is a researcher. And I just wanted to get that plug in there for the benefits of thinking about adding interval training to whatever you're doing, even if all you're doing is walking. If you just walk where you are, going for four minutes at 6 % of perceived effort followed by three minutes at 30% effort and you repeat that four times, you're gonna feel better. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, I like that. I'm gonna get that book. I'm gonna definitely check that one out. I started  adding some interval training to my workouts not that far back, maybe a year or so ago. I find it so much more fun too. It makes the workout so much more interesting.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, it does. And actually, I feel better after doing that. It just gave me a peace of mind, which is the other benefit of exercise. It clears your mind. I have a cycling jersey that says “bicycling is cheaper than therapy”. It sure is, despite the increasing price of bicycles, it just clears your head out and makes you a happier person. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, for sure. And yeah. The price of bicycles goes up, but so does the price of therapy, doesn't it? 

Farmer Fred

Well, that, yeah. And medical care, too. Yes. Don't blame yourself, folks, if you are suffering with these diseases, because a lot of it, I really believe, is the addictive nature of things like sugar, salt and fats that you just want more and more of . And for whatever reason, there isn't enough, I don't think, good research

and publicity about the addictive nature of certain food ingredients. To me, right now, the big bugaboo in my life are potato chips, because like the old TV commercial used to say, “bet you can't just eat one”. You can't. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Exactly. Well, there is a lot of information, actually, about this out there. There was an expose called “Craving the Cookie’. I think it was back in, hmm, I don't know the exact year, might have been as far back as 2005 or 2009 or something like that in the Chicago Tribune. And they basically exposed the food companies for what they were doing, which was brain research on people to try to figure out what flavor combinations were going to make our brains addicted to a food. So feeling like I need more,  the typical addiction type of behaviors, I need more, I can't get enough. I'm thinking about it all the time. And that combination was sugar, fat and salt. Now sugar, fat and salt in nature do not come together in any food package. So it is well known that this combination makes our brain go a little bit haywire because those are the things that through evolution our bodies have craved because they have the high calories or the nutrients that we need. So our brains know we need these and they were hard to find. They were very hard to find back in the days when we were hunting and gathering, right? So when they come together in a food, our brain just goes crazy and our brain thinks this is the best thing ever. And so, yes, it is hard to stop ourselves from eating that. Now, the best thing to do is to taper yourself off of those things and you'll see that the cravings will decrease with time. You start to crave other things. I've noticed I crave now a lot of legumes,  who would have thought? 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, those foods are really are addictive and they're designed that way. The beauty of legumes, beans, chickpeas, snow peas, they're easy to grow at home. And you can grow them, depending on your climate, you can grow some of them year round, and it's just a great addition to your diet. It helps to have somebody in the house who is ticked off, in my case, at all the plants I grow, all the food plants I grow, and saying, well, what are we gonna do with these? I guess I better come up with some recipes. So my wife, God bless her, makes it her goal to cook a normal sized meal. I think that's key, too, in this age of restaurants that serve meals on platters. Have a dinner that is only 400 or 500 calories, but is composed primarily of food from the garden. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, this is food that  we call high nutrient density. So a lot of nutrients are in there per calorie. If we start eating a lot more of those foods that again have that fiber we were talking about and they contain a lot of water naturally in those foods, right? Those are the things that are free. There's no calories in fiber or water, and they fill us up greatly. So those are the two most satisfying things you could have in your food. They make you feel the most full and they have no calories. So those are the things we're missing in our ultra processed foods. That's what's been removed. The fiber and the water are taken out.

And so we get a really high calorie density in those foods, whereas our whole foods have this nutrient density, tons of nutrients in, you know, in not very many calories. And we feel satisfied. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Getting back to fiber, it's amazing how fiber can suppress the appetite too. What is also sad is how little the average American eats as far as fiber goes. I've read some figures that the average American might eat 15 grams of fiber per day, when the recommended minimum is 30. And if you eat over 30 grams of fiber, by the way, don't do it all at once, kids. Just work your way up to increasing the amount of fiber you eat. When you get to over 30, it really helps the gut biome process more of the good food and get rid of the bad food. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, you're exactly right. 15 grams of fiber per day is what Americans are eating now. And it's recommended somewhere 30 to 35, but truly, some groups will recommend we get to 50. And we know that our ancestors, those same hunter-gatherer ancestors, were eating 150 grams of fiber a day. So our body is used to having a lot more fiber. Where does fiber come from? Only plant foods, only whole plant foods, right? Those ultra processed foods, most of the fiber is taken out. Animal foods don't have any fiber at all.

So it's all coming from those whole plant foods, which again, we need to get more of. In America, that's 5% of our diet right now is these whole plant foods. So we need to get more of those in. And that fiber, you're so right. We're learning so much about the microbiome right now because it seems to be associated. It's products that it creates that microbiome, those bacteria in our gut. The products that they create seem to be related to health of almost every organ that we have.

So there's a lot of research in that right now. And it's just, it's really just gone, you know, exponentially up the amount of research on the microbiome. And what we know is the microbiome eats fiber. That is the food of the microbiome. Why? In our small intestine, we absorb all the nutrients that we can absorb and we can't absorb fiber. So our bacteria are mostly in our colon, our large intestine. So the fiber that we didn't absorb gets down to them. And then they can use it. So we're living kind of symbiotically with them, right? We're giving them a home, we're feeding them. And what they do is they break that fiber down and they just pump out these amazing chemicals for our health. The short chain fatty acids, they actually make these anti -inflammatory components that are so good for us. And then they also alter a bunch of those phytonutrients, those plant nutrients we know of and make them usable for our bodies too. So they're doing a lot down there. They're not just hanging out down there taking it easy. They're working hard for us. 

Farmer Fred

I think we better get in some nitty gritties. We're going to be on all sorts of scenic bypasses here. And knowing my audience, they want specifics. So let me start with a little list of my favorite high fiber backyard crops to grow, which include artichokes, which is so pretty, I have it growing in the front yard; blueberries; we have shell beans, of course, all the pinto beans, the black beans, black turtle beans, navy peas, great northern beans, kidney beans; apricots, and just about any tree fruit for that matter. Green peas, of course, are excellent, especially the sugar snap peas. Raisins, avocados, carrots, eggplant, oranges, pears,

peaches, strawberries, leeks, green beans, cabbage, cauliflower, peppers, potatoes, peanuts, asparagus, celery, spinach, sweet potatoes, tomatoes (thank you), apples, melons, broccoli, corn, lettuce, walnuts, olives, cucumbers, onions, radishes, zucchini. Yeah, just stuff you would normally grow in your backyard is all very healthy food. And you have a little section there on your latest newsletter about heart -healthy foods

and the phytosterol content of nuts, that nuts are so good for you. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, of all the foods that we can eat, nuts are the highest in those phytosterols. Again, those ones that will block cholesterol from being taken up into our system. So super healthy for us. And we know actually that nuts are the number one food for heart health. So we need to get more nuts in our diet. And the highest of the nuts, the highest in those phytosterols are pistachios. They have quite a bit of those phytosterols in them. So they're particularly good, kind of followed by almonds and pecans and walnuts and cashews. And yeah, so nuts are really, really great for our heart health. Now, when we talk about nuts, we're talking about all the research studies that have shown that nuts are great for our heart. Those studies tell us that we should have a small handful of nuts every day. I like to get the variety of my plant foods up every day. There's a recommendation that we get at least 30 different plant foods every week for our microbiome. So that's a fun game to play. Try to get to 30 per week of different types of plant foods. So maybe with our nuts that we have, we could have a small handful of a mixture of nuts. That would be great. But a small handful doesn’t mean an overflowing palm full. Right? Not like your hand is completely overflowing with nuts, but like a small palm full of nuts every day is what's recommended for our heart health. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, you mentioned in the newsletter, pistachios, almonds, pecans, walnuts and cashews. Cashews are a tropical nut, very difficult to grow here. If you live in certain areas of the country, like if you're in California, you can grow pistachios, almonds and walnuts.

A lot of the country can grow pecans. So if you're looking for, and you have the room for a 50 foot pecan tree, go for it, do that. I like to choose almonds for my healthy nut because as I pick them up out of the can, I can count them with my fingertips. And I know that 28 almonds make one serving. So I can keep track of that as I pop them into my mouth. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, the thing we probably don't want to do is sit down on the couch watching TV with a big bag of nuts near us. We're gonna end up eating way too many, they're so delicious and they're easy to eat. What's interesting, I think a lot of people don't eat nuts because they think, well, that's a really high fat food. I wanna avoid that 

food. But the thing about nuts is that they are, like I said, they're so good for our heart health. They cut the risk of heart attack in half and they cause a 30 % decrease in the amount of the number of strokes that people have. So they're really, really great for our cardiovascular health. They've got the good kind of fats in them. They've got a lot of those polyunsaturated fats in them. And when we look at the research,, we actually have research that has shown us that when people are asked to add a handful of nuts a day to their diet, they actually don't gain weight over time. Actually, their weight is the same as the people in the control group, or even lower. So nuts are very satisfying for us, too. So it's not that they're gonna cause weight gain. We do need to get these into our diet. 

Farmer Fred

And of course, fruits and vegetables and whole grains are part of that heart healthy diet as well. In fruits and vegetables, you mentioned the ones with the most phytosterols include corn, broccoli, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, and blueberries. Most of us can grow all of those at one time or another during the growing year in your backyard.

I have been on a search for a bolt resistant lettuce, and you gave me that tip last year when we talked last June. I believe it was episode 269 about a healthy diet. You said you need to try the Chinese cabbage, the Tokyo Bakana Chinese cabbage. It is bolt resistant. It can take the heat. And I go, well, gee, I'll try that because I've been searching for years for a summertime lettuce, a green that I can grow and have with just about every meal. And sure enough, that Tokyo Bakana Chinese cabbage, which isn't really a cabbage, it's more lettuce-like, it has a crunchy flavor, it's a loose leaf variety. Grow it in the shade in the summertime. Grow it in the winter in full sun. And it is delicious. It grows easily. You can plant a short row every month and you can cut it and it comes back and eventually it wears out.

But you can still plant it several times a year. Try it. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much. And you even said to try it, it's a game changer. And it really is for anybody searching for a bolt resistant, leafy green that can take the heat. Try that Tokyo Bakana Chinese Cabbage.

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, and you get a nice big head of that growing and you could just cut off the outer leaves like you said and keep it going and keep it going. And for some reason, the cabbage pests don't seem to like it that much. I haven't had trouble with them, whereas I have trouble with some of the other cabbages. Another one I want to tip you off to, in case you haven't tried it, is one called Devil's Ear lettuce. Have you tried that? 

Farmer Fred

No. OK, I'm writing it down. Devil's Ear lettuce.

Dr. Laura Varich

That's another one that I feel like it probably goes a lot longer before bolting than the rest of them. And it's kind of got a long skinny leaf. It's a smallish kind of head with a long skinny leaf. It's a loose leaf. And it's got some purple on the edges. Super wonderful, very nice flavor. And it doesn't bolt, at least not for a long time. So I love that about it.

Farmer Fred

They've done some trials out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, the Sacramento County Master Gardener Demonstration Garden, and  one summer they did try a lot of different heat tolerant lettuce or allegedly heat tolerant lettuces. And their final verdict was, well, they're barely heat tolerant. And they included things like black seeded Simpson, Amish deer tongue, Red Cross, Jericho, Year Round Bronze and a dark red leaf lettuce called Paradai, P -A -R -A -D -A -I, which is a red oak leaf lettuce. And also they tested Nevada, which is a green loose leaf. And it's kind of a semi -heading type. Again, they did as well as expected in summer heat, but as expected means, well, it might get you to August, but that's about it. So you think Devil's Ear lettuce can last through August? 

Dr. Laura Varich

Oh, I don't know if I'd say that. But it seems to go longer than the rest of mine as far as before it bolts. 

Farmer Fred

All right. Well, I will definitely pick up some devil's ear lettuce and give that a try this summer and see how it does. Great. Let's talk a little bit about greens. They're so good for you. They're low calorie and you can serve them in a variety of ways. You can serve them raw in a salad. You can saute them. You can mix it up in stir fries. There's just so much you can do with greens.

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, and they really are good for you. If you think about healthy foods, they're probably our number one healthy food. They have the most nutrients, again, that nutrient density that we were talking about. So yeah, greens are terrific for us. 

And some of the things that are really, really good for us in the foods that we eat. I know we talked about this a little bit before, the strong colors and the strong flavors in our food. And greens have both of those things going for them. Those dark green colors are really a combination of colors. It's a whole smattering of colors that's making that dark green. So they've got a lot of phytonutrients there and they do have some of those stronger flavors, right? Some of that bitterness to it and things like that. That tells us that there's a lot of those are really good phytonutrients in there. So yeah, greens, we can do so much with them. And it's just a matter of finding the ones that you really love. 

Farmer Fred

You mentioned different colored foods. I remember years ago, this is probably 30 years ago, a local supermarket chain hired a dietitian to go around and give little talks about eat a colorful diet, about eating different colored foods and how good it is for you. I just have a funny feeling she was just a little ahead of her time because not too many people were paying attention to what she said. It was intriguing to me. I think time has bore her message out. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes, absolutely. And now her wisdom has become a little saying called, “eat the rainbow”.

And so they teach this to kids now, eat the rainbow as a way of inspiring them to sort of eat and try all different colors of foods. But yeah, again, each of those colors is telling us about different nutrients in that food. And we know we need them all. The more nutrients, different types of nutrients we're getting in, the more we can affect all the different disease processes that might be happening in our body. So yeah, getting all kinds of different colored foods in, is really important. And I don't mean colored like your bag of M&Ms, those colors. 

Farmer Fred

I was going to bring that up, yes. But your colors in your natural foods, that's what we're talking about. Exactly. I mean, probably while we were talking about it, that was the image that most people had in their brain. Maybe it's that time of day. I don't know.  I'm trying to think of any healthy ingredient in an M&M. I'm not sure there is.

Dr. Laura Varich

Well, get the peanut ones and then you've got the peanut. 

Farmer Fred

Okay, yeah. Now talk a little bit about peanuts. Peanuts are actually a healthy nut and they're the least expensive nut that you can buy. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, they're so interesting because they're a legume actually, right? They're a type of legume, the peanuts, so it's different than sort of tree nuts and things. And they happen to have sort of the same healthy benefits of nuts that we're talking about, like tree nuts for heart health, but they also have a lot of the qualities that you might find in like a bean. And so they are really good for us. You know, I think we just have to be careful again, especially if we're watching our weight, not to eat huge amounts. And it's really much better to eat the whole nuts rather than say peanut butter. Peanut butter is delicious. We've sort of broken down some of the fiber components. Is the fiber still in there? But we can digest it all so much more easily, makes it a little less healthy for us than say the whole nuts where the fiber really slows the transit down through our gut. 

Farmer Fred

Speaking of slowing the transit down, when it comes to nuts, eating nuts in the shell takes a lot of time, but it can really cut down the amount that you put in your mouth. And I'm thinking of peanuts and pistachios. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, and that's fun that way, right? Messy, but fun, yes. That's important.

Farmer Fred

Cholesterol can be reversed. We've found that out. What are some of your favorite foods for lowering cholesterol?  

Dr. Laura Varich

Great question. Well, we talked about nuts and whole grains. Those are a couple big ones that are really good. And legumes. Those are probably the top. But there are a couple that some research has shown can be extremely helpful for lowering our cholesterol, actually working better than  those cholesterol lowering statins. They actually have more effect than those even do. I'd say the top one of those is a seed called Black Seed. It is used a lot in sort of the Middle East and India. And it's also called black cumin.

Its botanical name is Nigella sativa. You could find it online. You can find it a lot of places now. But what we can do is that we have to grind these seeds to get the value out of them so that they're digested. But a quarter teaspoon of this ground black seed a day in this research study, and there's been multiple of them, showed as much as a 30 % lowering of LDL cholesterol. That is an amazing number right there, 30% lowering of LDL cholesterol and also lowered people's blood triglyceride levels. Another one I love, ground flax seed. I think in general, everybody should be having this in their diet. So again, it's a seed that we're grinding, right, to be able to absorb it. If you add as much as, in these people, up to four tablespoons a day, they had a 15 % lowering of their LDL cholesterol. 

And so those are some things that I try to add into my diet every single day, really good for that purpose and have a lot of other health effects too that we don't even have time to go into because they're extensive. So those are a couple of things I would recommend to everybody for their diet. 

Farmer Fred

Do you have to buy the whole seed to get the full benefits and have a grinder as well? 

Dr. Laura Varich

You could find, probably find these seeds ground. For sure the flax seed already comes ground.

What I would do in that situation or really in either is to keep it in the refrigerator, keep the seeds in the refrigerator so that they don't spoil. And then so you can either buy them whole or you can buy them already ground with  black seed. You can put it into a pepper grinder and just use it like you would pepper. And it has a peppery flavor. You would use it sort of instead of pepper. So yes, you can just put it in a pepper grinder and just keep it on your table.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, and it's only adding a quarter teaspoon per day to lower your cholesterol, like you said, by up to 30%. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. 

Farmer Fred

If you buy the whole seed, do you have to keep that in the refrigerator or is just the ground ones you keep in the refrigerator? 

Dr. Laura Varich

I keep them both. But if you don't have room in your refrigerator, because that does take up some space, the whole seed, probably if you buy smaller packages and so that you don't have a lot sitting around for a long period of time, that's probably fine.

And these would be seasonings and easy to apply to any meal.  You can easily put those on any meal. And you see with the flax seed, it doesn't really have any flavor, so it's easy to put in almost everything. The black seed can be a little trickier. My husband doesn't like the taste of it too much. I haven't met many people that didn't like it, but he doesn't like pepper. So what we started doing was just getting those capsules that you could fill yourself. I grind it and then I just put it into some capsules. And I like that better than buying supplements because we know that the supplement industry is completely unregulated. We don't really know what's in our supplements. So I feel like if I buy the whole food and I just put it into some capsules, which is not very hard to do, that I know what's in those. 

Farmer Fred

And the capsule goes down with a glass of water, I would think. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Exactly. OK, all right. 

Farmer Fred

And that's interesting.  I like that idea, too, for those. But he doesn't like the taste of pepper? Does he eat fresh peppers? 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yes. Yeah, I think it's the black pepper. It's not a favorite.  

Farmer Fred

How would you describe the taste? You mentioned that ground black seed is also known as black cumin. So does it have that coriander type flavor? 

Dr. Laura Varich

No, it's actually not related to cumin at all. It's a completely different plant. It's again, it's peppery. It has a little bit of a pine taste to it. But it is, I think,  pleasing. I think it's delicious myself. So I recommend trying it out and see. I think you'll like it. 

Farmer Fred

All right. Pine nuts. I now have visions of Euell Gibbons in my head. Eat a pine tree. Many parts are edible. Pine nuts. Yeah. OK. All right. Tell us a little bit about fresh physician dot com. You pointed out that this is your life's work as a lifestyle physician, if you will. There's a crying need for this as opposed to, I won't say opposed to going to a doctor, but doctors don't take many courses in nutrition and diet, and you really need a dietician in your life or somebody who knows the ins and outs of food. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Yeah, most of us didn't have any real training in nutrition in medical school. Luckily, that's changing a little bit. But even with that, usually people aren't getting a whole lot of that training. So yeah, what I do is sort of to supplement what your doctor does, because I think if you go to your doctor, a lot of times they're not going to know a lot about the nutritional aspect. It's just not something that we learned in school. So yeah, the website was built to have kind of simple information to try to give people impactful information that they can actually do something about and apply to their lives. There's a recipe section and then I have more information on there too. Some of it about gardening and the benefits of that. Some of it about different health topics like heart health and brain health and things like that. Just built to try to simplify these ideas for people so that they can apply them to their lives and we can really all take our health back into our hands. 

Farmer Fred

And we should point out that you have a free newsletter as well. 

Dr. Laura Varich

I do and I would love it if people would sign up for that. My last one, as you said, was about heart health. And I try to put out a newsletter each month that really my focus every time I write a newsletter is I want people to leave with it thinking, OK, I have something in here that I can just do. I can apply it today to my life. 

I try to get to the latest research and kind of explain that to people. And so I hope I can reach more people. I'd love it. 

Farmer Fred

And you can sign up for her free newsletter at her home page. Just scroll down. You'll find the link at fresh physician dot com. Dr. Laura Varich, a very enlightening conversation today. So I will be looking at packages of “whole grain bread” that have a carbohydrate to fiber ratio of 10 to one, or better yet, 5 to 1. I'm gonna lower my saturated fat, eat 30 different plant foods per week and try Devil's Ear lettuce. 

Dr. Laura Varich

I love your checklist. That sounds great. 

Farmer Fred

Thank you for everything you do too. And thanks for being on Garden Basics today. 

Dr. Laura Varich

Thank you. It was a pleasure as always.

Farmer Fred

OK, here’s your garden to-do list for the day: 

• Spend some quiet time in the yard. 

• Walk, converse, smell and touch all your plants. Enjoy the texture, the aromas, the color combinations, the structure. 

• Admire the natural amazing artwork of plant leaves, and check both sides of those leaves for eggs or insects. 

• If you’re checking for eggs or bugs on your plants, make sure they are the bad guys, not the good guys, before you shoo them away.  

• Take a seat out there, and watch and listen to the visitors to your yard, from insects to birds to four footed creatures, some of whom may be of dubious benefit.

• And, if you would please, help spread the word to your gardening friends and family about the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. 

• Leave a thumbs up or a comment on the show at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, that let you comment or share, including our home page, GardenBasics dot net. And if you subscribe, leave a comment, share and a thumbs up, as well, at our newsletter, Beyond the Garden Basics, which is on Substack. You can find a link to all of these in today’s show notes. And as always, thanks for listening.

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday and it's brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript of the podcast, visit our website, gardenbasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.