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Garden Layout and Design
147 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of Hort Culture, we welcome back Jessica Bessin, the Mercer County Horticulture Extension Agent, who joins us as we discuss creating a more efficient and productive garden. Whether you have a small space or a large plot, we will help you plan and design your garden according to your needs and preferences. Learn how to choose the right plants, arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing and functional way, and avoid common mistakes that can ruin your gardening experience. Tune in and get inspired to start your own gardening project!
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Hort Culture
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Hort Culture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture. Hello, hello. We are back again. No, don't say hi yet. I'm not done.
Jessica Returns
00:00:22
Speaker
Hi. Yeah. Hey, what's up? I wanted to get in with that. I'm like, Hey guys. I'm just kidding. Love you so much. I, we are back sans Brett, but pro Jessica and Jessica, I think you were the first time we've ever like our, we've ever had a guest more than once. So if that says anything about how awesome you are, I feel extra special. We're like right now.
00:00:46
Speaker
We're going to have to have usually they will come back after they experienced this one. So you're the only one who's ever agreed. We just get a microphone in the mail and it's like, thanks. Yes. It's like, I don't want to see you guys ever again. Please don't, please don't talk to me. Emotional damage engaged.
00:01:08
Speaker
But, uh, yeah, we've got our, uh, brunette gals back on today and, you know, Josh and Ray are here or whatever. It's fine. The drones, the drones. Exactly. From the last episode, if you remember.
00:01:23
Speaker
our drones, our drones, and then Jessica and I just, you know, killing it over here. But anyways, Jessica said something before we jumped on here and I was like, no, we got to save that because I just think everyone can relate to this. And if you can, honestly, are you even a human? I think you're an alien.
00:01:43
Speaker
Jessica, you and I have a particular thing that we take to the office with the intention of it not leaving the office, but it always manages to make it back home.
Office Fruit Humor
00:01:54
Speaker
And that is in our lunchbox. And what is that item? That would be an apple.
00:01:59
Speaker
Um, sometimes it's orange, but maybe not as an emotional, I call it my emotional support fruit. And we get them out and we like wash them and set up there and we're like, Hey buddy, I'm going to eat you today. And then they go like back to her office or like, you're going to be the afternoon snack. Yep. And then we find like cheese or like beef sticks or whatever.
00:02:26
Speaker
And then, you know, at the end of the day, we're like, okay, buddy, get back in the lunchbox. See you tomorrow. I have emotional support fruit and I also have emotional support yogurt.
00:02:38
Speaker
Ooh, I used to have one of those. Yeah, it travels to the office, it goes to the fridge, and I'm like, you're my afternoon snack. And then, yeah, I find some other garbage to stuff in my face. I have emotional support, like bag, chopped bag, lettuce, occasionally. And it judges me from the bottom crisper drawer with brown eyes crying. No one probably doesn't last as long as our afternoon. It judges you as going to eat your Taco Bell.
00:03:03
Speaker
No, the apple looks at the lettuce and says, you're next lettuce. So yeah, the apple usually outlasts the lettuce. So absolutely. Why do we do that? It's like, yeah, it's just in case starvation sets in, I guess it's like the last ditch effort.
00:03:18
Speaker
One of those things you see where they're like, I am not the same person I was this morning. I have all these great intentions. I'm going to eat healthy today. I'm going to do all these things. And then he gets to the office and somebody's like, oh, you're getting nachos? Well.
00:03:33
Speaker
Oh, can I just tag? Just basically go with a plan for people to derail you.
Lunch Choices
00:03:39
Speaker
You're like, come on, somebody say, let's go to eat. Somebody say, anybody? Anyway, Chinese buffet. That's Aletheia and I. Oh yeah. She'll be like, she'll literally come. She kind of like swings in with this like random amount of swagger that she has. And she's like, so I brought my lunch today and I look at her and I'm like, I also brought my lunch today. She's like, but I don't want my lunch.
00:04:01
Speaker
I don't want that happen. And then before you know it, somehow we're at the China Buffet. I can't pass up a China Buffet. I cannot. I can't. I mean, Mexican is great, but my original weakness will always be like the China Buffet. Which I introduced Josh to a Cabrancoons recently. Just recently? Yeah.
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah. Josh had never, listen, we went out to the fruit and vegetable conference and I said, do you want to split some crab bar and goods? And he's like, I don't know what that is. I was like, what is that delicious? It's just little pillows of before. Yeah, that was great. Great. I mean, it's fried, right? It's fried. I was like, Oh, it's crazy. In a pocket of fried, whatever. And I'm going to be like, this is incredible. It's like, I will take that. Yes. Thank you.
00:04:49
Speaker
And it's all about the sauce too. I mean, it's so many times it's about the sauce. It's like duck sauce kind of thing. I think so. I noticed one thing, there's no apples anywhere on a Chinese buffet usually. Maybe they'd cut one into like a swan and it's like a buffet.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's true.
Garden Planning
00:05:12
Speaker
But what we are talking about today, if you saw the episode title and you're like, are they going to get to it? We're five minutes in. Is garden plan, garden layout, nothing super specific. Garden design, nothing super specific. So just to start, I think a lot of times when we hear the word like
00:05:33
Speaker
garden, two things come to mind. It's usually vegetables or small scale. So I think what we're taught, at least what I plan to hit on today was something that could be applied to whether you're doing cut flowers and also things that apply to large operations that you can also use whether or not, you know, you're doing just like a small backyard garden. So I think a lot of the things we're talking about today really are applicable to everyone. So, you know, hang around and join us for that.
00:06:02
Speaker
And by join us, I act like there's going to be a commercial comes on, but we're not sponsored. So let's just continue where we were. That's about the Apple Growers Association. Make sure to purchase your emotional support, Apple. I want to hear from you guys, not only about the many reasons why you don't eat apples, what's wrong with you people, but I want to hear from you guys, like personally, like I know you guys all grow things or have grown things or will grow things in the future, but
00:06:28
Speaker
Some of your processes that go through your brain for your own personal or professional situations in some cases. How you guys kind of go about
Seed Purchase Strategies
00:06:36
Speaker
things when you're making decisions. We're kind of broad today. It could be commercial, could be for home.
00:06:42
Speaker
Just whatever. I mean, like, how do you guys make decisions? How do you start forming this process in your mind? We talked about on the previous episode when we start to get these garden seed catalogs in, my eyes dilate, I'm pretty sure. It's like I go into some kind of weird trance-like state and it's so much fun. It's the looking at those seed packs. It is so much fun.
00:07:02
Speaker
I got three in the mail yesterday. Three in the mail. And I was like, I'm going to look through all of these. What a wealth of that. Like each little seed pack represents such incredible like potential for the future. I mean, like it's incredible. One seed pack can grow so much, but, and we have local growers that they purchase so many seeds, they donate them back to us. And I love that.
00:07:24
Speaker
there at the local office that I'm in because I guess they just purchased so many and they have so many left over because a lot of the people I work with are smaller home gardeners a lot of them but yeah the seed companies they are good at selling their wares. I get seed catalogs for my married name and my maiden name. You're a double dipping man. I get them at the office too. I get three of the same catalogs.
00:07:50
Speaker
And they're so bright and cheery on a dreary January Kentucky winter day. It's like opening sunshine in front of me. And then I start pushing buttons and ordering things. I mean, it's sometimes good, sometimes not good.
00:08:04
Speaker
My favorite seed catalog has no pictures in it. Is there such a thing? What is this? It's an Excel file. That's what it is. It's an Excel file that you hide from notes, red, pretty, pretty love it.
00:08:25
Speaker
It is for where I order, you can order veggies there too, but cut flower seeds from, and so I'm buying in like large quantities, right? And so, you know, I'm spending a thousand dollars on seed, unfortunately, which really isn't that much for a lot of people. Yeah, but you could, that's commercially for you though, as well. I mean, it's more than just home plantings. Yeah. Right. It's all in- Excuse to feed the addiction. All in Latin, so you have to know the Latin names, and then there's like really brief descriptions and there's no words, and it just makes me feel- Is this like a speakeasy for wildflower seeds?
00:08:53
Speaker
Is this a speakeasy? Like I'm like, not everybody could read that, right? What is that? Like not to be, you know, Brad or anything. Cause I also like, I know things and this is the one time the things I know really come in handy. Too many seeds for what you are trying to accomplish Alexis. And I say seeds. I know you deal with a lot of other bulbs and other plants. I have really tried to refrain.
00:09:22
Speaker
unless I know it's seed that will keep for a couple of years. So a lot of the seed that I work with really is only good for about a year. So I try not to like over buy. So really thinking about my planting plan, which goes into what we're talking about today. So I do kind of a planting plan. I know, you know, I want to grow these things. I need at least this many plants, which means I need at least this many seeds. But for me, when you're spending a thousand dollars on seed, you really can't like
00:09:48
Speaker
spend a ton of extra, so you can't just buy everything. And I still get caught up in the... But usually for me, it's color, so it'll be... I'll have one or two things I experiment with usually every year, and then for me, it gets the color. So I know I love a type of salosha, and so I want it in every color, and I have to back off and be like, am I really gonna use that red salosha? It's very, very difficult. But
00:10:15
Speaker
Yeah. Talking about planning, plan first by second. And so I think usually we get that flipped. Usually we buy things first and then we have to figure out where the heck we're going to put it. Personal attack, personal attack. You're welcome. You're welcome. But it is, you know, if you're doing it, I think the better way to do it and not that we're not all guilty of not
00:10:39
Speaker
Doing it this way but is the plan first and then purchase after that that's that's my two cents in it you had an Interesting experience. I don't know how many years have you been in your current property there Alexis? I mean, it's not been too many years to where You guys purchase this farm and then you went through this decision-making process of how to set the thing up That is interesting to me how you went about that and primarily I guess I'm asking about the
00:11:04
Speaker
uh, flower, you know, plantings, uh, your flower operation.
Farm Setup Decisions
00:11:07
Speaker
But, uh, like, how did you like look at the land and start making decisions? I mean, we're talking about layoff design and how you orient. Yes. Yes. I mean, how do you, with a clean slate, sometimes that's pretty exciting to me. It's a little harder sometimes to work with existing, but yeah, how did, what was your process there?
00:11:29
Speaker
So it's kind of the same, like thought processes can be really overwhelming when there's nothing there. So if that's you. It's exciting, but some of the decisions probably that you make in the first few months is going to affect you for the next 20 years as far as maybe your infrastructure, like waterheads and access and all that. My thing is thinking about access to water and access to like
00:11:53
Speaker
For a commercial scale, like your prep house, your washing station, your pack house, I'm trying to be as efficient as possible. So I want to minimize the amount of space between what's in the field and where it needs to end up. And so that was kind of a big thing. In fact, when.
00:12:10
Speaker
I was planning when we bought this farm, I had every intention of putting main production fields in the back field because it was prettier and it was more protected from the wind. So that was like part of what my thought process was. But then when it like push came to shove and I started thinking about like, we have to install water. We have to do all of these other things.
00:12:36
Speaker
It wasn't practical, so I ended up putting them in our bottom field close to our barn where the water and packing station would be. So in some ways it's flexible, yeah. I was going to say, in some ways it's like some decisions were already made for you, like the location of the barn, and you had to orient in proximity to that. Depending on your size, can you get equipment in and out? Oh yeah, that's a right one.
00:13:04
Speaker
With our production, with vegetable production, we have a bit, we kind of got forced into where we set up, you know, our stuff at originally, but we have a field that is not easy to get in and work the ground or because we do, we lay plastic and do trickle irrigation. Is it like across the creek or some kind of restricted access?
00:13:23
Speaker
It's just how it's laid out and there's not good clearance to turn a tractor around without any maintenance. So with planning with that, you know, grow a lot of produce, but also starting to do fruit production and said, okay, you know, that's hard area to work. So maybe let's put strawberries there, you know, something that's going to be a requirement. Blackberries in that area, you know,
00:13:49
Speaker
something that's not going to, it's going to be a permanent crop, asparagus. If it, you know, survives, uh, if it doesn't get forgotten enough. If it does survive, it will multiply its asparagus because we both pulled. And if this makes you feel better of how many things you've killed, remember Jessica and I have degrees and we teach people how to grow plants better. And yet we still both killed a very large blueberry planting, like separate farms, separate experiences, the same exact thing.
00:14:18
Speaker
So, uh, if it makes you feel better, it was a good support system for each other. There's at least 30 dead as we speak. So I'm like, okay, good. Cause I think I only have like four left. I think about things like blueberries and you meant you guys mentioned fruit plantings. That's when it gets real. I mean, it's one thing with annual crops when you have tomatoes or
00:14:41
Speaker
peppers or whatever that you can somewhat move around a lot easier. But when you get into more permanent perennial type crops, the considerations for me go way up.
Exploring Permaculture
00:14:51
Speaker
You want to be really careful looking at soil profile, look at orientation, you know, wind exposure, frost drainage. All of this stuff becomes super important. I mean, and which one of you guys said you that you were looking at? Was it Jessica? You or you guys are looking at like more perennial fruit crops. Both of you guys tried blueberries. We're not going to count that. We're just
00:15:14
Speaker
Are you in mistakes and learning from plants left that are in, that we dug up and are in pots. So thank you very much. Not a complete and utter failure. Josh, you have more, like, I know you have a little bit more experience, but like in permaculture. So I'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on that, but I know permaculture is like a hot buzz word that I think some people
00:15:40
Speaker
Like overuse or they overuse or don't use crackling, but like, yeah. Ultimately it means that you want things to be the most efficient and to make the most like sense. And that's what all of us in farming or grow with gardening are doing. So like, just call it whatever it is, but talk a little bit more about that. Sure. I mean, from, uh, like just to kind of clear up that terminology, cause some people will just use the term permaculture to describe everything.
00:16:10
Speaker
And it kind of originates with this guy, Bill Mollison, who was in Australia in like 70s, 80s, was an ecologist. And he basically kind of looked at a lot of different production systems that had been in their place for like a thousand plus years and kind of evaluated them from like an
00:16:29
Speaker
ecological perspective to come up with like what are the common things we see in this. And it is very much like an efficiency oriented system. And it's dictated by I mean, like what we're already talking about, you know, like
00:16:41
Speaker
one form of production would be like annual beds. And so in a permaculture system, those would be located, you know, in a certain proximity to the household close, I would say. Whereas like perennial systems are ones that need less maintenance would be located further out. Like they, I think the big, the, the aspect of permaculture, which is like hundreds of things you can get into the one that makes the most sense to me for like,
00:17:06
Speaker
design concepts and stuff like that is to think about the zone system, which if you think about it, it's like kind of concentric circles where like like a bullseye. Yeah, your house is zone zero. And it's the things that like you have to like touch and observe and interact with and have complex maintenance processes. They're all located there. And as you move out, you get into systems that are like very low maintenance and kind of forage base often more times like
00:17:34
Speaker
perennial, but low maintenance perennials, things like that. That's how I'd introduce that topic of permaculture. There's a lot to that even for homeowners. You're talking about a system that could encompass a lot of either homework commercial sounds like jobs. Yeah, they can do really huge scale, like 1,000 acres under permaculture management versus a household.
00:17:58
Speaker
one of the there's a book that I don't let leave my house. The permaculture design manual is like the second edition was printed in like 1988 and only about 300,000 were printed. If you can find it used. No big deal. I purchased it when I was like a broke undergrad, but it's incredible. It's like, you know, several hundred pages with really large illustrations and stuff like that kind of describing. You can pick any climate regime and there's like, you know, several hundred pages on
00:18:28
Speaker
what your obstacles and opportunities are in that system. You guys have already mentioned some critical things to me. Josh, one thing is the things that need the most attention, you know, closer to the house. That makes great sense to me. It seems seems logical. And Jessica, you or Alexis mentioned
00:18:44
Speaker
you know, water and how important that is, which kind of goes into what Josh is saying as part of the infrastructure. Both of those things seem huge to me as, you know, as far as really practical design aspects. Yeah. Whatever.
Garden Planning Advice
00:18:59
Speaker
Those resources, like one of the things like what you all were talking about with like annual production systems or to get down to the details, like your cut flower production beds, Alexis, like what kind of dimensions are we talking about specifically? Like how wide are they? How long are they?
00:19:14
Speaker
Yeah. Is that kind of dictated by the mechanization you use? Yeah. I mean, what, and like my operation, if we just called it, just called an annual operation, because I think annual flowers and annual vegetables can be treated very, very similarly and can be grown in similar, um, similar ways. So like what Jessica is doing where they're laying plastic and her beds are going to be much different than my beds that are like more low till, uh, and I'm using like fabric that I'm using over and over. So like.
00:19:44
Speaker
My beds are, my annual beds are like four foot wide because that's, I can reach two foot into the beds and they overlap into walkways and it's all about something that I could do on my own or maybe need one more person for like big things. Like when I lay, when I buy silage tarps, I buy a silage tarp that I can move with one other person or I can move like with my tractor.
00:20:09
Speaker
or my little walk behind tractor versus some people will buy silage tarps that are huge because they've got four people that are going to help them move that kind of thing. That's so important. If you were to have that help for those things. Yeah. How much help you're going to have, how much you want to be bending over versus not or mulching versus not. My peony beds are, I feel like a good example. I have a friend who
00:20:36
Speaker
grows a lot, grows peonies on a commercial scale like I do. And she, some of this has to do with her zone, but we're similar enough where she does, with the kind of soil that she has, she does mulch on her pea, like a heavy mulch system, and I have fabric down on mine. She works
00:20:56
Speaker
she farms full time, I don't. So she has a little bit more ability to stay ahead of the weeds to get the mulch down on the appropriate time than I do. So I have fabric down on mine just because that's a system that works better for me and my soil is good enough where I don't have to, you know, add organic matter every single year in the form of mulch. So like there's a lot of things when you're planning, think of what you can do or what you and whatever help you're going to do, help you have are able to accomplish. And sometimes you don't know, like,
00:21:26
Speaker
My four-foot beds outside and my annuals, the reason they're four-foot is because that's what I was doing. That's what the book said to do. I think moving forward as I slowly change my systems with the time that I have and just
00:21:41
Speaker
as your business changes, which it's supposed to, I'll probably change to a three-foot bed system just because I don't want to reach as far. Totally. I'm getting older. I'm just not able to do the things that I was doing before. In my high tunnel, they're more like a two and a half foot right now, and I really like that. I'm thinking three foot would be really good, and every year I may convert
00:22:07
Speaker
one or two beds over to that system. But Jessica, you all have changed some of the stuff you're doing and Jessica's doing a much larger scale with their operation.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah. Um, just, you know, for us, cause we end up selling out farmers markets and what we have changed over the years is just knowing, knowing your limit of what to produce and finding those right varieties that sell. And kind of like Alexis mentioned earlier, it's like, Oh, I really love that red solution. Do I need that red solution? That's like me and pumpkins. Do I need pumpkin?
00:22:44
Speaker
You need another baby pumpkin. No, I don't. Do they take up a lot of space in your production system? Yes. So over the years, learning and figuring out what is taking up a lot of space, what actually sells, what doesn't sell.
00:23:01
Speaker
varieties that are good or bad, or like you said, like, do I have help to help me? Do I have help to help pick sweet corn? You know, that's a big ordeal when sweet corn is ready. When tomatoes are ready, it's a big ordeal to make sure you have help with that. Just like we said with covering, we have strawberries on plastic this year, and so we're getting ready to cover. And so when we were thinking about that, instead of doing multiple long rows of it,
00:23:26
Speaker
That has been was thinking like, okay, how can we cover these easily? If it's just the two of us and it's windy, right? Yeah. So he did shorter, smaller blocks, um, plastic that he put them on so that we would be able to easily cover and uncover them when needed because you know, the nightmare is to try to one last couple of years, you've been over a lot and cover my multiple towns. Yeah. That's a great point across the field. Oh yeah.
00:23:55
Speaker
you know, are we going to be able to even pull it across if it gets wet or something? With the use of row covers, that's an awesome illustration of what we're talking about today is you have to really be careful. You have to know how many people are going to be working those covers. And it's just so much tougher if you have three really long rows versus maybe six rows that are half the length. It's usually easier to cover the block.
00:24:18
Speaker
than it is the rectangle. Which is kind of goes like opposite of like if you talk and look up like really old manuals like when they were doing, Ray, you know, the things that they wrote when you were- In the 1800s. In the 1800s. But like when you're looking at that- When it was an oral history of agriculture passed down verbally. Yeah, it was, you wrote it down at some point but-
00:24:36
Speaker
efficiency wise, it's more efficient to have like, depending on what it is. So like, like picking and putting down compost or tilling or any of those things. It's more efficient to have long rows, right? Because going in one direction and on a large scale. Yeah, absolutely. But
00:24:53
Speaker
If you are like my beds, my outside beds, my perennial and my annual ones are in like 50 foot like blocks. So they're 50 foot long. And I could have done a hundred feet, right? Like I could have made them longer, but because I knew, you know, this is the equipment, this is how many people I usually have helping me. It made more sense to do kind of these shorter blocks that way and to compart.
00:25:18
Speaker
love the term compartmentalize. I am a tree. I've said it before. I compartmentalize everything in my brain and that's how I do my farm. Josh called them zones. I call them compartments and it's the same concept, but I have these compartments where that's how I rotate through. Compartment one, two, three rotates or this one has a tarp on it and they're all standardized. I think standardization is more, I would argue maybe more important
00:25:49
Speaker
or one of the most important things to whatever you're doing, standardize what it is so everything is interchangeable has been really important to how efficient my farm is. You mentioned having that rotation system, being able to rotate those fields is very important. We do a lot of tomatoes, peppers, but then also a lot of squash and being able to rotate those fields out for disease and pest issues.
00:26:19
Speaker
You know, and like you said, having it all standard, right? So it's no big deal to, you know, keep track, keep records, which is very important with all of this thing. And Alexis and I talked about that over the break. I think there was one day when I was like, Hey, I found my very original planting records that I ever made from like 2012. Was it a journal? Our first year. I do have a garden journal as well. Oh, you and Alexis both. Okay. Yeah.
00:26:45
Speaker
And I was like, wow, we have come a long way since, you know, that very first one, but it's nice and it's humbling to see, you know, where you started. It's where you're at now. But having those recommendations. Put it down on paper or however you do things. Like if you're the person who likes to draw it on your iPad or put it onto an Excel spreadsheet or whatever.
00:27:06
Speaker
Whatever that is put it down on paper and I do like many renditions like I I'm a paper pencil person and so I'll do many different like renditions of things and So if you're planning even if you've already bought your seed no judgment it happens. It's okay. I
00:27:24
Speaker
plan it out and things will change. Like I look at my planning sheet every year and what I said I was going to put in this spot isn't always necessarily exactly in that spot because the plants just weren't ready and I had to get things in before storm or, you know, whatever, but it's close enough. Uh, and it helps me year to year to plan, to do that rotation, to figure out like, Oh, like for me height is very important. I mean, it's important vegetable production, right? Cause you don't want anything shading out something else. Right. And.
00:27:54
Speaker
So I'll realize that this new variety of solution I tried is much shorter than the other varieties that I've grown so I'm gonna grow that on the other end and so that it doesn't get smothered by in between these other two varieties in my row like things like that you can buy make you having a plan you can just kind of.
00:28:14
Speaker
Star those types of situation that's a good point Alexis even if they even though it's the same plan on paper You know that that specific aspects of that variety One may be more aggressive. So and that all goes back to record-keeping. That's a great point because a lot of times
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, tomatoes, tomato. Well, there's a big difference between like a patio and a beef steak or something. And you know, the subtlety like that is, I guess what you have to capture in those records, whether you're talking about flowers or veggies or whatever. Yeah, that's a really good point. We all get busy. And you know, by the end of the season, and then we have, you know, have this... I tell myself, I'll remember. I'll remember it. The biggest lie I tell myself. I have no idea what I had for supper yesterday. No clue.
00:28:54
Speaker
You'll be looking at these seed catalogs and it'll be like, okay, but you know, a lot of times you'll still get like companies will send you like, Hey, this is what you ordered last year. You know, did you, you know, do you want to just reorder that? Do you like that? But then you have to sit there and be like, did we like that? Was that that tomato that was beautiful, but tasted horrible? Was that the one that if it rained, it like busted or had horrible disease issue. And you got to go back and take note of those things. You know,
00:29:19
Speaker
I mean, for personal, like if you're just having your backyard garden too, you know, you don't want to continuously grow things that are tastier. Your family won't eat, yeah. I've started because sometimes I just, I don't like taking notes on my phone. I'm a weirdo and my husband always judges me for it.
00:29:37
Speaker
And so sometimes we're all weird because we don't take notes. Okay. I hate it. So sometimes I don't have my like little notebook with me. And so what I'll at least do and we're pretty much all in the age of technology is.
00:29:52
Speaker
I'll just take a picture because that picture has a date on it and then like it might be something as simple as like putting a thumbs down next to the tag that like says the name of it and then I know and so then when I'm ordering I might just go back and be like well I know Solosha was blooming in June and so I'll just go to June and find that photo and I'm like well I put a thumbs down so I'm not gonna order that again like it doesn't always have to be
00:30:16
Speaker
something and then maybe you transfer that to your notes or whatever, but make it as simple as possible because you won't do it if it's not simple. And that's the same for your gardens. Put your garden beds close to the house, like Josh said, in that zone zero or zone one, because if you see it, you'll deal with it. If you don't see it every day, you don't deal with it.
00:30:39
Speaker
Yeah, that's important for like home gardens, especially because if you don't see it, you're either not going to water it. You're not going to know the past or problem. You're not going to know that the shiitake mushroom sitting on the shade tree where that's there and gone. That's a perfect example because that happened to me with like, I mean, I was working on basically somebody else's farm on leased space. So it's like nowhere near where I live. You know, like I'm getting the car to drive to a place and yada, yada. But I had
00:31:04
Speaker
you know, I'd set up a bunch of shiitake logs. And instead of putting them in a place where I would see them every day, it's not like they need to be prominent. And it's not like they need to be daily managed. But
00:31:14
Speaker
You need to look at them routinely or you're going to miss it. And like that absolutely happened to me. Very discouraging when you go and see those little mushroom mummies. And I'm like, no weeping there in the woods under the trees. They're in my zone zero. They're literally out my back door, but that specific door, I have a bajillion doors. I live in an old farmhouse, so I have like a bajillion doors everywhere, but because we don't use that door very often, even though they are quite literally up against my house,
00:31:42
Speaker
I missed a bunch of them. They were little shriveled mummies. So like, it's not just- I need to go check mine then. Because it all happened so fast with fungus. But yeah, you could walk past something that's, even tomatoes, you could use tomatoes as an example. If you're a homeowner, obviously you, you're not maybe looking as often, but yeah.
00:32:07
Speaker
I had that happen with like rabbits down, I've got a garden next to the creek and, and it's down out of sight because it's only spot I have it sunlight exposures. Okay. But the rabbits were just mowing stuff down the last couple of years. And I'm like, Mr. McGregor, here I am yelling.
00:32:24
Speaker
At the rabbits and but I was not looking as often the only time I was going down this when I was watering and I was hand watering It's a small plot, you know go down there and check stuff out every week that week was weekly was not enough the rabbits must have sent out a text or something to their rabbit buddies and
00:32:40
Speaker
And it's just like the mushrooms on Tuesdays.
Farm Efficiency Discussion
00:32:42
Speaker
We got, you know, yeah, damage was done. Things happen. Decisions were made. Exactly. But yeah, the mushrooms. I've done that Josh so many times and just timely things like that. If you're not looking at it and you don't have to actually pass it every day.
00:32:57
Speaker
that becomes an issue, especially with these small plantings. But a question for Jessica, you and Alexis going back specifically Alexis, I know with you, but how does the size of equipment, and I see this, you know, with my local producers, but how does that determine like layout in some cases with the actual size of the equipment that you're working with? That makes a difference also, right? I mean, the what, alleyways and things, driveways you guys, Josh, I know you have experience here too.
00:33:24
Speaker
So like I said, like we use, we do a plastic layer, right? And we have like a three foot or six foot tiller that we have for our tractors. So be able to get that in and then do proper spacing. So we are doing like three foot beds and then having at least two or three feet in between rows. Don't quote me on like exactly how that, you know, is.
00:33:45
Speaker
And then we're not, we don't have any other equipment to take down the rows, except maybe a tiller or we do sometimes like what Alexis mentioned, where we have fabric that we reuse every year that we roll down in between the rows, the suppressed bead pressure. But I know Alexis is using much smaller equipment, you know, it's easier to handle and get in her high tunnel. That's a really big factor in like what size her gonna have. And like the one I mentioned before, like,
00:34:14
Speaker
We tried it like one or two years, but it was such a pain to try to get a tractor into that one other spot. Do you guys switch up equipment or like smaller base equipment? That's when we decided, okay, we're going to put our perennial crops up here. Got you. Because we don't need to be trying to go in here. Just such a hassle. That was like one of the plans with that. But definitely the size of the equipment you have and
00:34:36
Speaker
You know, do you want something that you can easily manage yourself, right? That you can do by yourself, or do you want something larger? Like with the plastic layer, you at least need three people. I mean, you can do it. Yeah. I've seen people do it by themselves. I deal situation. You need at least three people there to do it, to be efficient. And so you're not doing it all all day. Um,
00:35:02
Speaker
But that's a big factor in, you know, layout. Even if you're not using, like, I'm sure there's several of you on here that are saying, well, I don't do any mechanization. A wheelbarrow is mechanization. Even if you're doing no-till gardening or something, you need to be able to get that wheelbarrow to fit down a row and to turn that wheelbarrow around just like you would a tractor. Like the same things apply.
00:35:28
Speaker
You know, if you're, if you've got a wagon that you're putting harvests, whether it's a, you're pulling it with a truck or you're pulling it by hand, can you fit your wagon down there? So it doesn't necessarily have to be even factor size. That's a good point too, about harvest. Oh, harvest it. Your job ways are huge. You know, getting, how close can you get to your garden? Even if it's like your own little garden, because what are you growing? That's going to be really heavy. If you have like a bumper crop. That zucchini you forgot about. Yeah.
00:35:57
Speaker
I checked it yesterday, now it's 81 pounds. That's a great point. Get watermelons that the raccoons don't scratch apart and eat all of them. How are you going to carry those out? In my case, flowers have to be in water, so I'm hollagging buckets of water. Totally. That can be heavy, so even though flowers themselves are light and for optimal base life, they need to go directly into water as soon as they're harvested.
00:36:25
Speaker
I'm not carrying pretty baskets of flowers back as most people imagine. Yeah. Skipping in my sundress. Like the Danish sunsets. Yeah. Frolicking around. It's not, you know, you're not sweating at all. Never. It's never hot at a flower. It's like sound of music meets flower farming. It's exactly what it is. I sing a lot. Birds tend to land on my shoulders and twirling with me. They bring you your hat and like settle it on your head.
00:36:56
Speaker
But the driveways were always our biggest thing. Us guys were advocating all the time for dad. We're like, let's add some more driveways in because we didn't want to carry anything another inch more than we had to. And he's like, that is so wasteful. So we were always going back and forth between efficiency and wasted space. So we wanted always more driveways, more alleyways.
00:37:16
Speaker
And dad was like, no, we're not adding anymore. And I'm like, but dad, it would save us steps and time. And he says, get in the truck. And it's a balancing act and it, and you know, those things evolve over time on an operation, your driveways and your access points and stuff. If you have bigger fields, it's a big deal.
00:37:33
Speaker
I think balancing act is a good way to think of it because it is that it's not necessarily that it's like wasted space, right? It's just space that's not in production immediately critical for like, you know, your actual process and harvesting and all that. Like I remember one of the first farms I worked on had this pathway system where it was like they would have three foot wide beds and then a three foot wide pathway next to it. And it was like kind of, you know, these strips that were probably like a hundred feet long or something like that.
00:37:58
Speaker
And it was plenty of room to kid in between with wagons and all that kind of stuff. And it was pleasant to work in, and that's why they did it, right? Yeah. And if we really needed to, we could open up more of it, but we didn't need to, right? Yeah. You'd be amazed. It's one of those work with what you got situations. It's always amazing how much you can
00:38:19
Speaker
do in such a small area in horticulture production, I think especially. Intensity is there, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can have like, I mean, I know I talk about flowers a lot, but I think even in veggie production, depending on what you're doing, you could be a quote unquote commercial farm, like be a full time farmer, making your only income source on an acre. You know, you can't say that in other areas of agriculture. Like you can
00:38:44
Speaker
If you have an acre of tomatoes, like I'm praying for you because it's a lot. Yeah. But then they're down there. That's a lot. They're always shocked by that. Like when you say we grow like a lot of tomatoes, right? And they think, well, you say, thank you. You know, you're like, I grew 800 tomatoes. They're like, Oh my gosh. They're thinking like when you see row crops, it's, it's not, it's on way less than an acre. Yeah. That's a lot of tomatoes.
00:39:12
Speaker
That's a lot of tomatoes. That's a lot of tomatoes. Yeah. That's my favorite when you have like row crop farmers who are, or, you know, maybe they did tobacco or whatever. So these kind of like traditional ag guys that transition into horticulture crops. And they're always like, ah, I'm probably going to put in like three acres of
00:39:28
Speaker
You know, watermelons or sweet potatoes. You can tell their background a little bit. Hundreds and thousands of acres sometimes. So when they do it and you're like, I want to recommend that. And they're like, Oh, it'll be fine. And you know, they have all the equipment, they have sprayers, they have all this stuff, but then they do it. And after that season, they almost always decrease.
00:39:46
Speaker
I tell them, they don't really make like a tomato combine. Not readily. I say 10 times less space and 10 times more labor. That gets you close. It's the 10 by rule. I'm like, they're like, what? Then you start to talk about labor and the conversion factor is pretty rough between row crops and horticulture production can be.
00:40:10
Speaker
because we've got a long history of row crops in the state of Kentucky. Horticulture, not so much, even though we have a great horticulture production in the state, it is a different language. And the scale likes to say, yeah, the scales are just amazing when people are, they really have to, you can tell people's backgrounds of production based on how they talk about things. They're like, yeah, that's on the back 400 acres. I'm like, they're not tomato farmers. They're not tomato farmers. Even the back 10 acres is not a tomato farmer. They're not tomato, yeah. At least around here. Not tomato farmers, yeah.
00:40:40
Speaker
Exactly. But via the functional layout, and I think about things like sweet corn, we get that question a lot with newer farmers, especially, you know, between as far as, you know,
00:40:50
Speaker
pollination issues and long rows versus square blocks and things like that and worried about cross pollination. There's a functional design aspect to big and small farms here in Kentucky that you need to consider when you're even thinking about pollinators or if you're growing pumpkins, I guess, there's specific layouts depending on how aggressive and how big the vines get and all this stuff that you accumulate, all this knowledge over time on layout. So the record keeping becomes just so very important or if you're
00:41:20
Speaker
planting blueberries that live. Sorry, guys. If you're planting blueberries, you probably want to have those together. And to me, blueberries, I don't think about the plants. I think about the end game. I think about the netting. Blueberry layout, not on the plants, but on how I'm going to get nets over those things. That's a good point. Certain crops like that. It's yes, it's about the plants, but it's also about the special requirements like netting or if you have organic production that you're going to have to pull.
00:41:48
Speaker
you know, fabric over, that's all that goes into the consideration. And that's considerations beyond the needs of the plants. So yeah, it's interesting. Jessica, do you put any thought, sometimes it's easier said than done to be able to, it's a luxury to be able to put in thoughts on how your rows run in a field, like the direction they run.
Field Layout Considerations
00:42:09
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:42:10
Speaker
Cause it's not, sometimes it's not always the way the slope is or whatever. Yeah. Do you have you all, is that something you were able to put thought into and, and do, or kind of, well, where all of our stuff is down is just kind of like, that was our only option at the beginning. Right. It was like one of those things we've made it work. Mm-hmm.
00:42:31
Speaker
The other fruit plantings before we decided that we were going to make that other location, the fruit plant, like we were able to pick with that because of the, how the slope was and everything in that area. We're like, okay, we're definitely putting fruit up here because they're higher up. We don't want them to be down, you know, low with cold air and all of that. But it was one of those situations where like, okay, at the time before we actually owned farm, real farmland, you know, this, this is our, our options because prior to that we were,
00:43:01
Speaker
further away from a water source. So that was a real determinative factor. It was like we're now close to a water source.
00:43:11
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, we keep saying water source, but, and like Ray even said he had to like hand water and he didn't go see his, so it was his garden. I'm going to pick on you, right? Cause you've been picking on me about my blueberries. Absolutely. Ray did everything wrong in this situation. Okay. He put his, wouldn't be the first time he put his garden away, like further away from home where it's out of sight, out of mind. And he had to hand water it, which hand watering is fine, but he's hand watering something he's not looking at regularly.
00:43:39
Speaker
And hand watering can be very tedious. Who wants to consider buckets of water? Exactly. That's one of the biggest labor sinks in all the developing world is dragging water to the plants. Yes. So solid. Every time I hand water something, which I hand water most of my transplants when I put them in, just because I feel better. I think it saves me money in the long run, but I cringe every time I do it because I'm like... Do you do it with like...
00:44:09
Speaker
the beam and the two cans on either side. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Not even doing it that bad. I've got a hose and good pressure and I'm not lugging the hose all that far, but it makes me mad every time I do it. Cause I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. But
00:44:26
Speaker
I can see the black and white infomercial in slow-mo where you're just dropping everything, throwing it down and walking into the sunset. I'm literally falling over the hose. It's like one of those spray nozzles and it's flying up in the air like one of those wacky air. Like a fire hydrant hose that's knocking people down.
00:44:49
Speaker
rolling around and screaming. Water is such a big issue. I'll plug the fruit and vegetable conference if you guys listening missed that and you're here in Kentucky you missed a good meeting. But one of the breakout sessions was water, on farm water management. It was very interesting hearing from these larger commercial producers how they've creatively kind of managed water and think about water and it's kind of the foundation of their farm.
00:45:14
Speaker
And, you know, those producers, new producers outside of the state, of course, as you go into the West and larger scale productions and water rights becoming more of an issue, it's just incredible. Here in Kentucky, we're blessed with a lot of awesome water resources, but man, they based their operations. One person, one of the biggest in the state producers said, you know, I based my production off the number of ponds I can build.
00:45:37
Speaker
And it was really interesting. It was totally interesting. And where he put those ponds and how that affected his pumping capacity, distribution system, so on, so forth. Fascinating. That's a huge topic in permaculture design is about like.
00:45:52
Speaker
Ponds, pond location, and the use of topography. Cause like a pond at a low point is easy to build, but it's a huge investment to be able to put a pond or some kind of water storage system up at elevation. We had one of those on the farm I grew up on. Yeah, it was a farm that was a pond that was a catchment basin actually for reclaimed strip mine that had fully, you know, went through succession trees had grown up.
00:46:14
Speaker
but the pond still was there and didn't really fill up with sediment. So we were able to take advantage of this high elevation pond and it fed several of our fields and we never had to have a pump. We just did gravity flow and it was probably ran a quarter mile up on the mountain. We had an incredible pressure. It's like a battery. It's like so much potential energy stored up there. When I was working out west at this outdoor school, kind of like western New Mexico, you would see a lot of these farms where they would put
00:46:43
Speaker
you know a large gravity tank up on the top of a mesa and it was connected to kind of like a windmill sort of system that would be pulling water way up and then just keeping it up there for when they need it because they definitely you know you still need water you need to even kind of periodically flood fields to deal with like salinity issues so the capacity and ability to deliver water anywhere at pressure at large volumes it's like it runs your whole life
00:47:08
Speaker
I think we had like 90 pounds of pressure at the base. We had to use a presser reducer with no pulse whatsoever. And we had huge capacity and huge presser because dad would go from a large pipe down to some other. And just the elevation drop, you know, you calculate that out now, you know, easily to calculate the pressure gain, but it was insane pressure. But we did not know what a resource we had. It was awesome.
00:47:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was great. And with no maintenance whatsoever. And it was clear water. We didn't even have to run a sand filter on it. It was amazing. Yeah. Well, you know, back in the 1800s, there wasn't the pollution there is now. So our mules were in the barn that we ran the line through. And this is true story. They love that water. It's mules that I plowed with. There are smaller fields. I plowed with those mules. I did. That was our answer in the eastern part of the state. We had just got a lot of smaller fields and you could not turn our tractors around in them.
00:48:01
Speaker
And when I was younger, that was my first job is I would plow those small tobacco fields. I would hand cultivate those with our mules. And so our three and five foot plows. Yeah. Because you couldn't turn tractors in them. And dad gave me the profits from those. So I was super motivated as a 10 year old. I was like out there working mules. That's 10, 11 years old and had a team of mules. And man, we made some money back. I learned very quickly farming, if done correctly, you can make some money on it. So yeah.
00:48:29
Speaker
If everybody just imagined like baby Ray with a team of mules, I'm with you. I did. Big fun. It's big fun. Essentially, I imagined his son because they're twins. Yes.
00:48:41
Speaker
And I just laughed like... Reed would be riding the mule, not working the mule. He would definitely be riding the mule. Yeah, but that, I mean, sometimes you just have to be creative in these situations and take advantage. My father was so good about taking advantage of topography or taking advantage of these small fields that normally, you know, would go by the wayside. And, you know, he was really good at that. So I appreciate that. I want to give a... You want to think of obstacles as opportunities when it comes to like topography and stuff. Yeah.
00:49:09
Speaker
A little shout out. A little shout out, I think NRCS can do a lot of help doing visiting your farm and looking at topography and looking out maybe where a pond needs to go or you know where a hedgerow can be helpful and hey by the way we have grants for this so you know I know sometimes it can take a while to get them out there because they're so there's not that many of them and they're kind of running a couple counties at a time but
00:49:36
Speaker
reach out especially this time of year if you're kind of in a planning phase of bought a new farm or wanting to expand and they can help you think about you know the way the winds gonna come you know how do you set your high tunnel up or you know something along those lines where to establish perennial rows things like that so just kind of giving a shout out and those you know NRCS is nationwide so no matter where you're listening from you should be able to contact your
00:50:01
Speaker
local, are they, are they called agents? What are they called? I don't know. We're agents. So we, we like that term, but, um, so contact them. They can be really helpful. Mine just called me the other day and was talking about some, some opportunities, uh, that we could have on the farm on areas that we don't want to mow anymore. And how do we make that work for the environment and things like that? So.
00:50:28
Speaker
So that was pretty cool, but I think we're going to wrap it up. One other episode I wanted to, we talked about kind of irrigation. We have an episode on like low flow irrigation.
00:50:42
Speaker
collecting water and stuff like that. So if you've not heard that and that piqued your interest, uh, go back and check that out. I don't remember what episode it was late summer, 2023, I think. Okay. Yeah. I think it's called like low flow irrigation or something. Yeah, that was aired in September 24th rain barrels, rainwater catchment, low flow.
00:51:02
Speaker
That was a good one. I enjoyed that one. Yeah. That was a good one. So even if you're doing like small scale, you got a couple of raised beds, you want to water or, uh, you know, if you're going large scale, like I want to put one on my high tunnel to water the high tunnel this year. Um, she has big, big goals, big hopes and dreams, uh, but things like that, you know, check out that episode.
00:51:19
Speaker
And I think we are kind of wrapping this up. We should have Brett on next time. Not that Jessica wasn't amazing and I want her back all the time. But if you've been missing the sultry voice of Brett Wolf, he will be back with us on the next episode.
00:51:37
Speaker
We're glad to have you here. Thank you so much for listening. Follow us on Instagram, Hort Culture Podcast. You can shoot us an email that's in the show notes if you have ideas for episodes or want to know about something cool or hey, if you want to be on the episode,
00:51:53
Speaker
Let us know. We've had some people reach out on Instagram and we're like, I do this cool thing and can you talk about it? And by the way, if you want me on, so that sounds fun. So reach out to us. We're always eager to hear that. And thank you, Jessica, for joining us once again, because you're wonderful. I needed some feminine energy up in here. So thank you for that.
00:52:15
Speaker
Thank you for joining us. Check us out next week. We're talking about more cool things, more plant things, because this is the Hort Culture Podcast, and that's what we do here. Have a great day. Thanks for being here.