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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.
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Last September in Episode 226, we presented 10 of the best quick tips for a successful garden.
But you know something? There's plenty more where that came from.
In this episode, we have 10 more garden quick tips that we'll talk about, including create a container garden that would be sure to slow down cars and wow those walkers going by your front yard.
And we're only going to use three plants that you could do now in March or April.
Is there a cheaper way to make seed-starting mix?
Brad Gates, he of Wild Boar Farms' tomato fame, says yes there is.
Do you raise chickens?
How do you store the eggs?
Where do you store the eggs?
What precautions should you take after bringing those eggs indoors?
Good tips from Urban Chicken Consultant and Certified Poultry Inspector, Cherise Sintas Glover.
Taking pictures of bugs you find in the garden can be a difficult task.
Retired entomologist Master Rosarian and Ace photographer Baldo Viegas has some easy to follow advice to help you create a shot of a bug that makes it easier to identify.
Small apples are all the rage they're perfect for putting in a lunchbox.
But what's a good variety to grow?
Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson Nursery has some ideas on that.
Master Gardener Pambon is in love with a certain peach tree variety.
And you could be growing one too.
Thinking you're going to chase away turkeys or deer or skunks or rats or ants or just about any other pest from your yard, house or garden,
by using something like sound devices or shiny devices or an impulse sprinkler?
Debbie Flowers says, you better think again.
The brown thumb mama Pam Farley works her magic on a strawberry plant by turning one strawberry plant into many.
And it's easy.
She'll explain how.
Canadian Garden writer Robert Pavlos shares his secrets for creating a successful garden by implementing the cut and drop method.
He has the details.
And finally, I'd like you to try to grow popcorn this spring and summer.
I think you're going to like the results.
I know you'll like the taste.
I'll take you step by step through the process of growing your own popcorn.
It's all in today's episode number 258, 10 more garden tips.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful of Butylon Jungle in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with farmer Fred podcast brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
Leading off these 10 quick tips is something you could do right now during the early part of spring.
Creating some curb appeal with widely available cool season flowering plants that will look especially great for two or more months.
Nursery owner Julia Oldfield has some ideas for creating a three plant combination, a spiller, chiller, thriller, floral display that'll slow down any passerby who decides to take a look.
This was originally aired back in episode 47 in the Garden Basics podcast.
If you want to add some pop to your garden, especially in USDA's zone 7, 8 and 9, how about doing a little spiller, chiller, thriller display?
Now, what is that all about?
Well, Julia Oldfield has the answer.
She owns Big Oak Nursery in Elk Grove, California.
And Julia, what exactly is a spiller, chiller, thriller arrangement?
Well, I'm glad you asked farmer Fred because it's a great time to add maybe a pot on your patio or even a flower bed can be arranged this way.
Filler is something that would hang over the side of the pot or trail along the ground.
We like to use new, well, it's not new anymore, but it's something that not a lot of people know about.
They call them cool wave pansies.
If you know what a waste petunia is, they are these big giant petunias that will hang over the side of your pot.
And they've developed a pansy that will also trail the same way, so it'll hang over the side of your pot.
And then you have your chiller, which just sit in the center.
Its primary job is to fill the pot up in the middle and just chill and sit there and be beautiful.
We like to use ornamental kale, you have your purple, then your pink, then your white.
And then you can even add some calendula as orange and yellow.
Those are good fall colors. The orange calendula with the purple kale is absolutely stunning together.
And then you'll have your thriller, which is the plant in the center that sticks out of the pot and just pretty much waves at your neighbors because it's so beautiful and so tall.
We like to use the taller snap dragon. They will just bloom and bloom.
And they come in all the different colors, so you can really get a mixture of colors or your favorite colors together.
And it just really fills in your pot and makes your pot look full and just absolutely stunning.
And you can do it in your flower bed too. You can have the lower pansy in the front and then a medium plant like a calendula.
And then in the tall bath, you have your snap dragons and that way you can see the three layers.
Someone's driving by. They can see all three layers because you have them arranged by height.
What a great display of color for the gray days ahead. A spiller, chiller, thriller of cool season plants, the cool wave pansy in the front trailing over the pot or in the front of the garden.
The chiller, the standout color. That's, I won't say permanent, but it lasts a long time.
The ornamental kale and the calendula and then that big plant in the back or in the middle of the pot, the thriller, those snap dragons that can get 24 to 36 inches tall.
Julie Oldfield, thanks for explaining Spiller, Chiller, thriller for us.
You're welcome, farmer Fred.
Many of us are in a tomato frame of mind right now. We can't wait to get started. Brad Gates, he's the owner of Tomato Seed Company Wild Boar Farms.
And he has some quick tips on planting as well as a less expensive alternative for a tomato seed starting mix.
Originally aired in episode 79 of the Garden Basics Podcast.
Hi, Frankly, for the home gardener who's transplanting little tomato plants into slightly bigger containers, you could just use a good quality potting mix at your favorite nursery.
Yeah, I always use, that's when I'd use regular potting mix, that's what I would do. You can top off the trays and if anything's bigger than say your pinky fingernail, pick it off the top.
You can also run them through like a quarter inch screen. Just write your high quality potting mix, just screen it at a quarter inch and it makes perfect seed starting mix.
Excellent tip. And of course, as the tomatoes grow in that three and a half inch pot, they can get kind of lanky too.
But if you give them full sun like what you have here in this greenhouse, they will tend to be fairly upright, but do you find you have to prune them?
No, if you give them plenty of light and that's why I like the cool nighttime and they're not too hot during the day in here, we'll make them a little bit stockier.
Sometimes when you mass plant, like you're saying, put even up to 10 seeds or more in a small cup and plant them, they can fight for the light a little bit so they can get lanky.
The good things with tomato plants is you can always bury the plant in a bunch of the stem and it will readjust itself, so to speak.
Yeah, just like if you bought a tomato plant at a nursery, if somebody bought one of yours at a nursery and decided to transplant it into the yard like they should, they would want to plant it.
It's a plant it deeper than where it was planted in the pot at the nursery.
Yeah, my general rule of thumb is plant about 20 to 30% of the plant, no matter how big it is, if it was a little seedling, when I transplant, I'll plant them about 20 or 30% of the stem underneath the soil.
Once I get a nice transplant that's ready for the garden, same thing, I'll trim off any leaves or suckers that are below where I'm going to plant and then I'll bury about 20 or 30% of the stem.
So it keeps the potting mix it's planted in from drying out.
That keeps when the wind and the spring is blowing your plants around, it makes it a little further down in the soil so it can handle the wind and it will also regenerate roots on the stem where it comes in contact with the moist soil.
Do you raise chickens? How do you store your chicken eggs? Are they on the counter or are they in the refrigerator? And should you wash those eggs first?
Urban chicken consultant Shari Sintas Glover has some quick tips about that along with how long you can expect eggs to last indoors, originally aired in the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast last June 24th.
Here's a quick tip for you. We're talking with Shari Sintas Glover. She is an urban chicken consultant, runs the website chickens4eggs.com.
And there's been some sort of interesting talk on the internet about eggs. Can you leave them out on your kitchen sink? Should you wash them first? Shari, what's the deal with washing eggs and leaving them out of the refrigerator?
That's an excellent question or I should say, egg-cellent question. Thank you. So you're very welcome. So there's always a debate, right?
Some of the people want to keep the eggs in the fridge at all times. The other half like to maybe, you know, especially if it's their own backyard eggs, maybe leave them out on the counter.
And the truth is it's a little bit of both, right? So what's super cool about chickens is that when they lay an egg, that egg is actually porous, but it has the chicken actually lays it with a film, right, that covers that egg and protects it.
So it keeps it from getting inside of that porous egg shell. And so if you do bring in eggs from your backyard, for instance, you have a lame flock and you're collecting your eggs for the day.
You can absolutely bring them in. You can keep them out on your counter. It's not going to be a huge issue. Especially because they, again, have that natural protective layer that's covering that egg shell.
Now, most of us backyard chicken keepers will realize, though, that chicken eggs tend to get a little dirty sometimes, right? Especially in the nesting box. So you're going to be tempted to wash them.
If you do wash them, that it's totally okay and perfectly reasonable to do, but there's a couple of tricks. The first one is your, if you do wash that egg, you want to use a special, they actually have egg wash brushes that you can use that are gentle on the egg shell.
But you want to use water that's actually warmer than the temperature of the egg. And the reason for that is it will keep from forcing bacteria in through that porous egg shell.
And so make sure the water is warmer than the egg. The other thing you want to do is, once you have washed those eggs, then you probably want to put them in your refrigerator.
You've removed that protective coating and now the refrigerator makes sense. When I bring eggs home from the grocery store, I know that they've been washed. They've been cleaned. I'm going to put those automatically in my refrigerator.
And then the daytime temperatures, right? In the middle of the summer, when it's so hot, I'm probably not going to leave my eggs out for too long if they are out on the counter. I'm going to probably put them in the refrigerator a little bit more quickly.
But if it's in the middle of winter, I'm going to probably keep my chicken eggs out on the counter for a while.
For a while, a couple of weeks?
Oh, let's see. Well, it may be for a week or two, and they're usually just fine. But I tend not to keep my house too warm, so maybe that factors into it too. Really, if they're your own eggs, if you haven't washed them, they will definitely keep.
Or at least for a few days, if not a week or two. But if you wash them, then again, that's going to change that shell and remove that coating. And then you're going to want to refrigerate them.
And for refrigeration, what is the usual time that they're good in the refrigerator?
Well, that's an amazing thing about eggs. So you can actually keep them for at least several weeks, even a month or more.
And there's a neat thing that you can do with the eggs to kind of tell if it's maybe you passed its prime.
So obviously, if you have fresh chicken eggs, you're going to want to eat them when they're fresh, right? Within that week that they're laid.
But if you can't do that, and they end up being four weeks old, oh my gosh, by all means, that those make the best, hard-boiled eggs.
The older eggs always work better. Save those older eggs. But the trick that you want to do to maybe see how fresh they are is you would take a bowl, take a bowl of warm water, of course.
Remember, we want the water to be warmer than the temperature of the egg. And all you have to do is place that egg in that water bowl.
And then watch to see if it rises to the top, if it floats, or if it sinks to the bottom. If it rises to the top, then that means it's probably perfect for hard-boiling.
If it's still down towards the bottom of the water bowl, then you can probably use it for your fried eggs or scrambled eggs or anything like that.
So that is the trick. But remember, the water needs to be warmer than the temperature of the egg.
So, fresher eggs sink and older eggs float. Yes, there we go. What a great way to see it.
Now I know a lot of people are asking the question, what is the temperature of an egg?
Oh gosh, you're going to ask me that. That's going to be a hard question. Let's see.
You know, it depends on the room temperature. So with an egg, you have to be careful because if it's fertile, this is kind of one of those weird kind of chicken-geek kind of things.
So a fertile egg will start developing at about 55 degrees or warmer. So if you do have fertile eggs and you don't want them to develop an embryo, you have to keep them below 55 degrees.
How does this happen without a rooster around? Well, yeah, if you have a rooster. Okay, all right.
You're going to have to think about that. There you go. All right. Yeah, be worried there.
No, it's foreign. They're magically fertile. No. Well, so chickens will typically lay about 475 eggs in their lifetime. Give or take maybe 10.
And it depends on the breed. It depends on, you know, other factors because remember that chickens need to have so many hours of daylight in order to receive the chemical trigger to lay an egg.
And that magic number is about 14. So when you hear the, you know, people say, oh, my gosh, my chickens are not laying in the winter. It's really not because the weather is colder.
It's actually because the number of daylight hours has decreased. So it takes them longer to lay one egg, right? So if they're getting only 10 hours of daylight a day, it's going to take them in, you know, two days to get that chemical trigger to lay an egg.
So remember, they need 14 hours. What you'll find is that in the commercial facilities, for instance, or sometimes if you do want your hands to continue laying consistently through the colder or the less daylight hour months, what you can do is you can actually set up a light and give them that extra number of daylight hours kind of, you know, kind of trick them into it.
So you'd want to have the light though, not stay on at night, but actually come on early in the morning. So some people do that, do actually add a light to the coop to keep them laying consistently.
But that does mean that your chicken will not, they'll be going through that 475 eggs that they're going to lay in their lifetime. They're going to go through that much more quickly.
That makes sense.
Yes, that does make sense.
Is there a special kind of light bulb?
No, any type of light will work. And actually, I just want to premise with, if you do opt to add a light to, you know, some kind of light source to your coop, especially during the colder months, make sure that it's not a heat lamp.
And the reason for that is because there's such high fire danger. Sometimes people will think, oh, okay, I'm going to go ahead and add a light source. But gosh, I might as well just get a heat lamp because it's going to be cold.
Well, but there's so much danger when it comes to fire starting because of those heat lamps, don't chance it. Just go with a regular light bulb and the chickens won't need the extra heat anyways. They'll be fine.
There's a lot of chicken quick tips for you from Cherise Census Glover of chickensforeggs.com. She's an urban chicken consultant, a certified poultry health inspector as well. Thanks for the quick tips, Cherie.
Hey, you're very welcome. Thank you so much, Fred.
We get a lot of garden questions coming in asking us about garden bugs. Primarily, what is it? What is this creature? Is it a good guy or a bad guy?
Well, a lot of times a picture of the suspect is included in that text or email. And I'm here to tell you, we all wish those pictures were just a little bit better.
Retired entomologist, master Rosarian, and ace photographer Baldo V. Agus has some quick tips for taking better pictures of garden insects.
Originally aired in episode 200 of the Garden Basics Podcast.
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics Podcast. A lot of you like to send pictures of bugs that you can't recognize.
As long as you tell me where you're from and maybe take better pictures, we'll get into that. I can help you out because I have contacts.
I know people who know bugs, including this guy right here. If you're looking at your phone, you can see that it's Baldo V. Agus, retired state entomologist, master Rosarian, or you're above master Rosarian now.
Aren't you Baldo? You're like a emperor or Rosarian? What?
No, I'm still a master Rosarian. I do a lot of identification of insects from all over the world for people.
And as long as they send me a picture, if it can be in focus, that'll be great. If it can give you an idea of how big it is, that's also nice.
What is the easiest way to do that? Put your finger right next to the bug.
When you fingers in, then that way I can get an idea of how big it is. Also tell me how common it is in your garden. I like to kind of get an idea if it's really a pest or not.
Most of the insects that I see are not pests. They're innocent bystanders that just come to the roses or to the plants just to take a little drink of nectar or get a little bite of the pollen.
Speaking of taking a drink, Baldo likes to walk his acreage here carrying a mason jar full of alcohol.
Enough full of alcohol. Okay, half full of alcohol. And he's rubbing alcohol.
Alright, alright. But this is a great way to get that picture of that bug is you capture it first.
And then you can put that dime or your finger or whatever next to it so other people can get an idea of just how big the bug is.
So tell me about your mason jar of rubbing alcohol.
I fill it just a little bit of alcohol. And then I go around in the morning through my garden. I enjoy my garden every morning.
And then I look for unusual stuff that might be flying by.
Several years ago I found a little tiny insect called a soft fly. It turned out to be a new pest for this area.
And a lot of gardeners have a lot of problems with this soft fly.
Common name is a rose slug. It's called a rose slug.
And it's killed by the surface of the leaves. And it's very common in our area.
Now from Orangeville all the way into the foothills and all the way into Oregon and Washington.
And entomologists get really excited when they find something new.
Yes, I first found that in this area in 2013. And since then it's become a major pest.
Baldo is famous for all the bugs that he's discovered in the Sacramento area.
Now we are in Baldo's acres. And being a master rose area and the last time I heard Baldo you had over a thousand roses.
I think it's more than that.
I have 1500 roses in the ground and then over a thousand potted plants.
But the beauty of being in a rose garden of that size here at the end of April and early May, it's all in bloom.
It's just gorgeous here.
Yes, my garden is going to be in full bloom for the next two weeks.
So I'm going to be enjoying my garden every day.
Alright, let's talk more about taking pictures of bugs that you need to get identified.
So like you say, it's important that people send as much information as possible when they send that picture of the bug
where they found the bug, maybe what season they found the bug in.
Tell us about your garden, what you're growing, maybe the activity of that bug.
Does it fly a lot? Or is it just slowly crawling along? What is it doing?
When you take a picture of a bug, and especially if you've captured it in alcohol and you can pose it,
what items on a bug are you looking most at for a positive identification?
The best thing to do is I get several of the insects because you might be seeing the immature stages of the insects.
So it's also very important to get the adults because the adults are much easier to identify.
The nymphs or the immature stages of some of these insects oftentimes are very difficult to identify by a lot of enomologists.
But a few enomologists can do it. I know a lot of the immature insects for this area,
but if somebody sent me a picture from Connecticut or Massachusetts and they show me a moth,
I don't know when the heck that is. So what I do is I have friends who know friends.
I send them to friends in that area and they identify them for me and then I get back to the person
with the correct identification and maybe if he's a pest or a beneficial or something that just passes by.
When you're looking at an adult bug trying to identify it, are you looking at the number of legs, the antenna, or what?
All insects have six legs and tini. The legs are in the thorax. Yes, those are all insects will have that.
But beetles will have the hardened wings. The first pair of wings are kind of hardened.
So you know there is a beetle because of that. If you see a proboscis or the mouth parts are in the form of a syringe,
then that's a true bug or aphids. Anything that sucks will have those proboscis which suck the sap out of the plants.
So you look for characteristics like that. Also, you're very important. You look at the wings.
The wings are the most important thing in insects. In fact, all of the orders of insects usually have some kind of name in the wings.
Like choliptera means hardened wings. That means first pair of wings.
Neuraptora are the lace wings and the wings are lazy. They call nerve wings. So you look for things like that.
So what does hemiptera mean? Hemiptera is for the true bugs. Hemiptera means half.
Tura means wings. So half wings. And that's when they fall the wings. The first pair of wings.
They look like half wings. You always see a little triangle in there. You know, just above where they fall the wings.
And that's called a scutella. So you look for this kind of character.
You come for the roses. Stay for the bug talk. It's Baldo V. Agus, retired state entomologist, master Rosarian.
Thanks for the photo tips, Baldo. Thank you. Thank you. Anytime, Fred.
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We have a quick tip on fruit trees from Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson Nursery. Back in episode 107 of the Garden Basics Podcast, we chatted with Tom about the Hudson's Golden Gem Apple.
That's a rare high chill apple that's really very, very tasty and is known for producing lots and lots of apples on the tree.
Now those apples are on the small side, but as Tom explains, there are some benefits to having small apples, especially if you have school aged children.
We started in our fourth year of the project. We started thinning because we had so many clusters that were blooming and setting 6, 8, 10 fruit in a cluster.
So we started thinning all the fruit down to two. But this is one that I actually went in a couple of years ago and thinned down to one because I couldn't get the fruit size up to quite where I wanted it.
That made a difference, but what really made the difference to me was the flavor. This was just an absolutely wonderful variety.
And again, it's an old cider variety. It's a variety that you could use to make apple pies. It's a variety that you could just eat fresh.
And when I start to think of big, I mean, big fruit has never really impressed me. Big fruit is something they can get more money for than small fruit.
But when you look at where the market's going with things like that, if you look at cuties and halo's mandarins and you start looking at some of the things that they're marketing and smaller size, our cherry plums or the pluery varieties are a good example of that.
They're golf ball size or ping pong ball size, but they're just flavor packed and just absolutely delicious. So this, I think, would be a great variety and would store very well in not necessarily even a refrigerator, but in a cool, dry closet space or something like that.
I think you could store it for several months through the winter. And what a great variety to put into kids lunches.
And I mean, if I would have had fruit like that when I was a kid, I don't think I would have ever eaten a Snickers ball.
That's Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson Nursery talking about the Hudson's Golden Gem Apple.
Tom is conducting trials in Southern California, growing several varieties of high chill apples in a very low chill area of Orange County.
And he's finding that there are several varieties, including the Hudson's Golden Gem, that do well in a very, very mild climate.
If you want more information about his trials and other picks for the Southwest, visit Dave Wilson.com.
♪♪
So now you're thinking about getting that Hudson's Golden Gem Apple.
Well, here's another delectable piece of fruit that you might want to be growing in your backyard orchard.
The Suncrest Peach, Master Gardener Pam Bohn, total us all about it, back in episode 183.
♪♪
We're with Pam Bohn in her backyard here in Sacramento County.
Pam Bohn is a Sacramento County Master Gardener, and we're doing a little tour of her backyard, and she stopped at this peach tree
and went into high gear about why she loves this peach tree Pam.
What is this peach tree?
This is Suncrest, and we were at the state fair, the California State Fair one year, and they were selling these peaches, and we bought one to eat.
And it was phenomenal. I said, what is that peach? And it was Suncrest.
So we said, okay, the next time we have a space open up in the landscape, we are putting it in.
Well, we had another kind of peach here. It was a Babcock, and nobody liked it.
So it was a beautiful tree, and it bore well, but we said, no, we're taking it out, and we planted the Suncrest, and I don't regret it at all.
It has the most delicious peaches. It bears beautifully. You can keep it nice and small, and yet look at this crop already developing.
Beautiful tree. Wonderful.
We should point out, too. It looks like you've been doing some thinning of the fruit, a little bit more to come, but basically you're looking for about the width of a fist between the remaining pieces of fruit in order for that fruit to develop a good size.
Yes, this is one thing that both of us get out here and do, and we've already done one pass through. We kind of wait to just make sure, just in case you get a little bit of drop, if something happens or whatever.
The most critical one is when the fruit is still as small as it is here, and that's going to give you the best size. So we're looking for that.
And so, yes, I can see right here. Here's a double. I can just pinch it with my finger right now and take it off, and I think I'll do that while we're standing here, so I'll make sure.
Now, you've kept the tree at about six feet tall, and it's got about a six foot spread, too. So it makes a very nice looking shrub that probably gives enough suncrest peaches for you and everybody.
Actually, it produces so much fruit that I was actually able to freeze two quarts of peaches in addition to making a peach pie and eating fresh peaches on this tree.
And this tree is only, I think, five years old now. It's truly amazing. It has just grown beautifully, bears beautifully, and the fruit is just delicious.
And it's a good size fruit, but you do have to thin in order to get that as well, too. But you're right.
And you're kind of now at the stage where we've developed the main scaffolds, the secondaries have been developed. We've got our tertiaries, and now we're just maintaining the height and going to keep it as is.
There you go, the suncrest peach. You may want to plant one, Pam Bowen. Thank you.
Thank you.
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, puffs, and puffs.
And then 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, you can find them in the description.
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 Dave Wilson dot 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 0.9.
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 Dave Wilson dot com.
You're listening to our second compilation here on the Garden Basics podcast of Quick Tips, Nuggets of Sound Advice, to be a better gardener.
And this is a new quick tip from America's favorite retired college, horticultural professor Debbie Flower, on warding off pests inside and outside the home.
Her advice? If you're expecting to dissuade the pest, be it an insect or a four-legged culprit.
If you're using sound, lights, shiny items, or water, you better be warned. That won't last for very long.
Here on the Garden Basics podcast, we like to give you a quick tip now and then, and today's tip is about pests.
Four-legged pests, two-legged pests, indoor pests, outdoor pests, and the way they adapt to their surroundings.
Debbie Flower is here, America's favorite retired college, horticultural professor.
And today, let's talk about Debbie habituation.
Okay, I saw an ad, came across my email for a numerical product to eliminate pests indoors, get rid of them quickly and naturally.
Do you want to discover the best way to eliminate pests from your home? Take note, because below you'll discover how you can do it easily.
Well, it's something you plug into a wall.
We plug a lot of things into a wall these days.
We do. This looks like my Roku remote control. This one only has one big button on it, and you plug it into the wall.
And it says, if you're having trouble getting rid of insects or pests in your home or workplace, then this product is exactly what you need.
It's a state-of-the-art ultrasonic pest repellent that uses ultrasonic waves to keep cockroaches, rodents, and other pests out of your home get rid of pests forever.
What a dream come true. Yes, what a dream come true, but you know, it's not true.
You look up any pests from insects to birds to possum to deer, and you hear about all these devices that are available to control mice or geese or whatever.
It usually involves sound or water or lights. Or vibrations.
Mm-hmm.
And you know something? It will work at first.
Yes, momentarily.
It's something new in the environment that they haven't figured out yet, so they stay away until they have some time to figure it out.
Well, I think they keep coming back and they hear it, and they turn around and run, they come back, they hear it.
Stick around a little longer, maybe.
Yeah, maybe back up a few feet and go, oh, what was that? And then the next time they go, oh, never mind. Let's just do it.
Right.
Yeah, that's the way nature works.
Right, and that's what habituation is. It becomes a habit for them to experience it, and it doesn't interfere with their life.
They learn, so they just keep eating.
It's like motion sprinklers to keep whatever off your yard. Gees or turkeys, these motion detectors are usually hooked up to a sprinkler.
An impulse sprinkler. The water comes on.
Well, the sound frightens them, the water at first frightens them, they go away.
Before you know it, they're coming to your place for a shower.
Yes, yes. Feels good now.
Yeah, nothing bad has happened.
Right.
Habituation.
Habituation.
And I think in this case, this ultrasonic device works the same way in that, yeah, it'll work temporarily, but the more they hear it, the more they'll get used to it.
My concern, though, has to do with your pets.
Mm-hmm.
And what are they hearing? And before that matter, what is a human hearing?
You may not be able to ascertain what your hearing, but your head is.
Right. It may be having an effect on you that you don't even realize.
Right. It might be sending you who knows secret messages to send all your money to Albania or something.
And there have been official scientific studies done on these things with control and, you know, full scientific experiments which show that they do not work.
That there are some slight reactions by some species, but they've been tested on ants, cockroaches, mosquitoes, bed bugs, rats, and mice.
And birds. The mice were initially repelled, but then they became habituated to the sound.
When they do get a response, like, from the mice, it's only at a very specific ultrasonic wave.
And this product you're talking about, talked about rodents, which is mice and rats and other things that have to grind their teeth down.
And cockroaches, which are a very different species of pest. So they obviously have not tuned this ultrasonic wave to any specific animal,
but the scientific experiments still show that even if you get it tuned to the right wavelength, it doesn't work. They become habituated.
There's a glimmer of hope for a few species, but it's not something that is commercially available or even completely worked out yet.
The closest that habituation can be thwarted, and I think we see that in the local vineyards, is come harvest time.
You know, the grapes are edible, but they still need a two or three week more in order to fully mature, making them ripe bird food in the meantime.
So how do the growers keep the birds out of their ripening grapes, and they usually employ several devices in order to do it?
They might start off in the first week with the sound of cannons or the sound of shotguns going not at regular intervals, but at irregular intervals.
So the crows can't time it. Then they might try aluminum foil strips, colored foil strips, usually red foil strips because they say the birds think it's fire.
I don't know about that, but it does keep them off, but for a very short period of time, those foil strips are effective for maybe a couple of weeks at the most.
But that may just be enough time for you to get your crop in if you're growing grapes.
Yes, they all work for a very amount of time.
But this is not, these plug-in products for the home are not going to solve your rodent problems or your insect problems.
Now, if it may be put out a whiff of perfume or two to sweeten the air up in your home on a regular basis, oh wait a minute, that's a totally different product.
Or call me your pet, I have those. Yeah, if it played lullabies or white noise to help you sleep at night.
Okay, do it in combination with that.
Yeah, but no, not by itself.
Nope, sorry. Debbie Flower, thanks for the quick tip.
Yeah, you're welcome, Fred.
Back in episode eight of the Garden Basics podcast, we had a discussion with Pam Farley, better known as the Brown Thumb Mama.
She of the website, brownthumbmama.com.
And she was talking about all the vegetables that she recommends to get kids working out in the garden, growing food, that they will enjoy eating.
Then the subject of strawberries came up and up popped some recommendations on turning one strawberry plant into many strawberry plants.
How long do you keep a strawberry plant? Do you replant or do you save runners or mother plants or how do you go about it?
The first year after I plant, I clip off the runners because the runners will pire out and weaken the other plant and all the moms that are listening to the podcast will understand, but all the little ones will pire you out and weaken you.
So I have not replanted any runners, but you can, right?
Oh, yeah.
Just as a, like, started as a separate plant, do you need to reroute them?
Well, actually, they are already rooted and you just dig, don't yank them out of the ground.
I'll just clip them off.
Well, you actually, it would be better to clip off that runner and then dig it out and then transplant it to someplace else.
Ah, see, this is why I say I have a brown thumb.
Sometimes I do things and they don't work and sometimes they do.
I'm always learning.
You're getting multiple years out of those mother plants then.
Yes, I'm on my third year.
As Pam Farley found out, yeah, you can get a few years out of a mother plant.
A lot of commercial growers, though, will replant strawberries every year because with each successive year, those mother plants produce fewer and fewer strawberries.
But one thing is true, those runners don't toss them out, clip them off, plant them, and you'll have more great strawberries in the future.
There are even more good tips on propagating strawberry runners from the excellent book Plant Propagation produced by the American Horticulture Society.
Excellent book if you want to get into plant propagation more.
And it talks about strawberry layering.
Many strawberries, it says, have runners that root into the soil, runner production coincides with the end of fruiting on cropping plants.
Plantlets form on these stems as they grow.
When the plantlets are well rooted, they may be easily severed from the parent plant.
This self-layering habit can be encouraged.
Stems may be layered onto the soil or into pots sunk into the bed.
Now that's very intriguing.
And this book goes on.
For best results, keep some plants specifically for layering.
Plant these three feet apart and remove the flowers.
Keep the soil moist to encourage runners to develop and root.
PEG the runners with wire staples into the soil or into three-inch pots filled with a soil-based mix.
And plunge those pots level with the soil surface.
Plant rooted plantlets into their final positions in late summer and autumn for a good crop the following season.
Back in episode 124, we chatted with the science-based Canadian garden writer Robert Pavliss.
He's the creator of the website GardenMiths.com.
And he had a quick tip for feeding the soil for healthier plants, a task that didn't require much work at all.
He calls it cut and drop.
One of my favorite blogs to read is the GardenMiths blog at GardenMiths.com.
The author is Robert Pavliss, a Canadian-based gardener.
He is science-based.
He has a lot of great advice.
He explodes a lot of gardening myths.
And in a recent post about using weed tea, really weed tea, or fertilizer tea, he brings up the point about how he basically feeds his garden.
And it's with mulch, but it's a cut and drop method.
What's that all about?
Let's find out, Robert Pavliss with us now.
And Robert, tell us about your cut and drop method of feeding your plants.
Well, this started about 15 years ago.
I moved to a larger garden.
I've got six acres.
And I learned very quickly, if you walk around on six acres a lot, you don't get anything done.
And you get very tired.
So one of the jobs I've always done is compost.
I'd have the traditional three-bin composting.
I'd haul all the things I collect, the cuttings and the weeds, and everything.
I'd haul it down there and turn it a couple times, make some compost, and haul it back to the garden.
And I realized that's a lot of work.
So I had to come up with a better way.
So I now use the cut and drop method.
And what I do is when I'm in the garden, any time I get plant material in my hand, so these could be dead flowers.
I'm cutting things back.
I pull a few weeds.
You know, whatever it is, I just drop it where it is.
Now, if I know I have visitors coming, I usually kind of shove it behind a plant so it's not so obvious.
But for the most part, I just drop it.
And what happens is that in two or three days, the sun heats it up, the part dies, turns brown.
A couple weeks later, you don't even see it.
All those nutrients stay in the garden.
They don't leave.
I don't have to move them around.
And I don't fertilize my gardens.
There's no need to fertilize.
So as long as you're not taking things out of the garden that have nutrients, you don't have to add nutrients back.
Now, in my vegetable garden, that's a little different because there, of course, I harvest things.
So I may fertilize a little bit.
I put on a little nitrogen once in a while, but even there, I fertilize much less than most people.
But in my ornamental beds, I leave everything where it is.
I do most of my garden cleanup in the spring.
We're starting to understand that garbage that's laying around the garden is critical for native insects to live.
And so we leave it in the fall.
And what I do is I come up in the spring and if it's laying on the ground, I just leave it.
You know, hosta leaves, they'll be laying on the ground.
I don't have to clean those up.
Nature does that for me.
The flower stocks in Mahastha, they're still standing up in spring here.
Our winters aren't long enough, I guess, to knock them down.
So I cut those out into sort of six inch pieces and just drop them around the hosta.
So cleanup is very quick because I don't have to move things around.
I just cut it all and once everything is, you know, on the ground, I'm done cleanup and I leave it there.
And I agree that, you know, very early on in the spring before the plants start growing, you do see little bits of stuff here and there.
But very quickly, those things grow.
You know, the tubes come up, the daffodils are up.
You're looking at the flowers and you don't notice the rest in a couple of weeks.
It's all covered with new plant growth and it all composts on its own.
We don't have to put all that effort into it.
Same with leaves, they drop off to trees and for the most part, they stay where they are.
I have a couple areas with big maples that get too many leaves, so those, I rake half them off and move them somewhere else where they can be used.
I stop raking leaves out of beds. I go around the lawn and I rake those leaves into the bed this closest and I'm done.
I don't want to spend time, you know, playing around with leaves.
And I find the system works really well.
And if you go in nature, if you go in the woodland, that's what happens.
Everything drops to the ground and magic happens.
You know, the insects come out, the bacteria come out, the fungi come out, they digest it all.
You know, six months later, it's all gone and underground and that happens automatically in my garden as well.
I noticed in the post for that on the Cut and Drop garden that you posted at gardenmyths.com
that a lot of people were commenting that, well, yeah, sure, that's going to work for you because you get summer rain.
Does this work in dry climates?
Yeah, well, what will happen is these, in fact, summer rain here in late July and August,
we typically have very little rain. I can go six weeks without rain.
So it's kind of a weird place here. We get lots of rain and spring and fall, but the summers can be very dry.
But what happens is you have this leaf of something.
It dries very quickly. It goes brown.
Now, it may not decompose as quickly as in a compost pile because, you know, a compost pile is hot.
We keep it higher moisture level there. It's piled high so it retains the heat and so on.
So composting works faster, but this leaf will go brown, get crumbly, it'll break up, do where it will come up and grab some and take it underground.
And I can tell you in a few months, it's gone.
Robert Pavliss, good advice on easing your fertilization of your plants.
It's a great way to have time to do other things in life.
Garden Myths is the name of his book. You can find out more information about it at gardenmyths.com
plus his other writings. And he has a YouTube page as well.
And that YouTube page, Robert, is...
Garden Fundamentals.
Garden Fundamentals. Robert Pavliss, we learned a lot about easing our fertilization chores.
Thanks so much for the quick tip.
No problem. Play your being here.
In today's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, we talk with Washington State University Horticulture Professor Linda Chocker Scott about drainage issues.
Linda has written extensively about garden myths in her books as well as online at the Garden Professors page on Facebook.
And the myth in today's conversation on the podcast portion of the newsletter deals with drainage, especially the counterproductive practice of adding items to the bottom.
And adding items to the bottom of a plant container to improve drainage.
It doesn't.
Now, if you don't believe me, if you don't believe Debbie Flower, maybe you'll believe what Linda Chocker Scott has to say.
In the newsletter portion of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we talk about improving drainage in slow draining garden soil.
And we write about drainage issues to solve when building a raised garden bed.
Give it a listen before you decide to build a raised bed on top of your lawn.
Plus, we have a nifty trick for thwarting gophers from attacking your raised beds.
All that is in today's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.
For current newsletter subscribers, look for the issue entitled If You Can't Dig Down Grow Up.
If you're already a subscriber, it's probably in your email waiting for you now.
And by the way, it is a free subscription and you can start it or read it online for free.
Find the link to the newsletter in today's show notes or sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
Here's one thing I'm doing this spring.
I'm cutting down on the number of tomato and pepper plants I'll be planting.
Because I want to use a lot more of my prime garden space for a crop that I seem to never have enough of.
Heirloom popcorn. I usually run out of this very healthy homegrown snack by December.
So what is heirloom popcorn?
Well, for one thing, it is far and away, much tastier than that stuff labeled popcorn that they sell in bags next to the potato chips.
And it has much more flavor than most hybrid varieties of un-popped popcorn.
Plus, some heirloom popcorn varieties have the added benefit of having soft, crunchy tasting leftover kernels.
Unlike those hard kernels at the bottom of a popcorn bowl that could crack a tooth.
So how do you grow popcorn?
Here it is from way back in episode four of the Garden Basics Podcast.
We've been speaking today about fun things to do with the kids and that, of course, includes gardening and also growing kid-friendly crops.
And here's one they're sure to enjoy.
It's popcorn. Have you ever grown popcorn?
Yeah, you ought to give it a try. And especially as interest in healthy eating continues to grow.
This time of year, late April, May through early June is the time for backyard gardeners to make room for that family favorite.
And it's good for you. Popcorn.
It's a dent corn relative and it's one of the best all-around snack foods you can munch on.
It provides almost as much protein, iron, and calcium as beef.
A cup of popped, unbundered popcorn contains fewer calories than half a medium-sized grapefruit, about 40 calories.
Popcorn is a whole grain and that means it has as much fiber as brand flakes or whole wheat toast.
And if you've never tasted homegrown popcorn, you are in for a treat.
Unlike the drab sameness of store-bought hybrid popcorn, there are many different kinds available for the home gardener via catalogs, nurseries, and seed stores.
But as we found out last week listening to Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden Seed Company, seeds are getting hard to come by in this era of coronavirus.
So if you're looking for popcorn seeds, you might want to start at your local big box store or local hardware store, then go to the nursery.
And if that doesn't work, try online and see if they have any popcorn seed left.
Some of the better outlets for heirloom popcorn seed include the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, as well as Baker Creek heirloom seeds, and you'll find them occasionally as well at Burpee Seed Company, Park Seed Company, Johnies, and Harris.
Now you're probably familiar with the traditional big and chewy movie style yellow hybrid popcorn.
Well, you can choose among several smaller, crunchier, white varieties, and that includes many heirlooms as well as hybrid varieties.
And you know, for fall decorations, it's hard to beat the colorful popcorn that include blue, red, and black kernels.
Now, a word or two about heirloom versus hybrid popcorn.
What do we mean by that?
Hybrid varieties are bred to produce more cobs per stock, as well as larger cobs, and hybrid popcorn tend to pop up bigger as well.
That sounds really good, doesn't it?
There is a downside.
The seed you collect from your popcorn harvest from hybrid popcorn will not come back true to the original if you planted again the following year.
The heirloom popcorn tends to have the same problems as other heirloom vegetables. They're more susceptible to insect and disease problems.
It's a smaller harvest and smaller kernels, but there is one big upside to growing heirloom popcorn, and that's better flavor.
Plus, if you planted the heirloom popcorn away from other varieties of corn, the kernels you collect this year can be planted again the following year, the result being the same great flavor.
Among my favorite heirloom popcorn seeds to grow include Wisconsin black, Dakota black, Cherokee long year, but my favorite is Pennsylvania butter flavor popcorn.
The time to plant your popcorn usually late May through June anytime in there, and you would plant popcorn the same way you would plant sweet corn.
By the way, don't ever plant sweet corn and popcorn together.
You'll have two conflicted crops.
You might break a tooth when jumping down on an ear of sweet corn, and the popcorn won't be popcorn. It won't pop up.
So to repeat, you have to separate the distance that you plant sweet corn from popcorn by quite a distance, but if you're growing popcorn by itself, isolated, and none of your nearby neighbors are growing sweet corn, you should be okay.
So what does a popcorn require to grow? Much of the same requirements as sweet corn, full sun, a soil that drains easily, no standing water.
And what you do is you plant the kernels about two inches deep, six inches apart. Now for better pollination, don't plant them in a single row.
Plant them in squares in short blocks. They're wind pollinated, and that aids the pollination.
Thin out the seedlings when they come up to stand about 10 to 12 inches apart. When it comes to fertilizing popcorn, three fertilizations work best at planting time, when the stocks are knee high, and again when the tassels appear at the top of the stocks.
Because popcorn can grow tall, six or seven feet tall, it does use a lot of nitrogen to get growing.
Perhaps choose a high nitrogen fertilizer where the nitrogen is about twice the amount of phosphorus and potassium. The numbers on the bag of fertilizer would say something like 10, 5, 5, or 8, 4, 4.
No need to get the really super duper heavy stuff nitrogen fertilizers. Those ones in the single digit would just be fine. You want to irrigate the popcorn thoroughly once or twice a week.
And then stand back and wait, watch those stocks grow. Usually early fall is the time when you're going to be harvesting your popcorn here in California, it's early October.
The stocks will be mostly brown, the husks will be dry, and the kernels will be hard. So wait for those stocks to turn completely brown before you start harvesting those cobs of popcorn.
When will it be ready? Try popping a few kernels on the stove in a pan of hot oil at this stage. If most of them pop, that's your sign to remove the ears from the rest of the stocks in your garden.
Strip the outer covering from the ears, the husks, and then place those cobs of corn with the kernels still intact in a mesh bag or an old nylon stocking to cure for two or three weeks in a warm, dry, ventilated area.
After that period of time, pop a few kernels again. If they pop, then strip the kernels from the cobs and store the kernels in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
Now if that popcorn you munch on is a little chewy, that means it's still too wet. Let the kernels dry some more.
Popping a few every couple of days until the popcorn is no longer chewy is the way to go. Now if you get too many un-popped kernels, add moisture to the storage container.
Pour a tablespoon of water over that quart of popcorn kernels. Shake it up a couple of times on day one.
By day three, try popping up another batch. Repeat this procedure until most of the kernels are popping.
Probably the most difficult part about growing popcorn, and this is where the whole family can join in, is stripping the kernels from the cob.
It's a little difficult. It's a little hard. Buy a cheap pair of gloves and wear those.
Or you can buy this device that a lot of seed companies sell. It's called the Little Stripper.
Okay, now that your imagination has run wild, let me tell you exactly what the Little Stripper is.
It's actually a cone-shaped device that fits over the ear of popcorn.
It has plastic or metal ribs on the inside, and you turn it as you go down the cob, and that strips off the kernels.
Again, you can find this online. I think the Jungh seed company may have some.
And then again, storage is important. You want to store the kernels in an airtight container in a cool, dry place.
And be sure to label it. Date it as well. And you want to put the name of the variety on there because if your family really likes it, well, then you can set aside as a small bag of those kernels to plant next year.
If you want more information about growing popcorn, check out the Farmer Fred Rant blog page and look for the post called Grow Your Own Popcorn.
From the Garden email bag, Rahul from St. Louis, Missouri says, after listening to your episode with the author, I got Jessica Walliser's book, Plant Partners.
But I would love to hear what you have to say about companion planting.
Well, thanks for writing in, Rahul. I appreciate it. Companion planting.
Well, that can mean different things to different people. And not all of the suggested combinations have any support in scientific research, but they're certainly popular on the Internet.
In her book, The Informed Gardener Blooms Again, Linda Chockerscott writes,
traditional companion plant charts have entertainment, but not scientific value.
It would be better, says Chockerscott, to not use the phrase companion plant, instead use phrases such as intercropping or plant associations, which are more definable and credible.
By the way, one of the more credible garden writers on the subject is Jessica Walliser, as Rahul mentioned.
And back in episode 78 of the Garden Basics podcast, we talked with Walliser, who is the author of the book, Plant Partners.
She talked about scientific proven strategies for incorporating different plants into your vegetable garden, defend off the bad guys by attracting the garden good guys.
Go ahead and check out our conversation about plant partners recorded back in 2020. It's in episode 78 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.
Also, in that episode, from our first season, we offer up a timely tip. How deep should you plant that new fruit tree?
You can find a link to this flashback episode in today's show notes, or wherever you get your podcasts, or at our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week on Fridays, plus the newsletter podcast that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter continues, and that will also be released on Fridays.
Both are free, and they're brought to you by SmartPods and Dave Wilson Nursery.
The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
And that's where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That's Garden Basics.net, or you can use the links in today's show notes.
And thank you so much for listening.
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