178 What's Your NQ*? (*Nature Quotient). Dealing with Leaf Spots.

How in tune with nature are you? Probably more than you think, if you’re a gardener. We talk with Emily Murphy, author of the new garden book, Grow Now, about your NQ, your Nature Quotient. Plus, we talk with her about front yard gardening, the actual definition of full sun, and the special hands of a gardener. 

Got new, colorful spots on the leaves of your annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs? America’s favorite retired horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, has reassuring answers for one worried gardener. Those spots you see just might be a natural development in early spring. Oh, by the way, welcome to Spring!

We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory (we’ll hear more from the dogs later on). It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. And we will do it all in just a bit over 30 minutes. Let’s go!

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Chapters

• 1:34 What's Your NQ? (Nature Quotient)
• 16:43 Smart Pots!
• 18:35 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 19:47 Leaf Spots: Good, Bad, No Big Deal?
• 34:21 Garden Basics Newsletter

Transcript

Garden Basics 178 TRANSCRIPT What’s Your NQ? Dealing with Leaf Spots.

Farmer Fred  0:00  

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred. Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot. 

Farmer Fred  0:32  

How in tune with nature are you? Probably more than you think, if you’re a gardener. We talk with Emily Murphy, author of the new garden book, Grow Now, about your NQ, your Nature Quotient. Plus, we talk with her about front yard gardening, the actual definition of full sun, and the special hands of a gardener.  Got new spots on the leaves of your annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs? America’s favorite retired horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, has reassuring answers for one worried gardener. The good news is: those spots you see just might be a natural development in early spring. Oh, by the way, welcome to Spring!  We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, we’ll hear more from the dogs later on. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. And we will do it all in just a bit over 30 minutes. Let’s go! 

Farmer Fred  1:33  

A few episodes back we talked with author Emily Murphy. Her latest book is, "Grow Now: going beyond organic rewilding your lands, sequestering carbon and supporting biodiversity." "Grow Now" is an excellent book, excellent pictures, lots of very practical garden advice. In that previous episode with Emily, we talked about garden regeneration. What is regenerative gardening? Go back and listen to that in episode 175. Besides being an excellent garden author, she's a practiced plants person, a designer and educator and photographer. She also has a wonderful website and blog page called passthepistil.com and pistil, by the way, is spelled p-i-s-t-i-l. passthe pistil.com. And she's the grandchild of immigrants whose livelihoods were tied closely to the land. And growing up in Northern California, Emily had the opportunity to learn the wonder of natural systems and growing from a very early age. In this episode with Emily, we talked about what's your nature quotient, a little quiz you can take in the book. We talked about what full sun is, versus part sun.  We talked front yard gardening. And we talked about her hands. 

Farmer Fred  2:49  

A lot of times when I'm introduced to somebody who says yeah, I'm a gardener, I will say, "let me see your hands". And you in your book, Grow Now,  I've lost count of the number of pictures of your hands in the book. And I just think it's wonderful because you're not afraid to get your hands dirty. You're not afraid to have dirt under your fingernails. You're not afraid to show the world, "my hands are the hands of a gardener".

Emily Murphy  3:13  

I am not afraid. In fact, we were talking about my grandmother earlier. I think that's one of the things I loved about her most,  were her hands; and I remember as a kid, just thinking her hands were so beautiful. And I love them so much and I've taken so much pride and as I age, and  start having hands like hers, and part of that was working in the garden.  I wear gloves occasionally, especially when I'm working with prickly things or you know, things that could that are abrasive, like rose bushes.  I don't really have that many rose bushes, but there are some on the property I inherited. But really, I just loved being close to soil as a child.

Farmer Fred  3:55  

Your home probably resembles more homes now, in that you didn't have a lawn in your front yard. You had potatoes.

Emily Murphy  4:06  

Yeah, so when I wasn't with my grandmother, I lived in a college town in northern California and it was city  blocks, and here's my house, no lawn, but potatoes. And that came from my father,  his father was Portuguese. And that's what I guess Portuguese did when they moved into a new home: they planted potatoes. And I think it was one way to immediately have a food source, of course, and an abundant food source. A lot of potatoes are nutrient rich and calorically rich and an easy source of food. But it also helps work the soil immediately, just by digging a hole for that potato seed, the eye of the potato, and popping it in and then letting the roots of the plant do the work of really cultivating that soil and bringing it to life.

Farmer Fred  4:59  

And in this day and age front yard gardens, food gardens are almost necessity because of the increased shade from taller surrounding buildings or trees as they get taller and the only sun may be in the front yard. So why not turn that into a garden instead of a lawn?

Emily Murphy  5:15  

Absolutely. And I think it's becoming more common, especially in California, I think that there are still some issues in parts of the country where they haven't got the memo, that it's really cool to have a front yard garden. But you're right, a front yard garden, sometimes that is the only place to grow because your backyard might have shade or or maybe you might be limited on space, or who knows what the circumstances are. The lovely thing about a front yard garden that I've found is that it brings the community together, at least for a moment, people ask questions, they want to know what you're working on, what you're growing,  I have a front yard garden, but I have a fence out there, because I'm near a busy street. But I've had open front yard gardens, and I know people with them. And when I'm visiting, it's so much fun to be in the front yard in the garden, and then just to be chatting to people as they walk by. And it's an easy way to share seeds and things you're growing and ideas and what you've learned as you grow.

Farmer Fred  6:09  

Your book, Grow Now, gets into the practicalities of a lot of things we're discussing, and we use the term full sun and you take that up on page 81 in your book by asking the question, "how much sun is full sun". There are actual definitions of that, aren't there?

Emily Murphy  6:25  

There are actual definitions of full sun. Of course, there's nuances to anything. I like to say, know the rules so you can break them. But full sun is  eight hours of sun a day, or six to eight. And it doesn't have to be continuous. It can be broken up. Your home, for instance, might cast a shadow in the middle of the day when the sun is at its peak, but you have plenty of sun in the first half and the second half of the day. The second half of the day, the afternoon sun is the most intense. And sometimes, if you just have sun from depending upon the season, of course. We have sun from noon to 8pm. Well, that's pretty good. 11am to 8pm is pretty great. Part shade is four to six hours, or three to six. And then anything that's full shade is like three hours or less of sun and often it's just morning sun. And there's a difference in the intensity of the sun from morning to afternoon. As I was mentioning, there's also a difference in placement of plants. One of the stories I tell in the book is of my friend Kat's garden. And in her garden, she has it in an unlikely place. It's between her house and the fence, in a space that's maybe six feet wide. There's beds on either side, and this path in the middle, maybe it's a little wider than six feet because it has to be like a two foot wide path and the tomatoes grow on either side. But the side of the house that this garden is in, is on the east side of the house. And it only gets sun in the morning and maybe late in the day. And she grows the best tomatoes, she grows black crims. And she's near the coast, maybe a mile from the ocean. Where I live, four or five blocks from her, andI  was lucky to get Sungolds to grow, lucky to get Sweet 100's, and she had black crims. And she didn't have full sun in the middle of the day. But it was really because she's trapping heat. And she had radiant heat off of her home. And I'm sure there's also a lot of reflective light coming and bouncing off of the building and the fence to some degree. And boy, wow, her tomatoes are incredible.

Farmer Fred  8:48  

One can find microclimates throughout one's yard. And sometimes those narrow areas, especially if it's against a south or west facing wall, can be great to help plants stave off the effects of frost or freeze in fall, winter and early spring. And also to grow things that you could put on a trellis for example, to make them sort of two dimensional instead of three dimensional. Now you mentioned the fact that close to the ocean, you need as much heat as possible. In warmer areas in the valley, you need to think about too much heat. We're seeing a lot of problems now, in backyard vegetable gardens in the areas of the Central Valley here in California and I'm sure elsewhere throughout the west, where the afternoon sun is just playing havoc with the gardens, causing all sorts of problems. And now more and more gardeners are looking towards  part shade for their garden to stave off the effects of the hot afternoons. So the part shade garden, where you're getting morning sun and afternoon shade, is almost turning out to be the ideal location for a lot of vegetables that we considered to require full sun. So that's the other thing about being a gardener: you got to roll with the punches and you've got to adapt to changes, you have to increase, as you put in your book, your nature quotient.

Emily Murphy  10:07  

Absolutely, I agree. And on the full sun in the afternoon, I do the same thing. I strategically plant greens and certain plants where I know they'll get afternoon shade. And while I enjoy having a garden with more sun because I no longer live quite as close to the coast. So I can grow plants like Black Crim tomatoes and peppers. I covet those areas that have afternoon shade for that very reason. Because the afternoon sun can be so intense, especially inland. But yes, I think you're right. It's a great segue to nature quotient, because as gardeners, we're required on some level  to stay curious and ask questions. And your nature quotient, which you can abbreviate to your NQ, is part of that, whether you realize it or not. So we're all familiar with your IQ. Your IQ is your ability to reason. Your emotional quotient, your EQ, is your ability to collaborate and work with others, your understanding of others. Your nature quotient is your understanding of the natural world. And it doesn't necessarily mean you need to know the scientific names of every plant and animal, or remember every fact in nature, such as well, what is full sun, but to have a general understanding and to pay attention. And I think that's actually one of the gifts of gardening. It helps us pay attention, focus our attention and see things through a new lens, or a particular lens of growing and working with nature to grow everything from tomatoes, to cucumbers to native plants, to support biodiversity. Your nature quotient is a big part of that. It's your lexicon for how you relate to the natural world and how you see yourself in it. And what I think is so important in our in our times today, knowing that monarch butterflies, Western monarchs in particular, while they had a rebound in their populations this last November, the Thanksgiving count, their  numbers are drastically low. They used to number in the millions in the 1980s. And last year, they numbered less than 2000. It reminds us how important it is, y just hearing those statistics, how important our gardens are for supporting biodiversity. When we're more in tune with nature, I think we have inherently developed the skills sort of through osmosis as I was talking about earlier, to buoy and support nature and ourselves in the process. Because we need nature as much  as  wildlife needs nature.

Farmer Fred  12:44  

Definitely. And it's something we've been talking about on this show, that by encouraging the beneficials and the pollinators to come to your yard, you need to build them the good bug hotels, those plants where they're going to live and raise their young, not necessarily the plants where they're going to be feeding on the bad bugs, but just homes for them that offer them protection, and also perhaps another source of food. And by encouraging those beneficial insects especially you can reduce to zero, the amount of chemical pesticides that you need to use in your yard. You're basically, as you point out in your book, creating your own little ecosystem that is self sufficient.

Emily Murphy  13:28  

Absolutely. And that's the keywords: ecosystem and ecology. And again, doing our best to mimic nature and how nature grows itself. And when we look in natural systems that are very disturbed, very little or fairly intact, they're abundant with biodiversity of all kinds, all kinds of bugs, good bugs, bad bugs, they're all rubbing shoulders and doing what they do. And you know, the beneficial insects need food and a lot of those beneficial insects, if they're not pollinators, they're predators of those bad bugs. And we want them in our gardens and maybe those aphids are their food source. And at some point, if you're patient, you can find a balance of ecology. I had this one moment, a couple years ago, where I was just sitting in the garden. I had a deck garden at the time and looking at my calendula plants. And I thought, "what are all those spots on them?" Well, they were aphids. There were aphids all over my calendulas. The first instinct for some people will be, "Oh no, my plants! I need to run in and get my my insecticidal soap!" Insecticidal soap has its role to play at certain times, and I have used it in the past. But in this instance,  I just wanted to watch and see what happens next, because everything looks fine to me. And the next day, they were all gone. They just left. And I took a reminder to pay attention, slow down and know that  badbugs might be coming into your garden, but they might not stay for long. And you never know who might be there to eat them. So, watch and pay attention, see what happens.

Farmer Fred  15:05  

Well, the chances are, you have a garden that is also filled with plants that attract ladybugs and lacewings, who love to feed on aphids.

Emily Murphy  15:13  

Oh, absolutely, and hoverflies, too. Growing that abundance of plants, that's where we can start. Actually, there's two places to start. There's starting with soil care and supporting soil ecology, because an abundance of soil ecology and biodiversity in soil naturally supports biodiversity above ground. And we can drive that soil ecology through a number of factors. One of them is planting a biodiverse range of plants. And when we grow a biodiverse range of plants, a diversity of plants, whether that's in your vegetable garden or in your landscape, or the border along your walkway or the hellstrip between your front yard and your street, or between your sidewalk and the street, planting a biodiverse range of plants inherently  supports a biodiverse range of animals and microbes, included. It's not just the above ground wildlife,  it's the below ground wildlife that's also important. There's this fabulous push and pull of feedback or what I like to call sometimes a "feed forward loop" that happens between the soil and all the organisms that live above ground.

Farmer Fred  16:25  

Emily Murphy, the author of the book, "Grow Now" has been with us. We've covered a lot of topics. And  you can find more information in her latest book, Grow Now, available wherever you find your books. Emily, thank you so much for spending part of your day with us.

Emily Murphy  16:39  

Thank you, it was an absolute pleasure.

Farmer Fred  16:46  

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Farmer Fred  18:36  

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Unknown Speaker  19:50  

Hi, Farmer Fred. I just want to start off by saying how much I love your show and how much you've inspired me and given me the knowledge to start my very first garden in my very first home. My name is Sunny, and I live in zone nine B, in Brentwood, California. I've had a problem with red leaf spot on my Mexican Primrose, which I have dug up since last winter. But via root system, it has spread little babies everywhere and even the tiniest little leaves sprout up, and eventually catch this red leaf spot. A couple of questions: how do I get rid of it? And do I need to worry about it around my other perennials? I have had a couple of my perennials catch this form of blue spot as well. I tried copper fungicide, and I'm considering just heavily mulching around the area. Please help. Thank you. 

Farmer Fred  20:45  

Well, thank you, Sunny from Brentwood, for that question. For those not from Northern California, Brentwood, California is sort of halfway between Oakland and Stockton. It's in the delta of the Sacramento-San Joaquin rivers. It's a very windy place. And it's a great place, actually, to garden, they have very good soil there. If you'd like to get in touch with us like Sunny did, I would suggest you go to speakpipe.com/garden basics. It's the easy way to leave an audio question without making a phone call. Or you could phone us if you want to, that's fine. 916-292-8964. One nifty thing that Sunny did besides leave us the audio message at SpeakPipe, she also texted us pictures of her problem at 916-292-8964. You can always send those via email as well, to Fred at farmerfred.com. Well, you heard her in the background. There she is, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower.

Debbie Flower  21:58  

Yes, I'm here and I'm agreeing because pictures are so helpful. 

Farmer Fred  22:02  

Yes, they are. It helps to truly identify the plant. Sunny said it was a Mexican Primrose. We wanted to make sure that indeed, it was a Mexican Primrose. It is a plant that I would politely describe as "gregarious."

Debbie Flower  22:17  

Yeah, rambunctious. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  22:20  

Something that can be out of control. I also like to call it the prettiest weed I have.

Debbie Flower  22:25  

It is very beautiful. It's very sunny. It blooms yellow and it spreads quite quickly from seed, and possibly from the roots as well. But it is a beautiful bloomer. Lovely to see, lovely to have in the summer garden.

Farmer Fred  22:40  

Do you want to say that it actually blooms pink?

Debbie Flower  22:45  

The ones I knew, if it's truly Mexican, I believe it'll bloom yellow.

Farmer Fred  22:50  

Hmm. Now the ones I have were pink.

Debbie Flower  22:53  

There are many different evening primroses. And that's part of our problem, is that common names like Sunny used to refer to Mexican Primrose can refer to more than one plant. So that's a technicality. We don't have an answer for, from what she sent us, exactly what that plant is.

Farmer Fred  23:14  

This is very correct. And chances are there could be many colors. I'm reading here in the Sunset National Garden book about the Mexican Evening Primrose, which by the way, isn't a primrose at all. Oenothera is the genus. And the book talks about the different colors. It's usually a rose pink bloom in the summer. The flowers open in daytime, and the stems die back after bloom, but it spreads rapidly by underground stems and can invade other plantings. It likes full sun, there is a white flowered form known as Alba, there's Woodside white, which ages from white to pale pink. Siskiyou is an especially vigorous, long blooming variety with two inch, light pink blossoms. So it could be any number of colors.

Debbie Flower  24:01  

Right. and they don't talk about one that is native to us locally here in the Sacramento area of California, and other parts of California, which is a different species of Oenothera. Oenothera alata and then there's a variety Hookerii, which is named after the founder, whose last name was Hooker. And that is also a bloomer, and it blooms yellow at night.

Farmer Fred  24:24  

It wasn't named after TJ hooker, the TV show?

Debbie Flower  24:30  

No, it existed before the TV show.

Farmer Fred  24:33  

Okay, the Mexican Evening Primrose again, depending on which species you have, then could be any number of colors, but I think it all spreads the same way and that's via roots...

Debbie Flower  24:44  

and by seed as well.

Farmer Fred  24:45  

Oh, isn't that delightful?

Debbie Flower  24:48  

Yes, that's one of the reasons it's such a rambunctious plant. The population I am thinking of was the Oenothera alata hookerii and it was on campus where I taught, and it was separated by sidewalks so there would be a population over on one side of the sidewalk and another population over on the other side. Now roots can go under sidewalks, roots of these really rambunctious plants can go under sidewalks, and come up on the other side. So I have no definitive proof that it was spread by seed. But that was my guess at the time.

Farmer Fred  25:20  

Yes, indeed. By the way, there are other versions of the evening primrose as well, which do indeed have bright yellow flowers. So we know it's an evening primrose. But what you have in your yard could have come from who knows where, right. It's actually very widespread throughout California, Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Colorado, West Texas, and even gets into Tennessee and Kentucky. So it's a plant that gets around.

Debbie Flower  25:50  

It sure is. Yeah, you can find it in many, many gardens. (Dogs begin barking in background)

Farmer Fred  25:55  

Okay, we'll wait.

Debbie Flower  25:58  

Are they barking at someone getting the mail?

Farmer Fred  26:02  

I'm sure it's just a dog walking by out front. This is why we're in Barking Dog Studios. And Fred forgot to close the door. Meanwhile, but that's not Sunny's problem. Let's get back to Sunny. She doesn't complain about it. Well, actually, in subsequent emails, she does say yeah, it does spread a lot. Yeah, yeah. Does her problem, the purple or reddish spots on the leaves? There could be any number of reasons for that.

Debbie Flower  26:31  

Right. And the one that I hope it is, for her sake, is that some of the evening primroses just naturally have red spots on their young rosette leaves. Rosette is an arrangement of leaves where they're all in a circle (near the base of the plant). And some plant,s like some of the primroses, produce a rosette of leaves, sometimes just for a whole year, there are some plants that do that. And sometimes just when they're very young in the spring, and then they will send up a stalk, with leaves on that stem, and the flower at the top. So some of the species of Oenothera or evening primrose have red spots on those rows, at least in the spring. So it's just natural. It's just natural, and the population I taught about had them. They were not raised, they were not sunken. They were not hairy, they were not fuzzy. They were just a spot of color on the leaf.

Farmer Fred  27:28  

And it could be just a seasonal disorder as well.

Debbie Flower  27:31  

Yes, we often see red in plants in the cooler weather. We like it in some plants. For instance, flowering plum with red leaves, some of the flowering clumps have red leaves all year long. Some of them have red leaves only in the spring, and then again, in the fall when they lose their chlorophyll and go to get ready to drop their leaves for the winter. There are other plants that show red in the spring. If you put your tomatoes in a little too early, maybe the soil is a little bit too cold, then they will show some color. It's not a bright red, but the leaves will tinge toward red. And then as soon as it warms up, they'll get green again. And that redness is due to phosphorus not being available to the roots of the plant. Phosphorus is often brought to the plants by microorganisms that live in the soil. And those microorganisms are active, more active when it's warm and less active when it's cool. So when the soil is cool, the microorganisms are pretty lazy, and there isn't a lot of phosphorus available for the plant, and that shows up in the green parts as a redness.

Farmer Fred  28:48  

I would think, then, that if your soil temperature is below 50 or 55 degrees, you would have that lack of activity in the soil. And if you purchase a soil thermometer, you can get a pretty good idea of where your soil is. It's one real good reason for planting in raised beds, because the soil warms up faster.

Debbie Flower  29:07  

Raised beds drain faster and it takes more heat to warm up water than it takes to warm up air. And so if there's lots of water in your gardening soil, it will take longer for that soil to warm up than if it is well-drained and has lots of air in it. If it's a phosphorus issue due to the cold temperatures in the soil, adding phosphorus will not solve it. Adding phosphorus will just build up salts in your soil and potentially lead to other problems. So all you have to do is wait. Wait until it warms up and it will get better.

Farmer Fred  29:41  

 There's this expression in the world of Integrated Pest Management called "abiotic disorders", which basically means it's probably your fault. Many fungi according to the University of California IPM program, cause leaf spots on a wide variety of plants and the spots may vary from small discreet dots and raised areas to irregular yellow or brown patches that cover much of the leaf surface, the leaves can fall off. Generally they rarely cause long term damage. Similar spots can be caused by bacterial pathogens, insects and mites. Or abiotic factors on some plants. And their solution for it is very abiotic oriented. Just tolerate them. Infections can be tolerated, but remove fallen leaves and debris promptly. Many of the pathogens are favored by moisture. Avoid overhead sprinklers and irrigate early in the day so that the foliage dries more quickly. Generally, fungicide treatment is not warranted.

Debbie Flower  30:43  

You can create more problems by applying fungicides  than you fix. There are good funguses out there as well as bad funguses. And in the natural environment, they kind of keep each other under control. It's when we start messing with that environment that things can get tilted one way or the other. And we can end up with infested plants. If leaves are falling off the plant, pick them up and get rid of them. Move them away. If there's been many leaves dropping under the plant and they are rotting in place, because you didn't pick them up in the past, then you could scrape away that mulch that that has been created by or added to by those leaves and replace it with other mulch, making sure not to put them all up against the trunk of the plant. 

Farmer Fred  31:35  

There is a conundrum facing many gardeners who have sprinklers on their lawns. And that's the case of these sprinklers. When the wind blows, especially down in Brentwood, and you got your sprinklers on, your plants are going to get very very wet, not just your lawn but the surrounding plants that may be behind it. So if you still want to water a lawn and yet, keep your ornamental plants that are adjacent to the lawn on the drier side, you could hook up a drip irrigation system for the ornamentals. That's kind of hard to do on in lawn situation. But you could swap out those old spray heads on your sprinklers for something a bit more modern, like the Hunter MP Rotator heads, that send out little fingers of water, and there isn't as much spray, there isn't as much mist, less water flying around your yard.

Debbie Flower  32:26  

The water isn't drifting, because the droplets are a little bit bigger, they're a little bit heavier, and they don't travel as far with the wind. You really have to check out your own situation, but it's generally more windy in the afternoon than in the morning because parts of the earth have heated up and that hot air is rising and that creates wind. So think about the time of day, pay attention to when you find wind in your landscape and don't irrigate at that time. And then the other would be, "right plant, right place" for those ornamentals around the lawn.

Farmer Fred  32:59  

Growing plants in sunny locations, having good circulation, perhaps by pruning off excess foliage. And, of course, fertilizing properly, if you apply too much, especially of a nitrogen fertilizer, you get that too-lush foliage, and that provides excellent conditions for fungal growth.

Debbie Flower  33:18  

Right. For fungal growth, and for some insect attacks as well. That new growth is very thin, it  takes a little bit of time for the leaf to expand and then to put on its protective coatings. And those pests, find those young leaves and attack. 

Farmer Fred  33:34  

So Sunny, the bottom line is you could just live with the purple dots and enjoy them as part of the scenery. I really enjoy the Mexican Primrose in my neighbor's yard, right? And there is a driveway separating her yard from my yard and as long as it doesn't cross the driveway, I'm happy. Mexican Primrose, a pretty plant, but it's rather gregarious, thuggish, or whatever you want to call it. And if it's got purple spots, it may just be part of the plant. But just in case,  rake up, get rid of any sort of fallen debris, and turn off that overhead sprinkler. Debbie Flower, thank you so much for your help on the Mexican Primrose question.

Debbie Flower  34:19  

You're welcome Fred.

Farmer Fred  34:23  

You may have listened to our chat with Emily Murphy, author of the new garden book, Grow Now, when she talked about your NQ, your Nature Quotient, a measurement of how in tune with nature you just might be. The higher the NQ, the better the gardener you probably are. But we really didn’t dig down to find out the specifics, such as what sort of questions you should ask yourself about your own NQ, and ways you can improve your nature quotient.  So, that would make an excellent topic for the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, “Beyond the Basics”. It’s the free garden email newsletter that comes out every Friday. Take the quiz, and find out easy ways to better connect with your natural surroundings.  It’s in the edition of the newsletter that comes out Friday, March 25.  Take a stroll through the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, Beyond the Basics. Find a link in the podcast show notes; or, at Farmer Fred dot com; or, by going to substack dot com slash garden basics.  Think of it as your garden resource that goes beyond the basics. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter. And it’s free. Please subscribe and share it with your gardening friends and family. The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, Beyond the Basics. And thank you for listening.

Farmer Fred  35:45  

Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday. It's brought to you by Smart Pots. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple, Iheart, Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast, Google, Podcast Addict, Cast Box, and Pocket Casts. Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.