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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.
♪
There was a survey that asked gardeners coast to coast,
what are your favorite homegrown vegetables?
So, naturally, we have a podcast about America's top 10 homegrown vegetables.
Master Gardener and vegetable expert, Dale Pothauer and I talk about each of those 10,
along with growing advice for each one, our favorite varieties,
and tips for having more backyard success with those vegetables.
Actually, we got into such detail about each.
We're going to have to divide this podcast chat into two episodes,
today's and next week's Garden Basics podcast.
So, today we are talking tomatoes.
Well, that's no surprise, really.
That is America's favorite vegetable to grow, as well as cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, and carrots.
Next week, it's five more.
It's all in today's episode 263, the top 10 homegrown vegetables, part one.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful of Butylan jungle in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with farmer Fred podcast,
and we're brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
♪
Have you ever wondered what are the top 10 garden vegetables that people grow in their backyard?
Well, the National Gardening Association took a survey
and so did the Rapid City South Dakota Journal newspaper.
And together they came up with this list of the 10 most popular homegrown garden vegetables.
So, we're going to spend a few minutes on each talking about them
and maybe give you some tips on growing the most popular ones.
And if you want to be a popular gardener, these are 10 good ones to start with.
Gail Pothower is with us.
Gail is the Sacramento County master gardener, vegetable expert extraordinaire.
And Gail, it's no one's surprise that on the National Garden Association's list
of the most popular garden vegetables, tomatoes is number one with something like 86%
of gardeners saying that, yeah, we plant tomatoes.
It's number one on every list I've ever seen, any book on tomatoes I've ever read.
So, yes, it's probably the reason why a lot of people got into vegetable gardening was
to start growing tomatoes.
So, yeah, I agree.
Number one.
And especially with salsa overtaking ketchup as America's favorite condiment,
I'm not surprised either that tomatoes are right up there at number one
because frankly, salsa is a lot easier to make than ketchup.
However, you can't grow your cilantro in the summer when we have tomatoes.
So, yeah, I will tell you a way on how to do it.
Oh, yeah, I would like to know.
All right.
Mine suffers.
Remind me to tell you.
Okay.
Don't let me forget.
All right.
With tomatoes, let's start with the beginning gardener.
If you're growing your first garden and you want tomatoes, America's most popular
homegrown vegetable, well, start with something with training wheels, something that might
be easy.
And usually the most seasoned gardeners will say, well, start with a hybrid variety.
Don't start with an heirloom.
Start with something easy to grow.
Start with something that is going to produce a lot of fruit like a cherry tomato and go
with the tried and true varieties for your area.
Right.
Especially a cherry tomato.
I think they pretty much can be grown by anyone, anywhere as long as they have some
sun, they can take a little bit of shade and like full-size tomatoes or indeterminate
tomatoes that need to have full sun, at least six to eight hours.
These can handle a little bit of shade and I find they don't stop producing in the middle
of summer like a lot of tomatoes will if we get temperatures over 90 degrees.
The cherries will continue to produce.
They're easy.
They're small.
They'll be great for kids to grow.
I think the biggest mistake that beginning gardeners make when planting tomatoes is they
plant too many plants and they put them too close together.
You need some air circulation to avoid some of the fungal diseases.
Tomatoes are a vine and there's different classifications of tomatoes and the types
of fruit and the vines.
Indeterminate, in dwarf typically.
Indeterminants are long vines and if you don't provide some kind of support, they're going
to trail all over the ground.
That's when you can run into a lot of trouble with the fruit and the foliage on the ground.
You can get diseases and insects and that sort of thing.
Indeterminants need to be caged or staked some way.
Exactly.
Very good idea to train those tomato plants and using a steak or a cage and you can make
the cages.
You can buy cages but I got to tell you, if you're going to buy tomato cages, make sure
they're a good size.
They should be at least four feet, five feet tall with a diameter at the top of probably
two and a half, three feet.
That would be ideal.
That goes back to how far apart you should plant your tomatoes as well which would be.
I would plant them at least three feet apart if not four feet apart.
I have 12 foot beds and I will get four in their maximum, three or four.
My cages are at least three feet apart or at least the plants are three feet apart.
When you do it in a cage, you're able to keep all that foliage inside so it doesn't
sprawl all over everywhere.
I get good air circulation.
I have found that the four or five foot tall to midi cages generally aren't tall enough
for some of the indeterminate so I have to put in that extra piece to make it about six
feet tall because it can get six, seven feet tall.
What are some of your favorite tomato varieties to grow?
It's like what's your favorite child?
Well, I'm kind of of the heirloom camp so I do a lot of open pollinated or heirloom varieties
mostly for the flavor.
I may not get real high yields but some of my favorite ones that I'm growing this year,
one is Brad's Atomic Grape.
It's an open pollinated one that Brad Gates has developed for his Wild Boar Farms.
It's kind of a grape tomato which is a cherry but it's elongated and it's big shaped sort
of and it's multi-colored.
I think it's kind of psychedelic looking.
It's got purples and greens and red stripes and streaks all through it.
It's very tasty.
It's got a good hang time.
You don't have to pick it right now.
It'll hang on the plant a while.
I've been growing that the last several years and it's become one of my favorites.
I too have so many favorites.
I really am hesitant to mention one or two.
But I'm going to defer to the vegetable experts at UC Davis at their Vegetable Research and
Information Center who when recommending cherry tomatoes, they mention the cherry grande,
the sweet cherry, the sweet 100, and the red cherry.
For container varieties, as far as cherry tomatoes go, they have patio, toy boy, better
bush, and small fry.
I find if you're going to grow tomatoes in a container, you don't want to do an indeterminate
one because you'd have to have a huge container and it would fall over and be top heavy.
Look for varieties that have patio in their name like patio boy or something or a dwarf.
It's a dwarf variety.
That way you don't have to grow it in such a large container and they'll do just fine.
Some of those will need to have still have some kind of cage and I find on those really
short container type tomatoes.
You can use the tomato cages that you find at the garden center that are cone shaped.
I use those for really small tomatoes, peppers and eggplant as well.
Yes indeed.
I call them pepper cages as a matter of fact.
That's mostly what I use them for.
When you asked about my favorite, one that I grew last year, I've been growing it a number
of years and actually saving seed is an heirloom, salmon heirloom lover.
It's called Thorburn's terracotta and it's this most amazing terracotta color.
Orangey, olivey, honey brown and it's amazing.
The flavor's great.
I had pretty good yields on it.
I like green doctors.
That's actually my favorite cherry tomato.
It's a green cherry that's prolific in the terminids, so it's a big plant.
It produces all season.
I haven't had any cracking on it.
When it's ripe and some green tomatoes are hard to tell when they're ready to pick,
it turns yellowy so it has a yellow cast to it.
One of the hybrids that I've been growing in the last over years is purple boy hybrid
and I've had really good luck with that.
It's a medium-sized black, they call it black variety, which in the tomato world is a dusky
rose with purpley overtones, green shoulders.
It's really good and a good producer.
Then my favorite one to cook with is Goldman's Italian American.
It's an heirloom from Italy and it is large, what kind of pear-shaped red fruit and it
kind of pleats in it.
According to looking pleats, it's really interesting looking.
The flesh is blood red when it's ripe and really meaty, not very many seeds, so it's
great for cooking.
I take it, these aren't tomatoes you found down at Lowe's or Home Depot.
No.
That's one of the reasons I start all my tomatoes ahead of time, usually early February or so,
for transplanting out on your birthday thread, April 28, so it's coming up.
I buy seeds.
We have a whole world of varieties to grow if you have seeds as compared to what's available
as plants at Garden Center.
If you're going to be heading out to the nursery to buy tomato plants to be planting
during the month of May or even into June, there's a lot of good hybrids that are tried
and true across the country that work really well, and that are commonly available too,
like Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, Champion.
Those are just a few of the ones that shall we say normal sized tomatoes, and if you want
a good sized beef steak tomato, Whopper is a popular one that you're going to find that
gets to a good size.
One of my favorite big ones too is Big Beef.
I'm just hesitant to talk about heirlooms because all gardening is local, and if I mention
my favorite beef steak heirloom tomato as Dr. Weiss is yellow, I know that somebody's
going to try it and not have good luck with it, but that is.
Right, and I've tried brandy white.
That's probably the gold standard for heirloom tomatoes, and I can't get brandy wine to grow.
I've grown a couple of other heirlooms.
The names are escaping me right now.
Paul Robeson, I think, is one or black crayon that are supposed to be fabulous, and I got
one fruit on them.
So, yeah, I stick with the heirlooms that I have success with.
Well, at this rate, we'll be done with this program in three hours, so let's move on.
That's right.
Okay.
On our 10 most popular home grown garden vegetables.
Number two, and I will tell you right off, I don't eat it, so I don't grow it.
I hope you have, and you can tell us all about cucumbers.
Well, my husband won't eat them.
So I grow them rarely at home.
I am actually going to grow two of my favorites this year.
One is called green fingers and the other is silver slicer, and silver slicer is a white,
kind of off-white cucumber that is very crisp and juicy.
It's great.
Green fingers is a hybrid person.
It's a small, like a baby cucumber, so you pick them when they're little, and it's never
bitter, so it's really good.
And then if I'm going to make pickles, I like to grow alibi.
That's a hybrid pickling cucumber.
Cucumbers, we are not going to plant them in our area, probably for several more weeks.
They like to have really warm soil, probably in about a couple, three weeks we should hit
70 degrees, 65 or 70 degrees for the soil, and that's when we're plant.
Yeah, and remember, we're talking soil temperature here, and right now, even here in sunny California,
even though we had one of the coldest wetters, winter's ever, our soil temperatures are just
starting to get into the upper 50s to low 60s, and it'll be a while before it gets into
the 70s, which is prime growing conditions for those roots to really shift into high
gear and start production.
It could easily be June and July.
Yeah, and cucumber is something that you can plant all through the summer.
They grow fairly quickly, produce quickly.
So you don't have to start early in late April, early May, even if the soil temperature has
warmed up and the nighttime temperatures are not so cold, you can start them in May, June,
July, and still get a good crop.
You can either direct sow cucumbers or you could do transplants.
They don't like to have their roots disturbed.
I do transplants primarily because I have critters around my yard that like to eat the
seedlings when they come up.
So I will start them about three weeks before I want to transplant them out.
They grow quickly.
I do seeds in a four inch pot and transplant them directly from that pot.
Make sure they're not root bound.
So if you buy a transplant at the nursery or garden center, be sure it's not root bound.
And the easiest way to do that is flip the pot over.
If you see roots coming out, the drain holes on that little container, put it back and
go look for another one.
Yep.
And cucumbers can be trained a betrellis so you don't need to use up a lot of real estate
in your garden and grow them up a trellis and mix for straighter fruits and you get
better air circulation that way as well.
According to the Vegetable Research Information Center at UC Davis, some of the varieties they
recommend for containers, which is would indicate they have a respectful growth habit.
Pickle Bush, potluck, Bush champion, parks, Bush, Whopper, salad, Bush and Space Master
all are rated as suitable for containers.
But you're right.
Most cucumbers need some training if you're going to be planting them.
And they say you can plant more in a smaller space because they're not sprawling all over
the ground.
They need to be spaced well enough so that you can use good air circulation because a
lot of the crops in that curcumin family can get powdery mildew so you want to have good
air circulation.
Alright.
If you like cucumbers, you can plant them.
They're easy to grow.
And the good news, like you mentioned, is they grow easily from seed directly sewn in
the garden.
How far apart would you space the seeds?
We thought, well, if I was going to train them up a trellis, I would probably grow them
a couple feet apart.
If I was going to, if you're not going to do them in a trellis, people typically do
them in a hill.
I don't have not grown them in hills, but you would plant several in a hill and then
thin them to the, to two.
I would probably do them three or four feet apart.
I want to get plenty of air circulation if they're sprawling, if they're not grown up.
Probably one of the biggest complaints you might hear about cucumbers is bitterness.
And they experience bitterness, especially those that they've grown for fresh use or
for pickling.
And that's due to the formation of some compounds that impart a bitter flavor to seedlings, roots,
stems, leaves and fruit.
And one of the easiest ways, according to the University of California, Davis, the easiest
way to control the bitterness is basically to cut off the end and skin it, really.
And that can help control the bitterness.
Yeah.
And those compounds you're talking about, and I've been wanting to say this all day, are
cucobiddo.
Oh, no, I can't even say it.
Cucobiddo-sins.
And that's the compound that does make the fruit bitter.
And it's also the compound that attracts cucumber beetles.
So I know that they're trying to breed cucumbers that don't use compounds in them so the cucumber
beetles won't be attracted to them.
But there are some varieties you can grow that are reliably not bitter.
So an Armenian cucumber is one, which by the way is actually a melon, lemon cucumbers
and any of them that are Persian, those tend to not be bitter.
Also avoid growing cucumbers in cool or shaded locations and they need regular moisture too,
as well as regular fertilization.
And usually if you choose the new hybrid varieties, bitterness is much less of a problem.
And again, if you do taste a bitter cucumber, try peeling away the skin and the outer flesh
and removing the stem end.
Yeah, because I think that's where the bitterness tends to accumulate or at least start is at
that stem end.
So yeah, but since I don't grow cucumbers all that often, I haven't experienced bitter
cucumbers very often.
Some of the varieties that are also recommended for burplus cucumbers, if there is such a
thing.
Sweet slice is recommended by UC Davis for being burplus.
My husband would appreciate that.
That's why he doesn't eat them.
Interesting that they note that burplus cucumbers tend to be long and slender with a tender skin
and the bitterness associated with the burp has been removed.
Other causes of bitterness and cucumbers include temperature variation of more than
20 degrees, moisture stress and storage of cucumbers near other ripening vegetables.
So it sounds like ethylene gas is an issue here.
Certainly does.
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Number three on the National Garden Association of the 10 Most Popular Garden Vegetables.
Sweet Peppers.
They actually broke it out from Hot Peppers.
I find that interesting, but Hot Peppers is on the list too, so we will get to them a
little bit later.
I probably now grow more, so I do grow more sweet peppers than I do tomato plants.
Who would have thunk?
It's just that there are so many different colors and tastes and aromas and just the
beauty of the sweet pepper in a salad.
It's just so enticing.
You want to try as many different varieties as possible.
And they're going to change color as they grow, most for the most part.
I find that I do have my favorites, but every year I try new ones.
I'm looking for that perfect, big, blocky bell that has thick flesh.
Like the ones you buy at the grocery store, big, blocky.
And I'm still searching for that.
So the ones I'm doing this year, most of them are new to me.
Still a couple of tried and true favorites.
But I have a long list of my favorite sweet peppers.
Well, I tell you what, if I have a big red or early sensation leftover from planting,
you can have them.
They are big, big, blocky, tasty peppers, sweet peppers, the early sensation, ripens
to a really nice golden yellow and big red, just like the name implies, is big and red
and blocky.
Okay, I would love to try that.
Yes.
Okay, good.
I'm moving plants today too.
Good.
Oh, are you okay?
One of my favorites that had become a favorite, I grew it for the first time last year, was
astonishing yield.
It was called sweet roaster.
It's a hybrid.
It's a tall plant.
It got about three feet tall and it has elongated like six to seven inch long peppers
that are a couple of inches wide.
They mature from green to red.
And I had to double check my notes to be sure that this was right, but I harvested
spinach peppers on it.
How many?
72.
I had to go back and look at my calculation.
I said, that can't be right.
I do a tick mark for everyone at 72.
It was amazing.
Wow.
Among the hybrid sweet peppers that are recommended by University of California Davis include
gypsy, which is one of my favorites.
My favorite too.
Yeah, I think I've planted gypsy for the last 40 years and it hasn't let me down yet.
They also recommend, I don't know why, the Yolo Wonder and the California Wonder, which
are two big blocky, sweet peppers that you'd find in a grocery store.
That sort of big green, you know, a dollar each look to it.
But to me, they're just kind of bland.
Yeah, I agree.
I tried them once and that's it.
They were just kind of ordinary.
Nothing special about them.
So they didn't make my list of favorites.
One of my favorite blocky bell-shaped peppers to grow is tequila.
It is just a beautiful deep purple color within a aroma that is, I have yet to find another
pepper with the aroma of tequila.
Can you still find seeds for those?
I've had difficulty finding that.
Yeah, I didn't have any problems finding them.
Let's see.
I've been checking catalogs around and I saw the tequila pepper in obviously the totally
tomatoes catalog go for it.
Oh, okay.
That's one that I used to grow and I really liked it and somehow it's dropped off my radar
when I tried finding that I couldn't.
So I didn't do an extensive search apparently.
All right.
I'm adding tequila to the big red and early sensation list for you.
Okay.
Yeah, we're going to move out more plants.
All right.
This is good.
You know, here's a planting tip that I didn't realize until this year how effective it is.
And this has to do with planting tomatoes or peppers.
And Don Shore of Redwood Barn Nursery shared that with us a few weeks ago.
And he was saying, if you just transplant those, either the nursery bought tomatoes or
peppers, but especially tomatoes, transplant them into one gallon containers three weeks
or so before you plant them outdoors, they take on a vigor that will surprise you and
will probably end up producing tomatoes, especially quicker than that.
If you planted it from a four inch pot, if you, if you, because there's less stress that
if you leave that four inch pot or heaven forbid, a six pack of vegetables in those
teeny tiny little containers for any length of time, they get root bound and they get
stressed as soon as you can, even if you're not thinking of planting it for a month or
so, go ahead and transfer them into one gallon containers with some good quality potting
soil.
I am amazed at the size difference in the tomatoes that have been transplanted in just the last
two weeks.
I can attest to that as well.
I started some tomatoes for my niece who lives in Fresno and they're about a month ahead
of us.
So I start her tomatoes early February.
I start mine in the industry of the way.
So about a month difference hers ended up going from four inch pot to one gallon to two
gallons and they were over three feet tall and stocky and gorgeous.
The ones I started a month later, some of them are still in forage pots.
They're ready to go into bigger, but they are just stunted in comparison.
I mean, they're doing well, but I mean, the size difference and the thickness of the stems
is just amazing.
Yeah, I agree.
They need to go in bigger pots and I will do that next year.
My problem is I ran out of bigger pots.
Well, it's worth the investment, I think.
I think you're right.
And you check with your neighbors.
I bet somebody's got a pile of one gallon containers behind their garage.
I'm sure.
More than likely.
All right.
But even the peppers that I transplanted from the four inch containers into one gallon
containers, they're bigger and stockier as well, not as dramatic as tomatoes, but the
sweet pepper plants are much bigger as well.
Yeah.
What I've been doing the last couple of years is following Debbie Flowers' technique of
germinating pepper seeds.
And I've become a believer because pepper seeds typically take several weeks.
I mean, they're slow to germinate, even with a heating mat.
Her technique is soaking the seeds in hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes.
And I'm a believer.
That's the way I'm going to be germinating them from now on.
It seems to be really working.
I don't know why.
If it just softens the seed code, if it, I mean, I don't know.
And it has worked for me really well.
It's worked for me as well.
It's taken the germination from what used to be three weeks down to about a week and
a half.
Right.
The same here, yes.
Another option too in that regard too is to germinate the pepper seeds between moist
coffee filters.
And as soon as they germinate, as soon as you see that little root come out planted in
a seed starting mix, and you can get plants quicker that way too.
Good idea.
I haven't tried that.
I will.
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Moving on to number four on the top 10 list of the home garden plants worth trying in
your garden beans.
Now originally the National Garden Association said green beans, but I think beans in general
are recommended and very tasty too.
Probably snap beans, maybe more so than dry beans or something, although I do grow dry
beans as well.
But if it's snap beans, the typical bean, mostly as green beans, you see in the grocery
store, whatever, but there's also yellow beans that are called wax beans sometimes and there's
purple beans as well.
There's some that are slender and flat.
Those are the Roma type.
Those are my favorite.
And then there's varieties that are a bush or a pole.
So some will need support, a tall support, the pole especially.
Can string beans, what are they made of?
Can't is string beans?
Yes.
String beans that you'd buy in a can.
What kind of bean is that?
I don't know.
I would assume it's a, I don't know.
I don't know either.
It doesn't list the variety name on the container, so I don't know.
And there is, I mean, if you went looking for string beans seeds, I'm not so sure you
would find any.
Yeah, I don't know.
Well, maybe there's snap bush green beans and that would include things like contender,
barvista, Roman or tender crop among the snap pole green beans are Kentucky Wonder,
Romano and Scarlet Runner.
And Scarlet Runner has the attractive Scarlet flowers as well.
Right.
They, depending on where you live, you may not get a crop or much of a crop of beans.
They dislike the hot summer that we have here in the Sacramento area.
We still get flowers on them, but they don't, we don't get beans.
I know down in the Bay area or cooler summer areas, you can get beans on them, but up here,
it's ornamental and they're beautiful flowers.
Yeah, that's not to say that there aren't warm season legumes like certain bush beans
that can grow here in the summertime.
Right.
And some heirloom varieties, I grew one called bingo, which was very productive.
My favorite bush is a green bean that's called strike.
I've had great luck with that.
It's really prolific, the plants have been pretty disease resistant.
And then we do like the Romano or the Roma type that are more flat, a wider and flat.
And they're, I think they're meatier.
They have little different flavors.
So that's a favorite one that I'll grow.
And then I like to have color when I, in my food.
So I don't do just green beans.
I'll do yellow beans and purple beans as well.
The yellow one, my favorite is rock door, which happens to be an heirloom.
And then purple queen, it's gorgeous.
It's deep purple.
However, when you cook it, you'll blanch it, it turns green.
Ooh, that sounds interesting.
Yeah.
You know, the internet knows everything.
And I quickly did a search for string beans.
And it was the University of California again came up with the answer.
Snap beans, also known as green or string beans.
So you've got snap bush greens, the ones we mentioned, contender, harvester, Roman and
tender crop, and the snap pulled green beans, the Kentucky Wonder, the Romano and the Scarlet
Runner.
So there's your string beans.
You know, I think they were called string beans way back when, because they had strings
on them.
When you would cut the, the stem end off, you'd have to pull that string down.
And I think that's, I was having a recollection that that's why they called them string beans.
But now they've bred them to be more tender and not have that string.
So he was also a featured banjo player on he-haw.
Oh, is that right?
Oh, yeah, he's forgotten about that.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So beans, there you go.
The number four crop grown in home garden vegetables, and according to the National Garden
Association, something like 37% of all gardeners have grown them in the past or will be growing
them again.
So beans are up on that list.
39%.
All right.
Today, April 28th is a special day.
So we have a special beyond the garden basics newsletter and podcast waiting for you.
April 28th is the official tomato planting day.
Well, at least it is here in many areas of northern and central California.
And your special day might vary as you may still be waiting for nighttime lows to be steadily
over 50 degrees and soil temperatures to reach about 60 degrees.
But whenever the time is right, well, happy tomato planting day.
So to celebrate, we talk about the hybrid and heirloom tomatoes that are worth a try
in 2023, including the favorites of many tomato heads.
We list easy to grow tomatoes too.
Plus, we have a chat with Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms and how he is breeding the heirloom
tomatoes of the future.
Brad has developed several popular, tasty and colorful, open-pollinated tomato varieties,
including Pink Berkeley Thai Dye, Barry's Crazy Cherry, Brad's Atomic Grape, Solar
Flair and a lot more.
For current newsletter subscribers, look for the issue entitled Happy Tomato Planting
Day, but which varieties?
If you're already a subscriber, it's probably in your email waiting for you now.
Or you can start a subscription.
It's free.
Find the link to the Beyond The Garden Basics newsletter in today's show notes or at substack.
And you can sign up for the newsletter link at our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
Number five.
Oh boy, here we go.
It's a crop that I think because it's a root crop you can grow at just about year round,
depending on your climate, carrots.
Mm-hmm, I have actually never tried growing them in the summer here because I think we're
too hot.
I think the reach would be too woody.
It's generally a fall crop in the spring in our area, but carrots can be easy to grow.
It depends on your soil.
They do like to have deep blue soil, no stones or clods in them.
I mean, if you have real heavy soil, there are varieties that are shorter and can maybe
a little sturdier and can tunnel right through that clay, but they typically like to have
a real loose soil.
And you can get that if you have a raised bed.
You know, if you're like, we have clay here, I couldn't grow carrots in my ground.
I can do it in a raised bed or a large container.
And you're absolutely right.
Or if you have rocky soil too and you want to grow carrots, it might be a good idea to
grow the shorter varieties like Danvers Half-Long.
Mm-hmm.
And Danvers, and there's a type that's called Chantinee, and they're real blunt and sturdier.
They're thicker at the top and they can just power their way through heavy soils easier
than the ones you find at the grocery store, which typically are the impuriter types.
They're long and slender and you really need to have good, loose, deep soil to grow those
varieties.
Yep.
And that's the perfect solution for growing carrots.
And here in USDA Zone 9 in California, you can plant carrots from seed, which is, I
don't even know if you can...
Have you ever seen carrots at a nursery as a transplant?
I have, actually.
I have recently and I was astonished because I don't know how you would transplant a carrot
without getting that root to be disturbed.
I mean, it could twist or it could bend.
And that's what you're harvesting.
And so you want good, straight roots.
So I don't know how you would do that.
Were they in just normal-sized containers or were they in like nine-inch tall tree pots?
No, it was a six-pack.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
Oh my.
Well, you can plant carrots from seed.
That's a lot safer.
And here in USDA Zone 9, you can plant them in March, April, May.
And like you mentioned, the fall through winter planting season of August through December
of planting carrots from seed.
Debbie Flower once gave us a very good dip for planting carrot seeds because they're
so small, they're very difficult to put them in place one inch apart.
They tend to, because they're so small, there's a clump of them and you need to get that
thinned out so they stand two or three inches apart, ideally.
And one of her students came up with it and they used moist chopsticks.
They dipped the chopstick in water and then dipped it in a bowl of carrot seed.
And then we're very carefully shoving the carrot seeds off the chopstick into place
in the garden a couple of inches apart.
That seems to work.
I haven't heard of that.
I'll have to give that a try because, yeah, carrots, the seeds are so tiny that it's impossible
to almost impossible to spread them out.
They're ultimate, thinned destination.
But wow, okay, I'll have to try that.
They do take a long time to germinate.
I have found, I mean, you could take several weeks, three or four weeks.
So you've got to keep them pretty moist.
And we at the Horticulture Center, what we typically do is put a piece of agribon row
cover over it.
You could use burlap or whatever and then soak that and that would keep the soil moist
until they start to come up.
But they have a long germination period.
Another tip to help thwart that waiting period or at least let you know that, oh, I've planted
there, I better not disturb that soil.
Debbie Flower gave us this tip is to plant radishes nearby the carrot seeds because radishes
germinate so quickly, it will let you know that there are carrots also awaiting to come
up in that spot.
So don't go digging around there.
That's right.
Yeah, that's a good tip to do.
And radishes germinate so quickly and you'll have them harvested before the carrots are
even ready to thin much.
So yeah, that's a good tip.
All right.
We can't finish yet though because I got to tell you the tip for growing cilantro in the
summertime.
Oh, yes.
All right.
This tip came from Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden Seeds.
And I was discussing this with her once and her supplier of cilantro seeds who does it
in the Bay Area told her that when he wants a crop of cilantro in the summertime, what
he does is he grows it as microgreens.
In a shady area, he will just every couple of weeks scatter seeds across a flat in some
good potting soil or seed starting mix and let them grow one to two inches tall and then
harvest those microgreens, those cilantro microgreens and use it just like regular cilantro.
And I grow microgreens all the time.
It never occurred to me to do cilantro.
And he does some outside.
And he does them outside.
Yeah.
Because they don't have time to bolt.
That's true.
I'm going to give that a try.
Yes.
Thank you.
Wow.
Look where all the time went.
We've only got through the first five of the top 10 most popular garden vegetables.
So we're going to have number six through 10 on next week's garden basics podcast.
So we did one through five tomatoes, cucumber, sweet peppers, beans and carrots.
Next time around Gail and I will get through summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce
and peas.
Gail potthower.
We have offered people a short, sweet education on growing home vegetables.
And I hope more people try it this year.
We have and it was fun.
I enjoyed it.
Maybe you're stepping up your gardening game this year by getting a greenhouse.
And that's a great idea.
Greenhouses are great for starting the myriad of varieties of flowers and vegetables from
seed.
In varieties, you won't find as plants at your local garden center.
Greenhouses can provide a home for temperamental plants.
Yes, I'm looking at you orchids and you can extend your food guarding to a year round adventure.
But before you purchase that greenhouse, give a listen to our flashback episode of the week.
It's episode 170 entitled buying a greenhouse.
Ask yourself these questions first.
It's from February of 2022.
There are a lot of factors to consider that you might not realize until after you assemble
your greenhouse ventilation needs, heating and cooling requirements, electricity and water,
the width of the door.
What sort of flooring to use?
What about shelves?
And there's a lot more.
Take it from a guy who's on several backyard greenhouses.
Don't skimp on quality.
Avoid bargain greenhouses.
So we're talking greenhouses in this week's flashback episode.
Go to your favorite podcast outlet and do a search for episode 170 of the Garden Basics
with Farmer Fred Podcast.
It's entitled buying a greenhouse.
Ask yourself these questions first.
You can also find the podcast as well as a transcript 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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