Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
Tips for beginning and experienced gardeners. New episodes arrive every Friday. Fred Hoffman has been a U.C. Certified Master Gardener since 1982 and writes a weekly garden column for the Lodi News-Sentinel in Lodi, CA. A four-decade fixture in Sacramento radio, he hosted three radio shows for Northern California gardeners and farmers: The KFBK Garden Show, Get Growing with Farmer Fred, and the KSTE Farm Hour. Episode Website: https://gardenbasics.net
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
384 Ideas for a Successful First Garden!
Essential tips for beginner gardeners, focusing on starting small, plant selection, spacing and companion planting, along with maintenance strategies and the value of involving children and keeping a gardening diary.
Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.
Now on YouTube (audio)
Pictured: An all-container first garden
Links:
“Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter (Mar. 21 edition features more about first gardens)
Dave Wilson Nursery https://www.davewilson.com/home-garden/
Six-inch mesh grid reinforcement wire
Planting Calendars by USDA Zone (from Urban Farmer)
Planting Calendar for Northern California
Drip Irrigation Systems for Containers
All About Farmer Fred:
GardenBasics.net
“Beyond the Garden Basics” Newsletter
Farmer Fred website:
http://farmerfred.com
The Farmer Fred Rant! Blog
http://farmerfredrant.blogspot.com
Facebook: "Get Growing with Farmer Fred"
Instagram: farmerfredhoffman
https://www.instagram.com/farmerfredhoffman/
Blue Sky: @farmerfred.bsky.social
Farmer Fred Garden Minute Videos on YouTube
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from possible links mentioned here.
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384 First Garden TRANSCRIPT
IDEAS FOR A SUCCESSFUL FIRST GARDEN!
Farmer Fred:
We have essential tips for beginning gardeners. We focus on starting small, plant selection, spacing, and container planting. And we have maintenance strategy tips, as well as the value of involving your children and the importance of keeping a gardening diary. It's episode 384, Tips for Success with Your First 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 Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go.
Farmer Fred:
[0:45] If you've been out and about shopping at garden centers and nurseries this time of year, you may notice a few more cars in the parking lot because people are getting the garden bug. The days are getting longer. The days are getting warmer, for some of us. And that always draws a crowd. So what if you're part of those crowds that have never had a garden before for any number of reasons? Maybe you moved and you're in a new location that has a patch of soil or maybe just a big patio and you want to plant some containers with food or flowers and you've never done it before. What do you do? We're here to help. With me, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, Debbie Flower. And the subject, Debbie, is how to start a first garden and be successful. It's like when you ride a bike, if you start to ride a bike, you're going to start probably with training wheels. Yes. Even though modern thought has it that it's better to start without training wheels.
Debbie Flower:
[1:44] Oh, it does? I didn't know.
Farmer Fred:
[1:45] But that's a different episode You will know when you get grandchildren.
Debbie Flower:
[1:47] If.
Farmer Fred:
[1:48] If, yeah. Gardening is much the same way. You need to start with good soil, a watering system, and easy plants to grow. and also know what your family will eat and don't eat, all sorts of things to consider if you're planning your first garden. But first, I would like to tackle the subject of, do you have time to garden?
Debbie Flower:
Oh, good point.
Farmer Fred:
This is harder than owning a cat. There's more to it than that. Yes. Do you have to work in the garden every day? Not necessarily. Depends how you automate it, for one thing. But you do need to spend time.
Debbie Flower:
[2:30] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[2:31] Surveys among gardeners, I don't know where these gardeners live, but these surveys have basically come up with results that the average gardener only wants to spend maybe an hour a week in the garden.
Debbie Flower:
[2:43] That's not much. So start small if you're one of those people.
Farmer Fred:
[2:47] Right. That's a good idea, too. And not only just small in area, but also small in quantity of plants that you grow.
Debbie Flower:
[2:55] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[2:55] I'm glad to see that the industry is getting away from six-packs, where vegetables are put in a container that has six plants. Do you really need six tomato plants?
Debbie Flower:
[3:11] Probably not. Probably not, unless you're a big tomato fiend.
Farmer Fred:
[3:15] Yeah. But generally speaking, one tomato plant, one pepper plant per person in the house will do.
Debbie Flower:
[3:23] If you're eating it all fresh, if you're a canner, it's a different story.
Farmer Fred:
[3:27] Well, that brings up the other question, too. What are you planning on doing with all that food you're growing? Are you going to can it? Are you going to freeze it? Are you going to dehydrate it?
Debbie Flower:
[3:36] Or just watch it grow. Yes. Sometimes I do that. I see you have a bolted plant, it looks like a bok choy maybe out there.
Farmer Fred:
[3:44] All the bok choy is bolting.
Debbie Flower:
[3:46] Yes. And it's in lovely yellow flower now. And that's, to me, equally as fun as watching the bok choy grow and eating it.
Farmer Fred:
[3:54] Exactly. The problem is when the flowers do grow, when the temperatures get warmer and the plant starts to bolt, the leaves tend to get bitter.
Debbie Flower:
[4:01] Bitter, yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[4:02] But I'm leaving those flowers on there for a very good reason. I'm leaving those plants in the ground for a very good reason until it's time for them to make room for the summer models.
Debbie Flower:
[4:12] Right.
Farmer Fred:
[4:13] And that is it attracts beneficial insects.
Debbie Flower:
[4:15] Yes, it does.
Farmer Fred:
[4:16] And so you got to think about that, too. Who can I hire to help me with my garden? Mm-hmm. Mother Nature. Mm-hmm.
Debbie Flower:
[4:23] That Good Bug Hotel you talk about.
Farmer Fred:
[4:25] Yeah, the Good Bug Hotel and just mixing flowers with vegetables, especially members of the Asteraceae family, which are the daisy-like flowers. And there's a lot of those.
Debbie Flower:
[4:35] And then there's the opposite, mixing the vegetables with the flowers. If you already have an area where you plant your annuals, those that bloom all summer long, and then you switch them out and have some that bloom all winter long, you could add a vegetable here and there for their beauty. But you also, I see, have some lovely red stem chard out there. That's a very pretty thing to put into the garden and just put that in. You've already got decent soil if your annuals are doing well and you've got irrigation and you've got weed control. So you just drop in a pansy and then a chard and then a pansy and then a chard.
Farmer Fred:
[5:12] Well, that brings up another good point for the successful first garden. You do want to space your plants correctly.
Debbie Flower:
[5:18] That's probably the number one error I have seen from people who show me their new garden very proudly. So it's a little hard to say something, but the plants are right on top of each other.
Farmer Fred:
[5:32] And what happens then?
Debbie Flower:
[5:33] They get too crowded and nobody produces. Plants need space to get the air and expand their root system into enough soil that they can produce the food that's necessary to make the part that we want to eat.
Farmer Fred:
[5:47] And healthy plants like circulating air as well.
Debbie Flower:
[5:50] Big time.
Farmer Fred:
[5:50] Yes. And if you have too many plants in there, that cuts down the circulation. And if you live in a humid climate, you're looking at disease problems.
Debbie Flower:
[5:57] Big time. Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[5:58] So the best place to figure out, how far apart to put those plants is probably on the back of the seed packet if you're doing this from seed. But if you are a first-time gardener, I would recommend you start with plants.
Debbie Flower:
[6:11] Yes. And the plants come in containers, hopefully with a tag. And the tag will tell you, sometimes they just say how tall the plant will get. Let's say they say it gets to be 12 inches tall. Assume it will also get 12 inches wide. It's not always right, but it's a good place to start. And that means when you put that plant in the ground, you put a ruler right where that plant is and it goes out 12 inches and the next plant will be that far away. That's 12 inches all on one side, but the next plant also has to expand. And so two plants that are 12 inches across need to be 12 inches apart.
Farmer Fred:
[6:49] One of the easiest ways to do that, especially if you have some raised beds, if you're lucky enough to be moving to a place that has a raised bed, is to buy some hardware cloth (also called concrete reinforcement wire). A sheet of hardware cloth is usually four feet by five feet. And it's made of a good quality metal of six inch grids and perfect grids for planting correctly.
Debbie Flower:
[7:15] Spacing is done for you. But you're going to need some tools too, because you're going to need to plant those plants. If you're buying, I must admit, it is much easier to buy your plants already started. Buy them at the nursery. Don't buy them in flower. Although sometimes it's hard to find. Now that would be for flowers, but flowers are, there are edible flowers. Pansies are edible. Calendulas are edible. It's hard to find. I was walking in a nursery yesterday and everything's in full bloom. It's hard to find them not in full bloom. or a tomato, if you're going to start with a tomato, you don't want it to already have a tomato on it. It's just tough on the plant to move from that pot into your garden and still be working on producing that tomato. But anyway, it's easier to buy a plant at the already grown, just a small one in a container at the nursery, bring it home, knock it out of the pot. First thing you're going to want to do is mess with the roots. I know that maybe sounds horrible, but it is better for the plant for you to disturb those roots before you put it in the ground the roots that are circling around and around will never change direction and so you the plant can get sort of congested underground so some people say use your fingers I prefer that you have a pair of pruning shears and just cut the roots across the bottom in an x and up the sides one one slice not in very deep
Debbie Flower:
[8:40] Just to get those outer roots cut. And then you put it in the ground and you have to dig a hole. So for that, you're going to need some kind of a trowel. Or another tool I really like is called a Hori Hori. It's Japanese, looks like a knife. It has serrations on one side and a point at the tip. It's very good for digging out weeds. You can also dig holes with it.
Farmer Fred:
[9:04] It has kind of a scoopy shape.
Debbie Flower:
[9:06] Yeah, it has a little bit of a scoop to it, a little bit of a V to it. And so you can dig a hole with one of those tools. You've cut the roots, put the plant in the ground, into the media. If it's a container going into a container, you plant it flush. So the tops of the plants, the media from the container you brought it home in matches the media from the container in your raised bed. But if it's into the ground, you can plant it a little bit high. Of course, it depends on what kind of plant it is. But basically, you want the media to be about the same height as what you're planting into.
Farmer Fred:
[9:43] By the way, you want the media to be the same too. If you're planting in a hole, don't try to baby it with store-bought soil.
Debbie Flower:
[9:49] Right. You're going to plant directly. The media it's coming in is basically store-bought soil, but it'll never outgrow that if you keep putting more store-bought soil around it. So you cut those roots, and then those new roots that form right behind those cuts will venture out into the field soil.
Farmer Fred:
[10:07] Would you water that hole before you stick that plant in?
Debbie Flower:
[10:10] I don't want my media to be completely dry. So either I've watered the whole bed and gotten it all. That would be my preference is to run the system, turn it off, let it settle, then get my moisture meter. Or I can use my troweler, Hori Hori, and dig a hole and get down about six inches. The roots of the plants I'm putting in that day, if they're grown at a nursery, will probably have roots only in the top six inches at this point. And make sure it's moist all the way down. And the plant in the container I'm planting should also have moist media.
Farmer Fred:
[10:45] And of course, if you want the real true gardener experience, if you don't have a moisture meter, is grab a handful of that soil that's at the bottom of the hole and make a fist. And when you open your hand up, if it is a nice little dirt clod and it takes some effort to break it apart, that is the perfect soil moisture level. On the other hand, if when you squeeze it, water runs down your arm, the soil is still too wet. And if it just crumbles when you grab it, it's too dry.
Debbie Flower:
[11:14] Right. All good ways to check if it's wet enough.
Farmer Fred:
[11:17] By the way, a dirty hand is a happy hand.
Debbie Flower:
Bad nails, too.
Farmer Fred:
Bad nails, yeah. But there has been scientific proof that working in the soil with your hands soothes the mind.
Debbie Flower:
[11:32] Okay.
Farmer Fred:
[11:32] That's what you're after. You're after some peace of mind.
Debbie Flower:
[11:35] Well, I know it's definitely a place. The garden is a place I go to when I need that. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[11:39] And there's plenty. You can make as much work as you want or as little work as you want to a point.
Debbie Flower:
[11:45] Yes. And I'm a lazy gardener. I spend hours a week in the garden, but I don't rush around. I just tootle around, look at things, deal with what I see.
Farmer Fred:
[11:57] We should talk about placement. If you're a first-time gardener, you need to look at your yard and see where the sun is there the longest. Because if the instructions on the plant, say, needs six to eight hours a day of full sun, you've got to figure out if that area is getting six to eight hours of sun during the time of the year when it will be doing most of its growing, and that's spring and summer. So, if you went out in the wintertime and looked at your yard at various times of the day and you thought, oh, this is getting sun all day, will it in the spring and summer when the trees nearby are in full leaf? There may be a shade. So, know your yard.
Debbie Flower:
[12:39] Yeah. So, as we have said other times, it's good to spend time, at least a year ahead of time, watching those things in your yard before you actually site the garden.
Farmer Fred:
[12:51] That's in a perfect world, folks.
Debbie Flower:
[12:52] Yeah. So you didn't do it and things aren't working out and you got some extra shade or in our climate, we can actually have too much sun on some things that can handle that where we don't eat the fruit, where we eat the leaves. Those things can take a little bit more shade. You just learn from that. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[13:13] Gardening is trial and error. Yes. And you adapt. It's a great learning experience. And you can get the kids involved, too.
Debbie Flower:
[13:20] Oh, they love it.
Farmer Fred:
[13:21] Yeah. And especially, there are certain plants, I think, are better planted from seed. You have less root issues. And fortunately, for a lot of those plants, they're rather big seeds to deal with. I'm thinking like pumpkin seeds.
Debbie Flower:
[13:35] Yes. And kids love pumpkins. And once the fruit has formed, you can have them scratch something into the fruit. And as it ages, it will callous, that’s what it does. And when the pumpkin becomes the color it's going to be at the end, you have this whatever they scratch into the face, perhaps their name, into it. And it becomes their pumpkin.
Farmer Fred:
[13:54] That's how you keep the kids from fighting. They can just scratch their name.
Debbie Flower:
[13:58] And that's their pumpkin.
Farmer Fred:
[14:00] Yes, exactly.
Debbie Flower:
[14:01] Just make sure they all live.
Farmer Fred:
[14:03] The pumpkins, not the kids?
Debbie Flower:
Both. Well, both.
Farmer Fred:
Yeah, okay. That's a good point. So, yeah. And kids love big seeds. They're easy to plant. And there are certain seeds you can plant, too, that are fairly good size that will pop up quickly as well. And that's important. And I'm thinking like corn. Corn seeds are fairly quick and they can pop up in five to seven days.
Debbie Flower:
[14:27] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[14:27] If the temperature is right.
Debbie Flower:
[14:29] Right. That's critical. You need to know the seasons of gardening where you live. Your cooperative extension website should have that or you can call them up and things you might ask are when is our average last frost in spring and when is our average first frost in fall and a lot of seed packets if you're using seed will say plant so many weeks before your last frost indoors and then move them out after your last frost. The other thing you can do is watch your night temperature. Everywhere can have a summer or a warm season garden. Some places can have a cool season garden. Some places don't have enough hours to have a cool season garden. But knowing when your night temperatures have settled at 50 degrees, that's when you're into your warm season gardening.
Farmer Fred:
[15:20] There's an old Roger Miller song called, You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd, which is sort of self-explanatory. And when you're a gardener and you're growing things, a similar song might be, you can't grow a zucchini when there's snow on the ground. It's all about timing your planting.
Debbie Flower:
[15:40] At the right time. I planted beans. We're talking about good things for kids. And I think I've told this story before. So forgive me or cut it out. Scarlet runner beans. They are edible. I don't not want to prefer to eat them, but I grow them for the flowers, which attract hummingbirds and other birds, butterflies, things that like red and drink nectar. And the beans are notorious for needing warm soil and night temperatures reflect the temperature of the soil. So I kept planting these seeds around a daycare playground. I did the research and found out that they are not toxic. If somebody were to eat the whole plant, they would not get sick. Not from toxins. They might get sick from having too much food. And they're a vine. And there was a fence there they could grow on. And I kept going. I think I went four times and planted these vine seeds around this fence. And finally, the fourth time they came up and they grew up, they created a lovely green backdrop for the playground and their seed pods are beautiful. They come out sort of a tan color and they have dots on them and then they turn pink and then they finally turn brown. And you can open them at any time along this maturation process. And the seeds inside are different colors too. And the kids just had a blast.
Farmer Fred:
[17:01] You left out the best parts of that story. I really liked the fact that these these kids were in, was it a daycare or a school?
Debbie Flower:
It was a daycare.
Farmer Fred:
Okay. And it was a daycare in Reno, which is in the high desert. And it's just a hot climate, period. But this particular school was mostly asphalt on the outside. There were busy roads nearby.
Debbie Flower:
[17:19] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[17:19] There was no greenery to speak of.
Debbie Flower:
[17:22] No, it was gravel on the playground. Yeah. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[17:24] So you added color.
Debbie Flower:
[17:25] Yes. It bothered me to go into that playground. So color or shade, when you get close to a plant in summer and wind blows through it, and boy, is it windy in Reno. You know, it's natural air conditioning. It worked out very well.
Farmer Fred:
Is it still there?
Debbie Flower:
I don't know. We moved.
Farmer Fred:
[17:43] All right. So when you’re choosing plants, Don't forget to ask your family, so what would you like to eat? No, I'm sorry. There is no M&M tree. You can't do that. But, I mean, there's a lot of tasty foods out there. It's an experiment for your kids to find out how they can expand their taste buds.
Debbie Flower:
[18:05] Starting with, if you're going to do tomatoes, grow cherry tomatoes. Little ones that little kids would love. Ones that fit a single one in your mouth and then you bite on it and you get this explosion of flavor. It can be very sweet, very juicy. You just go out and pick them off the plant. Green beans, the same thing. You can just pick them off the plant and eat them right in the garden. It’s pretty amazing. I think radishes, I don't frankly know a lot of people who just plain eat radishes. I cut them up and put them in things or use them in place of potatoes and stews. It's magic to pull them out of the ground and see what was under there.
Farmer Fred:
[18:44] Oh, yeah, exactly. And carrots, too. But the problem with carrots is they're a real small seed.
Debbie Flower:
[18:49] Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[18:50] But what you can do, and you offered this tip a lot, to remember where you planted the carrots, you plant radish seeds nearby. Yes. To let you know that, oh, there's carrots planted there, too. Right.
Debbie Flower:
[19:01] And pretty soon, after a while, the carrot leaves will come up and then you'll know where they are.
Farmer Fred:
[19:05] Yeah. So, all these tips you're going to learn as you garden, and you're going to be trying to expand your garden. And one way to expand your first garden, in fact, it's not a bad idea to start your very first garden as a container garden. Yes. To use pots. Make sure there's drainage in those pots. Mm-hmm. And then you can move them around to the sunny areas.
Debbie Flower:
[19:27] Yeah, I was at a big box store recently, and they have the half wine barrels with holes already drilled in the bottom. The times I've bought wine half-barrels, I had to drill those holes. And that's hard work because that's hard oak wood. So I was pleased to see that. I don't know if they're made from hard oak. But you can get that and then they have the roller bases and put it on a roller base. And then you can, if you messed up with your sun predictions, you can move your container around, move it into the sun.
Farmer Fred:
[19:57] But if you don't want to go as big as a barrel, you could get away with some smaller containers. And I think for most vegetables, a 15 gallon container would be fine. You're pushing it with a 10 or a 5-gallon size.
Debbie Flower:
[20:13] So, a 15 is 18 inches tall and 18 inches across the opening. So, that gives you an idea of how big it is. And when I did that with students, I had them paint them. We cleaned the outside of the containers and we painted them with spray paint. And I brought a bunch of colors and they could do what they wanted. But you want a light color on the outside that reflects sunshine. Otherwise, you can boil the roots in the container. The sunshine can do that.
Farmer Fred:
[20:40] The other tip when starting your first garden, no matter what you're planting, is make sure that what you're buying in the way of plants is meant to go into the ground at that time. Because nurseries sometimes have a habit of bringing in a lot of different vegetables at one time. I guarantee you they came straight out of a very warm greenhouse to that nursery. So if you try planting a tomato on the same day that you're planting zucchini... The tomato may make it, the zucchini probably won't.
Debbie Flower:
[21:12] Right.
Farmer Fred:
[21:12] So some plants need warmer soil temperatures. That's why a soil temperature gauge is very handy to have to help you out there.
Debbie Flower:
[21:23] Well, if you don't have a soil temperature, well, everyone has a soil temperature gauge, which is themselves. In a pair of shorts and t-shirt and you go sit on the ground, you need to be able to sit there for 10 minutes and be comfortable. Mm-hmm. No knee socks, no sweater, no scarf, no hat.
Farmer Fred:
[21:40] That'll do it. Yeah. And then you can go ahead and plant because by then the soil temperature is probably at least 60. Mm-hmm.
Debbie Flower:
[21:49] And you should get good germination from beans, from squash seeds, pumpkin seeds.
Farmer Fred:
[21:54] Corn, too.
Debbie Flower:
[21:55] Tomatoes, anything, really. Yeah. You're beyond, or you're at the end of the lettuce season, the greens.
Farmer Fred:
[22:03] We're still looking for the perfect lettuce variety for the summer in Sacramento. And it has to be grown in the shade in the summer.
Debbie Flower:
[22:12] Under shade, near the coast. I've seen fields of it.
Farmer Fred:
[22:16] Oh, yeah, sure. Because on the coast of California, the temperature very seldom drops below 40 and very seldom gets above 90, 95 or so.
Debbie Flower:
[22:26] But they're still, yeah, still using shade. Yeah. So it's, you know, it's a tough crop for the summer.
Farmer Fred:
[22:31] Speaking of containers, if you go out to the nursery and start impulse buying plants, and then you go home and you say, well, I got some other things to do. I'll get to those plants later. Is it a week later? Is it two weeks later? One piece of advice that I think our friend Don Shor, who owns Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, advises people, When you get home, if you're not going to plant them in the ground that day, put them in larger containers.
Debbie Flower:
[23:00] I learned that from Mary Helen Seeger, one of the people who owns Four Winds or did own Four Winds growers. I don't know who owns it now.
Farmer Fred:
[23:07] Other Seegers.
Debbie Flower:
[23:08] Other Seegers. Okay. They grow citrus and sell them, among other things. Daphne, citrus, blueberries. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[23:14] So, if you're going home with a six-pack of flowers or a lot of vegetables in four-inch pots, then you need to transplant them into, ideally, a one-gallon container, which is, what, eight inches tall, eight inches across? Or not that.
Debbie Flower:
[23:31] No, more like six.
Farmer Fred:
[23:33] Yeah, six by six or so, because that'll give that plant an opportunity to get a more vigorous root system going.
Debbie Flower:
[23:43] Right. But then you have to have that time to do it and the facilities. You need the container media, you need the containers and a place to put them. If I bring them home and I'm going to plant them tomorrow, I get the aluminum roasting pans from the cheap store and put them in a shady place and put the plants I just brought home, the six pack of pansies or whatever, and the four inch of whatever in there and water them. They're in the shade and they're watered. They're not going to grow, but it's going to preserve them from dying. Remember, they're watered daily at the nursery. If you just put them on the ground, put them somewhere and walk away for two days, they're probably going to be in very poor condition.
DAVE WILSON NURSERY
Farmer Fred:
[24:31] You have a small yard and you think you don't have the room for fruit trees? Well, maybe you better think again. Because Dave Wilson Nursery wants to show you how to grow great tasting fruits like peaches, apples, pluots, and nut trees. Plus, they have potted fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, olives, and pomegranates. These are all plants that you can grow in small areas. You can even grow many of them in containers on patios as well. It's called Backyard Orchard Culture, and you can get step-by-step information via the Dave Wilson YouTube videos. So where do you find those? Well, just go to DaveWilson.com, click on the Home Garden tab at the top of the page. Also in that Home Garden tab, you're going to find a link to their Fruit and Nut Harvest Chart. You can be picking delicious, healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December here in USDA Zone 9. And something else you're going to find in that home garden tab. You're going to find the closest nursery to you that carries Dave Wilson's quality fruit trees. And they're in nurseries from coast to coast. So start the backyard orchard of your dreams at DaveWilson.com.
IDEAS FOR A SUCCESSFUL FIRST GARDEN! Pt. 2
Farmer Fred:
It's more than just choosing the right plants to have a successful garden. There are a lot of elements that go into that first garden success. Let's continue our chat with Debbie Flower about starting your first garden.
Farmer Fred:
[26:02] Well, let's talk about those ancillary things that go well with a successful garden, which includes placement of the garden where you can see it from a window in the house.
Debbie Flower:
[26:08] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[26:11] And also, how are you going to water that garden? And to automate it can give you a day off.
Debbie Flower:
[26:18] Yes, it can. There are places, you know, in this country that get rain on a regular basis. That's a real concept here in California. But even there, an irrigation system is a benefit. Use a timer. There are some very simple irrigation timers. Houses have hose bibs. It has a connection to the hose bib. You just screw it on there and turn the water on at the hose bib and you can just turn the dial. They have a limited, I want to say 180 minutes maybe, a limited amount of time that they will run, but they will then shut the water off. And when my dad was aging and his brain was aging and he was forgetting to shut off the water and coming out to floods the next day, I just put those on all my parents' hose bibs and it solved the problem.
Farmer Fred:
[27:11] Bring them in for winter so none of the parts freeze and put them back out in spring and they'll last for years.
Debbie Flower:
[27:17] Yes. And those, do those have a battery in them? No. Yeah, those are mechanical.
Farmer Fred:
[27:22] It's a wind up toy.
Debbie Flower:
[27:23] Yeah. If you get more, you can get more complicated as always. Oh yeah. Ain't technology great. And those will have batteries in them, and they last me, I don't bring those in, and they last me about two years. But the twist ones, real easy. Anybody can use them.
Farmer Fred:
[27:40] But that's definitely Something to consider before you go shopping for plants is ask yourself, how am I going to water this? Do you have a hose with the right attachments? Like we were talking about using possibly an oscillating sprinkler.
Debbie Flower:
[27:53] That's what I did before I became aware of drip irrigation. I had an oscillating sprinkler that I would turn on over... Covered pretty much my entire garden when I lived in Portland, Oregon, and let it go with a timer. The timer would shut it off.
Farmer Fred:
[28:11] And they even have drip irrigation systems now for potted plants, for containers that you can buy, where you can run the smaller tubing into each pot. And remember that a sprinkler system versus a drip irrigation system has a big difference, and that is the amount of time that you would run them. because a sprinkler system, an oscillating sprinkler, for example, might be putting out two gallons per minute. And a drip irrigation system might be putting out two gallons an hour.
Debbie Flower:
[28:41] That would be high for a drip. That'd be high, exactly. Half gallon per hour or gallon per hour would be the max, I would think, on a drip line.
Farmer Fred:
[28:48] Yeah, it depends on your soil.
Debbie Flower:
[28:51] Yes, your soil is critical. So, I like to use micro sprayers so that I have the drip Supply line, but I put micro sprayers on it so that the water spreads everywhere. Then I'm free to put my seed wherever I want to.
Farmer Fred:
[29:05] If you're planting from seed.
Debbie Flower:
[29:06] Too. Which I like to do.
Farmer Fred:
[29:08] Now, remember the micro sprayers, though, as that plant gets bigger, that spray might be blocked by leaves.
Debbie Flower:
[29:14] Right. Yeah, got to watch that.
Farmer Fred:
[29:15] And you can prune off a few of those lower leaves to get that water to spray out a little bit further. And it sends out, it's called a micro sprayer. But in reality, most of them send out little fingers of water in a circle.
Debbie Flower:
[29:30] Sort of like my kitchen faucet, and I press a button, and it goes from a stream to a spray. The spray to me on my microspray is very similar to the spray in my kitchen faucet.
Farmer Fred:
[29:40] Except it's more gentle outside.
Debbie Flower:
[29:42] Yes, and it goes horizontal.
Farmer Fred:
[29:44] Yes. Well, that too, that helps. But yeah, getting back to the soil then, if you are planting in containers, you don't want to use your native soil in a pot. Why?
Debbie Flower:
[29:56] There's something called water relations.
Farmer Fred:
[30:00] Would you like to hear what you said before?
Debbie Flower:
[30:02] Sure. You want to play it? All right.
Farmer Fred:
[30:03] Now, we talked about what is the best soil for containers, and we got off on this tangent of native soil versus packaged soil. And I think I said this, and then you said that. The benefit, too, of having those big pots is you can use a potting mix, a soil mix, to start off with. We should be dissuading people from filling those pots with their native soil.
Debbie Flower:
[30:30] Right.
Farmer Fred:
[30:30] Because what's in that native soil? Weeds.
Debbie Flower:
[30:34] Right. Lots of live things that could harm your plant. And also the water relations of field soil are very different than container soil. And you need the water relations to be correct for the container, thus you use container soil.
Farmer Fred:
[30:46] And that was back in episode 307, if you want to check that out, where we talked about the differences in container versus native soil.
Debbie Flower:
[30:54] It was clear to me.
Farmer Fred:
[30:58] Okay, so what are water-related relations?
Debbie Flower:
[31:00] Well, you know, when a molecule of water meets a molecule of water and they date and they make more water. Yeah. No, that's not water relations. Water relations is how water moves through soil. Water does not drop through the spaces between the particles in soil. Water travels along the surface of the soil. It has to do with plus charges and minus charges, if you've learned about magnets or know about magnets. It's a similar kind of thing. But the water moves along the edges of each particle, and it moves in all directions until that volume of soil has become full. Then it stops at the bottom of that volume of soil, and the water just fills up. That's what happens in a container, regardless of what kind of soil you have in there. You apply the water to the top. It travels around the particles that are in the container. It gets to the drainage holes. It stops. If water is continually applied, then the water continues to come down from the top until all of the spaces between the particles in the soil are full of water. And then the next drop that's added to the top pushes a drop out of the bottom. That's pretty simple. Does that make sense, Fred?
Farmer Fred:
[32:15] What also brings up the other topic of why, if you are growing your plants in containers, why you don't want to fill up the bottom of that container with the pebbles or broken pots or some other non-soil?
Debbie Flower:
[32:30] Well, then that becomes the bottom of the soil. And so let's say rocks, people tend to use gravel or you can buy it in bags and put some in the bottom. And it's still recommended in places, and that is incorrect. But let's say you do that, that the water will move through your soil till it comes to this place with different, much, much different particle sizes, and the water will stop. It may stop completely, or it may just slow down drastically, but enough slow down that the soil above will fill up with water. till the next drop, till it's completely full and the next drop pushes a drop into whatever's below it. You've shortened the root zone by putting the rocks in the bottom. You have not improved the drainage. You have shortened the root zone. Field soil in general has smaller particle sizes than the stuff we buy in bags that is considered container soil. Container soil is organic matter, which is much bigger than any component of soil except organic matter. Soil is made of rocks that have been broken down to different sizes. The bigger sizes of soil are sand, the medium sizes are silt, and the smallest sizes are clay. And they all fit together to make field soil. So the spaces between those small soil particles are very small. Plant roots need both oxygen and water. If you add water to, put those in a container, add water to the top, there's a lot of surface area in soil. It has to get around. All these little particles, sand, silt, and clay, takes a very long time for the water to get from the top to the bottom, and there are very few spaces for air. Thus, the plant sits in water for too long. It's called poor drainage. They don't do well. They don't get enough oxygen. Yes, roots need oxygen.
Roots have to take plant food and break it down in the dark to make, they have to take it from other parts of the plant, break it down in order to make food to make more roots. And that process requires oxygen and the roots have to get oxygen from right where they are. So you have to have oxygen. So if we switch to a container media, which is bigger particles, the water moves more quickly through it and there are bigger spaces for the air. And so the roots get more oxygen as well as they have water available. And organic matter holds water. It is the thing in soil that holds onto water that is available to plants. And so you have a good combination of available water and oxygen. And so your roots can be active and can make more roots and can keep that plant very vigorous. And the plant does not drown.
Farmer Fred:
[35:16] Let's clarify that the bottom of that container, if it does have shards of broken pots or pebbles or whatever, that is a distinctly different ingredient than what is normally found in soil. It is not sand, silt, or clay. Correct. And you may water your soil and you've got pebbles on the bottom and there's holes in the pot and you may see water going from the bottom. But what's happening at that level where the soil meets those pebbles, as you pointed out earlier, it's backing up. That whole area is getting too saturated. Because , I liken it to a freeway. You're driving down the freeway, everything's fine. And all of a sudden, you get a warning sign saying, construction ahead. And so you're still going along. And then all of a sudden, the traffic starts slowing down. And it slows down. And it slows down. Because up ahead, it's being narrowed from four lanes to three lanes. Right. Or worse. The same thing happens to water as it's going through a pot. It's doing fine. It's going through the soil that's there, the media. And then when it comes to this distinctly different stuff, it could be styrofoam.
Debbie Flower:
[36:25] It could be pebbles or whatever,
Farmer Fred:
[36:28] The traffic stops and go, whoa, what's this?
Debbie Flower:
[36:30] I like your analogy of the lanes because as the water's coming down the container soil or the field soil, whatever, hopefully it's container soil, it has many lanes it can use. The water can come down. Then it comes to this bigger thing, rocks or there are not as many lanes between the rocks to the bottom of the container because the rocks are bigger and the water travels around the outside of them. They all have to consolidate. The lanes have to merge to get around these big rocks. And that's when you end up with a saturation layer at the bottom of your container soil. And that's rotting. That is where roots rot. That's where rotting occurs.
Farmer Fred:
[37:09] And that's where your roots are going. Yes. And, you know, heaven help them that the drainage slows down that much. So that's why we say if you're putting out a container plant, you need to have consistent soil. Consistent, I like to say soil. By that, I mean potting mix or whatever.
Debbie Flower:
[37:30] Potting mix or media, I call it. And that can be confusing for some people. Be aware that in a container, you will always have a saturation zone at the bottom of the container. because those lanes of water the water can take to get to the bottom of the container have now merged into however many drainage holes you have. And so the water backs up right there. If you buy a plant at a nursery, sometimes people, when I worked at a nursery, sometimes people complained that there was moss growing in the drain hole. Well, that means the plant's being cared for correctly. It is being watered. Some people don't water enough and the water doesn't get to the bottom. That's a different problem all of its own. If you've got moss in the bottom, then you're getting the water all the way to the bottom.
Farmer Fred:
[38:18] Which is another topic we can get into is if you are watering your garden by hand, maybe you have a shower nozzle and you're watering your plants. If you go to a nursery and watch these people who get paid to water plants, they're going back and forth, back and forth over the same plants.
Debbie Flower:
[38:36] Well, if they're really doing it right, they're putting the nozzle in one plant and filling it up and moving to the next plant and filling the container and putting the next plant and filling a container. You have to train people to water.
Farmer Fred:
[38:47] Yeah. that depends on the containers they're in. If they're in six packs, that's a little difficult. you're going back and forth.
Debbie Flower:
[38:55] Back and forth tends not to produce enough water in any one place. So that's where that moisture meter can come in handy. Right.
Farmer Fred:
[39:02] And how long do you water a plant in a container? my rule of thumb is wait for water to come out the bottom. A lot of people make the complaint that, well, I've got these holes in the bottom of this container and I put the soil in and I watered it and a lot of soil came out the bottom. You offered a tip many years ago about how you can get around that without permanently slowing down the water. And that was to put a sheet of newspaper on the bottom, put the soil on top of that, and then water it. And that newspaper will dissolve, if you will, or break apart in a few days.
Debbie Flower:
[39:39] Right. It's very, very thin. I don't know how many people have newspapers anymore.
Farmer Fred:
[39:44] Yeah. And you do want something that is able to be broken down. Right. Not, you know, hard.
Debbie Flower:
[39:49] But I find if you wet the media before you put it in the container, It sticks together well enough that, yes, a little bit comes out the bottom when you water, but not enough to make a difference.
Farmer Fred:
[40:02] The choice is yours, folks. But that's one way to help save the soil from going out the bottom. A lot of people, too, don't even think about this.
Debbie Flower:
[40:12] And hopefully they may figure it out.
Farmer Fred:
[40:13] Well, yeah, I'll plant these plants over there in that area there. Okay, fine. How are you going to get through there without stepping on the soil? Are you making the garden area big enough so that you've got maybe a three-foot walkway around the garden to take a wheelbarrow, for example? Because you don't want to step on the soil. Why don't you want to step on the garden soil?
Debbie Flower:
[40:38] You compact it.
Farmer Fred:
[40:39] And that removes the air.
Debbie Flower:
[40:40] That removes the air and things won't grow there. I have garden paths. I know where they are. And the last arborist who came to my house knew where they were. He walked right through it. These are beds in the ground. They have trees and shrubs in them, but they're too far for me to reach all the way in. And so I designate a path and things don't grow in the path and that's fine. But I can walk in the path and reach the rest of the plants.
Farmer Fred:
[41:07] Generally speaking, if you get down on your hands and knees to pull weeds or something like that, you can reach across maybe two feet or if you're taller, two and a half feet. So, a garden planting area should only be four, I would say four feet wide.
Debbie Flower:
[41:22] Yes, I agree.
Farmer Fred:
[41:23] So, you can reach the middle.
Debbie Flower:
[41:25] And you can reach it and use a tool and apply some power to that tool. You're not just reaching. You got to do something when you reach.
Farmer Fred:
[41:33] And harvest.
Debbie Flower:
[41:34] Yes, harvest.
Farmer Fred:
[41:35] Yeah, that's very important. I mean, that's what you're here for if you're doing a first garden. So do make room not only for yourself, but also for that wheelbarrow or wagon or whatever you're hauling around. And you once had an argument with a landscape designer who wanted to put your garden someplace else. And you said no.
Debbie Flower:
[41:57] Right. He wanted to put it in a place where I couldn't see it. And I said, no, I have to be able to see it. I need to be reminded. It's not visible from the main rooms in the house, but it's visible from my bedroom. And when I go out on my patio, I get to sit and read or whatever. It's visible there. I need to be reminded it's out there and go visit it.
Farmer Fred:
[42:21] And it's especially ideal if it's at a window that you normally use, like maybe a kitchen window. Or if you have a den or your TV room or whatever, and you've got a big glass patio door there, see it through that.
Debbie Flower:
[42:36] Right. Have your containers on your patio if you're doing container gardening. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[42:39] Yeah. Just have it visible. One thing I would do in a perfect world, if they were going to force me to move to some place where all I could do was container gardening on a patio, but the patio hadn't been poured yet. I would install that concrete patio or whatever you're using with drain spots, just maybe 12 inches across, 12-inch diameter, where I could set the pots on so that the water wouldn't stain the concrete. It would flow to a pipe system below the concrete and take the water out to the back of the yard or whatever, just to avoid the stains.
Debbie Flower:
[43:17] Yeah, the metal Cattle troughs that I have bamboo in on my patio, something in them has started rusting. Oh. And I think it's, I've done some research and it's the, it's the solder. It's the, I think, I'm not positive. But yeah, there are stains on my patio now.
Farmer Fred:
[43:40] You didn't have drain holes in the bottom? You're just using the side plug?
Debbie Flower:
[43:41] I'm using the bung. Yeah. Pull the bung out. Yeah. Using the side.
Farmer Fred:
[43:45] “Side plug” would be the more polite term, but okay.
Debbie Flower:
[43:48] Side plug. I'm using the side plug.
Farmer Fred:
[43:52] But yeah, drainage, it comes down to that. It's amazing what it can harm, including cattle troughs like that, which are excellent too, by the way.
Debbie Flower:
[44:02] They are.
Farmer Fred:
[44:02] Yeah.
Debbie Flower:
[44:02] They are. I visit Tucson, Arizona regularly because that's where my husband is from. And they use them there. People say, oh, they get too hot. Well, Tucson is about as hot as it gets. And they don't line them with anything. They don't paint them. They just use them as raised beds.
Farmer Fred:
[44:21] I took the precaution on mine. I grow blueberries in the cattle watering troughs, which are about six feet long, two and a half feet tall, maybe two feet, three feet wide. And it's galvanized steel. But what works on it perfectly is tractor paint. So if you go to a tractor supply store. Yeah, exactly. A tractor, something like a tractor store. But I would bet the big box stores have an area of tractor paint. Some kind of metal paint. Yeah. And they come in wonderful colors like a John Deere green or Kubota orange, Ford blue, whatever color you want.
Debbie Flower:
[45:00] You can even paint a picture with those colors.
Farmer Fred:
[45:01] Yes, you could. But that just adds color and it does provide a modicum of temperature control for that if you're going to have them out in the hot sun. I would think, though, that those containers that they are growing plants in Tucson. Are they growing seasonal plants in the winter and that's it?
Debbie Flower:
[45:17] They grow all year round. Yeah. Yeah. They do provide shade from above. A lot of them have put, of course, I was there last month and it was winter crops, much like we have here in California. But they use PVC pipes, you know, one inch to one inch probably long ones. And they make arches over the top and then have some floating row cover over that at this time of year. And then in the summer, that is replaced with shade cloth.
Farmer Fred:
[45:49] That makes sense.
Debbie Flower:
[45:50] Yes. I like that.
Farmer Fred:
[45:52] Yeah. All gardening is local and your rules may vary slightly depending on if you're in Minnesota or if you're in Southern Arizona.
Debbie Flower:
[46:01] In Minnesota, I typically go there in April because that's my son's birthday month and he lives in Minnesota. They're just starting to put the plants out.
Farmer Fred:
Oh, are they?
Debbie Flower:
In the nurseries. Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[46:12] Oh, in the nurseries. Okay. I would think the ground in some parts may still have snow on it.
Debbie Flower:
[46:16] You're right. Right. It can be cold. It can be very comfortable. But yeah, the nursery season is just beginning.
Farmer Fred:
[46:24] And no matter what you're growing or where you're growing, in whatever medium you're growing in, there will be weeds.
Debbie Flower:
[46:32] Oh, yeah. That's their job, right?
Farmer Fred:
[46:36] They blow in from the wind. Sometimes you bring them in after you buy a plant from the nursery. Yeah. Hidden in the soil.
Debbie Flower:
[46:42] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[46:43] So you have to be diligent about getting in there and pull the weeds while they're young. Why is that?
Debbie Flower:
[46:50] Because one of the big ways they spread is by seed. And when they get older, they get seed. And they also, some have very deep roots and some will spread by roots. So you want to get all that before it has a chance to get around your garden. I had a weed. It was pretty. I let it go for a year. That was my mistake. Calendula Arvensis. And it seeded everywhere. Huge, huge areas of my property. So I had to take drastic action.
Farmer Fred:
[47:28] But it's necessary because there was competition going on.
Debbie Flower:
[47:32] Yes. And I couldn't get ahead of it myself.
CORRECTION TO “CALENDULA”
Farmer Fred:
[47:36] Whoa, let's back up here. Now, Debbie mentioned that the weed she was having a problem with was a calendula. And you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. A calendula is a pretty flower that thrives here in California during the cool season and is attractive to beneficial insects. And you would be correct.
Farmer Fred:
[47:55] However, that's the more common calendula variety officially known as Calendula officinalis. The variety that Debbie mentioned was Calendula arvensis, whose common name is Field Marigold. And you won't find a reference to that variety in your more common garden reference books, such as the Sunset Western Garden Book or the American Horticultural Society's Encyclopedia of Garden Plants. In fact, the only reference book that I found on my shelf that makes a reference to the Field Marigold, Calendula arvensis, was in Hortus III, which is a behemoth garden reference book from Cornell University, consisting of over 1,200 pages. And there it is, on page 209, where it states, “it's from Central Europe and the Mediterranean region and it's now established in waste places in California and elsewhere”. So basically, it sounds like a weed to me. Now, you might be thinking as a gardener, maybe my home library should include a copy of Hortus III. Well, it does have uses. At three and a half inches thick, Hortus 3rd makes a great small step up to reach whatever is just out of reach on that top shelf, and it's sturdy enough to hold a door open on a windy day.
Other than that, you, being a creature of the 21st century, may wish to eschew the book route and just type in Calendula arvensis into an internet search engine. And there you'll find a link near the top to Cal Flora, which is a very good reference for the plants of the Golden State. And it says this about the field marigold, Calendula arvensis. “It is an annual herb that is not native to California. The leaves have a strong smell. It produces three types of fruit. They are rostrate, simbiform, and annular. Rostrate and simbiform are suitable for long-distance diffusion because they have larger size and weight than annular, while annular is suitable for short-distance diffusion”. So what this person, who's trying to show off their PhD in botany, is trying to say is: it's a really successful weed. However, if you stick with the good old Calendula officinalis, commonly known as the pot marigold, which is found at most nurseries, you're going to get a long season of beautiful, usually yellow-colored, daisy-like flowers on a plant that, although it may come back year after year if the weather cooperates, it usually maintains a fairly neat habit. Thank you for indulging by Latin. And now back to our scheduled programming.
FIRST GARDEN, cont.
Farmer Fred:
Well, that's one reason. And another good garden tip for the first-time gardener is walk your garden every day.
Debbie Flower:
[50:33] Absolutely. That's the only way you're going to find the baby weeds. And I like to carry an empty... planting container with me. It can be a number one, a number two. It doesn't have to be very big. And so I can pull the weeds up and throw them in there.
Farmer Fred:
[50:49] One other tip that is kind of important too is you want to control pests as, I would like to say, organically as possible. But I would prefer to say in the least toxic fashion as possible.
Debbie Flower:
[51:03] Okay. That makes sense.
Farmer Fred:
[51:05] And one of your friends is a powerful stream from the water hose if you come across aphids.
Debbie Flower:
[51:10] I saw my first aphid yesterday. It was in a Home Depot parking lot.
Farmer Fred:
[51:14] Okay.
Debbie Flower:
[51:15] On a Rhapheolepis. New growth.
Farmer Fred:
[51:18] That would be India Hawthorn.
Debbie Flower:
[51:19] Yes. Yeah.
Farmer Fred:
[51:21] Huh. Well, in a parking lot, a lot of reflected heat. So they're coming out of...
Debbie Flower:
[51:25] And the aphids tend to go to the stressed plant first. I always wonder, if I have a plant that's full of aphids, what is stressing this plant? Is it in too small of a container? Is it too close to other plants so that the beneficials can't get in? Is it, I don't know, what's wrong? A parking lot is a very stressful place for a shrub to grow. So, that answered my question right away. That's why the first aphids of the season for me were found in an asphalt parking lot.
Farmer Fred:
[51:55] They were consorting with the enemy. Yes. Yeah. It's a case of every time you walk the garden, you're going to see something new. You might start seeing leaves turning color. Is it natural or is there a problem? And usually if you see problematic coloring in a leaf, especially brown portions, that's usually a watering issue. And it could, unfortunately, it could be either too much or too little.
Debbie Flower:
[52:19] Yeah, that's when you've got to use that water meter, moisture meter or dig down and use your hand.
Farmer Fred:
[52:25] Now, a lot of people will plant and then forget what they planted.
Debbie Flower:
[52:30] Mm-hmm.
Farmer Fred:
[52:31] It's always a good idea to get yourself, when you go to the nursery to buy the plants, a package of those white plant markers.
Debbie Flower:
[52:38] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[52:39] And write down the plant that you put in. But guess what? The snails and slugs come out at night and they move those signs around or they bury them. They're trying to hide them from you. Or if you have garden gnomes, they're the ones doing it. They're the ones pulling out those sticks. So keep a garden diary. Write it down in a book you have inside. And that's a good way to remember things like, oh, we really like this plant. You can get that in the diary or I don't want to plant that again. That's a good reminder, too.
Debbie Flower:
[53:07] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[53:07] And that way you have a permanent reference. So get yourself a book, a little blank gardening diary book or just plain old notebook and keep track of it on a day by day basis what you're doing in the garden.
Debbie Flower:
[53:18] Mm hmm. Excellent idea.
Farmer Fred:
[53:20] I have my history in gardening that goes back to 1989, I think.
Debbie Flower:
[53:25] Wow.
Farmer Fred:
[53:26] All right. One time a noted landscape architect told me, and I've remembered this for now 30 years, if not longer, he said, “life is too short to put up with a problem plant”. Well, the same is true with an annual or perennial in your garden. If it's not performing, if it's not producing what you want it to produce, yank it out, plant something else.
Debbie Flower:
[53:50] Yes.
Farmer Fred:
[53:51] And there's a season for everything. Here in California, it's interesting that we can be starting our winter garden, if you will, in July or August because that's the time it takes for a seed or a tuber or root or corm to get established in the heat. It's not uncommon to see a tomato plant in one spot and right next to it, there might be cabbage. Cabbage. Yeah, exactly.
Debbie Flower:
[54:15] Cabbage Seedling.
Farmer Fred:
[54:16] Yeah, a seedling, because even though it's still hot, the seedling isn't going to be affected adversely by that, except it'll be happier growing that way.
Debbie Flower:
[54:26] Yes, and you'll get a bigger head out of it.
Farmer Fred:
[54:28] It's the first garden. You're going to have fun. Don't forget that. Take a lot of pictures. You don't have to post them. Honestly, you don't have to post them. But if you want to, go ahead. Fine. Your family will enjoy it. This is a hobby that lasts a lifetime.
Debbie Flower:
[54:43] Mm-hmm.
Farmer Fred:
[54:44] And you'll always, if you start gardening once, you'll always want to garden again. It might be smaller in scale. It might be larger. It might be more convenient for you if the garden bed is raised. But whatever age you are, you're going to get a lot of benefits from gardening. Plus, you're going to be growing the healthiest food you could possibly eat.
Debbie Flower:
[55:04] Yes. And most tasty.
Farmer Fred:
[55:06] Debbie Flower, there's your first garden.
Debbie Flower:
[55:08] Yeah. Have a good time.
BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER
Farmer Fred:
[55:11] If you listened to this episode, number 384, entitled First Garden Tips for Success, you picked up a lot of useful information for a great initial garden. But we have more. In this week's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we have more first garden ideas, including pondering the never-ending question, where does the water go? Good drainage. It's essential for successful plants. And if you have low spots in your garden that seem to be much slower at drying out after a heavy rainstorm, or maybe you have lots of clay soil, you'll want to check out this newsletter. If you're starting a first garden or you just want more success with your existing garden, the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter is for you. More first garden success tips can be found in the March 21st, 2025 edition. Find a link to it in today's show notes or at our website, GardenBasics.net, and you can find it at Substack as well. It's free. It's the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.
Farmer Fred:
[56:19] Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday, and it's brought to you by Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics is available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript of the podcast, visit our website, GardenBasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.