400 Top 4 Garden Topics of All Time

Show Transcript

400 Transcript FINAL

Farmer Fred

To celebrate this, the 400th episode of the Garden Basics podcast, today we’re running the most listened to garden chats from each of the 100-episode seasons, including starting a victory garden; growing caneberries; container gardening basics; and planting and growing shade trees.  It’s Episode number 400 of the Garden Basics with farmer fred podcast! We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. Let’s go! 

VICTORY GARDEN 2.0

Farmer Fred:

The Garden Basics podcast began during the early stages of the Covid crisis, back in April of 2020, when people were being warned to stay home. All of a sudden, there were tens of thousands of new gardeners, and we wanted to provide a little guidance, so they could be successful, new gardeners. So, it’s no surprise that the very first episode, starting a Victory Garden 2.0, was one of the most listened to episodes in our audio catalog. Here it is:

Farmer Fred:

When the Victory Garden Manual was first written in 1943, it was pretty easy to come up with reasons to grow your own vegetables. After all, it was wartime. Food was scarce. And the food that was available may not have been the healthiest or the freshest because a lot of that was going to the war effort. People responded. And in 1943, nearly 40 percent of all fruits and vegetables grown in the United States were grown in home and in community victory gardens. That's pretty darn impressive. Well, maybe it's time for Victory Garden 2.0. That's the thoughts of Diane Blazek. She's the executive director of All America Selections and the National Garden Bureau. And maybe in this time of coronavirus, Diane, we need to start our own gardens for many reasons, not the least of which is, hey, we might be sheltering in place. Give us something to do.

Diane Blazek:

You're exactly right. Yeah, it's not only something to do, but any of us who have been gardening for a long time know that just getting out in the fresh air is such a well-being type of thing. You get out, you're getting vitamin D, you're exercising, and it just makes you feel good. It gives you a sense of accomplishment to work in your garden and grow your own produce. So, yeah, there's many reasons why now is a perfect time.

Farmer Fred:

 It reduces stress. It increases the amount of healthy food that is available to you. You don't have to go to a grocery store for a lot of things now. So, yeah, and this is the perfect time to get started on a garden, isn't it?

Diane Blazek:

Oh, it really is. Yeah, I know that there are some areas of the country that have already been able to start. I'm in zone five I'm in Chicago so a couple weeks ago I started some seeds in my basement and it'll be a little while before I can actually harvest but, I think Audrey Hepburn had this great quote about gardening is a way that you're looking for the future. And I'm probably messing up her quotes and I apologize to her. But, yeah, I think in this time we need to be looking forward with a positive eye.

Farmer Fred:

Getting back to the whole concept of Victory Garden 2.0, we should point out that there was a book back during World War II called The Victory Garden Manual. And the author of that book has something to do with the National Garden Bureau.

Diane Blazek:

He certainly does. And it's such an honor to bring all this back and talk about it again. So Mr. James H. Burdett, he had worked for a seed company as well as being a newspaper journalist. He had the idea for National Garden Bureau back in 1920. So he launched this nonprofit organization as a way to disseminate gardening information to other journalists. And that is still the model we're using today. But then because the Victory Gardens came about in World War II, and then they had a resurgence in World War II, this book was published in 1943. So, you know, he had to start working on this probably about the time of Pearl Harbor and then published it in 1943. And it was just such a good guide for anybody who wanted to start their own victory garden.

Farmer Fred:

 And that's the place to start, even here in the 21st century, with some of the tips he wrote about in the Victory Garden manual. And probably not the least of which is, know where you are. You've got to garden according to your zone. And as this guy on the radio here locally often says, all gardening is local.

Diane Blazek:

It really is. Yeah, that's a good tip. And just from being on social media and talking to people, A lot of them don't even realize you need to know your growing zone and what that means. So we put that first and foremost as the number one thing you need to know. Subsequently, it means you need to know your last frost date, which we put that further down the list. And probably they should be together, but I was just trying to do it in order, like step one, step two. So know your growing zone and know your last frost date are two top tips that we wanted to start with.

Farmer Fred:

 One of the more accurate growing zone maps for California does not use the USDA zones. What they use are called the Sunset zones, and that would be from the Sunset Western Garden Book. And even though the Sunset folks are falling on hard times like a lot of publishers are, the book is still available. And it is really a necessary reference for gardeners here to find out what you can grow in your specific area of California. In fact, if you look around, you can find the Sunset National Garden Book, which lists the zones throughout the entire country, almost like the Western Garden Book. So if you can find that book, that's also a nice book to have on your garden shelf. I guess, too, when it comes to planning your garden, and this is the time of the year to plan your garden and maybe plant it here in California, it would be next month for summer vegetables in your part of the area. It's probably Mother's Day in May.

Diane Blazek:

Right.

Farmer Fred:

Probably for a family that's sheltering in place, make a list of the items your family enjoys eating.

Diane Blazek:

 Exactly. I gave an example to somebody else earlier that I said, you know, if your family's not going to eat spinach, don't plant spinach. Plant something else where, you know, the space is at a premium. So you really need to grow what your family will eat. And you think also, OK, when all this produce comes ready and it's being harvested, what if you have too much? Do you have people you can share it with? Can you freeze it? Can you can it? So just take all these items into consideration when you're deciding what to plant and how many to plant.

Farmer Fred:

 Oh, boy, you sure touched on a sore point with me as far as people who grow gardens and then watch it go to waste. If you grew it, eat it. And the only way you can eat it when it's out of season is to preserve it. And I'm so glad that California's Cooperative Extension Program has Master Food Preserver programs throughout the entire state. And they're a great go-to resource locally here for finding more information about to preserve what you grow.

Diane Blazek:

 They are an excellent resource. I heard them speak last summer, and I was just amazed at how progressive California's extension group is. They're very active.

Farmer Fred:

 And then, of course, you got to decide, do you want to grow it from seed or do you want to grow it from transplants? And for beginning gardeners, I always suggest, well, let's start off with the bike with the training wheels and do it from transplants. But you have some ideas as far as, OK, what plants do you choose that would be easier to grow than others?

Diane Blazek:

 Right. And maybe if you're a new gardener, you haven't heard the term direct sow. and thinking about is looking at some charts. And, you know, it was not available back in 1943, but we have a lot of good online tools now that shows planting dates and days to harvest. You can always research, go online and Google the number of days to harvest for a beef steak tomato and see what kind of numbers you get. They will vary. And it depends if you're planting with heirlooms or hybrids, some will be shorter, some will be longer. But yeah, that's very important. And I totally agree with you. It's a lot easier to just go to your local garden retailer and get transplants. But then there's other things that you may want to direct sow. And they would be quick crops, something like radishes or lettuce or spinach, something like that. So there's a lot of good options.

Farmer Fred:

 There are. And fortunately, the nurseries here in California, the retail nurseries are still open for business because they, too, are in the food business. And that's why they get to be open. And we're glad about that. Yeah, definitely. I would suggest, too, that if you're starting a vegetable garden for the first time, choose hybrid varieties over heirloom varieties. I mean, you can pick one or two heirlooms, but for the most part, keep it at hybrids because they usually will be more prolific, more productive, and they're easier to have success with.

Diane Blazek:

 Right. Because of the fact that I run the All-America Selections, we do plant trialing. And yeah, a huge majority of our new introductions are hybrids. And I say that same thing. For new gardeners, if you want to have more of a guarantee of success, plant the things that are going to be easier, that are going to be disease resistant. You don't want to put all that work and money into it and then just have them succumb to disease or something.

Farmer Fred:

 And as we mentioned, this is the perfect time to plan your garden. And what are some tips for planning your garden space?

Diane Blazek:

The old traditional victory garden was typically done in a garden plot or, you know, a certain size space in your garden. Not everybody has that anymore. So you really need to take a look at what kind of space do you have? Where is it located? Please, please, please make sure that it gets enough sun. I know that way too many people think, oh, maybe there's a little bit of shade and I can plant it there, you're probably not going to be as successful. You can research. Yes, there are some things, maybe some leafy greens that'll grow a little bit of shade. But for the most part, you definitely need some sun. And then you just have to decide for yourself, are you going to tackle growing this in ground? Do you have some raised beds? Do you want to buy or make some raised beds? Or do you just simply want to, okay, I have a window box or I have this 16-inch container and I want to grow a little determinate tomato. Those are the things to take into consideration and go from there.

Farmer Fred:

I guess we should define those terms because a lot of people get confused about it. Full sun is generally, ideally more than eight hours a day of direct sun. It could be six to eight hours. Partial sun is four to six hours and anything less than four hours is usually considered full shade.

Diane Blazek:

 Right, right, yeah. So, and I agree with you. That terminology and which plants you can grow where, I'm glad you're adding in the California aspect because we try to think nationally, which is kind of hard because it is, like you say, it's local. So it's hard to put in all those little asterisks for different locations.

Farmer Fred:

Two of your top 10 tips, you can almost combine into one. And you talk about companion planting and you also say, don't forget to plan for pollinator friendly flowers. And I tell you, a lot of your vegetables when it comes to fighting off pests, if you've got pollinator-friendly flowers and perennials that attract beneficial insects, they can go a long way to reduce your use of pesticides.

Diane Blazek:

Oh, absolutely. So you're you're killing a couple birds with one stone there by planting the flowers. But the reason we talk about the pollinator, I mean, yeah, the pollinators need our help. We need their help. And I think a lot of people might have gone too far in one direction saying, well, I'm just going to do 100 percent vegetables, forgetting that they need pollinators to pollinate certain of their produce. Exactly.

Farmer Fred:

 Of course, soil is always an issue if you have poor soil. And some people think they have poor soil, but it really isn't. It just needs perhaps to be amended. And that's where composting comes in.

Diane Blazek:

 Exactly. And so great time now. You're at home and you're using some of the produce from the store and you need to get rid of the peels of the core, whatever the case might be. Start a compost pile. Super simple. You'll be so happy you will. Your garden will be better off.

Farmer Fred:

And for the kids that like to play with worms, vermicomposting is catching on here in California, having a worm bin and then using all those kitchen scraps to feed them. And then what what comes out of the worms is called worm castings, which is a great soil amendment. Yeah.

Diane Blazek:

And there's a lot of great resources on how to build your own worm bins. I love that concept. If I had little ones, I would be all over that.

Farmer Fred:

 Anything else you want to mention here?

Diane Blazek:

Our website, ngb.org, tons of information, a lot of additional links on our Victory Garden 2.0 blog. So spend more time in your garden than on your website, but the website will definitely give you plenty of resources to be successful.

Farmer Fred:

Check local resources with the University of California Cooperative Extension. That would be the Master Gardener Program in your area and the Master Food Preserver Program. And you, too, can have a Victory Garden 2.0 to get us through this mess. Diane Blazek. She's the executive director of both the All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau. Diane, thanks for a few minutes of your time.

Diane Blazek:

 Thank you very much and happy gardening.

GROWING RASPBERRIES, BOYSENBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES

Farmer Fred

One of the sweetest backyard garden treats to grow? Caneberries - including Raspberries, Blackberries and Boysenberries. In Episode 182, which aired back in April of 2022, Master Gardener Pam Bone took us step by step in how to successfully grow these berries. This, too, was one of the most listened to segments in the entire history of the Garden Basics podcast. Want to be a successful berry grower? Give a listen:

Farmer Fred    

We're at the house of Master Gardener Pam Bone here in Sacramento County. And she loves raspberries and you ought to see her raspberry garden. So today we're going to talk some raspberry basics. And Pam, this is a rather phenomenal stretch of raspberries you have here it looks to be about 25 feet long and about eight feet deep. But what I like is that you have incorporated rows between the raspberries so that you never have to reach more than two and a half feet to pick the berries. So that was smart thinking, putting the rows that you can walk on to be able to reach all the berries.

Pam Bone   

That is really critical. Actually, it's really difficult. Otherwise, you don't get into the middle to harvest; it's hard for pruning. Later on, it's hard for pest control, it's really important. So what we did is we have some raised beds, they originally were two by sixes, they've sort of disintegrated over the years, but the soil has built up and then between those raised beds, then we put down a lot of mulch. And over the years, it's raised up as well. And so what we have is pathways throughout the whole area. And you can get you can reach and pick and harvest. And it's really easy to get to it. And it makes it a lot easier than a big solid block. And that is really important.

Farmer Fred  

How adaptable are raspberries to the United States? Are there zone limitations?

Pam Bone 

Well, some people would tell you that they can't grow raspberries in Sacramento that they have a really horrible time. We've been growing raspberries here at our house for practically the whole time we've lived here, which is nearly 42 years and there are certain varieties for certain locations. So you have to know what will do well here. You also have to know the location they require, how much sun can they take. You have to have sun in order to produce the berry itself. But here in our area, we have been planting Heritage and Oregon 1030. And those are varieties that are adapted to the heat. And the Heritage variety is still available everywhere. My daughter grows Heritage in Washington in Pullman, Washington. So these are what we call the fall bearers or everbearers. And they are a little bit different variety than the kind that you put up on a trellis and all. Actually they're much easier to prune, just go to your local Cooperative Extension or your nursery and find out what varieties are adapted to your area and what are their growth habits. And do you want that kind of growth habit? How much work are you willing to do with training them and pruning them and everything? So we've adapted very well here and produce huge crops of berries.

Farmer Fred  

If you look at the picture that's with today's episode of Pam's raspberry bed you you see a lot of T posts sticking up with a lot of wires. And judging by the heights of the wires, it looks like these raspberries get maybe six feet tall?

Pam Bone   

Oh yes, definitely they will grow at least that far. And and then in fact sort of hanging over. So I'd say they might even be seven feet tall. They grow beautifully in our area in the location that we have and very vigorously and we found that this system maintains them without having to do a huge trellis system because what these are, they are pruned down not to the ground but to basically brown sticks in the winter months. And then the new spring growth comes up and then they keep growing and then New growth comes up from the base to produce a fall crop. What we found is that it's almost like creating a little playpen for them. All you really need are wires that go around, just to hold the berries inside, so that they'll be remain upright. So all we do here is you just move the berries as they grow into the wires. And then they're just held inside. And so we've got a center wire here just so they won't flop. And it's a really ideal system. We found it works really, really well for this type of everbearer or fall bearer raspberry.

Farmer Fred  

What's the spacing on these plants?

Pam Bone  

Well, what were what was the spacing on the plants originally?

Farmer Fred  

And what is it now?

Pam Bone  

We harvest a lot of plants that come up in between the rows, and we have another little nursery area, that's too much shade for very much  production. So we then harvest and and we replace plants that die out. And I would say they're probably about maybe a foot apart, or so they probably started out back in the day about two feet apart. But no, this  is a block system, it's okay for them to be a little bit crowded. But you can see there's some areas that are a little bit more open and other areas that it's a little bit more compact and that so I don't think you can really mess up with this system at all. And they can be fairly close together. Remember, raspberries send up nice little new plants all over the place. And so if you space them far apart, they're going to fill in on their own anyhow, so you don't have to crowd them when you first start.

Farmer Fred  

This is being irrigated by a drip irrigation system, you have lines and quarter inch tubing, it looks like the emitters are spaced eight or 12 inches apart. And the lines themselves are maybe a foot apart each to ensure equal soaking of the soil. Are raspberries a thirsty plant?

Pam Bone 

They are, they do need even watering, regular watering. And we did find out kind of the hard way we've always used a drip irrigation system. But back in the old day before they had pressure compensating in line emitters, we had this laser tubing, and it just really produced a lot of water and we want it to be more efficient. And so even though it was on a drip system, we wanted to change to these new lines. And we found out we've got to put a lot more of these in here because these plants are thirstier than we thought and that laser tubing was putting out a lot more water. Luckily, it puts it out very efficiently. But yes, I would say we do water these once a week. And when we do, they may have to run for four to six hours at a time. Depending on the heat and how hot it gets in the summertime, here or what kind of a hot spell we're having or whatever, we may then turn it on twice a week, and just not run it quite as long. So I adjust it. but right now it's set for once a week and I believe it's on for four hours. 

Farmer Fred   

Alright, it's springtime when we're recording this. So those  would be spring hours of irrigation.

Pam Bone  

Right. And we increase it. What we want to do is increase the amount of water that is put on at any one time so we're not doing any shallow irrigation. These roots are not extremely deep at all. Not like a fruit tree or anything. But you do want to wet the soil down at least a foot to 18 inches and keep it moist; and we mulch. Everything is mulch, mulch, mulch and a lot of compost over the top as the top dressing to save water, to keep the water into the soil. Try to be as energy and water efficient as we possibly can. But berries I will say just like any fruit crop in your landscape, if you really have to save water because you're in a drought or whatever, then get rid of your lawn because you can't get rid of your fruit trees. And unfortunately, fruit trees, berries and other things like that take just about as much water as a lawn if not more, but look at what you're getting out of it.

Farmer Fred 

You can eat the berries, it's kind of hard to eat grass.

Pam Bone  

That's exactly right. So we just keep reducing the lawn, if we feel like we need to save water.

Farmer Fred 

With all the compost and mulch you're using, what sort of fertilizer regimen do you need for raspberries? 

Pam Bone  

Actually, we don't have to do much of anything. But once a year in the spring, we do topdress with usually something with higher nitrogen, just like all fruit of all sorts and we grow a lot of fruits in our landscape. They need nitrogen to grow and to produce fruit. People think oh, you need phosphorus and potassium. But  we've done a lot of soil testing in our area. And I worked for the Cooperative Extension for many years and saw a lot of soil tests come by. And for the most part, we don't see a lot of phosphorus and potassium deficiencies in our woody plants and are fruit trees. Are berries, they might need a little bit more because they don't have as extensive as a root system. So what I usually generally do is just buy something that is an all purpose, higher in nitrogen fertilizer, as long as it doesn't have any kind of a weed killer in it. lawn fertilizer works just just as well.

Farmer Fred   

Yeah, exactly. There are a lot of good like starter lawn fertilizers that take their time to break down and can feed the plants for a much longer period of time. And actually, lawn fertilizers are fairly good choice for a lot of massive plantings like raspberries here. And also, there's like you say, as long as you avoid the weed and feed products, and just stick with the feed products, you're okay.

Pam Bone   

That's true. And actually, this year, we did put on a lawn fertilizer, we went out and purchased, we needed some more for the lawn itself. And so I thought, well, let me look for one that is high in nitrogen, but has a little phosphorus and potassium and little NPK in there. And that will be good for the berry plants. We also, in addition grow boysenberries as well. And so I needed something that we could do for those as well. And then we can just use the same old thing on our citrus and our apple tree and everything else. One fertilizer makes it a lot easier.

Farmer Fred   

Raspberries, Harvest time is when? And how do you harvest them? And how long can you store them?

Pam Bone  

Well, the berries, this particular variety, remember,  these are the two-crop variety, and a lot of people may grow raspberries that only produce a spring crop. This one also produces the fall crop, Heritage. Heritage is the one that you can find in the nurseries now. And it's it's pretty much everywhere. I think they sell it all over the United States, that particular variety. Then we'll start bearing a crop in late May, early June. And we'll get a pretty good crop then. In fact, actually, it might even be mid-May this year, it looks like some of the flowers are getting pretty well developed already at the ends. Now this is a flower-fruiting cycle, where these are the old canes from last year that were cut down. And then the new growth that you see here is all from last year, as soon as these bear here in about another month or month and a half or so, then they are going to die back and then all the new canes arising from below that are going to come up. They're going to produce then a fall crop. And I will say that it's kind of unpredictable, but most of the time are, quote fall crop and I should say fall with quotes around it because really the crop starts in August. And it'll go till Thanksgiving easily in our area unless we get a really cold snap.

Farmer Fred  

So when that stem has produced berries, that stem should be removed?

Pam Bone   

We usually wait until it starts to look like it's not productive at all. And then we  cut it out. And the reason is, we used to just leave them but we found out that we had that mite problem when we had a little bit of drought stress. And we found that if it's too crowded, you don't get the air circulation, the leaves get dusty and dry. And mites love that. And we just found that it was easier just to remove it, open it up and get rid of it. And then it left a lot of opportunity for the rest of the canes to come up and grow. And then  those come up, then they fruit and we get a great crop. I say the heaviest crop is mid August to the end of September, a great crop. And I put up a lot of jam. So my husband has to pick, he does all the picking. I do all the putting up. My husband calls himself the gardener. I'm the horticulturist, we used to work together on a lot of this stuff. But now he's got me in the kitchen, you know, putting all this stuff up, he then will harvest about every five days. Because if you don't, two things will happen, the fruit will get soft and mushy, and then they will stop producing. But the soft and mushy attracts a fruit fly that goes to our cherry trees, as well, here, and we haven't had a real problem the last few years if you're really careful with keeping it up. But sometimes if you let that particular fruit fly go wild here, it will infest the fruit with unknown little white maggots until you're making your jam and all of a sudden there they are. Especially the fall crops. So you have to be really careful and really religious about getting rid of any fruit that's too soft or decayed or whatever.

Farmer Fred  

Picking the raspberries. Can you pluck them or do you have to cut them?

Pam Bone  

These you just pull right off. They pull off very easily and are not a problem at all. And in fact when we get down to the boysenberries, it's the same thing, you can just pull them right right off. You don't have to cut anything. They're very easy to pick. They're a little bit thorny,  a little bit of prickles on them, but not too bad.

Farmer Fred    

What does Mike the gardener use to a store the raspberries as he's picking them? Does he have a big bag? Or is he just carrying a bucket?

Pam Bone 

 I like them to be in a colander, and so I have a lot of large metal colandars and some plastic colenders. That way, there's more broad surface area, he brings them into the house then. And I kind of make sure that they are well distributed because I put them in the refrigerator. And actually raspberries have a very, very long refrigerator life, they can easily stay in a refrigerator and without having to put them up or do anything with them for five to seven days, and not see any decay or anything as long as you've picked them without already having a problem with a soft fruit. I try to get to them though and put them up if I can within about two to three days. But if something happens, and I get a little behind, it's really producing heavily, I can leave some of them in there, it works out really well. 

Farmer Fred   

Anything else you want to mention about raspberries?

Pam Bone  

Well, I think raspberries are pretty easy to grow. And they're easy to prune and take care of. They produce a beautiful crop and make fabulous jam, you just have to be careful to attention for making sure you mulch, making sure that they don't ever  suffer any kind of a drought. Keep them irrigated evenly without too much water, they are sensitive to root rot. Our soil is a heavy clay soil. And we do have a type of Phytophthora in our soil that does infect our raspberries occasionally.  I've had it actually identified at a state lab to make sure. So what we do is we just make sure that we pull those out occasionally and then I really watch the irrigation, to make sure that we're not keeping it too wet or whatever. But we're still going to get a little bit of it because it's in our soil, and you've got a heavy clay soil and even just normal spring or winter rains or whatever keeps the soil wet. And as soon as that fungus gets active, then you have to be careful not to keep it too wet. And so it's kind of walking a little bit of a fine line there with the irrigation but otherwise they're pretty carefree. Once a year fertilization is it. And the pruning doesn't take much time and I highly recommend raspberries, they're, they're fabulous, and they taste really good.

Farmer Fred    

Well, let's walk over to the other berries and see what's growing. 

Farmer Fred    

We are at Pam Bone's house here in Sacramento County. Pam Bone, famous Sacramento County Master Gardener, the original Sacramento County Master Gardener, by the way. And we are at her home where they have developed a yard for over 40 years and Pam loves berries. Pam, it's almost like Knott's Berry Farm here. You've got boysenberries here.

Pam Bone   

Yes, I come from Washington State, my husband comes from Oregon State and you have to grow berries, raspberries, boysenberries, whatever. Boysenberries are just ideal for making pies and I make a lot of pies. They make a wonderful jam. And of course, they're delicious for fresh eating as well. And they love our Sacramento climate.

Farmer Fred   

Ah, so does that mean that in a state like Washington, they wouldn't do well?

Pam Bone    

No, they do great there too. They love it there, they do just as fine. You just have to decide, do you have the sun for them, they just like full sun. And they do really well, in that they are very adaptable actually.

Farmer Fred    

Describe the trellis that you've designed for them. 

Pam Bone  

Years ago, we had a massive system with the big wooden cross bars on it, and the ones that you see commercially. It's a pretty daunting thing, too. And it takes a lot of time and energy to install, and it's expensive. And one day, we had a massive tree fall and literally destroy our entire berry patch here, including the cross bars. And so we decided, you know what, we're gonna do this a little easier. And we're going to use these T-bars, these metal T-bars with wires. And it works just beautifully. It holds them nicely, we've got a T-bar spaced out so that you've got not too much tension on the wire or, you know, too much stress on the wires here. And then we've got the three wire system so that the berries can be trained in three different locations and tied on with little twisty ties. And then we use kind of a barrel method, sort of where you, you come up from the base of the plant, and then you go on to one of the wires and train the branches, sometimes as a barrel loop if you've got a long enough cane, and they loop around, gives a little more maximum sun exposure for the plant. But yeah, these T-bars just work really, really well. They stay in the soil nicely. And then you can see there, they turn in just a little on the edges just because some of the tensions late in the season. But you can twist the wire a little bit tighter and and it works great. And it's inexpensive, easy to do and not so daunting.

Farmer Fred  

For those of you technically minded, the T-bars are spaced about eight to 10 feet apart. And there's a three wire system on here that looks like it begins about 18 inches above the ground. And the next two wires are also spaced by another 18 inches. And so the total height of this is maybe four and a half to five feet.

Pam Bone  

Yes, and then some of the berries later in the season, then they'll stick up a little bit further and there are a lot over just a bit. But otherwise this contains them pretty nicely actually, you can see that we do have some canes that are growing past the wires. But for the most part, it works well for us. If you've got a really really vigorous canes growing, then you might want to make a little bit taller.

Farmer Fred  

And a little bit more support on the ends as well.

Pam Bone   

Exactly, That's true, too. If they get really heavy and laden down, then the wires then sag. And we get a little bit of that, but gosh, it's a really inexpensive easy way to do it and if for some reason you had to move it or adjust things or whatever, it's easy to do this whole thing with the big wooden cross bars and people putting them in concrete and whatever else they do it's it's like digging for a fence. A permanent structure may not be what you need to have.

Farmer Fred   

How do you care for boysenberries? What are the watering requirements, the fertilization and the pruning requirements?

Pam Bone    

Well, as far as watering goes, they need regular irrigation, at least once a week irrigation. We have a drip irrigation system, using the inline emitters in rows down the berries themselves. We have three lines on each of the rows. So we encompass most of the root system. And then we want to make sure that we run that drip irrigation as long as water is flowing down into the root system, we want it to go down in as far as we can, which is going to be at least 18 inches. 12 to 18 inches is where most of those roots are contained. So you want to make sure that you run the irrigation long enough. I will say that I find that most people do not run their drip irrigation long enough, and they just dribble out a little bit of water. Then  you get a very shallow root system and what happens if you have a dry spell? You forget to water, something happens or whatever, then the plants are really suffering. So watering is really critical. The other thing that we do is we put on a lot of wood chips. We get a lot of arborist wood chips that are delivered to us and put that on and then we always top dress with compost. We have a lot of compost piles. We have a lot of oak trees and other trees that produce leaves and plus of course I save all my kitchen scraps  and that compost, then, makes a wonderful top dressing. It doesn't completely eliminate fertilization. But it helps to give you a little bit of nutrition as well as keeping the soil moist and cool and helping to mitigate soil fluctuations in temperatures and then it's going to help with your watering as well. So fertilizing then, about once a year, already did it just a few weeks ago, just as the growth is starting up in usually early March, then we go in with an all purpose fertilizer or in our case, this year, and in years past, we often just get a an all purpose lawn fertilizer, high in nitrogen, which these berries need, but it still gives you a little bit of phosphorus and potassium. But nitrogen is necessary. People don't realize that you got to have the growth in order to produce flowers and fruits and the fact that we're putting on a lot of mulch and a lot of compost on top and that the soil in our area isn't real deficient and phosphorus and potassium, you don't need very much of it, you're going to get it from your mulch, and your compost, a little bit anyhow. So the nitrogen is the one thing that is transitory. You put it on and it flows right out when you water. You got to be careful not to overwater, you'll lose your nitrogen. So nitrogen is real important that it be put on annually for all fruits, whether they're bushes, or vines or fruit trees.

Farmer Fred  

It's always a good idea to have your soil tested before you do any planting, so you know exactly what your soil needs. There are a couple of inexpensive University related soil testing sites that will be glad to take your $20 and send you back a soil test report. One is the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the other is Colorado State University. If you do an internet search for either of those universities and put in the words "soil test", you'll get the details on how to go about that. And they're fairly complete soil tests, too. So that is a inexpensive option. Of course, you can always soil test for macronutrients and pH yourself. You can find those kits at any garden center or nursery. But yeah, know your soil before you plant anything. Are the boysenberries like raspberries, in that once a branch produces, it's done?

Pam Bone    

Yes. And in fact, in this case, because our raspberries I was saying earlier, are fall bearers or everbearers people call them that because they produce two crops. This produces one crop, we get a crop in June, and then that's it. And then those berries, as soon as they start to really dry back and look kind of crispy, you just remove them, then the new canes are all coming up from the base of the plant. And we let them just sprawl on the ground while the others are dying back, then we take them out and at some point, put the new ones up onto the trellis.

Farmer Fred  

Alright, boysenberries, and what do you do with them? When do you harvest them?

Pam Bone   

Harvesting is in June in our area. Basically, they're pretty much finished by the Fourth of July, we can usually count on the last crop just about them. And they will start producing about the first week of June. And you can just you just come out and pick them. you pick them with your fingers. You don't have to use any kind of pruning equipment or anything like that. You just pluck them off and they store very nicely in a colander in the refrigerator and I make a lot of pies and jam with them and we eat them fresh and just love them. They're great. boysenberries are one of the most versatile berries and do well in a variety of climates. They actually will tolerate the sun even better than raspberries in full sun, they don't do well in the shade. They'll produce a lot of vine, but who wants that? And then you do have to do one thing with boysenberries. Like any Blackberry, because they're a type of Blackberry,  they will send up errant blackberries and you can get the Blackberry mess if you're not careful when the patch gets overgrown. So just go out there and make sure you tidy up the rows occasionally and dig out those ones. Otherwise, we don't find them becoming the jungle at all, unless you're just not keeping up with it. 

Farmer Fred  

Are there boysenberry varieties?

Pam Bone    

Boysenberry is a variety of blackberry. So there are nectar berries, which some people say boysenberries and nectarberries are the same. There are loganberries, there are a lot of berries. These are all types of berries that were developed from a Blackberry and then there are lots of just blackberries that are not crosses but have been also genetically grown to produce different varieties of blackberries so you can just get an ordinary Blackberry. These are a larger berry a little bit softer berry I like them because I think they're better for pies. We did grow regular blackberries, as well, but found they weren't to my satisfaction for baking with them and making jam, so we took them out and put in more boysenberries.

Farmer Fred 

How daunting are the thorns on these?

Pam Bone 

You know, back in the day when we first put these in, the thornless berries didn't produce very well, they were not very good varieties. Now I understand from a lot of growers and from the Master Gardeners that grow these at our Fair Oaks Horticulture Center that a lot of the thornless varieties are excellent now and do produce well. So we put in 40 varieties and they're not that bad. I will say when we're tying them up, often times, you have to put tape or something on your fingers to prevent yourself from just getting little prickles into your fingers. But they're not that bad. And they just produce so well.

Farmer Fred  

It is a little hard to be tying branches up to wires when you're wearing thick goatskin gloves.

Pam Bone 

You can't do that. That's the problem. Actually what works pretty well now  is just the little thin latex gloves you use for just cleaning up around the house and that they actually work pretty well for being able to tie with those. And then you can replace them and they're cheap. 

Farmer Fred   

There you go. That's a good quick tip. We are in the boysenberry patch at Pam Bone's house. It's It looks to be berry delicious, he said punnily. Thank you, Pam.

Pam Bone  

Thank you very much Fred. I enjoy sharing my crop with you.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER

Farmer Fred

Gardeners are saying very nice things about the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter:

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And thank you for your support and encouragement to keep the good gardening conversation going. 

CONTAINER GARDENING BASICS

Farmer Fred

Even if you don’t have a big backyard, you can successfully grow a lot of edible crops in containers, on a sunny patio. No wonder this topic got a lot of listens! But there are tricks to doing it right. From Episode 256 in March of 2023, here’s a primer on container gardening basics:

Farmer Fred   

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

Pam Farley

Thank you. It certainly is. 

Farmer Fred 

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

Pam Farley   

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

Farmer Fred   

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

Pam Farley   

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred 

That's nice.  

Pam Farley

It was very sturdy and very expensive.

Farmer Fred    

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

Cool. Yep. Well, that'll be me. 

Farmer Fred   

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

Farmer Fred 

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley  

That can be a problem.

Farmer Fred  

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

Yes and wear eye protection. 

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

Exactly yes

Farmer Fred  

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

You don't know. And that's okay. I still don't know how to replace zippers, either. But that's all right. That's why God made Velcro. That's why we have friends that know how to do these things. 

Farmer Fred  

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

Pam Farley

Right. And that would be boring. 

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley  

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

You do write about fruit trees, as well. 

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred   

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred    

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

Pam Farley

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

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley   

Well, I do have a special thank you gift for everybody who has ordered the book after hearing about it on your show. And if they go to brownthumbmama.com/shop, they can enter in their proof of purchase and get a free bonus chapter that's not printed in the book, about making compost. 

Farmer Fred

Okay, so if you buy the book, you go to brown thumb mama.com, which is Pam Farley's website, a very successful website I might add, go to brownthumbmama.com/shop and find yourself a way to get a free unpublished chapter. 

Pam Farley

Absolutely. Just need your email address and your order number from whatever place you ordered it from. And then it will come to your email.

Farmer Fred

It’s available wherever you get your books. Oh, by the way, is it a Kindle book as well? 

Pam Farley

Yes. 

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

Absolutely. 

Farmer Fred

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

Pam Farley

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

SHADE TREE BASICS

Farmer Fred

Who doesn’t love a good shade tree in their yard? But how do you plant and care for a shade tree, an investment that can add thousands of dollars of value to your yard? Apparently, enough gardeners thought so, to make our March 2024 interview with consulting arborist Gordon Mann the absolute most listened-to segment in the history of the Garden Basics podcast.

Farmer Fred

Do you have trees on your property? Well, trees are usually the largest and longest lived natural features on your property. Plus, they're worth a lot of money when you go to sell your home. So it pays to take care of the trees on your property. But do you know how? Well if you don't know how, that might be the time to call in a consulting arborist, especially if you think that there's going to be problems. if you see the tree leaning, or maybe branches are starting to break? Or there is some unusual shedding of bark or something like that? You want to call in a consulting arborist. Well, what is a consulting arborist? Let's check in with Gordon Mann, he happens to be a consulting arborist and he has a company called Mannmade Resources, serving Northern California for residences, businesses, and agencies. He’s been doing it for more than three decades, and he wants your trees to succeed. But the only way those trees can succeed is if you do the right thing, and treat them right. And as I've been saying on this program for how many years now, it's all about the soil. And that's so true when it comes with trees, as well. Gordon, a pleasure talking with you. And I hope we can shed some light for people to help them take better care of their trees.

Gordon Mann    

Fred, I appreciate the opportunity to share some information with you. And actually I've been doing this for about 45 years. And seven years ago, Mann Made Resources shifted our consulting to California Tree and Landscape Consulting, Cal TLC. And that's where the consulting comes from. They also, in July, started the Institute for Soil Genomics, for very healthy community forests. And the idea is to help people learn how to get our soils back to their natural form.

Farmer Fred 

And I bet right now people are wondering, well, wait a minute, what is a consulting arborist? So why don't you explain the difference between a regular arborist and a consulting arborist?

Gordon Mann 

The consulting arborist should be someone with enough experience to come out and make an inspection on the property of the trees and figure out what any of the issues are that are impacting the tree health or the tree condition. Usually the consulting arborist is not part of a tree care company. Because most tree care company salespeople show up to your property to sell tree work. There are several of them that will give some consulting out. But their job is to sell tree care, otherwise, the company goes out of business. Nobody could just keep giving free information and stay in business for their careers. So we do charge for independent, unbiased inspections of the trees, and offer the most scientific ways to help the trees grow and stay healthy. Or, if the trees have some issues, how to treat the issues, instead of just saying the trees have to be trimmed or have to be removed. We give options and mitigation options for any issues on the property. 

Farmer Fred   

And just like you would visit a doctor regularly or a dentist regularly, if you have trees on your property, and especially if they're full grown trees that could be worth thousands of dollars when the time comes to sell your property, you might want to call in a consulting arborist every few years to just do a general survey of your urban forest.

Gordon Mann 

I agree with you. And I'm not just trying to sell our work. Any asset that we have requires some kind of preventative maintenance or regular maintenance. We think about all the things in our homes and our cars, and we do things to take care of them. No one drives their car until the engine seizes because they never changed the oil. And trees, being a very valuable asset to our property and part of the community canopy, are very important and do need to be inspected occasionally. We help the property owners learn how to manage their trees structure and health in appropriate manner. 

Farmer Fred  

And to find a consulting arborist new near you, there are a couple of good resources out there that can help you pinpoint somebody locally who can help you out. I know there's the International Society of Arboriculture, with their website, treesaregood.com . That’s where you can find a list of arborists and consulting arborists. But also there's one specifically for finding a consulting arborist, the American Society of Consulting Arborists ( https://www.asca-consultants.org ).

Gordon Mann  

Both those have arborists that are either certified or with ASCA registered. Consulting arborists can help you inspect the site and give you the information you need to take better care of your trees. And hopefully the person that comes out is talking to you about growing better trees and keeping the trees healthy. And helping you understand what we can do to avoid unplanned failures as much as possible. None of us are able to look completely below the ground. But we can look at differences in the site conditions, the tree trunks and sometimes the roots. What we normally do is we make as much assessment as we can from what we can visually see from the ground. And then, if we come up with some things that we need more information on, there's called advanced assessments, where people might go up in the air and climb the tree to do a aerial inspection and look at what's up in the branches close up or actually excavate the soil. So those of us without X-ray vision can actually see the roots. Also, we have things we can do like tomography or resistance drilling and find out what level of decay is in trunks that might have no apparent openings that we can see inside but sound hollow and we use a mallet to check the quality of the wood.

Farmer Fred  

The American Society of Consulting Arborists, their website is asca-consultants.org . And we will have a link to both the American Society of Consulting Arborists and the International Society of Arboriculture in today's show notes as well, I know you've been going around giving presentations on tree health. And I'm amazed at the resiliency of trees. Even though, to the naked eye, they might appear to be healthy, they could be stressed, because they were started poorly and not the least of which is when they may have been planted, when the housing development you live in was finally landscaped. Usually, landscape goes in as the very last thing, after all the construction work. And that initial landscape is being installed on compacted soil and maybe very little topsoil just because of the construction process.

Gordon Mann   

Yes, Fred. It's really sad how when we look at the difference in how trees have grown in our communities from 50 years ago to current times, they used to build individual houses, they didn't scrape the entire site of all the topsoil off and compact it so they can build the houses so they don't settle. And then they come in with four inches of topsoil and try and get the trees to grow. I hope some of your listeners have actually had the opportunity to walk into wildland areas, or forests. We have so many national forests in our area, and county forests and things like that, where we can actually see how trees grow naturally. And hopefully they walk across a duff layer. that is a tree's natural fertilizer, a natural way to restore the soils with the elements that it needs to function properly. So soils and soil genomics are very much like the human gut. There's so much more information now about the biomes and things going on in the human gut that help our bodies care for themselves. The soils are the exact same way. And there's so many fungi and bacteria in the soil that helped promote earthworms and other things that are happening in the soil that sometimes you need a microscope to look at. And when we scrape the organic matter off the top of the soil and we compact it, then it eliminates a lot of how those organisms can grow. It changes the soil porosity and permeability, it changes the soil aeration. And most people just think that tree roots need water. But roots need both air and water, because they're living cells, and cells need oxygen. And most of the microbiomes in the soil are not anaerobic. So they also need oxygen and air. At the institute we do actual soil tests, not the normal one that goes through the local cooperative extension agencies that some of the soil testing that is done that just talks about the elements in fertilizer, the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and pH. But we actually look at up to 120,000, microorganisms, both bacteria and fungi, and what's missing, and it looks at what nutrients that are actually tied up in the soil and unavailable to the plant. Because the bacteria and fungi that help the roots that are extracted from the soil are damaged or missing. And the other thing humans do really well (unfortunately) is we clean our soil. We rake in the fall, removing the organic matter and all the leaves, taking any loose organic material off the soil. And those layers of leaves and organic matter does two things. It protects the soil from the sun. So otherwise it's soil that's kind of like a brick. So anytime you get water, it usually runs off until the soil gets so saturated that finally does soak in a little bit. Or it does just run off and it never goes deep into the soil. And because the soil is baked, the organic matter and the fungi and bacteria that are in the shallow areas of the soil that normally replenish the soil are actually either killed or lost. And we have very poor quality soils.

Farmer Fred   

Earlier on, you mentioned the word, “duff”. And some people are probably thinking, why is he talking about a fictional beer from “The Simpsons?” Duff is another word for mulch, and it's the fallen leaves and the small branches that basically carpet a forest floor. That is their mulch, it's an actual mulch, just like we're always talking about the benefits of mulching your garden because it moderates soil temperature, it moderates soil moisture loss. It helps aerate the soil; as it breaks down, it builds up the microbiology in the soil. And also, when you get a heavy rainstorm, that layer of mulch can also help break up the impact of the water on the soil. Because on bare soil when it rains really hard, it actually compacts the soil more, removing the air. So that duff layer - that mulch layer - helps that water more slowly trickle into the soil. So the water penetrates deeper, too. Besides, don't rake your forest. Maybe reconsider those leaves that are falling from your trees every fall. I've gotten into the habit of collecting the neighborhood oak leaves and grinding them up with either my mulching mower or my string trimmer and spreading the chopped leaves around my garden to help improve the soil during the winter. I’ll do that if I'm not planting a cover crop.

Gordon Mann  

Yeah, Fred, you've got such a great method, the least expensive way to care for your soils. Most tree care companies, when they grind up the chips, we can still get them to drop them off at our house for almost for free, without having to haul them away to the dump. And wood chips around trees are the best. And the natural organic matter of whether it's a crop, a plant, or a bush or a tree is what those plants are used to growing in normal nature. And as humans, we think we're doing the right thing by pulling them out. And we have this great behavior as humans of treating everything like they're human. We do all these similes and things of how nature would act as a human is probably a better way to put that, and it's not correct. And there's also some new mulch products out there that people can use such as nut husks, and hazelnuts and maybe butternut. We don't want to use walnuts because they have some allelopathy to them which can be a little bit aggressive to other competing plants. But the other mulches are creating a nice mulch layer that we can put over the soil and actually do the breakdown of organic matter like you're talking about. And unfortunately when we add mulch, it's not a one time and you’re done. We have to add mulch again after it breaks down. But that's what helps keep the soil in a well functioning condition.

Farmer Fred    

You've been going around doing demonstrations and talks about  Healthy Soil for Healthy Trees. And you talk about the basic building blocks for cultivating a healthy tree life. What's in that soil for a healthy tree? Water, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese zinc, copper, boron, Molybdenum.

Gordon Mann   

Yeah, there's excellent polysaccharides, ESPs, and more.

Farmer Fred 

But what's interesting is all of those soil elements can be accomplished with adding organic matter. Directly.

Gordon Mann  

Humans are so used to taking two tablets and call me in the morning and give me a pill to take care of what I'm doing that we think that by fertilizing our trees, we're helping with the exact same thing.

Farmer Fred  

Now we're not talking fruit trees here. We're talking ornamental trees. 

Gordon Mann   

Ornamental trees, right. Okay. And  even fruit trees, there's some fertilizers that are specific towards improving the fruit production. And that's different than just trying to throw extra nitrogen and stuff in the soil to get it to grow faster.

Farmer Fred    

And we have talked about nitrogen on this program about how it does spur new weak growth that's very attractive to insect activity and not necessarily good insects either. And the same is true, if you start adding fertilizer to a tree that doesn't need fertilizer. iI it's got that layer of leaves on the ground, that's enough to feed that tree, isn't it?  

Gordon Mann    

It usually is. And again, because we start with soil that was not natural, and then we're changing it, that some of the things in the soil are not there. And trees typically only need two things, water and organic matter. The organic matter will break down and improve the soils and help the roots do their job and help them break down what's in the soil, and free up the elements that they need to grow. And by creating enough organic matter, which builds up the bacteria and the fungi in the soil, and the biodiversity helps the trees be more healthy. But typically, the humans think we want something to turn around overnight. And so we don't give the soil the chance to do the long term development that it needs. That's going to eliminate the need to do all these shots of nutrients that we get from fertilizers. 

Farmer Fred  

Let's talk about your travels throughout Northern California and assessing, especially, backyard trees and residential trees. What are most of the problems you're seeing associated with those trees?

Gordon Mann  

it was probably what we saw that was a result of the drought. The wonderful (not really) way the state of California manages its water, instead of trying to help people be educated and they say, “we all have to use less water”. And we all have to do these things properly and deep watering our trees and not so much throwing the shallow water on the turf, and not relying on how much rain we get each year to how we are going to behave. Unfortunately, that's what the state does. And so when people tell you, you have to stop watering their grass, they also stopped watering their trees. One of the things we designed was what we called stealth tree watering, where we have people dig a 12 inch wide excavation of their lawn and put a soaker hose in that spiral excavation, covering it with mulch, and then very slowly turning on the water so it bleeds out very slowly and drips into the ground and actually does go into the soil without greening up the grass next to it. The mulch helps cover it, so no one can see it, and they can keep their trees alive. Because as soon as people cut off the water to their lawns, they're cutting off the water to their trees as well. And unfortunately, most of the trees have learned to rely on that water from the turf watering. 

Farmer Fred  

And that tree may not even be in the turf and may be adjacent to it. But a tree's roots can travel a long way. And they'll go a long way to find water.

Gordon Mann  

Correct. And one of the problems we have with most of our nursery stock is that they're grown in containers. And more people are trying to use air pruning to stop the roots from circling. But as soon as we pull a tree out of a container, we can see all the roots that have circled. And if we're fortunate, and the people growing it every time they moved it from a smaller container to the next larger one, they actually did root pruning to get rid of the circling roots. The only roots we have to deal with at planting are that last layer of circling roots where we have to either prune them or something because they don't just go. “I’m free!, I'm out of the container!”. They stay right where they're at, even after we pull them out. And the people that just stick it in the ground like a wine cork, the tree roots are  going to continue to grow in a circle. And the first thing I do when I visit people's property with young trees is I give the tree a little shake. I grab it anywhere from 12 to 30 inches above the ground and wiggle it. And if I can see the container-sized soil moving in the ground, the tree is not rooting well. And the choices we have then are: we can root prune it right then, if it's been really recent, we could pull it out and transplant it. Or we could try transplanting it if it’s been in the ground for a while as well as root pruning it and replanting it with a much more healthy structural root system.

Farmer Fred   

We’ll have link in the show notes today about the correct way to plant a tree. And you have to pay attention to the hole, I think the The old saying is dig a $10 hole for a $5 tree or something along those lines. But basically, that hole should be wide, not necessarily deep, but wide. And when you plant that tree, too, maybe if those roots are going round and round in that root ball, is to score the root ball with a sharp object on four sides and maybe across the bottom, and try to spread the roots out so that they will go out and help fill in that space that you just dug out like a six foot diameter, maybe 10-12 inches deep, it depends on the size of the container that you're planting. And by the way, don't plant your trees in containers. Take them out of the container first.

Gordon Mann  

Yes, and you know, it's really interesting, the Sacramento Tree Foundation has had this pedestal method of planting trees pretty much for the last 30 years. And when I brought that up at the industry standards meeting, my co workers and my professionals around the country called it a boutique planting method, which kind of shocked me, because our volunteers do that all the time with very little training. When you dig the hole too deep and put the soil back on it, we can't compact it to the type of aerated density that it was before we excavated it. And so the tree will settle. And one of the number one ways to kill trees is to plant them too deep. So the pedestal method is we take the tree out of the container, we measure what the depth of the root ball is, then we dig where the tree is going to go to only that height or even that height less one inch. And then around the outside of where that pedestal for the tree is going to sit, you can go as crazy as you want. With your excavation,  we usually recommend at least two times the root ball diameter, but you can go 3-4-5 times the root diameter and outside of the pedestal, you can dig deeper. And if you have a hard pan outside the pedestal, you could punch through the hard pan so the water can actually drain through the planting hole. And you can create a really wonderful environment for your tree to grow. And because we're talking about organic matter and things, a lot of the soils we have don't have organic matter. And that's where the mulch we're putting on comes in. And then we water the tree. The only roots the tree has, whether it's evolved in burlap or a container, is the roots that are moved on to the site. So we have to keep that root ball moist. And then we have to slowly expand the moisture outside the root ball so the roots can grow outside the root ball. And the more we loosen and break up the soil and the digging those bigger holes, the better the air and water can actually flow in what was the original compacted soils in most developed neighborhoods or sites. 

Farmer Fred  

Many people when they're planting a tree, they want to do the tree a favor, and they buy some really nice potting soil or potting mix, and they don't reuse the native soil there. Instead they'll just fill up the hole with potting mix, that can be a negative can’t it? 

Gordon Mann  

It can be. The bigger the hole you dig and the more you mix in some of the potting soil so you increase some of the organic matter and that really large site, the better off it is. Because as the roots do grow with the soil genomics and biomes, they pull those things with them and they keep moving them through the soil. But I wouldn't replace it completely. I would just mix in some organic matter, maybe up to eight or 10% at the maximum,  into the soils. And I would do it over the entire area that I dig out, a really large area, and that may help the tree establish a little faster.

Farmer Fred   

And you mentioned, too, that you add mulch. But that mulch is only a top dressing, Correct?

Gordon Mann    

Correct. If you're  using topsoil, it usually is a combination of a silt- loam, which will have both clay and loam in it. It will have some organic matter as well that is light. You don't want heavier organic matter. You do want lighter organic matter and then you add more to the surface and let it slowly get broken down and move through the soil.

Farmer Fred 

Yeah, we should point out, too, that if you're adding compost to that hole, even if it's just eight or 10%, Compost tends to break down, so it's going to settle. So you do not want to plant compost beneath the tree. You want that pedestal to be on the native soil I would think. 

Gordon Mann    

Native, unexcavated soil. You want that to be unbroken up. Because as soon as we loosen it up and put it back in the hole it does settle. All the people that do root grinding and all that they take the wood in the dirt, they grind it up, pulverized, and they usually mound it. And then within a couple of years that mound is level because that stuff naturally settles.

Farmer Fred    

Which is exactly why you need to replace mulch every few years because  it's  really a living thing, and it's breaking down. iI’s feeding the soil. So you're really helping out your trees and your shrubs, when you do use a natural mulch, like chipped and shredded tree branches. Now one good tip I know for planting that tree at the correct level where you want about one inch of the existing soil ball of the tree from the container above grade, is to lay your shovel across the hole and then when you place that tree soil ball on that pedestal, you want that top one inch of the existing soil ball to be just about a little bit higher than your shovel.

Gordon Mann    

Yes. And also once you take the tree out of the containers, sometimes the root ball starts to disintegrate. That's what soil does. It falls apart. It's not supposed to be packed together like a  clay thing you make pottery out of . And so by having it higher, if you do get a little bit of the bottom to fall away, you still won’t plant the tree too deep.

Farmer Fred

We're talking about how to plant a tree and a lot more, with consulting arborist Gordon Mann. And one of the topics that comes up whenever it involves tree planting is, you want a tree for privacy? Can you do that? Let's find out how. 

Farmer Fred

And I guess we should get into one reason why people like to plant trees, is for privacy. I remember years ago during a technical advisory committee meeting at the Sacramento Tree Foundation, there was this rush to try to find tall growing, fast growing, narrow trees for compact backyards to give people the privacy they wanted. And usually as a result, and this has been going on for 30-40 years, they tend to plant the trees too close together, in their attempt to try to get instant privacy.

Gordon Mann   

Yes. And even landscape architects, they're taking a site that has nothing and trying to make it look attractive. They're going to put the trees very close together just because you want it to look nice. Otherwise it looks like a desert, with a couple of trees on it. And so they do put things together. The only benefit about that is because they have so much irrigation for the initial trees, that for the ones we're going to keep on the site over time to grow, they already have irrigation in place. Because they have additional irrigation for trees that will probably be removed, because they're over planted. And they're growing the canopies together.

Farmer Fred   

And that’s causing all sorts of other problems too, usually with fences, because they tend to plan that row for a privacy screen way too close to a fence line.

Gordon Mann   

Yes. And, again, we think about what we're doing from our side of the fence, and not the other side of the fence. And if you're a property owner, and your tree is going on to my property, I have the right to prune it back to the fence line, as long as I don't kill the tree. And don't do too aggressive pruning. And if you want to keep the tree with the kind of balanced canopy or a balanced crown, it should be planted a little bit in from  the edge of the fence plus then, the roots are going to have less impact on the neighbors. And if I do have to do root pruning and put a barrier in, earlier in the trees life, I do that. And the farther from the trunk I do that, the more natural root system I'm going to have with that tree as it grows bigger. The worst time to root prune is when the tree has got large woody roots. Because if we cut that root close to the tree, everything that extends outward from the point we cut is lost.

Farmer Fred  

Yeah, and sometimes those trees could be supporting each other. 

Gordon Mann  

Yes, sometimes the roots do graft together. But the biggest thing is, when we do work on our trees, we want to avoid unplanned failures. We can do things to improve the soil and do things to help improve the health of the tree. Sometimes we do add some fertilizers with our organic matter. But for the most part, we can try and keep these trees growing, especially with water and organic matter. But we can't stop unplanned failures once we've taken away the structural support the tree has. And one way you can look at this with a great model is you can put a wineglass on a cocktail plate or on a dinner plate. And they take trees out of the field, filled grown trees and ball and burlap them, they're basically taking the tree that was the cocktail plate and coming out with the wineglass with a champagne flute base. And we start pruning. If you chip away the base of wine glass or a champagne flute, you'll see how literally how little you would have to take off for that thing to fall over. The only difference between that model and a tree is the fluid or wineglass fall in the direction of the chipping, and the tree falls away from the root pruning, usually.

Farmer Fred    

Let's take our pruning talk above the soil level and talk about what people are doing to their trees, as far as pruning goes. A lot of people don't know the difference between a heading cut and a thinning cut when it comes to pruning. And most people are just doing heading cuts, chopping a tree willy nilly to get to the height they want, with little regard for the health of the branch that's left over, which usually when you do that, you end up with many, many more branches coming out of that cut that are all more weakly attached.

Gordon Mann    

They’re more weakly attached and are growing so close together that they can't grow to maturity without pushing on each other. One of the features of that is occluded bark, where they grow on and smash into each other. And then when those tree branches actually fail, you can examine the top and see there was no connection in the top anywhere from a quarter to a half of the way those branches are touching each other. The best way to prune a tree is to allow it to grow naturally. And because we're allowing our trees to grow mostly in open areas, they're growing a little wider than they would and taller and skinnier than they would in the forest when they might be close together. And so what you really want to do is you want to take away the end weights on some of the branches. That reduces the loading. When we get branch failures, it's because the weight and loading of the branch is stronger than the attachment. So we have those heavily over-pruned trees that are basically the hard heading cuts. And the branches that sprout together are now thinned out, the attachment is not complete as I explained earlier, and so at some point they do fail, which is really unfortunate because when the branches break without pruning, we lost all our pruning options. We now have this sheared off branch we have to see if we can take away the shearing and still get the branch to grow. And then once the the new branches do sprout out the shoots sprout out, we have to prune to manage them. And most nurseries, they grow trees. They take a baby tree and make it look like a mature tree. They strip up all the branches on the lower bark to a tuft on the top, where they've topped the tree. When we get bigger woody branches and we make these large heading cuts and topping cuts. The likelihood of decay is much greater because the trees don't heal. They seal or cover and take so long for their wound wood and are calloused to grow over those pruning wounds that they expose that open wood to decay which then can get into the tree and cause constructional problems over the life of the tree. 

The other thing I'd love to talk about is people have heard plant the right tree in the right place. That to me is a mantra from all the electric companies that have to prune to clear their wires. As a way to avoid expending money pruning trees for their wire clearance, what really has to happen is, trees are actually a wonderful community or an individual asset. What the we want to do is we want to figure out why we're growing the tree to begin with, then we're going to grow the right tree in the right place for the right purpose. So if we want the tree for shade, or for screen, or for flower, or for fruit, they've done the iTree studies, which is probably since 2003, we've been getting results from iTree. It's a free computerized program that the Forest Service has sponsored with some of the research grants. And it's shown us that from the first zero to seven years of a tree growing, we don't get any benefits from the tree, we're investing money and time. And because the canopy is so small, we don't get any benefits back. The leaves are the worker bees on the trees, and the leaves are what do the photosynthesis and do the shade and the air quality.  The tree from seven to 15 years starts to break even on his return on investments, then for 15 or 20 years, we're starting to get a little bit and 20 years to maturity the tree is just pouring back the benefits with the crown size. And so if we can't grow the tree to maturity, we're never really achieving those benefits. So the idea is how do we locate the tree so we move away from the competing infrastructure and utilities. So if I have to fix a sidewalk, or if I have to fix a curb, or have to fix a underground line, whether it's electrical, water, sewer, gas communications, I can do those repairs without having to cut so many roots that I have to take the tree out, then I can grow that tree to maturity and still take care of all my infrastructure. So the idea is that we figure out why we want to plant the tree, then we figured out what space we have, then we determine which potential trees we could plant in that space. Then we look at the characteristics of those trees, Evergreen or deciduous, nice flowers, nice fall color through it, if we're doing it for crops. And then we pick those trees and we actually try and have some diversity. So we don't have rows and rows of the same trees. Because those of us that have heard of Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, emerald ash borer, eucalyptus borers and lerp psyllids, they're usually attracted to one species. So if we have a row of species, we just create a smorgasbord for either a current insect or an invasive insect. And if we look at the City of Milwaukee, they have some of the best records and best research from some great research professors in Wisconsin. When Milwaukee got hit with their Dutch elm disease in the 1970s, it took until about 2020, about 50 years, for the canopy to restore itself that was lost by the loss of all their elm trees. And if you look at the emerald ash borer, cities in the Midwest and the Northeast and southern Canada, they're going to be 30 to 50 years to restore their canopies that are lost from all the emerald ash borer damage to their  ash canopies. And so what we really try to do is to get some diversity in place. Maybe not have more than two like trees in a row. Find trees that have similar canopies, and crown shapes and fall color, and have a little bit of diversity in the species. But it's similar a uniformity as humans seem to need.

Farmer Fred    

And don't forget to maybe throw a few native trees into that mix as well.

Gordon Mann   

Yes, and native trees are a great thing to have, and we have a great history with them. But as soon as we take that site, and scrape all the soil off and compact it, there's no guarantee that native species are gonna do any better than any other tree. And if you look at the number of native trees we have in any ecosystem, if you only have two or three native trees, we can have diversity, if we have 10 or 12 native trees and we have a great palette to work from. And we can share native trees with a few introduced trees and have a wonderful, natural and an attractive landscape.

Farmer Fred   

And again, we will use the term Hydrozoning, where you want to match up the watering requirements for the plants that you are irrigating.

Gordon Mann  

Correct . It’s that just the not the hydrozone, it is the availability of water. In California, we get no natural rain typically from April till October. We might get occasional rain. We're getting more a little bit the last couple of years, but they've just been a spritzer. And the rest of the time and with the heat we get, it’s getting up into the 90s and the triple digits. That water evaporates out, and the trees do evapotranspiration pretty quickly. And so most of the artificial and supplemental watering that we do has to be repeated on a weekly to every two week basis. And that watering should be very slow and deep. Watering that goes deep into the soil and is put on under the mulch. And then the mulch helps reduce the evapotranspiration and evaporation from the soils that you talked about earlier, and helps the tree go longer between irrigation applications.

Farmer Fred   

And again, that spiral you mentioned is a great idea where you are laying down either a soaker hose are an inline drip irrigation tubing in a spiral that gets wider and wider as it goes out so that the whole drip line of the tree, if you will, which extends from the trunk to the outer leaves, has the availability of water. Putting  one little drip emitter next to the trunk of the tree is not doing the tree any good. It's like you mentioned earlier, that whole area needs equal amounts of water.

Gordon Mann    

Yeah, one of the designs we've used when we were working with landscape architects is you actually could do concentric rings of drip hose as you talked about. Or you could use a bubbler and you create a basin. So that buffer fills the basin. And you start out with the basin right over the root ball so the ball stays alive and slowly enlarge the basin as the tree grows, because  it's not a Ronco grill, set it and forget it. It's a living thing that needs constant attention and maintenance. And hopefully if we do it right, we're putting in small inputs. And as the tree gets bigger and bigger, we get more and more benefits from it.

Farmer Fred    

Now folks, you can take this conversation about trees and apply it to your children, by the way, that same rules apply.

Gordon Mann  

Absolutely Fred. you know, we don't just birth a child. We don't just plant trees, we grow them and we raise them. And you're 100% on that.

Farmer Fred  

Exactly. You want your trees to help take care of you when you're old.  Is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to talk about?

Gordon Mann   

Last thing I would say is that you mentioned the term “thinning” earlier about pruning and thinning cuts. In 2017, we extracted the word thinning from the industry standards, because humans have this thing that the trees need to be thinned. The leaves on the tree are the worker bees, and they perform everything. And  since their worker bees, if we compare the trees to a corporation, we have workers and productivity. If we take away a third of the foliage, and we were General Motors or Dodge or Ford, we just got rid of our nightshift. If we take away two thirds of the foliage, we got rid of our night shift and the swing shifts. And those cruel people that top the trees, we got rid of all our workers. Who's going to build the cars? Who's gonna do the photosynthesis? The trees can't go to the union hall and bring on new workers. The way they restore their leaves is they sprout from usually buds, and some are adventitious. And some are their buds that are on the trunk and on the branches. And they sprout from those. And they're trying to restore the number of workers that they lost. And the attachments from the sprouts are usually weakly attached because branches and trunks - the way they grow - Dr. Alex Shigo showed us this back since 1977, or 78, that the trees they overlap and their tissue overlaps from the trunk to the branches. And that's what holds those branches on so tightly. And when we do the the heading cuts or the topping cuts and we get these sprouts, the branches are only attached by one or two years into these spots. And it takes if they grow really fast that they're trying to do to produce the foliage they are weakly attached and they can fail. So the idea is to get rid of the word thinning from our vocabulary. And talk about only remove a branch for a specific reason for either the health of the tree or the structural integrity of the tree, or one of our human important needs like clearance for fire prevention, damage on homes, for visibility of traffic signals and street signs, and for making sure that we're not getting slapped in the face when we're looking down at our cell phones while we walk and figuring out a way to manage the way the trees grow. We allow them to grow by only removing anywhere from five to 18 to 20% of the foliage at any annual pruning on the tree, unless it's a really critical need. And trees that maybe haven't grown in a long time have the risk of a branch failing, because the branch failing takes away our pruning options. Whereas pruning well and keeping the natural shape of the tree looking like a tree full of foliage and dense foliage is the best way to grow the trees.

Farmer Fred   

So, what did we learn from Gordon Mann, consulting arborist, today? Well, it's Farmer Fred Garden Rule number seven, “everything you know is wrong”. Because just like in this little conversation here, what terms don't lead to correct pruning work? Things that we've been saying for years, like remove dying branches, remove diseased branches, remove crossing branches, and thin your trees. Basically, hold on. And what Gordon is saying is only prune what is necessarily good to prune. 

Gordon Mann    

When we write the specs to say remove dead, dying, frothing, diseased branches. So if you have a dead branch, you may want to only prune it back a little bit and leave some habitat, sometimes dead branches do that, or you can remove the dead branch because it's not going to impact the health of the tree. But a dying branch, say 10% of the branches dying, you gave me permission to take out the whole branch even though he had removed the 10% of dead branches. Diseased branches, we have anthracnose, and powdery mildew. And you have a diseased branch with those and you gave me permission to go ahead and remove all those branches. Basically, you're getting a topped tree when you thought you wanted a nicely prune trees. Crossing branches are what depends on your perspective, you look at the tree from the top and every branch is crossing, it's really crossing and robbing branches. And you want to try and first reduce some of those loading weights that gets it to separate from the robbing. Or if they're crossing and the branches are covering the same area where we need the leaves to grow, maybe remove one or two of the one of the two branches or a pair of branches. But removing crossing branches, I can remove all of them, or both of them. And then the last one would be  thinning again, you're just taking branches out of the tree, and the tree is gonna regrow those because it has to grow. And we used to say in the industry standards that you don't remove more than 25% of the foliage. And all the pruning specification said remove up to 25% of the foliage. Really, we want to remove anywhere up to five percent to 12 to 18% maximum, depending on the needs of the species of the tree. And we only want to remove the branches that have to for it and weight loading or critical safety issues. And that's a different approach than just go ahead and thin every tree to 25% and make it look like got a haircut at the barber. One of the best analogies I can relate to is for those of us that have significant others that one of us goes to the barber and the other goes to a hairstylist. I go to a barber and  first I pointed to a picture on the wall to have him cut all my hair off like the guy in the picture. And when I walk out of the barbershop everybody knows I got a haircut. When my lovely wife walks out of the hairstylist, she's probably paid 10 times what I pay, and she comes out and she goes, “What do you think?” And like I say, “Okay, what did they do? Your hair looks great.” Which supermodel do you want to look like? They don't look like an army sergeant that just came out of boot camp. They look like a nice head of hair with a beautiful style. And when my friends come out of hairstylist, their hair doesn't look like it's been cut. It just looks very attractive. And if we can kind of prune our trees that way, I think we’d be way ahead.

Farmer Fred   

I hope you have a comfortable couch to sleep on.

Gordon Mann    

I know.

Farmer Fred  

We've been talking with Gordon Mann. He is a consulting arborist with the California Tree and Landscape Consulting firm. He has a website called Mannandtrees.com. If you don't know your trees, if you don't know what kind they are, if you have questions about your trees, it pays to invest into a consulting arborist. Gordon Mann, thanks for setting us straight on trees today. 

Gordon Mann 

Absolutely, Fred, I always enjoy your show. And I really appreciate all you do to educate our public in these areas. And I'm glad you share your podcast with whoever can go online and listen to you.

Farmer Fred:

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday. 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.