287 Fall Berry Care. Debbie Explains Stuff.

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287 transcription Fall Berry Care, Debbie Explains

Farmer Fred  0:00  

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

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

For those of you with backyard caneberries - that would be blackberries, boysenberries and raspberries, for example - fall is the time to do some maintenance on those sprawling vines, for a lot of good reasons, not the least of which is to help insure a large crop of berries for the following spring and summer.

We talk with a Master Gardener berry expert about pruning, fertilizing and caring for your backyard berries in the fall.

And, if you enjoy listening to the gardening advice of America’s Favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower, you’ve learned a lot from her over the years. In today’s episode, I get Debbie to do a deeper dive on some topics or terms that she’s mentioned in the past, usually while talking about another subject. And those mentions could use further explanations. Things like, how do you sterilize soil in the kitchen oven (if you dare); where are those unwanted cool spots in a hot compost pile; at what point in a plant’s life do you add soil nutrition if that plant is in a seed starting potting mix? And  I still want more clarification on her method of starting seeds in a paper towel.

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots, and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

FALL BERRY CARE

Farmer Fred

We're here at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. It's an Open Garden Wednesday, and it's fall. And there are some wonderful berries growing here in barrels, including blackberries and boysenberries. They look excellent, but it's sort of the end of the season. So what should you be doing with blackberries and boysenberries, at this point in time in the fall? We're talking with Anne Moore, a Sacramento County Master Gardener, and I really like the fact that these are being grown in barrels. What are the advantages of growing blackberries or any caneberry in a barrel?

Anne Moore  2:37  

The obvious reason is it creates space that you might not have in your garden. It also can help you with invasiveness because these plants can really spread. So the barrel is going to give you a barrier to prevent that from happening. But in our case, in particular, we also are dealing with a problem we have in the underlying soil. We have a problem that's somewhat common in our area called crown gall, which is really a problem for caneberries. And we experienced it here. So we put bricks down and then put barrels on top of that. We're able to grow in an area that otherwise wouldn't have been healthy for caneberries.

Farmer Fred  3:08  

You talked about the benefits of growing blackberries and boysenberries in large wooden barrels. Can you get away with planting these in smaller containers? And if so, how small can you go?

Anne Moore  3:17  

I wouldn't recommend it. I think it's a little bit challenging for these plants to be in containers, but  they're doing okay. And actually, I am hoping that we'll have more canes coming up. And we'll have more going on here. And I think a smaller container would really interfere with that.

Farmer Fred  3:33  

It looks like these barrels are about 24 to 26 inches across, and about 24 to 26 inches high.

Anne Moore  3:39  

Yeah, I think that's a good size. I would stay with that. If it were me. 

Farmer Fred  3:43  

The last time I looked in a nursery there was no specific blackberry soil. So what sort of soil do you recommend?

Anne Moore  3:48  

We just use normal soil. I know you might want to investigate if there's other soils that help you retain moisture because that can be a problem with containers. But we've been happy with just regular potting soil, and we certainly add fertilizer plus other amendments.

Farmer Fred  4:04  

And I want to point out something very obvious here, but I don't want to overlook it. These barrels have drainage: drain holes on the bottom.

Anne Moore  4:10  

Absolutely, that's essential. Yeah. And we really do monitor what the moisture is. We use a moisture meter to make sure that they're nice and moist, but not too moist.

Farmer Fred  4:20  

Are blackberries and boysenberries a little bit like blueberries, in that they prefer an acidic soil?

Anne Moore  4:25  

Somewhat, but not to the same extent. But they like slightly acidic soil. Out pH in the area tends to be around seven. They prefer between five and a half and six and a half. So it's close enough where you can get away with not dealing with it. But we really like to add a little bit of sulfur just to get them to their happiest place.

Farmer Fred  4:44  

All right. These look happy but it is fall, and so it's sort of the end of the production season. What is the best things to be doing for these cane berries in the fall so that you have a super-duper crop next year?

Anne Moore  4:58  

Two things. Pruning, which we're going to talk about a little bit now. And then we're gonna have a workshop later on today about that here in the Hort Center. And two, we'll add fertilizer and a little little bit of sulfur to adjust the pH. 

Farmer Fred  5:13  

What sort of fertilizer would you use in a barrel, growing caneberries, realizing that barrels probably have to be fertilized a little bit more often, because of the fact that a lot of that fertilizer is getting leached out quicker than it would in the ground.

Anne Moore  5:26  

Right. We use normal fertilizer, we have other baneberries going into the ground. But with barrels, we've just changed over to a regimen of adding half strength, diluted fish emulsion and kelp meal. And we actually do it almost monthly when we can, if it's not too hot. And we learned that from some experts we have in our orchard area and people that we know from some of the major cultivators of caneberries, because there's so much water going through these barrels, it just really leached through the soil and out a lot, kind of quickly. So we're really happy with this new change. We think our plants are looking a lot more vigorous this year, and we expect him to even be better next year.

Farmer Fred  6:03  

Yeah, fish emulsion doesn't have much nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium, usually fish emulsion has an N-P-K of 5-1-1. And the kelp meal, or the seaweed, has micronutrients which help out a lot in terms of rooting and just for overall strength and vigor. With the fish emulsion, I know that on the bottle  it talks about fertilizing on a regular basis, because it is so weak. And I would imagine you even probably cut that down a little bit. 

Anne Moore  6:32  

We do half strengths. Yeah, and we water really well before adding fertilizer, and then again really well after. And we were really careful about not doing it if it's a horribly hot day, because we just don't want to burn these roots.

Farmer Fred  6:45  

Now, you mentioned that pruning is very important. And I would think that one of the common reasons for pruning berries is because to get new growth new berries the following year, it has to be growing on new wood.

Anne Moore  6:57  

Well the way, caneberries grow, and I'm talking about blackberries and boysenberries and other variations like Olalaberries and huckleberries, too. Their root is actually perennial, but their canes are biannual. So the root can live for a very long time. We have plants here that are 20 years old, the plants in our barrels were planted in 2019. So they're younger. But anyway, growing from that root, you have a first year cane that comes up which we call the prima cane, or first year cane. And that's basically the structure. And the second year that cane then is mature enough to become a Floracane. That is derived from the word flora, producing flowers and berries. So the first year growth is actually creating the structure. The second year growth with some exceptions, which we can talk about later on, there are some varieties that don't follow this pattern. But the second year growth is where you find when the berries happen. And they happen on the laterals that grow off of that primacane. So you should be pruning by now, if you have these kinds of caneberries. We want to go in and take out the second year canes because they're done. And we just want to get them out and then we're going to be pruning the remaining canes which are the primacanes and creating the structure on our trellis that will be producing fruit next year.

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FALL BERRY CARE, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I guess we should clarify for everybody that these berries,- blackberries and boysenberries - that are growing in barrels, aren't just flopping all over the place. You've created this trellis that runs the length of the row of the barrels with what looks like what four horizontal wires running across, the wires are spaced about a foot to 18 inches apart.  And then way up, at about six and a half, seven feet up the 4x4” two wood supports on either end, you have a T-shaped cross bar at each end I mean, big wooden T posts made of 2x4” wood,  for support. It’s  almost like building a kiwi structure, the strength of it, that you have with these four by fours at either end. Plus, to hold those end posts up straight, you have a steel pipe running the length of the row of barrels. That pipe is near the top, running horizontally to support those wooden uprights. And so what you're talking about, it is kind of like growing climbing roses. You grow first for the structure, and then you start tying the laterals off to the wires, correct?

Anne Moore  10:33  

Correct. Now our structure is pretty wonderful. Not every garden gardener is going to have the wherewithal to maybe do this, there's a lot of other ways you can create trellises, but you need some kind of support system that you can prune to so that you can just contain and manage the growth of your berries.

Farmer Fred  10:54  

Yeah, and the wires, by the way, besides going up and down the four by fours, that's the center post, there's a two by four running perpendicular to the barrels. And there are wires hooked to the outside of that crossbar that are running maybe two, three feet, away from the berries. But I think that serves a very good purpose that if you're trying to protect the berries from too much sun or heat, you could throw a row cover over it. 

Anne Moore  11:22  

We do that, absolutely. We have to otherwise we'll lose a lot of berries to the sun, we also will drape the laterals because they will get really long and crazy as time goes on. So we'll drape the laterals over there. And that actually allows more air circulation, too, if you can spread everything out a little bit. 

Farmer Fred  11:39  

Well, that was a good scenic bypass. But getting back to the pruning, do you have to remove all the secondary branches?

Anne Moore  11:46  

Yes, they're done. They're absolutely done. You can leave them in there if you want. But that just creates problems that could attract disease or just reduce air circulation and just make this a tangled mess. It'd be horrible to deal with. But yeah, you cut them all the way back, all the way back.

Farmer Fred  12:03  

 I bet if you're thrifty, you could probably take those cuttings and root them.

Anne Moore  12:08  

I would recommend using the primacanes. We're going  to be pruning those as well, and they're more vigorous. And I would recommend instead of using the secondary branches,  root the tips of the primacanes,  because it's a thicker branch, and they're new and  they're all about growing.  The second year canes, they're done. They're in their dying stage. So I wouldn't go there.

Farmer Fred  12:28  

I would think cleanup is an important part of the whole fall process of taking care of blackberries, and boysenberries, just because you want to prevent overwintering pests.

Anne Moore  12:38  

Absolutely, absolutely. Now, once you take all those canes out, those second year canes, there's still more pruning to do.  What you want to do is take your remaining primacanes, the first year canes, and you want to top them at the level that works for your trellising situation. So we would cut them at probably about five feet, which is where this really thick pole is, and then tie them up. So you've got a vertical primacane. You don't want upward growth because that's not where the fruit happens. It happens on the laterals, so you're forcing the plant to grow laterals. And then if you have any laterals, we'll see if we have any, it's hard to tell until you start pruning this. But if you have any laterals coming off those primacanes, we will go ahead and trim those to 12 inches or so. And they will keep growing, there'll be so much growth by the time the season comes next year. But we're just trying to sort of control the growth, keep it where it's manageable, and force the growth to the laterals rather than upward growth.

Farmer Fred  13:40  

Now, you mentioned earlier that there may be some exceptions to all this as far as berry production because it sounds like if you bought some of these berry varieties, you'd be waiting two years before you would get berries. Okay, so what are those exceptions?

Anne Moore  13:55  

Well, there's another variety more common in raspberries, which I haven't talked about too much. But we also have an example here of a Blackberry. It's called an everbearing Blackberry. And those berries actually have two crops per season. They actually have a crop on the primacanes the first year at the very end of their season, they'll fruit and then if you just top that, but leave that cane for the following year, it will have a second crop on the lower part of the cane.

Farmer Fred  14:24  

The fruiting season when you can pick them is generally summer?

Anne Moore  14:28  

The primacane the first year will be in the fall. In fact, we can see some fruit still on this plant here. That's an everbearing and then when you prune it early next summer, that same cane will have fruit in the fall in the spring. Yeah, spring to early summer. 

Farmer Fred  14:46  

Yeah, it depends where you live, folks. Well, let's talk about some of those particular varieties that might give you some fruit from the primacanes. What are some of those varieties?

Anne Moore  14:57  

Well, right here  this is called Prime Ark Freedom thornless Blackberry. And you can see here that this fruit down here, this is the second year fruit. If we search around here we can see somewhere where we pruned it. So we're going to cut that all the way down. And then here, we have some fruiting up here, and this was on the primacane. So we're gonna prune this down to here. And then we'll have laterals come out here and grow fruit early next summer.

Farmer Fred  15:34  

which coincidentally where that level is,  there's a wire running over the barrels at that level as well. So you're basically putting it back to the level of a wire to tie it to, right. Yeah. How do you tie it to a wire?

Anne Moore  15:47  

 Just simply with garden tape. Yeah, something that won't cut into the plant and yeah, not a problem.

Farmer Fred  15:54  

Now a lot of people, when they think of blackberries especially, or even boysenberries, they think, Oh, I don't want to deal with all those thorns. But there are thornless varieties. 

Anne Moore  16:04  

Absolutely. Most of our varieties are thornless. We do have a couple plants with thorns, but a lot easier to prune if you don't have those thorns.

Farmer Fred  16:13  

Coming up this winter. We'll talk about raspberries with Anne Moore, Sacramento County Master Gardener. Thanks for talking with us about fall berry care.

Anne Moore  16:20  

Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

FLASHBACK EPISODE OF THE WEEK: #182 Growing Raspberries, Boysenberries, Blackberries

Farmer Fred  16:26  

If the segment you just heard about fall berry care has piqued your interest in growing backyard baneberries, you’ll enjoy the Flashback Episode of the Week, #182, Growing Raspberries, Boysenberries and blackberries. Featuring Master Gardener Pam Bone, this is one of the  top 10 most listened to episodes in the Garden Basics library, offering great tips about planting, supporting, watering, fertilizing, and pest control for caneberries.

Give it a listen, episode 182, from April of 2022: “Growing Raspberries, Boysenberries, and Blackberries.”  Find a link to it in today’s show notes, or at the podcast player of your choice. And you can find it at our home page, garden basics dot net.

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Farmer Fred

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DEBBIE EXPLAINS…

Farmer Fred

Here on the garden basics podcast Debbie Flower is joining us. America's favorite retired college horticultural Professor. Debbie and I have been doing a little dog and pony show well, okay, we've been giving speeches to garden clubs and garden groups. And sometimes when you're talking to an audience, you know, you say things and you might say something and move on to the next thing to talk about and not really explain something that may cause some confusion in people's minds, raise questions. So we're calling this segment, “Debbie Please Explain This”. Back in episode 275, We were talking about green potatoes and whether they were safe to eat. And Debbie said this.

Debbie Flower  19:12 

Yeah, the green part is chlorophyll. We eat lots of chlorophyll. Celery has chlorophyll, it’s full of chlorophyll. Any green vegetable, such as broccoli, is full of chlorophyll. But it's when it's bitter and has a solanine buildup in it, and potatoes have solanine in them anyway to some level. And it's becomes more increased and more active. When they start to green up they make chlorophyll and become metabolically active. He also asked about how to dispose of the parts that you don't want anymore. A compost pile works just fine. Be aware that if it isn't a hot compost pile, and they don't break down, even little pieces, especially the little green pieces, can begin to grow in the inactive portions of a compost pile. And once you have a potato bed, you have potatoes growing there forever, because the little pieces of roots underground don't decompose. And you don't harvest them all. And so you they just keep growing every year. But yes, definitely you can put them in the in the compost pile, the worm bin, something like that. They are an organic that will break down.

Farmer Fred  20:22  

So Debbie, I would like you to explain where are these inactive portions of a compost pile.

Debbie Flower  20:27  

A compost pile should be three feet tall, three feet wide, three feet deep, to be effective and become hot. And what happens is, if it has enough oxygen, and some moisture, just enough to be like a wrung out sponge, the microorganisms live in the center of that pile, that's the hot portion of the pile. And everything around it stays cool. Too cool for active plant parts and seeds and things like that  to die. And so it's the outer portion of the compost pile that stays cool. What you want to do is turn it regularly, you're turning it regularly for a couple of reasons. One is for those outer portions that still contain plant material that's not broken down to get into the center and become broken down, but also to provide oxygen for  those micro organisms to live and do the work that they do to make compost.

Farmer Fred  21:25  

So in this particular example, we were talking about how solanine forms on potatoes, so you don't want to eat solanine if you do have a potato that is popping up from the cooler sections of a compost pile, will that new potato have solanine?

Debbie Flower  21:40  

Only if it's exposed to light. Light is needed on the Potato. Potato is a stem and therefore can become green and can make chlorophyll. It is not a root. Roots can't make chlorophyll. it is a stem. And so when that stems exposed to light, it will form chlorophyll and that is an indication it is also forming solanine.

Farmer Fred  22:01  

So in this conversation we've been having about solanine in this episode, you mention that some people are particularly sensitive to solanine. Yes, and you said this:

Debbie Flower  22:13

No, it is in the plant. It's in all the plants in the solanaceae family. Eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, tobacco, all have solanine in them. And they have different levels. Some people are particularly sensitive to solanine. my husband happens to be one of those. My sister is another one of those people. It exacerbates his arthritis. And there is a whole book written about that by a professor that I had at Rutgers. For some of us it isn't a bother. So all poisons, all toxicity, has to do with the amount. So it's only when you're going to have a large amount of solanine that it's a problem.

Farmer Fred  22:47  

My question to you in regards to this: Did you ever have a professor in college who made you buy his book as a textbook, charging you a gross amount of money?

Debbie Flower  22:56  

No, actually the book hadn't been written by then. He was  my fruit professor. So we learned about tree fruits primarily. In his class, there was a different guy for like blueberries and things. Rumor is, and I only know this as a rumor, that  when he retired, he was not offered emeritus status at Rutgers, which is where I went for my undergraduate degree. But he was offered it at Florida, some college in Florida, and he wrote the book then, after he retired.

Farmer Fred  23:26  

Do you ever have a professor who made you buy his book?

Debbie Flower  23:29  

I never did. 

Farmer Fred

I did, once. 

Debbie Flower

Yeah? Was it worth buying? 

Farmer Fred  23:33  

No! Especially from a college bookstore where they're gonna charge you an arm and a leg! 

Debbie Flower

Yeah. 

Farmer Fred

All right, I got that off my chest. Sometimes when we record live episodes where we're speaking to an audience,  we get off track and start talking about something else. And maybe we don't explain things as thoroughly as we should. But we're having fun. So anyway, Debbie,  you said this during the talk we gave at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center:

Debbie Flower  23:56  

Anything you buy in a container has been grown in soilless mix, you'll find people who will say I like to put some soil in because it adds some some life to the soil. That's okay. But sometimes that life needs to be only a little bit, I'd say less than 20%. If you want to do that, I don't do it. I don't advocate it, but some people really want to do it. But it has to be sterilized. they think it adds life. But some of that life it adds is bad life. There's good fungus and bad fungus. There's good bacteria and bad bacteria. There's good seeds and bad seeds, meaning weed seeds and the seeds you want to grow. And you can introduce all of those bad things in by adding any of the soil out of your garden. So we don't do it.

Farmer Fred  24:36  

So my question to you after listening to that, that some people may have been wondering about and we should explain it. How do you sterilize soil?

Debbie Flower  24:44  

Yeah, good question. It is do-able. And there's actually two ways you can pasteurize soil which kills many things but not everything in the soil. And you can sterilize soil which kills everything in the soil. They actually make soil sterilizers. They produce steam. So the process requires moist heat. And I had one when I was working in a greenhouse at the skill center, it wasn't very big, we sterilized some of our container soil in it, but we never did field soil in it. But you could put it in and you turn it on, and it pumps steam through the media. And if you get to 180 degrees for 30 minutes that kills most organisms in the soil, so that would be pasteurization. 212 degrees. That's boiling point, right? Yeah. Remember that one quart of water for 30 minutes, that sterilizes the soil, and it kills everything in the soil. So is that a good thing? Well, the people who want to put field soil into their container mix for the live things would only want it pasteurized, not sterilized. But if you suspect there are disease organisms in the soil, you would want to sterilize it, because disease organisms are live and you don't want any of those alive.

Farmer Fred  26:03  

I would think you would also not want to use your kitchen oven to try this right.

Debbie Flower  26:07  

You can and you can find the recipe on the internet. It uses a lot of energy and it smells bad and the smell doesn't go away. As soon as you take it out of your oven. It kind of hangs around for days. So be careful.

Farmer Fred  26:21  

Besides that, ovens, I don't think go down to 140 degrees.

Debbie Flower  26:25  

Yeah, yes, I think you're right. Well, no, I think they do. It depends on the oven. Probably. Yes.

Farmer Fred  26:32  

You in the past have mentioned away if you're pasteurizing the soil, how to do it to help mitigate the smell?

Debbie Flower  26:41  

Yeah, I looked up some information about doing it in the oven because I've never done it. And so there was something from Pennsylvania State University, which is the land grant college for the state of Pennsylvania. And  that's where they do all this agriculture and horticulture research at land grant universities. So they said to pasteurize soil, preheat it to the oven to 180 degrees fill a pan with about four inches of moist soil. Moist is critical. Cover it with aluminum foil and use a candy or meat thermometer to monitor the temperature and place the pan in the oven. When the temperature reads 180 degrees, that means the soil is 180 degrees. Leave the pan in the oven for 30 minutes longer. Then remove it and allow the soil to cool. Seeds can then be sown in the soil or it can be used as a transplant medium for seedlings. Soil that has been sterilized is critical for seed starting mix. So even if if you wanted to reuse your container media for seed starting, I would go through this process of sterilizing it.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER: 2023 TOMATO REVIEW

Farmer Fred  27:45  

In the October 13, 2023 edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, we take a look at some of the tomato varieties that gardeners had a lot of success with this past summer. And, we mention those tomato varieties that were failures. Of course, all gardening is local, and your results may vary. But, we’ll mention some that might be worth trying in your own yard, wherever you may be.

And in today’s newsletter podcast, we talk with local nursery owner Don Shor about his own  tomato successes and failures, as well as the ones his customers mentioned.

And, we talk about how the springtime issue of jalapenogate - where there were a lot of mismarked sweet and hot pepper plants and seeds sold - well, it may have been a lot more extensive, and included some tomato and other plant varieties.

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

DEBBIE EXPLAINS, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Speaking of seed starting, when we were talking out there at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, you stated this:

Debbie Flower  29:12  

So we use soil less mix. And soil less mix is basically three parts. You look up any recipe, you break it down. The Cornell University recipe is probably the most commonly used as a basis. It's three parts. It's organic matter that’s One part. that can be peat moss, where I worked in Oregon, it was shredded wood. that can be compost, it can be coir, which is coconut . Yeah, the stuff outside of coconut comes in pellets.  I don't use coir much. we did when I was teaching and it was a pain in the butt. Because you have to soak for 24 hours beforehand. and then we only use part of it. And then we have this bucket of soaking coir and now we're going to have to do something with that. So it became sort of a pain in the butt. So anything that's organic, 1/3. That one part. You might recognize this if you've ever been in the hospital (it’s a urinal bottle) I use this as my sizing part. One part  I use actually, I buy container media in a bag because it's mostly organic matter. One part of that into my  kitty litter box. Okay, this is my little one. I have a big one too.

Farmer Fred  

We're saving money here. Yeah,

Debbie Flower  

yeah, I buy regular stuff. Don't do anything special.

Farmer Fred  30:19  

You've always talked about mixing soil for planting, right? Would you ever use a commercial container media? Straight?

Debbie Flower  30:29  

 I did say I buy container media in a bag, because it's mostly organic matter. And then I do mix it with other things to put in my containers to grow my plants. The one time I use it straight is for seed starting. I start most of my seeds in six packs, because I like to isolate the root system of each plant. So I have one plant. I don’t need a lot of seedlings, I’m not running a nursery. So I have one plant per cell in the six pack, I have washed those six packs. And if I'm doing seed starting, I will sterilize them in a 10% solution of bleach. And then I need to use fresh media. And so I will buy seed starting mix. The texture is correct, it's very fine. And it has no known organisms in it. So that's the one time I will use it. When I move that seedling up from the six pack into let's say a four inch container or bigger. I will use other media.

Farmer Fred  31:26  

We're calling this segment Debbie explains or in more formal terms, the State versus Flower.  was Let’s continue with the trial. You also said this:

Debbie Flower  31:35 

 So one part of that organic matter. One part pumice.  I like pumice , it comes in this bag. It's lava rock. If you buy some a pass it around. Well, you can't everybody can't see it from here. All right.

Farmer Fred 

But Pumice is small.

Debbie Flower   

Pumice comes in sizes. Yeah, and this is horticultural pumice, and so it has a certain size. Pumice is good for holding moisture, but also creating open spaces in your media. And so I would do one part of pumice. Put that in and then perlite is an option. I don't have any perlite with me. perlite has been expanded, heated. expanded rocks that are white. And the reason I don't like it, I have some around for very special situations but is it's very, very dusty. To the point where I've inhaled it and coughed for days afterwards. It's not just I have to get it out of my system right now. It goes on and on. The dust is really irritating. And so I would have students water it down when we worked with it, but that didn't seem to work well enough. So I tried to get away from it. So I use vermiculite which is a different expanded rock. This expanded mica mined is wet. It holds moisture as well. So we've got one part of the organic matter, one part of the pumice and one part of the vermiculite. I could use sand I could use instead of any of these. What else would you use? the perlite we talked about. and mix that together and that's a good planting mix. You're going to need some nutrition at some point but that's a good basic planting mix. 

Farmer Fred  33:09  

Well the question begs itself well, at what point do you need nutrition? How can you tell when that soil mix that you started with needs nutrition?

Debbie Flower  33:18  

The soil mix might be a  brand that advertises there are nutrients in the bag of soil mix. But my mixes  don't have nutrition in it. When you're starting seeds, seeds do not need nutrition, they have all the food that the baby plant inside the seed needs. The food is also inside the seed. But once that plant gets above ground, and starts making chlorophyll and making plant food, it needs nutrition. And so you would fertilize the newly germinated seedling right then, when the plant is above ground. If I'm transplanting from one container to another, then I will mix some time release fertilizer into the media that I am putting into the new container. I will look at the label, it gives an amount so much per so much media; so much fertilizer for so much media. I'll use less. Maybe half of that. You can always add nutrition. I like fish emulsion to fertilize with. You can always add nutrition on top, water it in. But you can't take it out once you've put it into the media. So I always go light on that.

Farmer Fred  34:31  

Are you referring to fish emulsion as a time release fertilizer or a slow release fertilizer?

Debbie Flower  34:37  

No, the time release fertilizer is the pellets that come in a bag or a container. And you put those in and they release over time. The fish emulsion is a slow release fertilizer because it is an organic fertilizer and has to be acted on by microorganisms to break down and release the nutrients. If you look at the label of any fertilizer it will be on the back of the bag. Usually, it has a chart that tells you what the fertilizer is. All fertilizer bags will have an active ingredients listing, and they will say soluble nitrogen, or insoluble nitrogen. The soluble nitrogen is available to the plant immediately with water. The insoluble nitrogen must be broken down by microorganisms to be available for the plant. And so fish emulsion will have probably a larger insoluble nitrogen concentration than soluble. And so the plant will get a little shot right away from the soluble nitrogen. And then the insoluble nitrogen will break down over time and get the plant feeding for a longer period of time. So it's a longer release. But it is not a time-release fertilizer.

Farmer Fred  35:49  

So fish emulsion would not be a good substitute, then, at planting time,

Debbie Flower  35:53  

Fish emulsion can be a good substitute at planting time. I'm just lazy. And I don't get out there to fertilize all the time. So I use the pelleted time released fertilizers so that my plants are getting something even when I forgotten about them. 

Farmer Fred  36:10  

And of course, one thing we talked about a lot when we're doing these personal appearances is soil drainage. And the fact that if you put something at the bottom of the container, that doesn't help drainage, it slows drainage down. And then you said this

Debbie Flower  36:25 

Water moves down through the media. I always think of it as music. I don't know if that works for anybody else. The water attaches to the sides of the particles and moves down through the texture, whatever texture your media is. When it comes to a drastic change in texture, it stops. And then the water builds up above that.

Farmer Fred  36:44  

“I always think of it as music”. What music is it?

Debbie Flower  36:47  

We all have quirks. I think of it as a rhythm that the water will move through the soil. If the rhythm in that soil is the same, meaning the texture of that soil is the same from the top to the bottom. As soon as it meets a different texture, which would be the gravel in the bottom, or the Styrofoam in the bottom, the shards in the bottom of the hole, and even the hole in the bottom of the container counts as blocking that rhythm. Then it will stop moving and it starts to build up  what's called a saturation layer above that change in texture.

Farmer Fred  37:24  

So that would be a rest in music.

Debbie Flower  37:25  

That's the rest stop. Yeah. In music not the rest stop by the freeway. 

Farmer Fred  37:29  

 I would think of it as it's changing keys. Okay, yes, it's going through if I was to ascertain the water traveling through soil as music. Many times you've attempted to explain, with the spoken word, your way of seeing if that old packet of seeds is going to germinate.

Debbie Flower   

 If you're not sure, you do a germination test.  I've done it with paper towels, Fred uses coffee filters. I didn't bring one. Okay, this is my paper towel (hold up a piece of paper). I fold the paper in half, the long way, lay the seeds in the fold…

Farmer Fred   

you're gonna make an airplane.

Debbie Flower    

Lay the seeds on the fold. I do 10 Because it's really makes the math easy. Fold it up, make a cigar, make a cigar out of it (rolls it closed along the short side of the paper, with the seed-filled fold at the top).

Farmer Fred   

You're talented to do that with a microphone in your hand there. 

Debbie Flower   

I got skills, man. I moisten it, make sure it's wet all the way through, put a rubber band or something around it and stand it up. So the fold is up in the air, in a container. A glass container, a mug, your hospital implement, whatever. And cover the top. You want it to stay moist. And then you check it every day. If it says it's gonna germinate in seven days, you know, you can maybe let it go two days, but you want to make sure it does not dry out. A seed that has gotten wet. Once it dries, it's dead. So you do not want it to dry out. That's why it needs to be covered with plastic and checked daily for moisture. And then you start checking it and you open it up this way. And the beauty of  standing it up in the container is the roots are going to grow down. They grow toward gravity. And so you can tell which seed has germinated and so after the seven days have gone by, you open it up and see how many have germinated. If all 10 germinated, you got 100% germination, go ahead and plant them. And you can use the paper towel it was wrapped in, you can just cut them apart and plant them in the ground. There'll be stuck to the paper towel or the coffee filter, but they will still work.

Farmer Fred  39:19  

 And I always wonder if people are really grasping how you're doing it. I was going to actually film you…wait a minute, nobody has film anymore. We'll do whatever we do in the 21st century to make video of basically how you  determine if seed is viable or not. But then you found a link at the University of Wisconsin. And they had about the same method. So I can post that and save us both from video embarrassment, right.

Debbie Flower  39:51  

They use the paper towel they use the 10 seeds. They make the cigar fold it, roll it over wet it Put it in plastic. And the only difference I do is I stand the that cigar in plastic, upright in a cup, or a jar or something so that the fold and the paper towel cigar is upright. At the top that's where the seeds are. And I just do that because roots react to gravity, they grow towards gravity. And so the roots will grow down in that paper towel. And when you open it up, it's easier to tell from which seed, the roots came. If you lay the whole thing down, the roots will grow every which way, because they're flat on the ground and gravity is everywhere. And it's sometimes hard to tell which seed the roots came from. And then when you want to say, well how many germinated?  it's hard to figure that out. 

Farmer Fred  40:45  

we could go on another scenic bypass here, because it just made me think of people who like to plant by the moon, that the gravitational pull of the moon influences the timing of their planting. And that's been going on for centuries, right? I'm not well versed in it.

Debbie Flower  40:59  

 I'm not well versed in it either, but I did grow up near the water, and tides were very important. You know, if you're going to take a walk on the beach or not grow plants, right, go under the local bridge, which was very low and had to be raised if you work in a boat of a certain size. But yes, and so people who do it, they say it has to do with the water flow in the soil. And I don't know.

Farmer Fred  41:27  

I don't know either. Okay. That makes two of us. But if it makes you feel good, do it. Right. Yeah. I mean, if it works for you, fine.

Debbie Flower  41:36  

Exactly. And  so many things in horticulture are that way: if it works for you, do it, yeah.

Farmer Fred  41:40  

Okay, so go ahead, do it. Well, Debbie has explained a lot to us today. Thank you for being in an explanatory mood Debbie.

Debbie Flower  41:46  

you're welcome Fred

Farmer Fred  41:52  

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.