350 New Home? First Garden Tips

Looking to start a first garden in a new home? Before digging, do some planning, and some research. Today, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower, and I have tips for getting that first garden off to a great start at your new home. And, we answer about how to garden when there’s a concrete patio in the way.

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

Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Audio, transcripts, and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.

Pictured: Soil Texture Triangle

Links:
Subscribe to the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter https://gardenbasics.substack.com
Smart Pots https://smartpots.com/fred/
Dave Wilson Nursery
HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link)
Harvest Day at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, Saturday, Aug. 3.

Other links mentioned in today’s podcast:

Soil Texture Triangle (U. of Wisc.)
How to conduct a soil texture test (Clemson U.)

Soil Testing Services:
UMass/Amherst
Colorado State U
Texas A&M

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Chapters

• 1:11 New Home? First Garden Tips
• 18:42 Smart Pots!
• 20:24 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 21:37 Raised Beds on a Concrete Patio?

Transcript

350 TRANSCRIPT New Home, First Garden

Farmer Fred

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.

Looking to start a new garden in a new home? Before digging, do some planning, and some research. Today, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticultural Professor, Debbie Flower and I have tips for getting that first garden off to a great start at your new home. And, we answer about how to garden when there’s a concrete patio in the way. Or, that’s the only area you have for a garden.

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

New Home, New Garden? Some Tips

Farmer Fred

We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast. We get a question from Sacramento, from Teresa, and here's Teresa's question. 

Teresa from Sacramento

Hello, Teresa from Sacramento here, calling about a future garden. New gardener here. We just purchased a home, we've been doing a lot of stuff to the backyard, DIY. So that's exciting. I want to know if I should be adding anything to the soil if I'm going to plant in the ground. I did the soil test that Debbie mentioned a few weeks ago, or maybe I only listened to it a few weeks ago, where I shake it up, shake it up, shake it up, shake it up. I thought I had a very clay soil, but I don't know. I saw a lot of sand in there, so I'm a little confused. I’m just wondering should I add anything to the soil? I guess it depends on what I'm trying to plant. And definitely gonna start off with herbs and some low lying, easy to germinate seeds, and eventually get a yield from the plants and then move into the big dogs. Thank you and hope I gave you enough information to answer my question.

Farmer Fred

Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor. And Debbie, you want to know my favorite part of that interview? Sure. Here it is. Shake it up, shake it up, shake it up, shake it up. 

Debbie Flower

She'd be fun to go dancing with. 

Farmer Fred

Exactly. Very musical. Yeah, I like that. And the shake it up, shake it up, shake it up refers to your suggestions about how to determine how much sand, silt, and clay you have in your soil. 

Debbie Flower

Right. It's called a soil texture test. And you get about a one quart jar, peanut butter jar, mayonnaise jar, something like that. Fill it one third to one half with soil that you dug around from the root zone. So you scrape everything off the surface, dig a shallow hole, four inches maybe, take soil from down there. And if you're doing that you need to know if you're gonna plant one big area and treat it the same way, fertilize it the same way, irrigate it the same way, mulch it the same way, take bits from all over that area. Put the soil in the jar, add just a drop of dish soap and then water up to within about a half inch to an inch of the lid, put on the tight fitting lid and shake it up, shake it up, shake it up. I had the students do it for 10 minutes. They could get up and walk around the classroom, turn the jar upside down sideways, shake it back and forth. They could talk to each other whatever, but you'd shake in the whole 10 minutes. And then at the end, put it down on a hard surface on the desk. 

Farmer Fred

Rest it on the top or on the bottom of the jar? 

Debbie Flower

I like to turn it upside down first and do the last shaking that way and then turn it so the bottom is down, the lid is up and put it on a hard surface like the desk, and let it settle. And the sand will settle out first, the silt will come next and the very last fallout of that soil is the clay. And if you have a lot of clay, it may take days and days for the clay to settle. Then you measure the layers. If you don't wanna wait days and days, you just add like a little, about an eighth of an inch more to the clay layer. So you measure the height of the sand, the height of the silt, which goes from the sand to the clay, and then the height of the clay. And you know the differences because they look different. Sand is more gravelly looking and silt tends to be darker than the sand; and the clay is very smooth. 

Farmer Fred

And cloudy. 

Debbie Flower

And cloudy, yeah. It stays in the water a long time. And there is, you can find it online, a Soil Texture Triangle and you take the total height of the sand, silt and clay together. and then create fractions. How much is sand? How much of that total height is sand? How much is silt and how much is clay? And then you plot those fractions on the soil texture triangle. Teresa said she thought she had clay soil and that's very, very common. Many people think they have clay soil and they don't when they do this test. And I've seen that over and over again with students because they brought their own samples in from someplace that they were aware of and potentially gardened. And it's usually because the soil  has not been maintained as an open soil. It's been walked on when it's wet, it's not been protected. And so those layers, the sand, silt, and clay get smashed together and that's why the water doesn't drain through it very quickly. If you go online and after you shake, if you've done all that work to shake up the jar and let it sit there, you're gonna see those layers. You might as well call up a soil textural triangle.

Farmer Fred

I’m on a website at the University of Wisconsin's extension website now. And they define each of those three layers depending on how thick they are. They've got percentages of silt, percentages of clay, and the bottom one is a percentage of sand. Sand is at the very bottom. It goes from loamy sand, sandy loam, loam, silt loam, and silt. The middle layers are usually sandy clay loam, clay loam, or silty clay. And then you have two layers of silty clay and then the top layer, which is the top third of this triangle, it's clay. 

Debbie Flower

Clay has an overarching influence on the texture of the soil. And the texture is how the particles fit together, how water moves through them, how air moves through them. It takes less clay to influence the structure than it does other things. You can have as much as 60 % sand or 50 % sand. if the rest of is clay, you can still have clay soil.

So it's knowing, learning how to use this triangle is important. 

Farmer Fred

But so what?  It's like, OK, now I got all this sand, silt or clay. Now what? 

Debbie Flower

So knowing the texture of your soil is helpful, but it's not end all or the be all. 

Farmer Fred

Which is what I'm getting at. Why go to all that trouble of shake it up, shake it up, shake it up, shake it up when you can just send 20 bucks to Colorado State, Texas A&M or the University of Massachusetts Amherst and get a soil test done. and they will do texture and they will do some of the chemical components as well. 

Debbie Flower

But I can pretty much tell you that you're going to be low in nitrogen. 

Farmer Fred

Well, yeah. Everybody's low in nitrogen, all the time. 

Debbie Flower

It needs to be added on a regular basis and that your soil, regardless of what texture it is, can be improved by adding mulch. So what I would say to you, Theresa, is start small. I'd get a soil test done. This is where I'd start. OK.

Farmer Fred

You tell them basically what you told us, Theresa, you tell them what you want to grow.  And then you follow their instructions to the letter about how to take a soil sample and send it off to them. And back will come that analysis of your soil, how much clay, silt, and sand it really is, the nutrients it has and doesn't have. And what you really want to watch for  is usually the micronutrients and make sure you don't have any the shortages there that can be corrected before you plant anything. So the whole idea is to get your soil up to snuff for planting and making sure, too, that the pH is in the right range. And that, too, takes some time to adapt to. 

Debbie Flower

Well, pH is very difficult to work with. We are learning more and more. We used to think we could control pH, but it's getting more difficult, we're learning that it's out of our hands more than we realized. That plants are able to exude chemicals out of their roots to adjust the pH right around their roots in the rhizosphere, that’s what the root area is called, and that will put the chemicals that they need to absorb into the form that they can then absorb. If your pH were an extreme, that would influence the plant you're going to grow. Whether the pH is an eight or a nine, that would be very alkaline or six or below, that would be very acidic. 

Farmer Fred

That would be a blueberry garden. 

Debbie Flower

Yes. Yes. So getting a soil test is a good idea. I tend to wing it a little more and shake it up, shake it up, shake it up. Yeah. I've done that in my yard. But my yard is a suburban lot. My house, I think, is on fill, meaning piles of soil were brought from who knows where and put on the property and spread out. And then another pile came and it spread out and another pile came and it was spread out and then somebody drove over it to make it all flat. And so it's very layered and that always creates for poor drainage. Certain sections of my yard have extremely poor drainage.

When I dig down, I can see some layers. So in suburban areas, you can run into that kind of thing, developed areas. So start small, start with a, what would you say, eight by eight at the most? 

Farmer Fred

Depends on how much property you have and what you're trying to grow. 

Debbie Flower

And how much time you have to tend it. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah. I would, I might even start smaller, but have several areas say maybe four foot by four foot.  But have several of them.  Ready to go.

Debbie Flower

And don't add anything to your soil. 

Farmer Fred

Really? You wouldn't even add compost? 

Debbie Flower

No, not in. I wouldn't amend. Amend means mix it in. No, I would not amend the bed. I would put it on top. 

Farmer Fred

Okay. Now we're talking about the native soil. We're not talking about planting inraised beds, are we? 

Debbie Flower

No, we're talking about the native soil. 

Farmer Fred

Okay. And even if it was brand new soil, it's never been worked, or you've taken out a lawn and you want to do something to it, you wouldn't even rototill that place once to put in compost?  Because you're lazy? 

Debbie Flower

Well, sure. I am a lazy gardener. But also, if we're talking about a four by four bed, the roots are going to go beyond that. Yeah. If you're going to amend the soil, amend means turning something into the soil. You need to do the entire root zone of the plant. 

Farmer Fred

OK, so do the whole yard. 

Debbie Flower

Well, that's a potential. If you want to do that, do the whole yard. Don't do any more than about two inches because a rototiller is only going to go down four to five inches. 

Farmer Fred

By the way, if you're going to do it yourself, get a rear tine tiller as opposed to a front tine tiller. Front tine tillers put a lot of excess pressure on your back.  you have to basically pull up on the machine to get the tines to go down into the soil. Whereas with a rear tine tiller, you're pushing down on the handles. It's less pressure on the back and it's easier to get a little deeper. It's more comfortable. 

Debbie Flower

All right. There you go. Good advice. So I would only use a little bit, till it in and do the whole thing. 

Farmer Fred

But you're not gonna plant the whole thing right away.

 Debbie Flower

 No. Start small. But you've done the whole root zone. So for that you're gonna want to buy in probably a bunch of compost that can be delivered. 

Farmer Fred

The other thing I would do before I planted the garden is have a plan.  And in that plan should be an irrigation system.  Because different plants have different water needs. So why not set zones that each have their own valve where you can control the water for each section and that may mean putting in PVC pipe 10 inches, 12 inches down or so and running it throughout the yard into the garden areas. 

Debbie Flower

so it helps to have something down on paper  to guide you into this and this may be the part you want to hire out unless you know someone who's very handy with plumbing.  Get several valves,

not just one, not just two, get eight, get 10, and attach supply lines to them so that you can use one or two now and you can add to it. If you're have a lawn over there, that will be on one zone. If you're have trees around the property, that'll be on a different zone. If you're gonna have a vegetable garden, that'll be on a different zone, et cetera. So get that in and get some supply lines because it's an awful lot harder to put the irrigation in properly after you've started the garden. 

Farmer Fred

That's why I mentioned it; that involves digging. And you might as well do it while there's nothing there. And get the irrigation in. And you can have risers at various points to let you know, there's water there, so you can hook up there. And do it that way, because water's important. 

Debbie Flower

In our climate, water's incredibly important. Yeah. When you're starting new, yes, you have to consider soil, you have to consider water. 

Farmer Fred

And then again, eventually you want to make the jump from the herbs to the big dogs, as Theresa said.

I'm guessing she's thinking tomatoes. 

Debbie Flower

don't know if she is thinking about  shrubs and trees. That is what I was thinking. Actually, I would put the trees in first. They're small when you get them and we ultimately want them to be big. And so the sooner you can get them in the ground and get them established, the sooner they will provide the shade or the fruit or whatever it is you want them to do. But then again, that's where the plan comes in. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Because where you put that little tree on your piece of paper, the circle should represent its mature canopy so that you know that in five years you might lose your sunny garden.  

Debbie Flower

Yes. So remember the eventual growth of anything you plant. I mean if you want to do it simply you put all the big stuff on the north side of your yard and leave the south side open for for herbs. Yeah, unless you want to shade your house with a tree on the south side. 

Farmer Fred

There's that. then you've got to work around that. 

Debbie Flower

Yes. Yes. I would put the herbs near the door you're gonna leave the house with to collect them for cooking. So if you have a back door off your kitchen, I'd put the herbs there. Herbs do very well in containers too. 

Farmer Fred

Yeah, you could do that. And this is advice you say a lot, it's advice I say a lot too. Have your garden in view of a kitchen window. Or at least the dining room, or at least a window that you frequently go by, where you can look out the yard and go, “The herbs are ready. Look, the tomatoes are ready.  Look, there's a squirrel eating my fruit.”

 Debbie Flower

In that plan, when you plan the garden, whether you're just going to plan a container or a four by four square or the whole yard, space the plants on the plan so that they’re represented  at their eventual mature size. And you're going to have to get from a reference. The Sunset Western Garden book is a good reference. I know they're old now, but a good nursery will have that information on the tags. 

Farmer Fred

We're all older now. 

Debbie Flower

Yeah. We're all getting older too. Space the plants so at that mature size, like a rosemary, can get to be four by six. 

Farmer Fred

Depends on the the variety. 

Debbie Flower

It does depend on the variety. Yes. They should be spaced so that at maturity, they just touch each other or not touch each other at all. The number one problem I see with new gardeners is that they plant things too close together. They don't consider it. They don't give a tomato the room, the two to three feet diameter space to grow.

They put it three inches from a bean, which is three inches from a squash. Well, that's disaster. You're not going to get anything out of that garden. You've got to give them space. It also reduces your pest problems if you give them space. And it makes for much prettier garden. And when we say the word pest, we're not just talking about insects. We're talking about diseases as well. 

Farmer Fred

And things that are planted too close together, you've got air circulation issues and that leads to all sorts of diseases. 

Debbie Flower

Yeah, there's a lot to consider too. So that's why starting on paper is probably your best bet. Getting that soil test done to make sure that what you want to grow, you can grow there and then saving your money. Visit the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. You can visit it any day and see the ornamental section. And so you'll get some ideas there of plants that you might like to grow in your yard, plants that do well in our environment and how far apart they have or have not been placed.

And then there are open days for the entire Fair Oaks Horticulture Center and you might have to Google that. I don't know them off the top of my head. 

Farmer Fred

I do. 

Debbie Flower

Fred does. 

Farmer Fred

And the most important one, Harvest Day, is coming up August 3rd. That's a Saturday at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center. We'll have a link to that event in today's show notes where you can learn more. the whole garden is open and there are master gardeners everywhere to answer your questions. It is a demonstration working garden that is designed with the homeowner in mind. It's not necessarily designed to look pretty. It does look pretty, but it's not designed to be pretty. It's designed to be functional and productive. 

Debbie Flower

 And you'll get ideas for things like when you, if you are going to grow food,  how do you trellis them? How do you hold the melons up off the ground? Simple things. There are lots of things you can just get by looking. And there are lots of people there to answer your questions. So start with what you think you know, you said herbs.

Farmer Fred

They have a beautiful herb garden, too. 

Debbie Flower

They have a group of master gardeners who concentrate only on the herbs. And you can ask to touch them and smell them and maybe taste them and that kind of thing. They have fruit trees, deciduous and otherwise, and they're kept very small. They have other kinds of edibles as well. There is also  a community garden where all kinds of people grow things the way they want to grow them. So it's a good place to learn.

Farmer Fred

So Teresa, yeah, there's a lot of planning to do before you start planting, and maybe just spend a little bit of money on a soil test too, and that'll get you off to an educated start. Debbie, thank you so much. 

Debbie Flower

You're welcome, Fred. 

MORE INFO ABOUT THE SOIL TEXTURE TRIANGLE?

Farmer Fred

If you’re still scratching your head, trying to make sense of the how and why of the soil texture triangle test, there are a couple of links in today’s show notes that can clear things up. One is from the University of Wisconsin, the other is from Clemson University. The University of Wisconsin link explains why knowing your soil texture is so important, because it is tied directly to the availability of water for your plants. Clemson’s link shows you exactly how to conduct, measure, and interpret the results of your own soil texture triangle. Check those out. And, in the Tuesday, July 30, 2024 edition of the “Beyond the Garden Basics” newsletter, we will take a deep dive into that jar of sand, silt, and clay for an even clearer explanation of how to interpret the results of the soil texture triangle. To find out more about the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, there is a link in today’s show notes.

SMART POTS!

Farmer Fred

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Visit smartpots.com slash fred for more information about the complete line of Smart pots lightweight, colorful, fabric containers. And don’t forget that special Farmer Fred 10 percent discount. Smart Pots - the original, award winning fabric planter. Go to smart pots dot com slash fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred

Summer is the time for harvesting all that delicious, fresh fruit from your backyard orchard. Summer is also the time for doing some fruit tree pruning. You’re not familiar with summer pruning to help control the size of your fruit trees? It’s called backyard orchard culture and you can find out all about it at Dave Wilson dot com.

That's the website for Dave Wilson nursery, the nation's largest grower of fruit trees for the backyard garden. At Dave Wilson dot com, they have  planting tips, taste test results, nursery locations and information about their revolutionary backyard orchard culture techniques, which explain how you can have a cornucopia of different fruit trees in a small backyard, and that includes summer pruning. 

Just go to dave wilson dot com, and click on the Home Garden tab at the top of the page. There, you are just a click away from the informative You Tube video series at DaveWilson.com. And as part of that video series, they will walk you through everything you need to know about backyard orchard culture.

Your harvest to better health begins at DaveWilson.com.

Q&A - GARDENING VS. CONCRETE PATIO

Farmer Fred

There's a lot of way you can get your garden questions in to the Garden Basics podcast, email, sure, send it to fred at farmer fred .com. You can leave a message at our website, gardenbasics .net. You can call us, 916 -292 -8964. You can text or call, 916 -292 -8964. Wanna send some pictures? You can send it via email. We would like to hear your voice and you can do that via Speakpipe.

You don't incur phone charges because you're talking to your computer. 

Go to speakpipe.com/gardenbasics to leave us a message there. 

And we get a question from Amanda who is in North Orange County, California. That's Southern California, right below Los Angeles County. It is a gardening paradise. Well, except for things like traffic and more traffic. Amanda writes:

“I’m a longtime zone 6a gardener who relocated to Southern California zone 10b a few years ago. I found your podcast recently, and it has been so helpful in making that adjustment. Thank you! I have a question I’m wrestling with, and I’d love your input.

I bought a house last year with a few fruit trees and other plants that were lovingly cared for for decades by a landscape professional, before being somewhat neglected by renters for a few years. The soil was heavily mulched for years and everything I plant in it thrives. The trouble is that because of the lovely trees, there just isn’t a lot of full sun garden space. The best space is a 12’ x 20’ concrete pad right between two hose bibs, but I’m hesitant to put raised beds there because of drainage concerns. If you had to choose between raised beds on concrete or trying to plop vegetables in random spots around the yard to find rays of sun, which would you do? (The extreme option is taking out an ancient gnarled fig tree that still produces to take back some sun, but the figeater beetles last year were a plague that made me consider it.) And are there vegetables you would prefer to plant in-ground instead of in raised beds if you had very limited space? Thanks so much for all your wisdom!”

Farmer Fred

And so trying to find those little spots of sun around your yard may be temporary at best because that could be shade in a few years or even sooner than that. By the way, congratulations on moving from Zone 6B to Zone 10. Wow, that's a big switch. You must be in gardening heaven. You know, I have no qualms whatsoever about taking a jackhammer to that concrete area, removing it and building raised beds that could directly drain to the soil below.

And if you so desire, you could even keep a strip, maybe a four foot wide concrete strip, down the middle to have a pathway between the two raised beds that might be four feet wide and 20 feet long. We like to recommend that four foot width because that is the width which allows you to reach comfortably to the middle of the bed from either side. Plus after removing the two strips of concrete for the raised bed, you could bury a PVC pipe that could be connected to one of the faucets

and then have individual on -off controls for each bed. I would recommend probably five lines of pressure compensating half inch drip emitter tubing running the lengths of each bed with one gallon per hour emitters spaced about 12 inches apart. Now even more nifty to a raised bed would be to add a separate circuit of low flow micro sprayers along the inside perimeter of the beds to keep the beds evenly moist if you plan on direct seeding.

That is really a benefit if you are doing a lot of direct seeding because with drip irrigation, you're only watering a very small area. It's not widespread. So even in more professional situations like out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, in the raised beds in the vegetable gardening area there, they use the micro sprayers as well as the inline emitter tubing, the half inch tubing to grow things there.

And if you are unfamiliar with drip irrigation, there's some really good tutorials at the Dripworks website. That's dripworks .com. And just go to their resources page and you can see videos and a lot of good information about choosing the right drip irrigation parts for whatever you are planting. The choice of planting in raised beds versus in-ground really depends on what you are planting. In my experience, corn tends to fall over due to wind when planted in a raised bed.

Farmer Fred

And there are larger growing vegetables that would take up too much room in a raised bed for my taste. Asparagus comes to mind. Also rhubarb. Most everything else though probably could go in a raised bed. Now despite popular belief, crowding vegetables into raised beds is not a good idea because of crowded root zones, it can create too much shade, and the fact that disease and insects are harder to control in a jungle-like environment.

Follow the planting guidelines on a seed packet or that marker that came with that potted plant meant for transplanting. Those plants may look small to begin with, but tomatoes can take up a lot of room by early summer. So if you are planting tomatoes, plant them about three feet apart in a raised bed. And that's why I like to use tomato cages that are  made from mesh sheets, about four by five feet long. You can find them in most of the big home stores. And they have six inch mesh wiring. They're concrete reinforcement sheets.

And they can serve as a good template for spacing those tomato plants and those cages are forever. You'll find a million uses for them, such as in the wintertime using them to trellis your pea crop on. Consider too hydro-zoning your vegetables into your raised bed, and that's really just a fancy way of saying set up your vegetables according to their watering needs. For example, you can turn off the water to the bed that has onions and garlic a few weeks before you harvest, so you wouldn't plant them among your thirsty summer plants as tomatoes, peppers, and squash. 

I'm a big fan of raised beds, and I think that's a great way to go. Amanda, you're off to a wonderful start, and I think those big home stores will rent you a jackhammer, too.

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday. It's brought to you by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics, it's available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast as well as an accurate transcript, visit our website, gardenbasics .net. And there you can find out about our newsletter, Beyond the Garden Basics. And thank you so much for listening and your support.