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The Occasional Bean & Spring Garden Prep
105 Plays1 year ago
Join us as we dive into the essentials of prepping your home garden for the upcoming season. We'll cover everything from tilling to soil amendments. Tune in to get your garden space thriving!
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction and Gardening Humor
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Horticulture, 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.
00:00:16
Speaker
Hello, welcome. I need to tell you about two experiences that I've had where people have given me something that have said the same thing, and I'm not really sure if that says something about me or about other people, but I'm looking at this sticker that says, gardening, because murder is wrong. This is the second time I've gotten one of these.
00:00:38
Speaker
It's a very strong commentary. What about me says that if I didn't garden, I would murder someone. You said that before. Oh, I didn't really follow or something. Yeah. A dirty look. Yeah. People tend to give that to me and they're like, oh, this is why you must garden. I honestly did not follow the logic of that until you explained it. I was like, this is like a non sequitur.
00:01:04
Speaker
Is it like garden therapy? I was going to tell everybody about, we always have some pre chats before our episodes, you know, just getting, getting, you know, warming up and
Pest Control Insights and Seed Planting Tips
00:01:14
Speaker
everything. And the topic of flaming bees came up and I was going to tell everybody about that. But then as I waited for their entrance, I look at the sticker and I go, you know, this is, this is the second thing I've gotten recently about murder. What was the flaming bees? And my brain just may not be working today.
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, dealing with B was waspness, you know, the the advice, oh, gas on it and light it up. That's not. Oh, that's. Don't do that. No. But we do get a lot of calls about that. They're like, oh, you have Kudzu just dump some diesel fuel on it and light it on fire. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no
00:02:01
Speaker
Make sure to be in an enclosed space. The petrochemicals has a pest and invasive solution. Make sure you inhale really deep after you just really hang out close and breathe deep. So many issues. This is sarcasm by the way, listener. Disclaimer. Disclaimer. What if they already hung up though?
00:02:27
Speaker
I was thinking of you, Lex, as I was dealing with some perlite and trying to not get it into my lung area. That's good. Did you not? Did you wear a mask? I did not. I succeeded. Okay. Well, that's good. I know it's planting seed starting season because when I come in in the evenings and I blow my nose, it's just potting soil that pretty much just comes out. Oh, wow.
00:02:54
Speaker
So I need to be a little bit more careful. So this is me telling everybody, if you're dumping your potting soil into or mixing it or dumping it into, you know, a big garbage pail or something, which is what I do. I have like a big garbage pail. I put
Planning Crops and Starting Seeds
00:03:07
Speaker
my bales in and I just get it all up in my nose.
00:03:11
Speaker
You should wear a mask, okay? Don't be like me. Dust is for chumps? I don't know. Do you not have like a... Do you not do like the neckerchief kind of thing where you pull it up and dump or you do nothing? Just straight breathe? No, I just straight breathe it in. Like that time I did the sulfuric acid. No filter. No filter. Just right up in there.
00:03:33
Speaker
Wow. Yeah. Well, my other tip is if you're going to mix up some sulfuric acid, which is something that you can use to lower the pH of your water or something, you put the water in first and then put your little bit of sulfuric acid, because if you put the acid in first and then put your hose down in there, it will blow up in your face and then you have it in your lungs.
00:03:53
Speaker
I remember chemistry class, they told us to do that. Yeah. Well, you know what? I took chemistry class at a community college and I didn't pay attention. Another non sequitur. Although it was a great class, I just didn't pay attention. I don't know about this in community college. Actually, you know what? I had that class with your wife, Brett.
00:04:13
Speaker
Oh yeah. Yeah. She loved her time at the old BCTC. Yeah. It's great. I just was, I'm really bad at chemistry as you all have just heard. I'm great at horticulture and that's what we're here for today is horticulture. It's not called, it's not called Kim culture. Kim is, is try podcast. It's called a hort culture podcast. Well said. I'm going to Kim is try to get us back on track and ask you.
00:04:44
Speaker
What are we talking about today? Gardens? Yeah. We are talking about planning and prepping your garden or this could also be if you've got, you know, larger commercial areas or you're new to this. And we're talking specifically about things that we'd consider more of like an annual. So something where you're preparing an area kind of yearly. We'll talk about sort of perennials and some of that other stuff in an episode coming up.
00:05:12
Speaker
But we are talking more specifically about planning for some of those annual plants. So things like your tomatoes or your zinnias or something along those lines. Well, you already mentioned the best thing, Alexis, about this time of year specifically.
00:05:25
Speaker
When this podcast is first going to air, which is a mid test just after mid March is that seating season. And that sneaks, that sneaks up on all of us as home gardeners. And it's the two most common plants. People are seating. I mean, of course, Alexis, like, you know, flower farmers and stuff, there's, you're seeing all sorts of things, but home gardeners are seeing things like peppers and tomatoes.
00:05:46
Speaker
And here in Kentucky, the average average date is around mid March. So, and I don't know how that always sneaks up on me, but that is the time when most folks should be putting a tomato or pepper seed in to, if you're growing your own transplants. So that's one of the first things to think about. I mean, there's lots of other things this time of year.
00:06:07
Speaker
that you can do and I guess we'll be talking about some of those things today but what I like to remind folks is that for some of those garden crops contact your local extension office and get the seed transplant production data table from ID 128 our home gardening manual or you can just look that up online and there's a small very handy table there that tells you
00:06:27
Speaker
when seed should go in for transplant production for common garden crops. Or even direct seeding them. There's some leaf lettuce, things like that can be direct seeded. Radishes, beans. Radishes, yeah, beans, lots of good stuff. We're in pea time.
00:06:44
Speaker
love snaps, some snow peas. Oh my gosh. Okay. Speaking about starting seeds. I'm sorry. I'd share this with you. My niece, I have a three year old niece. She is my only niece and she is starting to get excited about growing things. So imagine my excitement about her liking plants. And she, I got a video of the seeds that they have started. Well, unfortunately they live in Michigan and mom didn't ask me, my sister-in-law didn't ask me when to sew.
00:07:12
Speaker
So there's, you know, squash coming up and it's March and Michigan and there's snow on the ground. So that leads me to, I promise I have something that goes with this, but what that leads me to is my number one advice to you. If you were starting to tease, I've said it before, I'm going to keep saying it because I don't know if you listened to our other episodes. Just kidding. I know you all have your loyal listeners, but
00:07:33
Speaker
It is better to put a healthy transplant in a week late or two weeks late than to put it in either too early when your soil is cold or to put it in quote unquote on time, but with a stressed plant that's root bound. So if you are like, oh crap, I'm supposed to be starting seeds this week and I'm not prepared.
00:07:54
Speaker
99% of the time it's going to be okay. Maybe you get a little bit less lettuce, something like that, but I'd rather you put in a really healthy plant and put it in a little bit later than put it in too early or put it in stressed. So. Yeah. So the root bound side of things is that you've started your seed in its tray too early. Too early. Right. And it's been hanging out in there and it does not meet, you know, a 12 week tomato plant in a cell that was good for it being eight weeks old.
00:08:23
Speaker
is gonna be really, really stressed. It's not like it's, you know, oh, it's a bigger plant, so it's gonna be healthier. It's actually gonna be worse for it. And your plants that you put in healthy, even if it's two weeks late, will probably catch up and surpass the one that you put in stress. And you can pot those up, certainly. And if you have a place where they're getting plenty of light, that's the other thing is you're like, oh, well, Alexis, I won't let it get rebound. I'll just pot it up.
00:08:45
Speaker
And in most scenarios, unless you have like a greenhouse type situation, you know, whether that's a small one or a large commercial one, unless you have something like that, you're probably not going to be able to provide it enough light when it's older. Light inside is great for seedlings, but once you kind of hit, there's like a certain point where like it really needs the sun. And so, unless you're going to shuffle those in and out every night, and trust me, that kid's tiring.
00:09:14
Speaker
It's just start them a little bit later if you want. So that's my, that's my soapbox. I'm going to step off of it now and let somebody else talk. But there it is. So seed starting is one of those things that I think a lot of people know about some. There's definitely complexities and things to it. But what are some other things as far as this time of year, it is again, we're talking about in the month of March heading into the month of April.
Garden Space Planning and Soil Preparation
00:09:40
Speaker
What are some other things? Like, should I be getting out and tilling? Is it too late to get a soil test? What other things should I be thinking about right now? Gardeners are always thinking about gardening, but one of the things I encourage, especially home gardeners, I know commercial gardeners are in a little bit different schedule. They plan ahead farther to get the varieties that they want.
00:10:03
Speaker
But if you look at your local garden centers, box stores and garden centers right now, things have been on the shelf for a week or so. You know, stuff started appearing on the shelf early March.
00:10:15
Speaker
So don't wait to get your seeds. If you are doing transplants, go ahead and do that now. You'll get the best selection. But also, you know, things like grow lamps, which you're probably going to need some supplemental light if you're serious about growing your own transplants at home. But just general supplies. Go ahead and get those because if you wait too late,
00:10:34
Speaker
much later than now, you're not going to have the same selection because it is amazing to me how quick that stuff flies off the shelves. And especially if you're ordering things like specialty heirloom seeds and stuff like that, you probably should have already placed those orders or at least go ahead right now. Don't wait till the last minute, even though you have several weeks for things like snap beans and stuff like that before those go on the ground here in Kentucky. You have several weeks left, but go ahead if you can and start looking at ordering those things definitely or
00:11:03
Speaker
making an in-person purchase at your local garden center. Go ahead and do that because stuff just goes so quick now with these pretty days that we're having in Kentucky. It's kind of been unseasonably warm for March. It's getting warm. The days are longer. Stuff's going to disappear off the shelves. So I'd encourage everybody to get their supplies. I would say planning, and I think we've talked about planning before, but
00:11:27
Speaker
I always need a constant reminder is planning the garden. So that can be just something like, you know, we've talked about rotation before, you know, moving your things around in your garden so that you're keeping your soil healthy, maybe incorporating a cover crop into that rotation that you've got. But also planning, you know, how many plants do you really need? And so I feel like I get that question fairly often from like home gardeners, but also from like our market garden.
00:11:56
Speaker
size of people is how many tomato plants do I need for my family of four or to supply my farmer's market booth every week. Some of that is going to be just, what is your market support, things along those lines. That's kind of an economic view of it, but we do have in that
00:12:17
Speaker
publication that Ray talked about earlier, we'll put a link in the show notes, Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky. What I really like from a vegetable perspective is that it tells you about an average yield per 10 foot of row for a bunch of different plants. And I think that can be really helpful because you, you know, if you're not going to can, if you're just looking for the occasional bean, you know, to incorporate into a weekly meal, the occasional bean.
00:12:44
Speaker
Now, the occasional bean. That's the name of this episode. The occasional bean. That's the name of this episode. I really like, can that be a t-shirt? The occasional bean. And then it says, hort culture on it. Would anybody buy those? Leave us a review if you would buy those. We'll get those made. But if you're just looking for something like that, well, then maybe you don't need 30 bean plants. And so you can look in here and you're saying, for the occasional bean, 10 feet of
00:13:13
Speaker
Bush beans gives me 12 pounds of beans. That's a lot when you really think about it. Like if you're just two people, do you really need, maybe you do, maybe you like an occasional bean, but... More than the casual bean connoisseur would be after. You're an everyday bean kind of girl. Yeah. An average bean. But you can look at that. I really think that's fun. I always tell when I talk to new cut flower growers,
00:13:39
Speaker
I ask them where they're going to market when they say, well, how many dahlia plants do I need? Or how many row feet of zinnias do I need? And I ask them about their market. In this case, most of the time, they're growing to sell. And so if their market is a CSA versus a wholesale grocery store versus a florist, I'm going to say, well, you need more or less. You need more varieties. So you need this many plants, but you need less of each variety.
00:14:05
Speaker
Or if you're growing for a florist, you need less variety and more of everything. And so sometimes you need to look at your market with that. But for our home gardeners, you know, look at just how often do you want an occasional tomato, an occasional onion, those types of things. Another thing, Brad, you mentioned that you mentioned tilling, which I don't want to get ahead of the conversation because there's lots of fertility discussion, some fertility discussion that we probably need to have today.
00:14:32
Speaker
But one of the things I need to do right now, I've got a pretty good little cover crop going on in my garden and I know, and I've had this discussion with two or three home gardeners already there where I'm at in central Kentucky and Bourbon County. I've talked to homeowners about going ahead because I know that they have somewhat of a clay content in these specific situations I have in mind of removing that top growth sometime in the near near future, even though they may be planting their snap beans April 25th.
00:15:00
Speaker
here in central Kentucky. That's the date, the end of April. You have several weeks, but you want to go ahead and get that cover crop removed at some point because that's going to allow sunlight into the soil. It's going to allow drying. And that typically means that if you're using just typical home equipment like a garden tiller to break up the soil,
00:15:22
Speaker
and you stand less of a chance of doing that when it's wet. And that makes a huge difference, folks, is getting that cover crop off. It's huge. If you leave a heavy cover crop on in your garden too long, your soil will not dry out and be ready to be tilled in April. So think about that. Your particular cover crop, like you mow it and then you kind of till and incorporate it in. And what do you have that's out there right now that you're going to be working with?
00:15:49
Speaker
Like are we looking at like winter rye or something? You're talking about the different ryes, the different weeds and some, in some cases clovers and Josh, that doesn't make a huge difference. Things that tends to lean over and fall over in the winter time or get too tall can actually, you know, overcome or overburden home tillage equipment. And it has to be mowed first. Right. And that's the first thing that I recommend. And it's kind of early in the season to solarize, but it can be done is
00:16:19
Speaker
mowing it off first, removing that or chopping that up finely. And then if you're going to do some solarization, if we have some nice warm days and we will in April, because remember a lot of these crops are not planting to the end of April here in central Kentucky a little bit later in eastern Kentucky, a little bit earlier in western Kentucky, but in central Kentucky towards the end of April. So that gives you some time to chop up and mow the cover crop to break that down.
00:16:42
Speaker
And then if you want to do some further breakdown through solarization, seed bed sterilization, you probably will have some warm enough days to do some of that. And you're really prepping the soil to be tilled at that point. And you're in much better shape than if you just go in with a heavy cover crop.
00:17:00
Speaker
You put in a garden tiller on something like wheat that's going to bind the tines of the tiller up. You're going to say lots of bad words and have a bad day. Gardeners, home gardeners only do that once because it's a bad scenario. But yeah, that's a great comment, Josh. The type of cover crop matters. If you are smaller scale and you don't have like
00:17:20
Speaker
a bush hog or a flail mower or something like that, a mulching push mower, or if it's a larger area and you got a mulching riding lawn mower, it does an excellent job. It's very similar to a flail mower where it's really chopping it up fine. I just wanted to clarify, Ray said, solarization, if you're not familiar with that, what he means is you're pulling some
00:17:41
Speaker
plastic over that's usually not permeable by water and you're heating that up but you're also kind of creating this little microbiome down in there for your biologicals to get in there and break that stuff down. So you're keeping it warmer, you're holding in humidity a lot of the times and that enables our microbes to do their job and break that down and let those nutrients become more available to plants in the future.
00:18:07
Speaker
So you can do that whether you're doing no-till or till. So I know probably a good amount of you out there are looking at no-till, maybe you don't have a tiller and that's fine. And so in a way, you can get into the soil earlier if you're doing no-till. And so you would do all of that same stuff with your cover crop, tarp it. You're going to probably have to tarp it or put down cardboard or something.
00:18:30
Speaker
And then you can add in a little bit of compost or plant right into that broken down cover crop, depending on what your soil tilth looks like. You make a few comments on compost, Alexis. That's a question I get this time of year also, and that's something that's commonly done with our standard, you know,
00:18:48
Speaker
Soils is to add a little compost.
Soil Health and Nutrition
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, I would don't overdo it. I think the heart I've been seeing a lot of soil samples and not a lot, I guess not a lot a lot, but a lot more than I used to see coming through with really high pH is and thing in areas like tunnels, especially high tunnels. But even in the home garden, very, very high, like eight, eight or above. So way more than neutral, which is our normal thing here.
00:19:14
Speaker
And the first question I ask is how much compost do you add? And nine times out of ten, they've been adding a bunch of compost because their soil was bad. Compost kind of feels like this instant fix, right? Or they're doing no till and they feel like they have to add a lot.
00:19:32
Speaker
And compost, most of the compost that we can get around here, especially if it's animal based compost, creates, will help promote a high pH, at least in our area where the way our buffers work and the way our clay works, promotes a really high pH. And so that can cause problems just like really low pH can, right? And so you're going to have to add sulfur to bring it down and do a lot more work.
00:19:56
Speaker
So a lot of people overdo it really. You only need one or two inches of, of compost should get the microbes working. Cause that's really your goal. The compost isn't necessarily the one fixing your soil. It's the microbes that are fixing the soil. And I think then it wasn't until recently that my brain really grasped that, that the microbes are just using the compost as like a really good little home to start their little starter house. And then they're creating their mansion is kind of the way I think about it.
00:20:26
Speaker
versus you supplying everything and giving them the mansion, then they don't really have to do a ton of work for your native soil. So that's sort of the way my brain has been thinking about it. And I think when we reframe the application of compost that way, it's helpful. We're helping the microbes. We're not trying to fix our soil instantly.
00:20:47
Speaker
Right now when you say compost you also mean actual compost of material because there's a big difference isn't there between like Horse muck that's fresh versus actually compost of material. Oh, yeah, I mean compost as in I don't know what went into it It's usually in our areas like horse manure and stuff But like I get a leaf compost because I have really high phosphorus levels. So I don't want any animal Compost and it's actually broken down. It's not bad. I don't know what it's made of correct
00:21:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's completely and that's happened some over the years. I've had taken several phone calls where somebody would have something like, you know, and I say fresh horse muck because it's very, that's a very common organic material. We are the horse state after all. We are, but you have to be careful about putting that on fresh and too thick.
00:21:33
Speaker
Because if you incorporate that down into the soil, it can create a very bad situation. If it goes anaerobic without oxygen and it's still actively trying to break down, it can off gas and produce some compounds that really can kill roots. So you don't want to get in that situation. It's much better to actually put that in a compost area, let it break down.
00:21:54
Speaker
until it's no longer heating the pile is go through the regular actual composting process. Now you can certainly in large areas commercial operations will spread muck right on top of the ground and that certainly does work but it's not in a real thick layer like
00:22:08
Speaker
home gardeners tend to do. So when Alexa says compost, she's talking about probably true compost and not fresh organic material that's still biologically active. It's like a finished product. And I always heard that your ideal compost doesn't smell bad. Like it doesn't smell necessarily. Soil. It's very earthy. And I was also taught to think of it in those same terms that she used, that it's like you're kind of inoculating
00:22:34
Speaker
your bed with a healthy microbial list while also supplying, you know, in the building kind of analogy, like you're giving them the raw materials and you're inoculating with all your microbial workers and letting them break it down and get everything ready. If you're an organic gardener and you're using organic sources of N, that organic source of N cannot be readily used in a garden. It has to be mineralized. And that's a huge concept that I've worked a lot with organic gardeners.
00:23:03
Speaker
home gardeners mostly, but even this applies to commercial operations. If you don't have a good microbial population, the mineralization is not going to work properly and it doesn't work at all below 50 degrees or so, but that organic can sources have to be mineralized and have to go through the
00:23:19
Speaker
these different reactions, and if you don't have a healthy soil that's got some of these factors that we're talking about now, the end's never gonna be available, or it's gonna be available over a very much longer period of time. So organic gardeners, they kinda know this, and it's a real important concept for them, that if you're using organic sources at the end. But it goes back to the microbes and the general state of your soil and the health of your soil. It's real important for organic gardeners.
00:23:48
Speaker
Josh and Brett, were you all at the farm when they got that bad load of compost in? I heard about it. I might've been near there at the time. I think it was just after my time. Yeah, the research farm got in some compost that ended up
00:24:09
Speaker
the cat, I guess it was the cattle who grazed the farm, grazed on herbicide treated grass, and that specific herbicide, whichever one it was, stays in the tracks. So the cow digested, it comes out and it's still
00:24:27
Speaker
And so then you, and then it also stays through the composting process. So it wasn't fresh cow manure. And so it also got composted and then they spread it on their crops and they were, they had herbicide damage on organic crops and they were like, this isn't possible.
00:24:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really impressive novel chemistry that can survive a digestive tract and then survive the composting process. Especially like a cow's digestive tract. Don't they have like three stomachs? I don't know anything about cows. But it's all microbial, you know? Yeah. It's a pretty impressive thing that can go through that and still do what it was designed to do.
00:25:08
Speaker
System molecule, yes. Impressive and very scary way. Which is kill plant material. Kill, kill, kill. Anyways. Well, I think that on that, just to the nitrogen fertility piece, because I mean, there's a lot of other elements involved in fertility, including the N's and the P's and the K's that you see on your labels, and also some other micronutrients have all kinds of roles.
00:25:35
Speaker
But I think on that end mineral, the mineralizable thing, just to just to break that down into just a tiny bit more simple process or like understandable thing. If you haven't been around it, you have different forms of nitrogen. Some of those are sort of like
00:25:52
Speaker
simple carbs like glucose where they're immediately absorbable, immediately usable. And there's other ones that are bound up together within, you know, organic content. And that's sort of more like a starch that has to be further broken down into simple sugars. And so when you're thinking about your plant's health, you put that plant in the ground and then across the course of the season, just like you and me, it's going to need more nutrition throughout the course of the year.
00:26:20
Speaker
And so sometimes you'll put down fertilizer that is immediately available like a starter charge or something along those lines that is has been mineralized. It is it is fully able to be taken up by the plant.
00:26:33
Speaker
And then over time that compost elements of the compost start to break down. The nitrogen from the air is fixed by some of those microbes and all the magic happens, which then turns that nitrogen into becoming more available to plants across the season. And so if you were to just put down a bunch of organic material that had nitrogen in it and plant plants into it, there's a pretty good chance that those plants would show signs of nutrient nitrogen deficiency because
00:27:04
Speaker
It's not available to them, even though all of it's there in the organic material that's there. It's a really cool aspect. And once you start to wrap your head around that, you start to see, okay, there is a value in putting nitrogen down at the beginning or at certain times during the year and other nutrients as well. But that was just something that I didn't readily understand that when I first started
00:27:29
Speaker
Working with plants and it's a cool thing to think about as far as working with natural systems that nature's systems are very powerful, but sometimes they're slower or they're delayed. And also makes you think about the power that we unlocked with the Haber-Bosch process of chemically fixing or artificially fixing nitrogen to turn it into
00:27:53
Speaker
Yeah, like a plant, which is like very plant-available source. The urea-based forms and the monocle forms. We really did it. Yeah. What's kind of amazing is if you think about how that's juxtaposed, right? Like we could make a bunch of really plant-available nitrogen, like the sky's the limit. And then today, like the most expensive form of synthesized fertilizer is slow-release fertilizer. We're trying to like work backwards to recreating like
00:28:18
Speaker
the natural system of, you know, not having to constantly apply little amounts of fast available nitrogen, but instead creating a system where it will slowly release as the plant needs it. It's like making a safer gun. I will be the first to say I haven't done the research, but what something in my brain is telling me I've heard this before from like a
00:28:42
Speaker
trustworthy source, but so, you know, take this for what it's worth, but that those, um, those readily available nutrients as commercial, um, chemical fertilizers, I guess, I guess technically everything's a chemical, right? As my friend Anna would say, but the miracle grows, those types of things that are like readily, instantly available for the plant.
00:29:08
Speaker
it, it essentially allows the plant to gorge itself on more nutrients than it needs, which is like me at a buffet. And so because of that, right, we know that especially pests that are like piercing, sucking pests, like aphids, mealybugs, stuff like that. So because of that, it makes those plants more enticing. There's more nutrients for them in those plants because the plant has all of these things they can't use. And, and
00:29:35
Speaker
Because it's just like holding on to them. Yeah. It's just like you walking around after the China buffet. Yeah. It's the best time to mug you and go for your wallet. Right. Yeah. Right. You're slow. And you're not going to use all the nutrients that you have taken in because your body just doesn't need it versus something like a truly organic fertilizer, like bone meals, blood meals and things like that.
00:29:59
Speaker
are because they are slow release, they release in a way that plants can take them up at the speeds that they need it. I guess they have to work a little bit harder for it in a way. So I just thought that was fascinating that it's like
00:30:14
Speaker
I don't want to say like big ag, but like to see how they have created a problem and then they have to create a solution. So you have to spray more because the pests are there. And I was just like, once again, it dawned on me that if that is in fact true, oh my gosh, what are we doing? I think that there's a lot of discussion about this exact thing with like more nuanced understandings of plant nutrition and the
00:30:41
Speaker
Essentially, like in the case of, you know, some of these things, it's like the accumulation of salts in the leaves, it becomes this thing that can have an attracting effect to certain pests.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, I, I think it's a really interesting next chapter in in potential next chapter in just general agricultural production that maybe these things are should be more measured and that we even just like the the idea like I think our testing is getting to a point
00:31:13
Speaker
where you can start to imagine more nuanced in-season response through some of the plant nutrition. But I would definitely say that I would feel better about defending myself with a belly full of bone meal.
00:31:29
Speaker
Or just like your pocket's full of bone meal, it's ready to snack on. It's not a belly full of chicken nuggets. Sprinkling it into my mouth over time. Like a pixie stick?
00:31:45
Speaker
And home gardeners, you know, we're talking about all these excessive drinks. Yeah. Well, I started to think of the China buffet and I was going to drop off a very deep and very sharp ledge. I am walking slowly back from the abyss that stares back at me, but home gardeners as home gardeners and being a home gardener myself, I know that we're, you know, we're, we have an audience here that's commercial and home, but we're specifically speaking to some home issues right now.
Gardening Techniques and Soil Testing
00:32:15
Speaker
Home gardeners tend to have small areas and really what amounts to a large amount of fertilizer. So I don't know about you, Alexis, when you do your home garden soil samples, it is not uncommon for me to get samples back with extremely, and this is very common, extremely high levels of phosphorus and potassium, meaning a lot of home gardeners will use a complete fertilizer like the most common form, you know, 10, 10, 10, it's as N, P and K nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
00:32:44
Speaker
all in there. And what that does is some of the nutrients are not used in the same amounts by plants and so aren't needed. And in fact, some gardens could go years without additional phosphorus and potassium. So I guess my point here being, if you've not taken a soil sample in the last year or two, please do that. It could save you some money because straight nitrogen is typically just a bit cheaper than a complete fertilizer.
00:33:12
Speaker
And not only that, but it's an environmentally sound thing to do not to put excess nutrients on there that are not needed because some of those things will then become a pollutant by washing off. So, you know, if you don't know your phosphorus and potassium levels, nitrogen is needed pretty much every year and needed in
00:33:27
Speaker
regular interval for most garden crops. I mean, in the form of a side dressing one, two, three times a year in home gardens. But that's not true for phosphorus and potassium. And some of those are persistent in the soil. That's why the rates build up so high.
00:33:43
Speaker
So that's my plug for taking a, of course we're cooperative extension so we're going to tell you to take a soil sample. Please do that and also your soil pH if you've not taken a soil sample in a while because it's not uncommon that that I see home gardeners put lime on every single year and what happens, and Alexis already mentioned it, is that the soil pH can
00:34:08
Speaker
kind of get out of sorts and then you end up having to put sulfur on there, which is acidifying to bring the pH back down because it's gotten too high with either a lot of compost over the years or a lot of lime. Uh, so just keep that in mind. And I see that just day in and day out in the springtime with these levels on gardens specifically, just really high nutrient levels that's not needed. And it's just kind of wasteful. So yeah, I think in like, in particularly in backyards and places like that,
00:34:39
Speaker
There's no telling where the soil maybe came from or how it was recombined and turned around and everything else. So the idea that there even is a blanket thing that you just can do every year, especially in those contexts is just off.
00:34:52
Speaker
You know, so we were trying to respond to data, not just, uh, sort of say, well, lime is lime. And, uh, also what garden crops you grow, uh, corn takes off a different nutrient nutrient profile than tomatoes do. So all of that matters. And if you're growing a lot of corn, you may want to sub that section out in your garden and do a soil sample just on an area. You know, if you're going to not put that in rotation, but grow corn for the second, you know, period or whatever in your garden.
00:35:20
Speaker
You may want to treat that a little bit differently than you do the rest of your home garden because different crops take off different levels of nutrients. I have a question for the squad. Let's say that I'm a newly interested gardener and I'm trying to put in mature leaf in searching for
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, past my cotyledon. I don't know. And I'm looking out and what I see before me is a an ocean of sod. And I'd like to put a garden in there somewhere. How would you go about transitioning from grass to garden? First of all, you probably wouldn't want to put potatoes in there this first year because wireworms will most likely be a problem.
00:36:13
Speaker
That's the number one thing I see, but you're asking about the actual process of, uh, I guess, people ask me that all the time. They want, they have grass. They want it to go to a garden and they don't want to do a raise, you know, a builder raised bed though. That is an option. Uh, they want to be an in the ground gardener like, like granny was.
00:36:34
Speaker
Yeah. Are we talking like urban environment or more rural? Because in urban environments, I add an extra step with heavy metal, you know, some special testing for heavy metals, if it's an urban environment, really important to know. So that's the first thing I do even before I go do any kind of tillage operations. Yeah. Dense urban, if it wasn't like always residences. And I mean, even if it was, yeah, that's a good point.
00:37:00
Speaker
To your question though, Brett, I definitely think a lot about sod cutting that area first, removing that layer of growth and being the first step before thinking about things like tillage or amending or whatever. What is sod cutting? Is there a tool for that or is that like a hobby?
00:37:21
Speaker
Well, it can be a hand muscle powered tool that, you know, you can purchase for relatively cheap, but you are going to feel that, especially if it's a larger area. If you're talking about a larger area, like more than, oh, a few hundred square feet, depending on your age and the strength of your back.
00:37:40
Speaker
Um, you can definitely rent sod cutters from like hardware stores, uh, like a push pushing a walk behind kind of thing. It's got like a little saw blade articulating saw blade that goes back and forth. It cuts and it kind of cuts the sod and that root level. And it's going to leave you with a bald strip of soil underneath more or less. Right. Yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
I did not know about sod cutters until I had broken all the sod in our yard by hand. We've all been there. I would also ask if you want to do tillage or no tillage, because that, I don't want to say it's necessarily easier. It's just the work is different.
00:38:24
Speaker
There's, you know, there's people who, if it's just, you know, home garden size, like I said, you can tarp those areas, let them die down. You can also start by adding just a layer of cardboard on there and then putting your compost top soil mixture. So you're feeling it and you're going to feel it in the pocket a little bit more, but
00:38:43
Speaker
If that soil is maybe a little bit rockier than you thought, or there's some instances where starting to create kind of your own soil and building that up can be beneficial. So that's always my first question. But yeah, I like to kill stuff off. I asked this question of a big no-till gardener who does
00:39:03
Speaker
She's very well known in the US and she does no till like perennial plantings and I know we're talking about annuals but that like kind of baffled me because it's like how do you control the grass around them and things like that and she was saying she will put down like a landscape fabric
00:39:23
Speaker
Like right on top for a couple weeks to kill that. Uh, and then she will, um, do a very light tillage and throw down cover crops. So she's thinking really far in between. So this is something she would have done last fall or for this spring. Yeah. And so if you have the luxury of time and you're like, I'm okay with, you know, just put doing a small garden this year where I've been and not expanding or something.
00:39:52
Speaker
That's the best way to go. And I always, I try and remember as much as I want to just like get stuff done. That's just who I am as a person that gardening is even annual production gardening. You will save yourself so much time by not rushing the process.
00:40:09
Speaker
So by saying, okay, I'm going to take the summer to get my mind right, right? To get this air, this plot, you know, more weed free. I'm going to cover crop it. I'm going to soil test. I'm going to get my amendments down. I'm going to do all of this. So yeah, maybe I might miss out on summer gardening, but then I can probably have time for a fall garden.
00:40:28
Speaker
And then every year after this, right? Like you have the whole rest of time as long as you want to garden in that area to use that, you will save yourself so much time by doing it right and correct this first time and sacrificing a summer for essentially the rest of the time you're going to do this.
00:40:46
Speaker
will mean the difference between sometimes you enjoying it or it becoming a job. Probably everyone on this podcast has done it the wrong way trying to rush it.
00:41:03
Speaker
Because you're just, I gotta get that tomato in. I gotta, I really want summer tomatoes this year. Well, you know what, throw a couple in pots and we'll, we can do a whole episode on container gardening and give yourself the time to do it right. You know, the first time and it will, it will change gardening for you. It's funny. I basically split the difference between Brett's question and Alexis's comments about like alternative methods.
00:41:28
Speaker
Because Brett, I did completely change where my garden is and I had to start last fall because it was heavy sod. And I broke that up planted a cover crop. So I did the time that Lexus mentioned. But before that, Alexis.
00:41:40
Speaker
And I think I sent you guys some pictures. It's been a two or three years ago, but I had heavy sod. So I just basically cut sod out in 24 inch circles and planted in those and then mulch those tomato plants. And it was a fantastic garden that I mowed around. It looked like the tomatoes were just growing out of the grass with these little mulch rings, but it was one of my best gardens ever because I didn't have a piece of tillage equipment to accomplish this in the large area I had.
00:42:07
Speaker
So i did a little keystone garden where i just sod cut 24 inch circles about 12 of those and that was enough work for me i was done after that but now what i did this past fall i wanted to use that entire area because it's a very fertile area and i had to suppress by tillage this past fall
00:42:24
Speaker
with a garden tiller. I mowed it really close. That was my first step. I didn't solarize or anything. I mowed it really close and then I tilled it, which was quite an operation because that was very tight fescue sod with pretty good roots on it. And then I sold my cover crop crimson clover mix with some other things thrown in there.
00:42:42
Speaker
Some buckwheat and random other stuff, but this this spring it's gonna be ready to go I was walking in there the other day just to test kind of the soul structure and it's nice and Spongy and got lots of pore space in there, but that's how I prepped mine But even before I did that bread I did what Alexis was talking about
00:42:57
Speaker
I used an alternative method because I didn't have a garden tailor at the time. I got a garden tailor, so if a person's got a garden tailor, they got to use it. I broke the sod and it took a lot of time, but hopefully that prep work's going to pay off. One thing I think too, just to mention is that depending on your ethos and your vibe,
00:43:20
Speaker
herbicides can be a really useful tool in some of this transition stuff. It's also sometimes in managing a no-till, there's all kinds of interesting philosophical arguments to be had between the tension of
00:43:34
Speaker
no-tills effect on sustainability versus using herbicide versus potential labor implications of having to hand weed. The scale matters there, the scale of the operation. There's a lot to talk about there, but I think sometimes we end up in these weird cycles of shame that we don't want to admit that, I've sprayed Roundup at my house before and I have done it and I'll probably do it again. Same.
00:43:59
Speaker
cereal. I'm a cereal herbicitist, I guess. But the thing is too, with good planning and strategic management, you can gradually reduce that use over time and save it for the winter creeper and the bush honeysuckle and other fun stuff that you're trying to knock back. There's a whole set of tools available and to be just outwardly
00:44:25
Speaker
skeptical or damning of any of them, I think, is a mistake. Just for what that's worth. Every tool has its own purpose. At the commercial scale, if you're certified organic, you can't use some of those herbicides, and that's totally fine. When you get that premium on the back end for your product, you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
00:44:46
Speaker
In the meantime, I think especially if you're converting things from sod or from some sort of landscaping thing into another or whatever, which we'll be talking about in future episodes, that is something. Real quick, can somebody explain to me why you said the thing about the ground being wet and you don't want to till, you want to get the cover crop off before you till, you don't want it to be too wet. Why don't I want it to be wet?
00:45:10
Speaker
10,000 years worth of damage. Right. Yeah. Wet soil compacts extremely easily, which when we say compaction, we're talking about the loss of air pockets and the air pockets are critical for microbial activity. I mean, you're basically making you can do a lot of damage to soil structure in a very short amount of time by working soil when it's wet. I'd say that's like the
00:45:38
Speaker
fundamental dogma of agriculture is when the soil is wet, don't be doing a bunch of stuff to it, including walking all over it and driving all over it.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah. One of the, one of the tests I remember is just kind of to pick up some of the soil and squeeze it. And if it, if it stayed in a ball, then proceed with caution. Well, it's like, don't proceed at all. You want it to be able to form into some kind of structure because working it when it's too dry can also be, you know, like not good, but working it when it's wet, it's the real danger. But like I always was taught that the perfect middle ground is that you can shape it, but none of it is sticking to your hand.
00:46:17
Speaker
And the other thing I like that I tell people is you form a ball and you hold it at like waist level. And then you drop the ball. And if that ball like breaks apart into, you know, multiple pieces, then, and like by multiple, I mean more than two. And it's probably okay to work, but if it only kind of shrink, like, you know, clumps up, it doesn't break at all. Maybe it only busts in half.
00:46:44
Speaker
it's too wet to work. So I have to have that very physical, like, I need to drop it, don't slam it, just turn your hand over and let it fall naturally. You should not be able to squeeze water out of it like a sponge. Yeah. And so those descriptions too, also you'll notice the bad things are associated with like more clay soils, right? Clay getting on you, clay kind of acting like you dropped some modeling clay and not breaking. And that's because the more clay that's in a soil, the more
00:47:11
Speaker
damage you can do through compaction. Like it's usually very hard to compact sandy soils, which is kind of where I grew up and it's less of a thing here. But so it's a very Kentucky thing to be concerned about compaction because of the amount of clay in our soils. Yeah.
00:47:27
Speaker
Look, yes, but clay is good. Clay holds water when you need it and it holds nutrients really, really well. So we don't hate clay. That's just part of it. Yeah. Back off, back off Florida boy. We like our, I mean, okay. Keep your sand there. Okay. We've got a minute or two here left. What are the, uh, raised bed? Does somebody mentioned raised bed gardens earlier? What are the raised bed gardeners doing this time of year? I mean, there, there's gotta be some prep work there, right?
00:47:57
Speaker
They're planning their Instagram posts. Just kidding. They are sewing their lettuce. Maybe they're covering their soil so that it warms up a little bit faster. I like that. Some plastic down to warm everybody up. You mentioned organic matter.
00:48:18
Speaker
Anybody top dressing that I guess if you have a lot of raised beds tend to kind of sink down, you know It's a people if it's a people's based raised bed, you know that stuff doesn't last forever Not only does it compact it just kind of goes dead after
Preparing Garden Beds and Local Advice
00:48:35
Speaker
a while. So Alexis talked a lot about organic matter and compost and you're probably top dressing that with compost but I really like the comment of
00:48:42
Speaker
like warming that soil up with a piece of heavy plastic or something like that. Yeah, that's cool. So even though you're a raised bed gardener, it may not be as intense for you in the spring. I know that there are some processes that they're growing through right now to prepare everything also. And if the raised bed was exposed, you might have some weeds in there to clean out.
00:49:06
Speaker
I always laugh with my raised beds because it's so easy to pull those weeds out. So weeding is not a big issue with raised beds. If you have, you know, typical raised bed soil. So a little bit of a prep work there also. Just to clear the air. I have nothing against raised bed gardeners. Here we go. Had raised beds before, but here it is. I don't really even know why I said the thing about that. He's feeling the pressure now. Everyone was like, just cry.
00:49:32
Speaker
I think there's a lot of applications for accessibility for those with other ability levels. I think that if you don't want your life to be about your insane in-ground garden and you want to just have some fun and grow some stuff, there's a lot of great ways to use raised beds. Just real quick, what do you all say as far as putting stuff into raised beds? Because I've heard people
00:49:56
Speaker
I have heard of people and I never followed up just like filling them up with compost and like growing in the compost. And I was like, that doesn't sound that sounds insane, but well, if it's if it's well composted, you can mix other things with that to amend that.
00:50:12
Speaker
Typically you definitely wouldn't want to put anything in there that's biologically active and I've seen that problem a lot I don't know Alexis if you've you've seen this but raised bed soils at a premium and everybody sells their own mix and a lot of times I have just noticed the last 10 years or so.
00:50:30
Speaker
with a lot of this bulk mix, you'll get it. You'll put in your raised bed the first year and it's still biologically heating. It's breaking down and nothing much grows in there until the second or third year. And then it's completely fine. But if you do add a mix like that, you may have to amend it with a few other things. I know there's perlite and vermiculite and each one has their own attributes.
00:50:52
Speaker
But be careful about putting anything in a raised bed because it's a smaller volume of soil in a smaller space. So everything's going to be magnified, including that off gassing and heat production, all the undesirable things of active compost. That's not completely composted already. But I've seen that with a lot of bulk mixes. Have you seen that, Alexis, with anybody calling you the first year? Yeah.
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah, I don't like to do just for reference if you're needing to fill your beds up more than a third compost like the magic number for for me is no more than a third. And then I'm also thinking about because I'm in a relatively small town where things
00:51:31
Speaker
are not as easily available. So I'm talking to people who maybe only have like box stores available to them. And so you can, you know, you can buy bagged compost, you can buy bagged topsoil, you don't need to buy the most expensive ones. And then sometimes it's hard to find things like
00:51:48
Speaker
Straight bags of perlite and vermiculite at those types of stores in large quantities And so you can get away with in my experience doing a bag like a potting soil mix which is different than topsoil and compost because it's got those perlite and the peat base that can be helpful and it grows good right out of the bag and
00:52:08
Speaker
Right. And so you can buy sort of these relatively inexpensive bags. I have found that the bagged topsoil always ends up having a good amount of sand in it. And so in that case, it can be good because you're good for drainage. It's off sending some of that compost. If you have the ability, if you're doing like large scale raised beds, like I know there's some cut flower growers who do
00:52:32
Speaker
slight raised beds in their high tunnels, like commercial production because of their soil health and, you know, they get rot and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so they'll buy big bulk of everything, right? They're getting in a truckload of compost. They're getting in giant, you know, bags of perlite and they're doing a mix themselves. And that's definitely cheaper, but not if you're only filling up one or two four by four raised beds. So. Right.
00:52:55
Speaker
Well, and to be clear, when we were talking about raised beds, we're talking about not just beds that are shaped up and raised in that way. Right. We're talking about physical barriers, kind of a structure. Right. Yeah. Like there's a cavity and a void to fill. Right. Yes. Yeah. So.
00:53:13
Speaker
You know, I feel like sometimes we have talks about horticulture, whether I'm talking to somebody and I'm like, so everything's clear as mud, right? There's like a hundred ways to do something. And we, I had a class, a beekeeping class last night and the guy said,
00:53:28
Speaker
I'm always, I always have to remember when I'm teaching a class that if you talk to 10 beekeepers, you'll get 11 different ways to do things to do the same thing. And I think that in horticulture, it can be very similar. And so our job here is to tell you about the things that are
00:53:47
Speaker
can be replicated, right? Like it should mean no matter where you are, it can be replicated, but that doesn't mean it's the only way. And so talk to local people who are growing stuff. They may have a really great resource for good compost and they may say, oh yeah, well over there, you don't want to till or we've got high pH. So there's so many different things and there are different ways to do them. Our job is to give you the things that can be replicated the easiest.
00:54:18
Speaker
I think it's Alexis Mel Bartholomew, still the number one selling book of all time on Amazon, Square Foot Gardening. What is his mix? The one-third, one-third, one-third. That's something that I've never had. It's peat moss, vermiculite, and compost. Vermiculite or perlite and compost. Yeah. I've done that mix. It's a great mix, but it is a freaking pain in the ass.
00:54:39
Speaker
Whoops, I almost had a pain in the butt to mix like on a tarp. Pain in the asparagus. Pain in the asparagus to mix and I just did not have a fun time doing that. So I did it once. You don't have like a commercial cement mixer that you just use for mixing your own. It's really tough and really messy. The peat moss is incredibly. And it gets in your nose and like we talked about perlite earlier getting all up in your sinus.
00:55:04
Speaker
You have to have a wedding agent for the peat moss, but it is such a good mix. And if you're doing a large volume, it may be worth the investment to look that up and get that recipe and use that as a base. You will not go wrong. It is time tested. But once again, as Alexis and others have said, every situation is just a little bit different. And getting hold of these materials is a big issue for raised bed gardens.
00:55:27
Speaker
Yeah, and as a note also on the compost thing is it's not really a thing like finished compost we're talking about is something you know, it's like a good product, but it's hard to know what you're getting, you know, depending on where you're getting it knowing what's going on in the process. So I think it's you know, it's key to listen to your kind of local resources and stuff like that about who's got good what and
00:55:50
Speaker
I purchased compost before I had 10 inch limbs in it. I'm like, uh, this is not the compost I was looking for. Like plant limbs, right? Not like people's limbs. No, not, not phalanges. Uh, no, not, not digits tree limbs and just bark and just maple leaves that I can pick out. Then I knew that that was a problem when I purchased that product. So it's a good point, Josh, asparagus parts, whatever.
00:56:18
Speaker
What else guys? What have we missed? Have we got everybody to where they need to be to get their gardens ready for spring?
00:56:23
Speaker
Well, I think, you know, the gardens, we could talk for about 12 hours. Oh, we could not even scratch the surface. So if there are other specific things that you all want to hear about with regard to gardening and growing plants, the annuals that we'll be talking about at some point in the future episode, we'll be talking about perennials and even lawn stuff. Don't kill that sod, but help it to grow. And so if you have things you want, you want to
00:56:49
Speaker
To hear more about, let us know, and Alexis will let you know how to let us know that you want us to talk about it. Anyway, she'll let you know how to get in contact with us.
00:57:00
Speaker
Awesome. Well, if you do want to get in contact with us, you can follow us on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcasts. Send us a direct message on there. And if you don't hear from me in 24 hours, send another message. Sometimes those get hidden in there, but usually I'm checking to make sure because we want to hear from you. So I try and keep up to date with that. And actually a couple of the guests that we have had
00:57:24
Speaker
have done that and they were like, hey, we'd love to hear about this. We do this. And we've been like, Hey, you want to come on the podcast? So, uh, we won't force you or anything, but if you want to, you can send us a message there. You can also send us an email. We put a link down to that, uh, in our show notes. So you're welcome to shoot us over an email and the email we all do see. So, uh, don't send an email that's personally to Josh, unless you want all of us to see it at the same time. But also if you're worried, I won't, you know,
00:57:54
Speaker
want to answer you or something, you can send it there. Just kidding. We have to answer all of you. It is literally our jobs. But we are so glad that you are here with us today. We really appreciate you listening. Please.
00:58:06
Speaker
go give us a review. If you like this episode, tell us what you want. You're welcome to say that on there. And as you give us five stars, you can say, I would love to hear about this later. The important part there is the five stars. So we appreciate that. But anyways, we hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us and that you will join us next time. Have a great one.