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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, we have a podcast about America's top 10 homegrown vegetables.
Actually, we have two podcasts on the topic.
There was last week's podcast, episode 263, that covered the first five top veggies,
including tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, and carrots.
Today in part two, Master Gardener and Vegetable Expert, Gail Path Hour,
and I talk about summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas,
along with growing advice for each one of those, our favorite varieties to grow,
and tips for having more backyard success with those vegetables.
Plus, we talk about our honorable mentions, backyard garden vegetables,
that really should be in that top 10 list.
It's all in today's episode 264, the top 10 homegrown vegetables part two.
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 SmartPods and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
♪
Last week on this Garden Basics podcast, you may recall, we were talking about the top 10
garden vegetables grown at home. Gail Path Hour was with us,
and we went through tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, and carrots, and we ran out of time.
So, this week we're on to part two of the top 10 most popular garden vegetables to grow.
It includes summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas, that according
to the National Garden Association and the Rapid City South Dakota Journal newspaper.
Gail, let's get going on six through ten.
Yes, let's do that.
Moving on to number six in the most popular garden vegetables to plant at home.
I laugh because, well, who hasn't had way too many zucchini,
summer squash, and zucchini is just one form of summer squash. There's all sorts of summer squashes.
Oh, yeah. In fact, some of my favorites, my favorite heirloom zucchini,
another heirloom is I'm interested more in heirlooms for tomatoes for the flavors,
but there are some other crops that have heirlooms that are really good.
It's called Ordalani de Fenza. I don't know how to say it in Italian, but it's a light green
zucchini. It's said that dark black green that a typical zucchini has,
real prolific, and so I grow that every year. And then there's yellow crookneck or there's
pallet and scallop or the pattypan. So there's a lot of different ones. I love butter belly.
That happens to be a hybrid yellow crookneck. And I grew it up a pallet last year. It's a bush
variety, but I wanted to get it up off the ground. So I propped up a pallet and grew it up the pallet.
And it saved space and it was easier to pick. And it was an outstanding variety. It was new
for me last year. Zephyrs always a good one. It's a yellow crookneck with green at the
bottom, kind of a light green color. And then my favorite scallop is sunburst.
It's a yellow pattypan with a green button on the bottom. And that happens to be an
all-American selection winner. Among the scallops that are recommended by UC Davis and these are
varieties that you'd probably find at your local nursery if you wanted to plant them from
transplants. But they're really best planted from seed. But refer back to our story of why you
don't want to cram the roots of it. Oh yeah, just like cucumbers. They don't want their roots to serve.
That's why it really is much easier from seed on summer squash. But Peter Pan hybrids sunburst
scallopini early white bush are the scallops recommendations among the yellow summer squashes.
They like early prolific straight neck, Sundance early golden summer crookneck dixie.
And among the zucchini aristocrat, grazini, ambassador, gold rush, and burpee Ford hook.
I think a lot of the problems that people have with summer squash is, well, first of all,
they're doing the right thing by planting from seed. And usually the recommendations from planting
by seed say mound to soil up about eight inches tall and about 12 inches wide, sort of like a plateau
of really enriched soil, maybe mix some manure in there. And then in that plateau that is 12 inches
across, put six seeds in a circle and then wait. And then you don't send them? No, you feel
like, Oh, look, it's growing. I don't want to take that out. No. Oh, you better. Honestly, if you have,
let's say two mounds of zucchini seed planted, and you've got six seeds in each and you
want a normal size garden and you don't want too much zucchini thin it out to one per hill.
Good luck on that. Yeah, I am sort of hesitant in that I'm going to grow two different squash this
year. Generally, I do one that's plenty for me and my husband, but I'm going to do my
favorite zucchini that and the yellow, the yellow kryptonite, the butter belly. I'm going to do
two different plants and I'm thinking I might be crazy because that's probably twice as much
squash as I need. I've already been collecting recipes on what to do with all that squash.
But yeah, it's very prolific. And if you keep harvesting them when they're small,
that will keep them producing. If you want to stop the production,
let them grow to a baseball bat and that'll slow them down a little bit.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, ideally for best flavor, they're best harvested when they're eight inches or less.
Right. Yeah. They'll get you CD otherwise, you know, when they get,
they're starting to get over mature and they'll get real CD inside. So yeah.
A lot of people come that they plant the seeds, the zucchini seeds of the squash seeds in May and
by June, they are complaining. Look, look at the fruit that's coming out. It's stunted. It's short.
It doesn't look right. What's going on? It's usually incomplete pollination because the fact
that they have separate male and female flowers and they don't produce male and female flowers
necessarily on the same day. If it's too hot or too cold and well, the bees sometimes don't
help out very much, but usually it's that incomplete pollination. But if you just patient, if you just
wait, you'll get normal size zucchini that the weather will even out and you will have more zucchini
than you know what to do with. Exactly. Yeah. And you generally, the male flowers start out first.
And so you'll have all these flowers and you think I have no fruit. Well, the female flower will have
a little immature fruit at the base of it. And so you can tell the difference. And they
the males start first, then the females when they need to get in sync with each other in the
morning because it's generally they're viable in the morning and it takes a while and the weather
can disrupt that. So yeah, you just got to be patient. As the University of California,
Davis says, under good growing conditions, fruits are ready for first harvest 50 to 65 days after
seeds are planted and in the world of summer vegetables. That's pretty darn quick. It is quick,
yes. Moving on in our list of the 10 most popular garden vegetables to grow at home.
Number seven is onions and onions. Gail take patience. Oh, absolutely. And I find growing
bulbing onions, the typical big onion to kind of be a challenge. So I rarely grow onions in my own
garden. If I do grow them, I'm going to grow one variety and it's called Stockton Red. And it's
getting a little more difficult to find seeds for Stockton Red, but that's one that I really like.
But onions are daily sensitive. So you need to grow a type of onion, whether it's long day,
short day, intermediate day, or day neutral, depending on your latitude. I think that's where a lot
of people have problems. They are growing a variety that maybe isn't suited for their latitude. And
so they either bolt prematurely or they don't bulb at all. So with Sacramento being in about a 38
degree latitude, we're intermediate day. So choose varieties that say they're intermediate day or
that are day neutral. Day neutral means it doesn't matter. Anybody can grow them. So that's kind of
the key. And where I've run into problems, if I buy sets or something, they don't necessarily tell
you if they're long day, short day, intermediate day, whatever. And so I'm buying the wrong variety.
Stockton Red, as I know, will do well here. So that's an intermediate day. But onions can be a
challenge. And so let's just say I don't grow them that often. I'll grow green onions or I'm
currently growing Egyptian walking onions, but bobby onions, I don't do too often.
Generally, onions are planted in late summer, early fall here in USDA zone nine, September,
October, and aren't harvested until June or July. If you're going for the bulbing onions,
now green onions are a different story. Green onions are scallions. You can grow those year
around here, a varieties like Evergreen White, Southport, White, White, Sweet, Spanish, White,
Lisbon, Tokyo, Long White, which I planted for the first time this year. And if you use a lot of
green onions in your recipe preparations, always have a pot of onions growing.
That's what I found that green onions are something that I use more, well, I use regular
onions a lot too, but I use a lot of green onions. And so those are easy to grow. I can grow them
in a container. I can grow them practically any time of the year. If it's too hot, I can move
them into the shade. So yeah, that's a good one to grow. Yeah, unfortunately, by the time they
are ready to harvest, it's not like you can take the onions out and plant something else. Actually,
you could. When the onions are harvested, if you reinvigorate the soil, you could probably put in
zucchini or another summer squash or a winter squash. Or set that space aside for planting your
fall crop, you know, because some of those can go in in August or September. They like to have
warm soil to germinate, but they don't necessarily like to have, they need cool climate to mature.
So a lot of our cool season crops, we would start growing when the soil is still warm,
but we want them to mature when it's cooler out. So once you took those onions out,
you could then plant something for the fall. Among the onion, for a bulbing varieties
recommended by the University of California, Davis's vegetable research and information center,
our Greeno, Greenex, California, early red, Fiesta, yellow, sweet Spanish, white, sweet Spanish,
Southport, white globe, Southport, red globe, and the Stockton yellow globe. No Stockton red in there,
huh? We actually did an onion variety trial almost 10 years ago at the Sherox Horticulture
Center, where we grew some several varieties of long day, intermediate day and short day,
to see how they would do in our climate, and all the long day bolted, and some of the short day
did as well. But that's which critical is to grow the right type. And what I mean by
long day, intermediate day and short day is, if you look at a map and you see your latitude,
long day are going to be up north. So they need 14 to 16 hours of daylight in order for the bulbing
to start. Intermediate day is 12 to 14 hours, short day is 10 to 12 hours, that's down south.
So it does have a lot to do with your latitude. Exactly. If you live in Edmonton, you can grow
long day onions. And we did grow them here and we found they don't do that well. So it does as a
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slash Fred. Well, here at Barking Dog Studios, we are running through the top 10 list of the
most popular garden vegetables to grow. We now come to number eight on our list. And it's time
for the hot peppers to shine hot peppers, the eighth most popular home garden vegetable to grow.
31% of gardeners across the United States say they grow hot peppers and they range from mildly
spicy to thermonuclear. There's all kinds of varieties to suit many tastes and degrees of
heat tolerance. There are some mildly warm ones that I like to grow like Newmax Joey Parker.
That doesn't offend my taste buds too much. But for those that like it hot,
really, really, really hot, you can grow those ghost peppers, the boot jalokias, the the charleston's
and the others. But there's a lot of good tasty warm peppers too like Anaheim for example,
or even some of the jalapeños. Yeah, I'm just shaking my head. I don't eat chilies. I can't tolerate
that heat. So one of the hot peppers that I grow is called trick you. It's a heatless
jalapeño. So it's not classified as a sweet pepper, but it's a heatless jalapeño. And I grow
that every year. And it's a hybrid that does great and huge yields. I like the flavor of the
jalapeño without the heat. And that's what you get. My husband on the other hand likes hot peppers.
And so every year I grow a little hanging basket of patapeno. It's a little miniature jalapeño.
It's an all-america selection winner. The fruits are only one to two inches long. And so I
satisfy his heat requirement with those. But that's a good good one to grow in a container.
I could grow it in a hanging basket like we do. And we also do it at the Horticulture Center in
a hanging basket or a small container. It's very prolific for something that size.
I grew one last year called not a peno. And it looks like a jalapeño, but not a it's not hot at all.
And it was actually very tasty. I couldn't convince my wife though to cook with it because she was
convinced it was a hot pepper. And she wouldn't take a bite of it because she won't fall for that
trick again. And so I would eat it in front of her. Look, it's not hot. See, am I running for water?
No, I'm not. But no, but not a peno is actually a it looks like a jalapeño, but there is a very
little heat associated with it. We mentioned some of the varieties that are popular that are
fairly mild in their heat. The Anaheim, for example, the Hungarian yellow wax, which is moderately hot.
That isn't too bad. And among the heirlooms, as I mentioned, the New Mexico City parker
is one of my favorites with a wonderful flavor to the problem with a lot of hot peppers is the
heat overwhelms the flavor. You missed the flavor. Well, that's why I like the trick to jalapeño,
because I can actually taste the jalapeño. And I like the flavor of it is the heat just kind of
overpowers. So yeah, I'll leave the hot peppers to other people. There's another pepper out there
called Shoshito. You talk to some people, they'll say, Oh, it's a sweet pepper. You talk to others,
they'll say, Oh, it's a hot pepper. I've grown Shoshito. I grew them for three years in a row,
because I couldn't figure out why nine out of 10 of the peppers at any one time that had ripened
on the plant would be mild. But there was one that was hot. And it just made never knew which one
was hot. No, they all looked the same. It was like, it wasn't a case of it had changed color or
anything like that. So the Shoshito, I think, is a tricky pepper. If you want to play Russian
roulette with your mouth, get the Shoshito. I actually did try it one year. If someone convinced me
to try it, they said, they're so good, you pan fry them and oh, they're great. So I did grow
them. And I did hear that, you know, occasionally you'll get a hot one. Well, everyone I had was hot.
And I read somewhere where they say you have to be sure to pick them when they're small.
If they start getting larger, they'll all be hot. So I've not tried them since.
Well, that's a good tip to have. All right, now we come to number nine on the list of the 10 most
popular garden vegetables. And it's a cool season crop in California. If you live in a very mild
climate or the Bay Area of California, you can certainly grow all the lettuce varieties you want
lettuce. And I can see why people grow lettuce. And I hope that you try something different than
iceberg. Iceberg to me is the most nutritionless, tasteless lettuce that has fallen into mass
marketing, because there's a lot of leaf lettuce varieties that are so much tastier and also can
withstand heat better than iceberg. Yeah, I was gonna say iceberg doesn't do that well in the
Sacramento area. We're too hot. And so we generally recommend try a loose leaf or a romaine or one of
the butterhead types. But if you have to have iceberg, pick that up at the store, don't try
growing it. It won't do that well here. Yeah, it's a waste of space, as a matter of fact. Now,
I have been on a lifelong gardener search for a lettuce variety, a loose leaf lettuce variety
that can take the heat. Some are better than others as far as getting maybe through July. But
it seems like when July turns into August, they all start bolting. Right. And actually, several
years ago, we did an experiment two years in a row at the Horticulture Center, because we get this
question a lot. Why can't I grow lettuce in the summer? So we thought, okay, let's find some varieties,
grow them through the heat of summer and see how they do. First off, you need to start with
some varieties that are heat resistant, like Jericho. That was bread in Israel. So it's a
little more heat resistant. And we tried half dozen or so different varieties. We monitored
when we planted them, how many weeks it was before they started bolting. Some did better than others.
Some did pretty well. But what we found is you need to molt heavily to keep the moisture in,
keep them well watered, provide shade during their entire lifespan in the summer, and then be
prepared as soon as one starts to bolt, take it out and then replant with another transplant. So
kind of a succession planting. It is possible, but it's a lot of work. Say it takes a lot of water and
shading and monitoring. I'm not sure if it's worth it or grow it in the shade if you have a
shady location. But often it's not just the sunlight, it's the heat. And even in the shade
in Sacramento, we can be fairly warm in the summertime. So it's a tough thing to do.
The closest green I've found that can be grown year round, and especially if you do it in the
shade, it does okay here in that Swiss chard. We'll be back after a quick break.
If you have questions about food and farming, check out Ask a Farming.
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on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Right, yeah, that can be grown year round. I have done it in an area of my yard where it got
some afternoon shade in the summertime. And it was able to over summer. But yeah,
any of the other leafy greens are going to be a little tough. One of my favorites,
oh, an absolute favorite lettuce is called Pomegranate Crunch. It's a red romaine,
and it is very good. I get it as pelleted seeds, which makes it a little bit easier to germinate.
Lettuce can have a difficult time germinating. Lettuce does need light in order to germinate,
so don't plant the seed too deeply. Pelleted seeds don't have that problem. But I think if
sometimes people have difficulty getting lettuce to germinate because maybe they buried it too far,
it needs light. It's one of the few vegetables that needs light to germinate.
And I believe it's one of those seeds that will not germinate in heat, period.
Right. If you tried sowing lettuce seed in the summer, maybe for a fall crop, if your
soil temperature is too warm, the lettuce seed can go dormant. So if you're also starting it indoors,
whereas I use a heating mat to get a lot of my seeds to germinate, you don't use a heating mat
for lettuce because the soil will be too warm and lettuce seeds will go dormant in heat.
Some of the varieties that have been recommended as heat tolerant lettuces that I've grown over
the years and they're barely heat tolerant, are black-seated Simpson and deer tongue.
They're pretty good, but like I said, they do eventually bolt. But if you're looking for a,
first of all, I think one good rule to remember is if you want lettuce to last in the yard as long
as possible, grow loosely varieties, not head lettuce. Right. And of the ones that we did in
our heat tolerant trial, the ones that did well besides Jericho was year-round bronze. It's an oak
leaf and it was late to bolt in the summer. So it actually did very well. Red Cross is a red
butterhead, Merlot, a dark red leaf lettuce, and a Paradé, a red oak leaf. That's one of my
favorites, but I can no longer find seeds for it. And then Nevada, it's a green loose leaf,
kind of a semi-heading type. So all those did well as well as can be expected in our summer heat.
So they did better than a lot of other varieties. I'm glad you mentioned Nevada because I have
grown that one before and it was pretty good. But I think if you want a dependable green,
do the Swiss chard. Right. I agree. All right.
Are you thinking of growing fruit trees? Maybe you already are, but you'll want to know more about
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Well, let's wrap this up with the number 10 most popular garden vegetable grown according to the
National Garden Association and the Rapid City Journal, the Rapid City, South Dakota journal newspaper.
It's peas. I think a piece. I'm looking out my window here and through the abutilon jungle and
looking at what I have growing in barrels and I've got some Oregon sugar pod peas on their last legs.
It's getting toward the end of their life here, especially since we, well, I think we just hit our
first 85 degrees or something after having so much rain and coolness. So peas are going to start
struggling. I don't grow a lot of peas at home, but we grow them at the Horticulture Center and
there's a new one that we're growing. It's an all-america selection winner called Snack Hero.
It's a relatively new winner and it was amazing. It looks like a green bean, so it's more
cylindrical along and slender like a green bean is and about four inches long and it was so tasty.
We were snacking on the mora at our workday the other day. It's really good. It's not a tall plant,
maybe a couple feet tall, so we have it growing up an old umbrella frame that we have collapsed
down to make like a pyramid and then we ran some strings up it. So it's growing on that,
but it was an exceptional variety, very tasty, not woody or stringy at all, so really sweet
called Snacki Row. When did you plant that? We know they planted them when I was out of town,
so it's probably in October maybe. Okay, so there was a cool season P.
Right. Then we have another variety of Snacki growing up an umbrella frame that we've opened up
and then run strings. You can run strings up or some kind of a mesh for them to grow up.
A lot of peas are vining type, so they need some kind of support. That's one way to
use up your old umbrella that the canvas is torn and I'll grow them up an umbrella frame.
All right, there you go. The 10 most popular garden vegetables from tomatoes to cucumbers,
sweet peppers, beans, carrots, summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas. By the
way, with peas, do you soak the seeds before you plant them? You know, I don't know if we soak
them or not since I was in here. You can. That's a good way to get them to germinate is soak them
overnight. I've heard I don't know if they need to be soaked that long. Usually six hours or so
is plenty of lukewarm water. Yeah, I would think so. Yeah. Now you had mentioned before we started
that you were disappointed that melons didn't make the top 10 list. I'm disappointed beats didn't
make the top 10 list. Yeah, I'm surprised at that as well. I thought beats would be on them.
Well, it depends on the list. I've seen several top 10 lists and they've had potatoes on them,
different things. So it just depends on which list you're looking at. But I grow if I had to pick
between only two things to grow, it'd be tomatoes and melons, I think. Okay. And what I like about
beats, this reminds me of something my uncle Hubert used to say back on the family farm in
Beach North Dakota. And when he was a he raised pigs and he said, we use all parts of the pig,
except the oink. And and beats are like that because the entire plant is edible. Oh, yeah,
I can do beats as micrograins. Yeah. So you eat the tops all the time and the leaves this time of
year are blush and make a great salad material. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Okay. Well, my favorite melon
is a musk melon. What we call cantaloupes here in the in the US is Sarah's choice and one called
Divergent. And I think those are my two favorites now. They're just so sweet and oh, they're wonderful.
So I'm growing them this year as always. My favorite beat variety to grow because it reminds me of
something psychedelic is the chiyogi a beat that has that concentric red ring throughout the entire
middle. Like the bullseye. Yeah. And it's delicious too. Yeah, I'm not a big beat fan, but I've learned
to eat them. But if I grow them, I like to do the golden beats. They're not as beady. I guess that's
a word. So they're a little milder. But if I'm growing micrograins for the for the tops, I do
bull's blood. Ah, okay. Yeah, it's real good. And you wear and do you wear an apron during all this?
You have to because you get that red all over you, you know.
Gail Pothower. 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.
How many of you directly feed your plants, both indoor and outdoor plants with human foods,
such as milk, sugar, coffee grounds, eggshells, and more? Are you doing your plants any good?
Now, composting food scraps so that they break down into the basic elements. That's a different
story. I'm talking about pouring milk or Gatorade directly around your plants or topping the soil
with coffee grounds. In today's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, we talk with Robert Pavliss.
He's the author of the Garden Myths.com website. He explains what happens to your plants and your
soil when you do that. And it's not necessarily a good thing. And he also talks about what he feeds
is in ground plants. And by the way, it isn't commercial fertilizers. For current newsletter
subscribers, look for the issue entitled, Can Human Food Also Be Plant Food? 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 at the newsletter link at our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
On next week's Garden Basics podcast, that'll be episode 265, we talk with organic gardening
educator and consultant Steve Zion about irrigation basics, especially when to water your garden,
and how to figure that out. And a big part of watering your garden effectively is having soil
that has the right mix of soil, air, and water for your plant roots to live in and thrive in.
You want soil that drains well, but yet retain moisture for a longer period of time.
Now that may sound like a contradiction, but it is achievable. Right now, Steve explains how the
addition of compost and mulch to your garden beds can help you achieve that goal.
What are some of the benefits of mulching and composting for the soil?
Compost and mulch should be just placed on the surface. You should not till it in. When you're
till in the soil, you're killing a lot of the soil biology, killing the worms. You're destroying
the soil structure, which is the different sized pore spaces. It ends up compacting the soil. So,
you put mulch, worm castings, compost just right on the soil surface, the rains, the irrigation,
and the soil biology. And particularly worms will come up to the soil surface every night,
feed on that material, and then go back down into the soil, acting as Mother Nature's wrote a
tiller. And it's that organic material that improves the quality of your soil, makes it more like a
sponge, and it helps hold the nutrients and hold the moisture. And it's the food source. It's the
energy source for the soil biology. And the soil biology is what makes your soil function.
It creates those large pore spaces when it's creating soil structure so that the roots can
grow easily so that you can transplant easily so the soil biology can move, so the nutrients
and water can move. So, you need that food for the soil biology, and you don't have to till it in.
You just put it on the soil surface, but you do want to keep it a little bit away from the stems
of your plants. Your plants are not adapted to having wet moist conditions, which is what you
will have in that mulch or compost layer on the soil surface. If that's up against the stem of
your plant, it can start to cause rotting conditions. The base of your plant will rot and die, and
your plant will fall over. Which back east is called a mulch volcano. So, you want to just lightly
scrape away all those ingredients away from the trunks of your plants only by an inch or so,
to just give them a chance to breathe. Now, on my raised beds, I have a more complicated
formula for making my own soil lasagna here, is at the end of the season,
I will cut off my tomato plants and pepper plants and zucchini plants at the soil level,
and I'll feed that, chop that up and feed it to the worms. Then, I leave the roots of those
plants in the soil. Then, I'll take a thin layer of worm castings and spread that over the entire
bed. I'll rake it in lightly, just with you with a metal rake, just lightly rake it in,
and then I'll throw an inch or two a compost on top of that. Then, on top of that,
the ground up oak leaves for my neighbors. Three to four inches deep. You basically have a thick
mulch layer that will slowly break down during the winter, be washed into the soil with the winter
rains, and then come spring, you start digging in your soil, you go, wow, this is great soil.
Look at the worms, look at them, they're smiling. It works, it really does.
You can say, I'm going to start, it can be fall, and you're saying, well, I want to have a vegetable
garden next year. You do that in what you just said in fall. Your soil could be really, really
hard and really nasty, and you think, I'm never going to be able to garden in there.
And you do what you just said, people will be amazed at how nice that soil will be, come spring.
Oh, and it's just a joy to dig in. I mean, if you're trying to dig a deep hole to bury a tomato
plant that's brand new and bury up some of those leaves, it just dig so easy. It's just so nice.
And the reason for keeping those old root systems in for last year's summer vegetables is, well,
they're going to break down in the soil, and they're going to provide even more nutrients for the
soil biology. Not only do that, they do that, but the space in your soil where those roots will,
where as they decompose, they're going to shrivel up and basically almost disappear volume-wise,
and then you will have nice channels for water, air, nutrients, roots to move through your soil.
Yeah, it's really not as much work as you think. As I've been telling people for years and years,
if you have this hankering to spend $1,000 on a rototiller, don't spend it on a chipper shredder.
You can find them for less as well. That chipper shredder is going to make garden gold for you.
Exactly. Yeah, we really don't want to till the soil. There's really no reason to till the soil.
The only time you should work the soil is when you're transplanting and just put all the compost,
put all the fertilizer, put all of the soil amendments right on the soil surface. Have you ever gone
out in the forest or out in the prairie and see Mother Nature tilling? She doesn't do it. No.
She doesn't rake leaves either. Yeah. Why do they call them leaves? Because you're supposed to leave
them. Thank you very much. On the ground. Yes, indeed. There you go. And if memory serves me
correctly, you have a class coming up on mulching and composting. Yeah, mulching and composting,
the class I've got coming up is Thursday, May 11th from noon to one Pacific daylight time. It's
called colossal compost, miraculous mulch and spectacular soil. You're right. I think compost,
I would add worm castings to that because that's basically worm compost and mulch. They're the
energy source, the food source for the soil biology that makes the nutrients available and
basically feeds the plants. To sign up for this class, go to CHWD.org slash community slash pound
classes. Wait a minute. Community slash pound like the pound sign? Yes. Okay. Pound sign. Then what?
Classes. Classes. I'll have that link in today's show notes, folks. Okay. CHWD.org slash community
slash pound sign and the word classes. Like I said, we'll have the link in today's show notes. Now,
that is a live Zoomer on Thursday, May 11th. What was the time again? Noon to one and it's free.
Noon to one in Pacific time. Pacific time. And that will be posted on their website,
the same website, a couple of weeks after the class. All right. So we'll be up there for everybody
to enjoy after the fact. Exactly. All right. So again, it's Steve talking composting, mulching,
and he ought to know. I won't say he invented it, but he gets the word out and more and more
people are doing it and having more and more success with their gardens here in Northern
California with the Citrus Heights Water District. I guess it is. Yes, it is. All right. CHWD.org slash
community slash pound sign classes. And you'll see the link. All right. Steve Zion. Thanks so much.
It's been fun as always, Fred.
Quit fertilizing your plants. Feed your soil instead. That was the topic way back in May of 2020,
back in episode seven of the Garden Basics podcast, which by the way is a very popular
episode that goes deep into what makes for a successful plant. And that's today's
flashback episode of the week. If you think plant roots are sucking up that liquid or granular
fertilizer that you're pouring on them, well, think again, plant roots aren't straws. Instead,
there are billions of microscopic beneficial fungi and bacteria in the soil that are converting
those fertilizers into a usable form for the plant and delivering the finished product to the plant
roots. The better you treat those beneficial critters, you're going to have healthier plants.
It's all about the soil. Back in episode seven, we talked with Giselle Schoninger of
Kellogg Garden Products about how this process works and actually how easy it is to improve your
soil and your plants. Also in episode seven, we talked about why you should spend your money on
a chipper shredder instead of a rototiller and how that rototiller could actually damage your soil.
Are your winter greens and cool season vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower starting to bolt,
they're turning bitter, maybe becoming uneatable? America's favorite retired college
horticultural professor Debbie Flower explains why that happens. But there's a very beneficial
side to all that bolting, a result that can actually reduce your garden pest problems. It's all in
our flashback episode of the week. Number seven, feed your soil, not your plants. It's from May
of 2020. Go to your favorite podcast outlet, do a search for episode seven of the Garden Basics
with Farmer Fred Podcast. Once again, it's entitled Feed Your Soil, Not Your Plants. You can also find
the podcasts 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.