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♪
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.
If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.
♪
If you're just about to set foot into the garden for the first time,
or maybe you're looking to expand your gardening horizons and you're wondering where to begin,
here's a tip.
Start small with container gardening.
Today we talk with Pam Farley.
She's the writer and photographer behind the highly successful gardening website, brownthumbmama.com.
And she's the author of the new book, The First Time Gardener, Container Food Gardening.
Even experienced gardeners will pick up a few handy tips on dealing with all the various kinds of containers
that you can use to grow edibles and flowers.
You're going to find out that not all drill bits are created equal.
You'll find out the best tools and implements to use to add drain holes in wood, ceramic, and terracotta pots.
Different pots have different shapes.
There's square pots, round ones, rectangular, cylindrical, vase shape.
Each of those will look better in certain parts of the yard.
Pam Farley will direct you to the right place for those pots.
And to keep those pots draining, Pam Farley has some tips and tricks for keeping the water flowing.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful of Butylon, jungle, and suburban purgatory.
It's The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast, brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
There's a new book out, The First Time Gardener, Container Food Gardening.
All the know-how you need to grow vegetables, fruits, herbs, and other edible plants in pots.
It's written by Pam Farley.
Although the title page of her book says Pamela Farley, but I have a funny feeling she's only called Pamela
when her mother might be mad at her or other people in her life.
I thought so, yeah.
Pam Farley has been gardening and writing, usually not at the same time, since she was in grade school.
All those interests collided in 2009 when she started the website brownthumbmama.com.
Oh, now it rings a bell with you.
She's been documenting her home and garden tips.
Now, millions of readers from around the world visit her site to learn about vegetable gardening,
easy recipes, and making a non-toxic home.
And when she's not gardening or writing, she might be out camping or reading or otherwise avoiding housework.
Just like she's doing right now talking to us about container food gardening,
Pam, this is exciting a book.
Thank you, it certainly is.
And it's a book that is very necessary in the 21st century, what was smaller yards and new gardeners.
You combine the two, and what do you get, a lot of container gardeners?
Absolutely.
It's the easiest way to get started.
If you know what you're doing, and it doesn't take much, and your book is a good guideline
to get started with container gardening because there are sure a lot of myths about container
gardening.
And we may get into some of that later on.
And certainly in your book, you cover just about every type of food you can grow in containers.
How about some just some general guidelines about growing in containers?
What do you look for in a container?
There are some important things to keep in mind.
And if you're on the internet at all, you'll see a lot of suggestions that are probably
not safe for growing food.
The important things that you want to think about when you're picking out a container,
your container can be a soup can or an old wheelbarrow or a fancy pot that you bought
at your local garden center.
But you want it to be big enough for the mature plant.
So you're not going to plant a lemon tree in a soup can, for example.
You want it to be food safe.
Now this means that I don't recommend that you plant potatoes in a stack of old tires,
for example, because there's just too darn many chemicals in those tires.
And third, you want to make sure your container has good drainage because if your seeds or
your plants are in a pot that's full of water and the water can't drain out, then everything's
just going to rot and you're not going to have any vegetables.
I think for the beginner gardener who is starting off in container gardening, it might be easiest
to start with greens because they grow quickly, they don't take up much space.
They're very malleable as far as being successful.
They don't require too much sun or too much shade.
But like anything in a pot, it requires drainage.
Mm-hmm.
And a little bit of chard will produce and produce and produce.
You better really like chard.
Well, chard, to me, chard is one of my favorite greens because in our hot climate here in
USDA Zone 9, it's one of the few that will successfully grow in the shade in the summer
time and you can have year-round greens in your salad from the garden.
That's right.
And I actually have several chard plants in the front and the backyard right now.
So I agree.
I like one piece of advice you give there in choosing containers where you say, if you
wouldn't eat out of it, don't grow in it.
So kids, don't eat out of paint cans.
Exactly.
Just because it's on Pinterest doesn't mean it's a good idea, folks.
Yes.
All right.
Well, that brings up a good point though and that is you can if you're creative, you
can use a lot of receptacles around the house for your containers as long as they have drain
holes.
Absolutely.
I have started seeds in a rotisserie chicken container from the store.
Or when we first got married and didn't have two nickels to rub together, I grew herbs,
literally in soup cans on the window sill.
I just pounded some holes in the bottom with some nails and used a nail to punch holes
in the bottom.
Egg cartons, any kind of old colanders, things that you were going to donate or toss, lots
of ways that you can repurpose them and use them for your garden.
I would think if there is one general rule of thumb when it comes to choosing a container,
I would rather have a deep container than a wide container.
That's very true.
There are some times when you, if you think about the shape of the food, you could get
away with planting radishes in a shallow container, but of course carrots are not going to work.
I have not found an occasion yet where a container was too big, but you can have a container
be too small.
That doesn't mean the plant's going to die right off the bat.
It just won't get as big as it could have and it may not last as long, may not live
as long as it would have because it doesn't have enough room to grow and get nutrients
from the soil.
One of the problems of growing a small plant in a large container though sometimes can
be there's way too much water in that container for that itty-bitty plant.
It better be an easy draining soil for it to succeed.
That's true and another good point because you don't want to scoop up garden soil and
plop it in a container for most of us I should say.
Most of us are garden soil is pretty heavy.
In this part of the state it's got a lot of clay, doesn't drain well, better to mix up
or purchase specific container gardening soil that's a little lighter and drains better.
The one lesson I've learned after all these years of potting soil is like you say, it
really doesn't matter, you can choose your favorite potting mix or the least expensive
potting mix.
Just be sure it is moist before you plant in it.
It is very difficult to moist and dry commercially bought potting soil because one component
that's probably in it is peat moss and peat moss is very difficult to get wet unless you
pre-moisten it.
One thing I like to do is if I'm using a bag of seed starting mix which I really enjoy
doing especially this time of year is I will dump it into a bucket.
No drain holes in the bucket.
Fill the bucket full of water with the seed mix in it.
Walk away, do something else, come back either later that day or the next day and transfer
that potting soil or that seed starting mix into pots with drainage and let them drain
a while and then grab a handful of it and throw it into whatever I'm going to plant.
Perfect.
When you point out in your book that I would like to emphasize is a lot of people are in
the habit of having a large container and maybe it's one of those large lightweight containers
that look like they're terracotta but they're not terracotta, they're really foam and they're
really light and easy to move.
So maybe they don't want to put it full of potting soil and they'll throw styrofoam
peanuts or potchards in the bottom of it just to maybe save some money.
There's a lot of things that can go wrong and not the least of which is you just created
a serious drainage problem.
So this is one of those things that's all over the internet and holy smokes everybody
thinks this is the best thing since peanut butter and I'm going to put some empty two-liter
bottles or some packing peanuts in the bottom of the container and this is a common garden
mist that has absolutely been busted and there are some important reasons why you do not
want to do this.
For starters your plant will not have enough soil to get enough nutrients.
The roots might reach down and then if the roots touch two-liter bottles and packing
peanuts they're going to be like wow I don't know.
Okay I give up.
It's going to change the balance of your pot so it'll be a lot easier to tip over if there's
wind or things like that and the most important part, this is the science part, the soil has
a specific density and the filler material below does not.
Well the water doesn't want to travel between those two porosities.
The water is going to try and stay in the soil which leaves the soil waterlog which
is what you were trying to prevent which is detrimental to your plants.
You are concerned about having a heavy pot, a heavy immovable pot.
They have little plant skateboards called plant tabbies that you can set it on before
you fill it with soil and you put it all around wherever you'd like.
Here's a lesson I learned the hard way on that.
I was doing a demonstration for some old garden show on the HGTV network years and years ago
and I was demonstrating how to plant in a wine barrel and a half barrel and drilling
the holes and filling it and they brought along one of those plant caddy casters with
it and I looked at it and go oh it's kind of small but we can give it a shot and I set
the barrel on top of the casters and it's going to demonstrate how easy it is to roll
and this is with soil and a plant in it and I think I moved it about six inches when the
whole thing just collapsed.
So the lesson I learned is if you're going to put a barrel on casters get yourself something
really heavy duty like a furniture dolly to put it on.
Yes I've got at my local garden center I got a plant dolly or plant casters that were made
specifically for wine barrels and cost as much as the wine barrel.
It's the right diameter and it's got like six or seven legs spread out so it's very sturdy.
Oh that's nice.
They have wheels like a shopping cart?
Yeah it's like you know it's a caster thing with a you know if they have a support caster
in the middle I don't remember but it did have one on each end.
It was very sturdy and very expensive.
And if you do planting containers that's another benefit of planting in containers if you have
let's say a citrus tree in there and there's a frost expected you can roll it closer to
the house to get a little bit more heat at night.
And that is probably easier than covering it and uncovering it or trying to figure out
if your Christmas lights can keep it warm enough for those kinds of things.
So tell us about the containers that you use in your food garden.
I have just about every different kind.
One of my favorite containers that I have quite a bit of in the front yard are smart
pots which are sturdy fabric pots with handles and I have them lined up next to the driveway
where they get the best sun.
I've got some chard and some broccoli in those right now.
I've got a few shallow terracotta containers that the I think the folks next door gave
me when they moved away and I've got green onions in those at all different stages of
growth.
I have harvested green onion seeds for ages so every few weeks I fill up another container
and sprinkle some green onion seeds in there so I'm always prepared.
Of course half wine barrels.
Let's see.
I have an orange tree in one.
I've got a couple with blueberries and I do have some of the traditional resin, the pretty
decorative containers, mostly smart pots though.
I would say by number they win hands down.
And they last for years and yes smart pots as the sponsor of this podcast but like I
tell you every week in the commercial I use it.
I've purchased them.
I would purchase them again.
They last for years and they don't create root problems either.
They air prune because of all the microscopic holes in them and I just did a test comparing
smart pots to a ceramic pot and a fiber pot growing roses and I grew roses in them, a
rose plant in each of them for a year and then mercilessly killed those roses off just
a couple of weeks ago because I wanted to see the roots of the plant to see what they
look like and the root system of the smart pot grown rose bush had four times the weight
and that's just the root part of it compared to the fiber pot.
So it encourages roots that you don't get any circling roots and they don't find their
way out and anchor themselves in the ground either.
So I was impressed with the size of the roses too that were grown in the smart pots versus
the fiber pots as well.
Awesome.
Yes I used smart pots for years and yeah I wouldn't have mentioned them specifically
except that I'm real happy with them.
Yeah I'm like I said they last for years or people have been using them for 20 years
or so.
Cool.
Yep well that'll be me.
Well yeah you saved things.
Yes you know.
Yes I'm still using the original ones I used eight years ago so there's that.
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We're talking with Pam Farley she's the author of the brand new book the first time gardener
container food gardening and she has more tips for planting in containers for both your
backyard and your front yard.
Getting back to the subject of drainage and using pots one of the big problems with using
pots is because of their weight and you set that pot on the soil there's a good chance
it might clog those holes that soil or if there's a concrete below it there's a chance
that those holes could just become clogged period and you have some ideas on that as
far as using maybe pot feet or pot toes.
Absolutely.
So there are a few different reasons that the drain holes can get clogged of course there
can be roots or the soil just gets compacted or you know there might be some bug goes down
there clogging up the holes and there are a few different ways to handle it.
There are fancy little lift gizmos called pot toes or pot feet that you can use that raise
the container up off the ground just a little bit half an inch is all you really need or
you can use the very fancy piece O brick which is a highly scientific method or a little
scraps of wood things like that if you raise up the pot and you find that the water is
still not draining right then the soil could be compacted probably want to gently tip the
container over then use a chopstick or an old pencil and poke the drain holes a little
bit from the bottom up to break up the soil and get things to drain better.
Let's talk a little bit about container aesthetics now I have no sense of design but I know
most people do where would you use cylindrical containers or square containers or rectangular
containers in the garden for it to look nice.
So I confess that I am also well I am a vegetable gardener and not a landscape designer on
purpose because my key criteria is will the food grow in this container yes okay good
so I actually had to consult with some friends who know what they're doing in that regard
and there are some things that can help you arrange your vegetable garden so that it
looks the best.
Obviously there are a bajillion different sizes and shapes of containers like I keep
talking about the soup cans on my window sill and there are beautiful decorative containers
at the garden center and there are five gallon buckets from the bakery so there's there's
all different shapes and sizes there are some things that you can consider for aesthetics
and placement so that your garden looks as aesthetically pleasing as possible especially
if you're doing container food gardening in the front yard and you might be concerned
about what the folks across the street or the neighbors walking their dog might have to
say.
So if you have a cylindrical containers so like the half barrels the pretty decorative
urns or containers from the garden center those look great in the corner of the yard
or maybe if you don't have a tree in the center of your yard you can use one very large striking
container as a focal point if you have several wine barrels you can use them as a border
or a more that's more rustic and more rustic look.
So square containers which sometimes if you're up cycling different things or if you're building
your own wood boxes because they're square they have to be placed more precisely they
can be depending on the material they're made out of they're more modern looking more sleek
some styles of houses it would look discordant to have a craftsman style house with a metal
watering trough planter or sometimes it's just in in Congress.
I'm glad you mentioned metal watering troughs because it is one of my favorite containers
to use for growing blueberries since blueberries require an acidic soil mix it's easy to do it
in a cattle watering trough that you may have purchased at a farm supply store as long as
you put drain holes in it but I've been seeing a lot of people using those containers as
all their containers in the front yard and if they're unpainted if they're that bright silver
it's kind of garish looking what's nice is those metal watering troughs usually can be painted
with tractor paint it because it sticks better to metal and there's like three or four good
colors when it comes to tractor paint you've got you know Ford blue John Green John Deere Green
you've got you know Ford Blue International Harvester Red Kubota Orange things like that
and it just adds it adds some nice bright colors to those the brothers stark looking
watering troughs exactly and I haven't seen around town but I have seen online folks that
we ripped out our entire front yard and put in these industrial cattle troughs and then oh golly
guess I'm not quite that brave yet but but it can be done oh yeah it can be done one thing we
should talk about when it comes to containers is the fact that maybe the darker colored ones
might just be absorbing too much heat on a hot summer day that is definitely a possibility especially
especially here in zone nine where we're cooking with gas all summer yes indeed what can a mother
do what can a gardener do for lowering the temperature on a hot summer day a black plastic pot and I
hope that you have moved beyond black plastic pots but if you if that's all you have I understand
but there are some mitigations to bring the temperature down in those containers in the summer
time I would say yes if if all you have are black plastic containers perhaps you can put them
inside a larger decorative container and use a cash pot is the is the term for the fancy outside
container a lot of disguises a more plain inside container and that would certainly bring the
temperature down if you're trying to bring down the temperature of a black plastic pot in the
summertime and not cook the plant that's in there because they can reach 140 degrees in as well as
a half hour if the the sun is hitting that black plastic pot on a hot summer afternoon putting
inside a larger pot is a great idea even better is to put it in that larger pot and then fill that
gap that air gap with like mulch wood mulch there to give it some even some more insulation from the
heat now there are some people who will wrap the outside of the containers with a reflective
substance like aluminum foil and and that will work that will keep the temperature down in the
pots but then again your neighbors may think you're signaling the UFOs where to land exactly
that could be a problem in your book the first time gardener series container food gardening you
have some great pictures lots of great pictures as a matter of fact but you have some a good set of
pictures that delineate exactly how to drill holes in the bottom of a wood barrel and you can refer
to that if you want to figure out how to do it i always get confused though about when somebody
gives me a pot that doesn't have drain holes all right i'm going to have to put a drain hole or two
in this how do i do it which drill bit do i use i know my way around power tools a little bit
but i tell you it pained hubby greatly to be taking the pictures while i was drilling these holes
because he was like oh oh oh oh you know oh what about oh hey oh you know but there are different
kinds of drill bits that you need to use and different techniques wood is pretty easy you just
use a standard drill bit but if you're drilling like terracotta you need a masonry bit my best
suggestion if you're doing glazed ceramic is only by them if they already have drainage because
they're very expensive and if you drill through with your expensive diamond tipped drill bit and
then you break the pot you are going to be mad mad mad and of course if you're doing the big metal
trough like i've seen then you need a metal bit and you have to go really slowly because it's
going to heat up it's tricky but it can be done yes and wear eye protection absolutely that is
yes it needs to be said every time my wood boring drill bits are my best friend they hang
they have the centerpiece of my pegboard in the garage and they range from about a quarter inch
diameter up to one and a half inches and for barrels i like three quarters you talk about i
think half inch and that's fine if you do enough of them and the nice thing with wood barrels is
you're not going to break the wood barrel exactly yes
the weather may not be perfect for outdoor gardening right now but it's perfect for planning
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is Dave Wilson Nursery's excellent lineup of farmers market favorites great tasting healthy fruit
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nut trees plus at Dave wilson.com you can find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson's
plants your harvest to better health begins at Dave wilson.com. Any first time gardener is going
to have issues that's okay you're gardening it's fun and for a lot of people the first garden is
their favorite garden no matter what happens but you may have issues and in pam Farley's book the
first time gardener series container food gardening she has a trouble shooting guide and pam your
plant problems section tackles problems with the plants and not only a lack of production but also
stems and leaves and what they look like the the leaves. Exactly so one of the things that was
really important to me in writing this book was that I wrote it for the beginningest beginner
there are so many people have come to me and said oh you know I think this is a silly question but
there's no such thing as a silly question there's no question that's too basic which is why in the
book I talk about how do I plant a seed I show pictures step by step pictures how do I plant a
seedling or a transplant from the nursery not everybody knows that and there's nothing wrong
with not knowing it if you've never done it before how could you expect to know exactly
I was talking with a friend who's an expert seamstress and I needed her to replace a zipper and she
said oh well that's easy you know that's not a problem at all you don't know how to replace
zippers and I said oh good heavens no all I can do is hem things and then we were talking about
gardening the next time we got together and and I said well you know just put it in your compost
bin and she said I don't know how to make compost and I thought well that's the easiest pie how can
you do that you don't know and that's okay I still don't know how to replace zippers either
but that's all right that's why God made velcro that's why we have friends that know how to do
these things right exactly yeah it wouldn't be the same if everybody knew everything right that yeah
and that would be boring in your experience with first-time gardeners what are their usual
panicked questions a lot of the time they so I have seen again online and with friends the first
time a corner of a leaf changes color oh no the corner of this leaf it's it's yellow and what am I
and it's my plant dying no you're actually your plant has like 500 million leaves and it's going to
be okay but I've included some pictures of leaves and sick plants and sick leaves so you can say oh
you know my zucchini plant it looks like there's flour or white powder on the leaves of my zucchini
plant what's that and you can look in the troubleshooting section and it says oh white powder on
leaves well that could probably be powdery mildew or another fungal infection here are some things
you can do or well the there's squiggly lines on the leaves of my pepper plant well you can look
up squiggly lines and that is probably a leaf miner which is just a bug that likes to go through
and and munch through the leaf and makes little squiggly lines not the end of the world not going
to kill your plant unless it gets carried away that's something that's different with this book
is you don't have to know what the problem is before you look in the troubleshooting section
you you don't have to look at this and say well maybe that's unsqualled or maybe it blossom in
rot or maybe it you don't have to know those things you can just look and say there's this white spot
on my bell pepper and you can look it up that way what i like too about uh your solutions is you
start with the least toxic alternatives an integrated pest management approach always always always
always and uh your garden hose could be your best friend when it comes to controlling insects
like aphids definitely just spray them off you know i'll start with the least toxic alternative and
a lot of people too when it comes to garden problems like a yellowing leaf or some sort of
spots on fruit for example they may say oh the plant needs water not necessarily always check
oh always check the container for its own moisture get yourself a moisture meter or stick your finger
down there and see what the moisture is like eight inches down where the roots tend to be and one of
the things that surprised me when i was researching is blossom end rot is something that comes up in
the summertime enough um where the base of your tomatoes gets black or leathery and i learned that
sometimes not always sometimes it can be caused by fertilizer that has too much ammonia interferes
with the way that the plant takes up the water in the soil and so if you can use a natural fertilizer
like like kelp or fish emulsion it's going to be easier on the plant and you'll run less risk of
odean on chemicals in the world of horticulture when discussing blossom end rot we usually like to
say it's an abiotic disorder and what that means is it's probably your fault because of
it's too much water not enough water too sandy of a soil wrong ph of the soil too much fertilizer
uh there's a lot of reasons uh that it could be funny yeah and i can tell you don't own a nursery
because you haven't tried to sell anything yet to solve these problems that's true i just take the
offending tomatoes and chuck them in the compost bin and think dog gone it those are the salad tomatoes
you cut off the bad portion and eat the rest you can very much do that yeah i like the fact that you
put in there not to add epsom salts eggshells and acid tablets or anything like that in your
container garden it's not going to fix blossom end rot i would like to have just printed out on
the cover in 50 point font but they frown on that kind of thing there are some garden myths that
i just can't stand and that's one of them we have done entire episodes on this podcast about blossom
end rot you can look it up and listen for yourself and realize that oh i'll just live with it yes
it is not the end of the world and golly around here the tomatoes grow so well that if you if you
lose one or two you're going to be okay that's right and congratulations you put in a picture a good a
really good picture too of a teenage ladybug which looks totally different than the mature adult
ladybug most people know that ladybugs are good guys and gals you want them in your garden to be
eating the pests like aphids but that teenage ladybug i always like to say it looks like somebody in a
san francisco giant's warm-up jacket it's black and orange like a dragon or a dinosaur yes they're
super cool looking but if you don't know what they are you might think oh my gosh a mug yeah squish it
identify all pests before you take action wise decision especially in their younger stages because
they can look totally different and it's usually just like in real life it's the teenage ladybugs that
eat the most aphids that's a teenager's yes i can i can confirm this with the teenagers in my house
yeah the teenagers eat more than everything that's right so another thing that is really
helpful for new gardeners is you might be you might look at your at the vegetable drawer in your
fridge and say oh well you know i know we go through we go through a lot of cucumbers green beans and
lettuce oh shoot now i have to try and figure out what kind of containers to get and how big and
what if they go together and what if they don't and so the book has like a quick planting guide for
vegetables fruits and herbs so you can think about what your family uses and you can look at the
at this cheat sheet and say oh well you know green beans we need a three gallon or larger and
and they're going to need full sun so okay i know that i don't want to plant them with
chard because chard's going to want a little bit of shade and i definitely wouldn't want to plant
them with something that needs full shade so you can look at the chart figure out what kind of
containers you need so you're ready when you go when you go shopping and you know when to plant
everything what size container it needs whether you want to plant it from a seed or a seedling or
a transplant some plants they don't grow as well when they're planted as a transplant or a seedling
garden center will sell them to you but they might not survive and then you'll feel bad and it's not
natural yes that's so true yeah the quick gardening guide is excellent in your book because you go
on a plant by plant basis describing the container size that's needed when to plant whether you can
plant from seed or whether you need to grow from a transplant how much sun it needs how much water
it needs fertilizer if it needs it and also how long it'll be until harvest and that's always
important very important yes and it's worth pointing out that this is a book for beginning
gardeners so things that I at least find more challenging to grow like broccoli and hicama
are not going to be in this beginner guide but I do talk about them on my website you do cover
fruit trees as well I do because I have eight at last count in my city garden congratulations
how tall do you keep your fruit trees are they in containers some of the citrus trees are the
apricot is out front I just got a couple of apples and some of the citrus are in the ground and
some are in containers and they all top out at about eight feet good for you pretty trimmed all right
that's called backyard orchard culture where you keep the trees no taller than what you can reach
because any fruit that's out of your reach is for the birds yes and you even have instructions on
how to grow an avocado tree you're an evil evil person for suggesting I know it can be done because
kerry stokes has one yes she does oh avocados where do I begin I tell you what folks if you live in
Santa Barbara if you live in oxnard if you live in San Diego go ahead grow your avocado trees
for anybody else in California find the warmest spot possible that doesn't get a lot of wind a
lot of reflected heat and you too can grow an avocado tree in usda zone nine and ten but there are times
when you just can't do it and it's really depends on the layout of your home and your yard and
can you grow avocados indoors go ahead and try who am i to stop you well we do talk about micro
climates in the chapter about sun and locations I would argue that you need a very specific
microclimate to grow avocados in zone nine or you buy the home that's for sale next to Oprah in Santa
Barbara yeah well I do have a special thank you gift for everybody who has ordered the book from
after hearing about it on your show and if they go to brownthamoma.com slash shop they can enter in
their proof of purchase and get a free bonus chapter that's not printed in the book about making compost
oh okay so if you buy the book you go to brownthamoma.com which is pam Farley's website very successful
website I might add go to brownthamoma.com slash shop and find yourself a way to get a free
unpublished chapter absolutely just need your email address and and your order number from
whatever whatever place you ordered it from and then as you it will come to your email available
wherever you get your books oh by the way is it a kindled book as well yes there you go you can
read it in real life you can eat it for eat it you can read it or you can read it in real
life you can and touch it and feel it or you can stare at it on a screen it's the first time
Gardener series container food gardening by Pamela Farley F-A-R-L-E-Y you want more information
I bet you can find more information about the book at brownthamoma.com absolutely pam Farley it's
Benatry talking to you I'm tickled to be here farmer Fred thank you so much
it's that time of year when many of you are opening up those new seed packets and rummaging
through drawers looking for those packets of seeds left over from well well who knows when really
you might recall that when you started sweet or hot pepper seeds in years past
it seems to take forever up to three weeks to get them to germinate in the new beyond the
garden basics newsletter we kickstart those pepper seeds to germinate more quickly and we have tips
on how to tell if those old seeds you just found will germinate at all it's in today's beyond the
garden basics newsletter for current newsletter subscribers look for the issue with those pepper
seed germination tips if you're already a subscriber it's probably in your email waiting for you right
now or you can start a free subscription or read it online it's free find the link to the
newsletter in today's show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our home page garden basics
dot net thinking about which vegetables and flowers to grow now march is an interesting time in the
garden for vegetables and flower growers many of our thoughts are about summer veggies but there are
plenty of cool season crops that can grow and mature between now and memorial day and beyond if the
weather cooperates from the archives give a listen to episode 168 and 169 of the garden basics podcast
it's called award-winning vegetable varieties to try in episode 168 Sacramento County Master
Gardener gale pot tower has suggestions and in episode 169 you're going to find more award-winning
plants with diane blasek of the all america selections she lists the flowers and vegetables that are
recent national award winners for the home garden as well as talking about those tomato varieties
that get rave reviews year after year popular tomatoes such as juliet celebrity and big beef
dive into the garden basic archives it's episodes 168 and 169 award-winning vegetable and flower
varieties it's from last year you can find a link in today's show notes or go to our home page garden basics
dot net the garden basics with farmer fred podcast comes out once a week on friday's plus the newsletter
podcast that comes with the beyond the garden basics newsletter continues and that will also be
released on friday's both are free and they're brought to you by smart pots and dave wilson
nursery the garden basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out and that includes
our home page garden basics dot net and that's where you can also sign up for the beyond the
garden basics newsletter and podcast that's garden basics dot net or you can use the links in today's
show notes and thank you so much for listening