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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.
♪
Proper soil moisture is necessary for healthy plant growth.
Do you know how moist your garden soil is right now?
Today, you're going to find out the easiest and best ways to determine the moisture level of your soil.
How to install a drip irrigation system on a raised garden bed.
A raised bed, by the way, has a totally different moisture pattern than your in-ground garden.
You'll learn how to pick a soil moisture meter or a soil probe,
and how your choice of fertilizers can adversely affect your irrigation efforts.
And we talk with a master gardener about how to grow zucchini or summer squash vertically.
That's a great solution for the small space gardener.
It's all in today's episode 265, Soil Irrigation Basics.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutalon 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.
It's been a wet winter and a wet spring for much of the western United States,
but the fact of the matter is, downpours, heavy rains, atmospheric rivers can happen in just about
any portion of the country. And sometimes it's followed by a bout of maybe warmer weather,
and you start feeling hot and you think, oh, my plants are hot. I should give them water.
Whoa, before you do that, let's cover some irrigation basics. What should you do,
especially after a wet winter? Farmers are tackling this problem throughout the western
United States right now. Home gardeners should be tackling it as well. How do you handle your soil
after a full wet winter and early spring? We're talking with Steve Zion, our friend,
our organic horticulture educator and longtime organic gardening specialist.
Steve, let's cover some irrigation basics here. And I know that the number one answer, of course,
is it depends because when people say, well, how long should I run my irrigation system?
Well, it depends. But I think the first step would be to check your soil moisture before you turn
on your sprinklers or your drip irrigation system. Exactly. And a lot of people, when they check
for soil moisture, they look at the surface of the soil. And after one sunny day, that surface
to the soil will look bone dry. But you go a quarter of an inch below that, in most cases,
and the soil can be either moist or even wet. And so the first thing you've got to realize that
when you're trying to determine the soil's moisture is ignore what the surface looks like.
You need to actually dig down into the soil. And there's a specialized tool. There's actually two
really, really great tools to help you basically dig into the soil, pull a column of soil out
so that you can examine 6, 8, 12, 18, 24 inches, depending upon how long your, what the tool is
called, is a soil probe. If it's a 12 inch soil probe, it's basically most often a stainless steel
or chrome tube. And about half of it on the side is open and exposed. So you push it into the
ground, you pull it out, and you will be actually be able to see and touch the soil that's in that
tube. And you'll be able to see whether that soil is moist or dry. Soil probes are nifty tools
that every gardener should have. So our soil moisture meters will get into that in a minute or two.
But with soil probes, it's shaped like a letter T. So you have a very sturdy handle to hold onto
to help you plunge it into the soil. And the reason you want to go down 8 inches, 12 inches,
that's the root zone of where your plants are growing. Because what we're trying to do here
is making sure that the root area, which is the area that absorbs the water, is functioning correctly.
Exactly. You want to know kind of the size of the plant and little tiny plants,
especially young seedlings, when you're just putting them in, the roots might go down a
couple of inches. But as those plants grow during the season, if it's an annual vegetable or something,
they can go down 12 inches, 18 inches, or in some cases, if you've got really nice loose soil,
24 or 36 inches. And trees, tree roots go down numerous feet. You know, there is very limited
research as to how far the roots go down. I like to water my large shrubs and trees using a drip
system for hours to get that water down about six feet or more. A lot of people say, well,
you're wasting water. Well, if you get the roots down that far, you don't have to water as frequently,
because you can let the top, you know, six inches or 12 inches go dry, because the feeding roots
are down below. Yeah, it's all about the roots. It's all about the soil as far as determining
where and how long you should water. And all soils are different. You've got heavy clay soils,
you have sandy soils. And for those of you who are saying, no, wait, could I push a soil probe down
12 inches in my crappy soil because of hardpan or rocks or whatever, well, there are options
available. And the old fashioned way was to basically hand dig down the root zone down eight
to 12 inches, grab a handful of the soil that was down at that level, make a ball of it in your
hand and squeeze it. If water rolled down your arm, the soil is too wet. If on the other hand,
it fell apart. As soon as you opened up your hand, it's too dry. On the other hand, if you squeeze
that ball of soil and it broke up with a little bit of effort, that is what is called field capacity
moisture, which is the ideal amount for whatever you might be growing. And what that basically means
is you've got different size pore spaces in your soil. And if you have good soil structure, if you
got a healthy soil, you have a diversity of different size pore spaces. And the large pore
spaces allow the water and the air and fertilizer and roots in biology to move through the soil
fairly effectively. What's really nice is we've got to realize that the life in the soil,
which includes our plant roots and the beneficial soil biology and worms and all the other critters
that live down there, they need air as much as they need oxygen. And so when you irrigate and if that
soil is saturated, like a lot of the soils were during these atmospheric rivers, the large pore
spaces are filled with water. But in time, when we don't have the atmospheric rivers moving through
and typically throughout the year, after you irrigate a short period of time, the water will drain by
the force of gravity out of those large pore spaces. So you have air. And that's one of the
reasons why you don't want to irrigate too frequently. If you're irrigating too frequently,
you're going to always be filling up those large pore spaces with water and depriving the life in
the soil of oxygen and air. And you will be encouraging disease organisms.
And that brings up another very good point too is after a heavy rain, don't be trumping on your
garden soil because that compacts the soil, which also removes those very necessary air pockets.
Exactly. One of you you want to avoid compaction. And one of the easiest ways to avoid compaction
is stay off the soil when it's wet. The easiest way to figure out whether it's too wet or not
is to just take a handful of soil, you know, take a hand trowel and dig up a little bit of soil,
roll it in your hand, and then drop it onto to a hard surface like a piece of concrete or a
stepping stone or something like that. And if it just goes splat and flattens like a pancake,
then it's too wet. It should when it hits the ground, it should kind of break apart a little
bit. As opposed to if it's too dry, well, it wouldn't even reach the ground probably in one piece.
Yeah, it would shatter more than crumble. Now one reason I like the soil probe is it doesn't
require batteries. There's nothing on there really that's going to break. And because you've got that
open slot on the side, you plunge that probe into the soil, give it a quarter's turn,
lift it back out, and then you can examine the soil that has been taken by that probe that you'll
see in the side. What should you be looking for? What should you be feeling for in that sample?
Well, when you're talking about irrigation moisture, and one of the nice things is, you know, is you
can pull it out. And again, you can you can roll it up in a ball and see if it squeezes and moisture
comes out. You know, you'll be able to tell it takes a little bit of time. But
in for most plants, you want that soil in that probe to be somewhat dry before you irrigate,
unless it's a plant that needs moist soil. But for most of our plants, you want that soil to dry out
a little bit in between irrigation. And that brings up the other good point of when
is the best time to use a soil probe or a soil moisture meter. And that's before you turn on the
drip irrigation system or the sprinklers. Exactly. And then, you know, a lot of people also ask,
not only, you know, when should I irrigate, but how much? And there again, there's that magic word.
It depends. Everybody's soil is different. Every and the environmental conditions are different.
And so what I typically tell people to do is run their irrigation system. Well, first,
run use the soil probe, make sure that the soil is somewhat dry and needs irrigation.
Then run your irrigation system, maybe half or maybe even a quarter as long as you normally do.
Then you turn it off, wait an hour, so that gravity will pull that water down as far as it's
going to go. And then you push in that soil probe again and pull it out. And you will actually be
able to see and feel how far down that water is gone. And if it's gone down four inches and you
know the roots of your plants are going down 12 inches, you've got water three times longer.
How many probes do you need to do on a sample size? Let's say it's, I don't know, 200 square feet.
And maybe there's a bit of a slope to it. Do you take that probe and stick it in at the top of the
hill or the bottom of the hill? Or how do you do it? Your best off is taking about 10 cores
randomly throughout the area. And it's really a good idea to pay attention to what the soil looks
like. And more importantly, take some of the soil out of the soil probe and play with it in your hand.
And you're going to want to kind of get a feel for what's called the texture of the soil,
which is the percentage of sand, silt, and clay. And sand will feel gritty,
silt will feel like flour and clay when it is moist will be slippery when it's hard,
or when it's dry, it will feel hard. Pay attention maybe to the amount of organic matter, the color,
typically the more organic matter that you have in the soil, the darker it will be. And you sometimes
will find that the soil on the top of the hill is dramatically different from the bottom of the hill.
If you're using raised beds, the soil in one raised bed might be dramatically different
from another because the soil that you brought in was brought in from two different sources,
where you find that the soils are different, they may need to be irrigated differently.
Yeah, I got a email from a listener who stumbled upon the Farmer Fred rant blog page. And most of
those little newsletters are about 13 years old. And I think in one of them, I was mentioning how
I water with drip irrigation in one of my raised beds, one of my original raised beds back in
the mid 1990s. And I pointed out that with drip irrigation on a raised bed, you need, as you
mentioned earlier, you'd need to run it for a long time. And I was talking about hours at a time.
The one thing I've learned over the years about soil and raised beds, that initial soil that you
put in there is going to drain swiftly and in a very small footprint, almost like a cylinder.
The more you change the soil by adding compost and mulch, the darker that soil becomes,
and the richer the soil becomes, and the more water holding capacity it has. And I've found over
the years, I don't have to run it for as many hours as I used to run it on a raised bed, because
you mentioned the nice rich, black, earthy tone of the soil and the wonderful smell of it. And of
course, all the worms working through it. Well, that's what I have now. And I can get away with
maybe a couple of hours of irrigation twice a week in the heat of the summer. We'll be back
after a quick break. Have you ever asked yourself, how do I eat to feel energized and not deprived?
How do I lose fat without excessive dieting or cardio? How do I build muscle? Or is it possible
to get in shape while enjoying my lifestyle? I'm Philip, host of the Wits and Wades podcast,
and each week we examine the science, interview the experts, and give you specific actions to
perform better in the gym at work and in life. Let's cut through the noise of the fitness industry
and achieve our health and fitness goals together. Just click the link in the show notes or search
for Wits and Wades in your favorite podcast app. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times it always amazes me
when I read, you know, folks comments in various blogs and on Facebook groups, where people say that
drip irrigation doesn't work for vegetables or it doesn't work for trees. And because the water
doesn't get down deep enough, well, the only reason the water doesn't get down deep enough is you
don't leave it on long enough. Well, that and they're putting it in the wrong place. So many people
will keep a drip irrigation emitter right next to the trunk. And that's fine when you plant it.
But as that plant grows, it's sending roots out. And by putting your driplines in a concentric
circle extending outward from the plant, you're encouraging the roots to go even more outward.
So as your plants grow, you need to add on to that drip irrigation system. And as the as the tree
grows, you have to realize, and this is true with most plants, as the plant grows,
there's what's called the drip line and just assume the foliage is like an umbrella. And then it rains
and the water that falls on that umbrella, when it hits the ground is called the drip line. And a
lot of people think that the that's where the end of the roots are, and that's maybe where you
should be irrigating and fertilizing. And that actually is in the middle of the root zone. The
root zone actually extends two to three times beyond that. And so we need to be irrigating and
fertilizing and putting compost and worm castings and mulch two to three times beyond
those outermost branches. I've discovered two with drip irrigation lines, the parallel lines
that run the length of say a four foot by eight foot bed. I remember on my first raised beds,
I had three lines running, not realizing that it would be a very narrow cylinder of water emitting
from each emitter. And finally dawned on me after much experimentation that you need more parallel
lines. So now in raised beds, I will usually run in a four foot bed, I will run five parallel
lines, the length of the bed. So there's what maybe eight nine inches, maybe a little bit more
than nine inches apart from each line. But the footprint of the water is going to be wider because
the soil has improved over the years. So you've got that overlapping effect that guarantees that
all portions of the raised bed are going to get water. It's kind of like soil texture. Your soil
texture determines how when you're when you're applying like irrigation from a drip source,
like a drip emitter, where will that water go when that water hits the soil? In a clay soil,
it has primarily smaller pores, and the water actually gets sucked into and through the soil.
And not only will it get sucked down, but it'll get sucked out. And so when you're talking about
your raised bed being improving and quality, it's you know, you're getting more diversity in the
pore spaces, and it will allow the water to move laterally as well as just down.
Typically, your sandy soils, if you're actually out in the garden, that water is going to,
you know, primarily go straight down from your drip emitters. If you're using drip emitters on a
clay soil, that's going to spread out pretty far. And so what I generally recommend is if you're
like doing a reticle garden and or starting to use drip system, put a line out there.
Run it for a couple of hours, and then wait an hour and see where that water is going and how far
out from this laterally is that water traveling. And in the surface, just by looking at it,
it's going to look like it's not moving sideways very far at all. Again, you've got to use that soil
probe and go down several inches to see whether it's spreading out and how far it's spreading out.
A narrow water cylinder in very sandy soil might only be a few inches wide, maybe seven, eight,
maybe nine inches wide for heavy clay soil. It could be 18 to 20 inches for a low-me soil.
It's somewhere in between that. Exactly.
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Let's move on to another thing that people don't consider if they have to live through an
atmospheric river. It's not only the timing of when you irrigate your soil. It's also a matter of
checking the soil chemistry because major rain events can also leach soil issues away that
you didn't want to begin with, like salinity. If you're in the habit of fertilizing, well,
I'll let you come busy because you have much more fun talking about salinity and fertilizers.
If you're using a synthetic fertilizer, they're really, really high in salts. That is deadly to
the soil biology. So when you're using your synthetic fertilizers, it's really harmful to the soil
biology. But one of the things where you can get rid of those salts is by heavily irrigating.
And so if you're using the synthetic fertilizers and then we have an atmospheric river, it will
leach those salts down through the soil profile. For your smaller plants, it will get it out of the
root cell. However, for your trees, it may be moving those salts into the root depths of where
your tree roots are in causing problems. You've got to realize that a lot of the nutrients and salts
move up and down through the soil, primarily down, actually, with your irrigation. They'll move up
somewhat with the soil biology. As the soil biology moves up and down, in particular, the worms.
But the nutrients that we have in the surface of the soil before these atmospheric rivers,
in addition to the salt, probably have leached down, probably out of the, to a large extent,
out of the root zone for a lot of our vegetables, especially the smaller rooting vegetables.
And so we're going to have to supplement with more fertilizer. And as always, I always recommend
using only organic fertilizers so that you're not putting down the synthetic fertilizers that
are high in salts that are absolutely deadly to the beneficial soil biology that works really well
cooperate in cooperation with the roots to nourish the roots.
Now, I should be pointed out, though, that organic fertilizers do have salt in them as well,
but certainly not as much. That's the big difference. Yeah, all fertilizers contain salts,
but the organic fertilizers are very comparatively speaking, very, very low in salts. And they're
also less water soluble. They're less likely, for the most part, to leach down through the soil.
And the organic fertilizers are also in a form that will be able to be digestible by the soil
biology, and they will hold on to those nutrients and slowly, over time, make them available to
the plant roots. The water is soluble for the lysers, the synthetic materials. In many cases,
especially if you've got a clay soil, you put the fertilizer down, you irrigate it. And because
you've already killed the soil biology, your soil has been compacted because there's no soil biology
to keep it aerated. And a lot of the water runs off. And with the water-soluble synthetic fertilizers,
the fertilizer runs off to. In many cases, it goes across the sidewalk, into the gutter,
and directly into our creaks and streams. That is not much of a problem with your organic
fertilizers. They will move into the ground because they're not as water-soluble. They're
less likely to travel with the water, even if you have run off. And the soil biology will
convert them into forms that the plants can use. So again, major rain events can alter your soil
chemistry theoretically for the good, but it also may leach away some necessary components,
some elements that you may need. And the only way you know for sure is to get a soil test done.
Taking a soil sample and sending it off to a firm to get analyzed takes a little bit of work on
your part. And I know you've covered this in the past in the many classes you teach about organic
gardening. How do you take a soil sample to get it analyzed? Absolutely critical that you sample
it correctly. And what's really sad is a lot of the soil testing services don't explain how to
collect the soil. You need to use a stainless steel or chrome tool. The soil probe is really
your best bet and put it into a sterile and put the soil into a sterile container. I did soil
testing for years and I remember going out and collecting soil samples and you typically want to
take at least 10 cores from the area that you want sampled so that it's a representative sample.
If when you're taking the cores and you find well this one core, this one little area, the soil is
dramatically different from the rest of the soil, don't include that. Leave that separate and know
that you're going to have to manage that area a little differently. You want the soil that you're
collecting to be all roughly the same and representative of each other. And you need to use this chrome
or stainless steel tool because if you touch it with your hands for example, the oils in your hands
will get off into the soil. And when you're talking some of the trace minerals, for example,
three parts per million can be a deficiency, eight parts per million can be a toxicity. So just a
little tiny tiny bit of contamination can throw those values off and you won't know that those
values are often then you will be fertilizing inappropriately. Typically you also want to,
after you've collected the 10 soil cores, you want to basically put it out in the sun and air dry it
or you can also put it in your oven, crack the door open and turn your oven on as low as it will go
and you want to dry that soil. The reason why you want to dry the soil is because the soil biology
will change the properties of the soil in shipment. Basically sterilize the soil without using any
chemicals to stop any soil biology from interacting with the soil. So it is a representative sample as
to what it was like in the ground. You ship it off and wait for the results. And you should try and
find a soil testing service that has experience with making organic recommendations. And that's
where it's really hard to find. We should warn people that when you drive soil in an oven,
it's going to stink up the house. So do it when nobody's home. Yeah, or let it or do it down.
It's when you're home. Well, yeah, they're right. Yeah. But but yeah, yes, when you when you heat
the soil in the oven, there will be a fragrance emanating from that oven. And it may not be pleasant.
I personally, I don't think it's horrible, but it's not real pleasant. And you want to use a
container. I like the what's it called? Pyrex or Corningware works really well.
How deep should the soil cores be taken when you're taking soil samples?
Ideally, they're the root depth of the plants that where you're going to be growing there.
Obviously, when you're talking trees, you're not going to take a core down, you know, four,
five, six, 12 feet for most of your plants. I would take at least eight to 12 inches.
And you bring up a very good point to the fact that the sample should be taken in an area where
the plants are of the same type, maybe your vegetable garden for one test. Do 10 samples there. If you
have an orchard, do 10 samples from the orchard. If you have a forest, 10 samples from that.
Yeah, I mean, if you've been managing the soil differently, don't include the two samples that
where the soil has been sampled differently in the same soil sample. You've got you want to collect
soil samples from an area where you've been managing it the same. So if you've been,
you know, if you've got a landscape with your normal garden soil and you've got raised beds
where you're growing the vegetables, you've got to sample those separately because the soils are
dramatically different. You mentioned trying to find a company that does organic soil analysis.
And you're right, that is difficult to find. I think peaceful valley farm supply still does that.
Do you know if they still do? Last I knew they did not, which was really disappointing.
And they used to have a booklet available that helped you, if you use the same lab that they used,
you could basically transfer the information from your soil test and get an organic recommendation
just by, you know, the tips that they provide. Last I knew that is that booklet is no longer
available, which I think is really sad. And some of these tests, because many of them are doing
agricultural samples, some of these tests can be very expensive. Some of the more reasonably
priced soil analysis are done at the university level. I know three universities that do soil tests
for around $20, you get a fairly good report afterwards, as far as what's missing and what it
needs, not to the thoroughness that Steve Zion's soil test would come back with that you used to
do many years ago. The UMass Amherst Colorado State University and Texas A&M all do soil tests for
anybody living anywhere in the United States. I'll have links to those three soil testing firms
at those universities in today's show notes. There's a problem with using those university
soil tests, because they're familiar with the soils back in their area. And their soils are
dramatically different than ours. And so when they get a certain result in a soil test, you know,
even though we might get the same exact results, the recommendation is going to be dramatically,
can be dramatically different. You'll get their values, but the recommendations
might not be appropriate. But at least you'd get the values.
Yes. And those ag tests can easily run over $100 and these tests from UMass, Colorado State,
and Texas A&M are, like I say, priced around $20. I'd rather see people get an inexpensive test
done than no test done at all. Yeah, yes, exactly. All right. So you get the soil test back and it
says, oh, your pH is a little low or your soil needs nitrogen. Well, duh, who soil doesn't need
nitrogen. And I may mention the percentages of phosphorus and potassium that would be ideal for
your soil, things like that. What's a gardener to do? Well, start with an organic fertilizer.
Try and find new fertilizers that have, you can, in many cases, nurseries sell organic fertilizers
that have nitrogen, phosphorus, potash, maybe some calcium, maybe a little bit of sulfur, maybe a
little bit of one or two other things. But when we're talking about soils that have been receiving
a lot of moisture and the soils are really, really wet and they're stressed. The plants are stressed
that are growing in them. And so when the plants are stressed, they are incapable or less capable
of absorbing nutrients. And so then in addition to being stressed from the moist soils, now they're
being stressed due to a lack of nutrition. And so one of the things you can do is you can take
some liquid fertilizers and again using only organic materials and mix them into a spray and
spray it on the leaves and spray it even on the trunks of the plants. It's much more effective on
the leaves, try and get the tops and the undersides, the leaves. And it's called foliar feeding.
And you can put it in one of those hose end sprayers. It works pretty well. Ideally, I think
the, if you can cover pretty much everything, or most of the things that the plants need
by using like a liquid fish and a liquid seaweed. The fish provides the nitrogen,
phosphorus and potash. And the seaweed provides 55 trace minerals, growth hormones. And it's the
growth hormones that is particularly important right now when your soil has been really, really wet,
because they're stressed. And if they've really been without oxygen, they might be rotting a little
bit. And so you want to encourage them with natural growth hormones to encourage new root growth.
And the seaweed, both applied as a foliar fertilized, but more importantly, in this case,
watering it into the ground can be very, very helpful in getting those roots
reestablished. In addition to your standard organic fertilizers for tomatoes or citrus or
whatever, there are other things that contain phosphorus or calcium. One nice thing that contains
both of those is rock phosphate. And it's really good a lot of people get blossom end rot.
And if your soil test comes back that you need calcium, then the rock phosphate will
provide you that calcium that you need. So, you know, that soil test can also tell you
various other things that you might need. For example, a good organic source of potassium
is green sand. And not all nurseries sell that, but some of your organic suppliers and some of your
better nurseries that carry a lot of organic fertilizers and soil conditioners will have
green sand as well. Let's talk a little bit about moisture meters that you can find at the garden
center, the hardware store. Some of these are rather inexpensive and they may not last very long.
Some are very, very good. If you go on to Amazon or one of those sites that sells soil moisture
meters, you will find a wide array in a wide variety of prices. I would suggest buying maybe two or three
and seeing how they compare with each other as far as readings go.
Yeah, the more expensive ones are much more reliable. I found that the less expensive ones,
they don't really accurately tell you what the soil moisture is for very long. But I also suggest
to tell people occasionally put the soil probe in a glass of water or put it in in soil that you know
to be very, very moist and see if it shows that it's moist. Put it in the soil that you know is
bone dry and doesn't say that it's bone dry. Check them, you know, if you're going to use a soil
moisture meter, check to make sure that it's giving you appropriate results, findings.
I think everybody behind their garage or garden, they have a pot of soil that hasn't been used in
quite a while. That's probably bone dry. And so you can test it out in that. We learned a lot today,
so don't let a lot of rain worry you too much. But again, check your soil before you turn on the
sprinklers of the drip irrigation system or pull the hose out and start watering just because it's
a hot day doesn't mean your roots are hot and sweaty. It's just you. Check it out first.
Steve Zion, thanks so much. It's been fun as always for it. You could amend it.
I did.
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better think again because Dave Wilson nursery wants to show you how to grow great tasting fruits
like peaches, apples, blue oughts and nut trees. Plus they have potted fruits such as blueberries,
blackberries, raspberries, boys and berries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, olives and pomegranates.
These are all plants that you can grow in small areas. You can even grow many of them in containers
on patios as well. It's called backyard orchard culture and you can get step by step information
via the Dave Wilson YouTube videos. So where do you find those? Well, just go to 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. With the arrival of warmer weather, there are some blood
thirsty pests that are becoming active in your yard and garden. In today's Beyond the Garden
Basics newsletter and podcast, we talk with a master gardener and a veterinarian about controlling
fleas and ticks on your pet in your garden and in the house. Plus they may not be out for blood,
but snails and slugs are munching away at your tender young plants. We have tips for choosing the
right snail and slug bait so that your dog or small child doesn't end up in the emergency room.
The key is choosing the right active ingredients. For current newsletter subscribers, look for the
issue entitled flea and tick control tips. If you're already a subscriber, it's probably in your
email right now waiting for you 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 sub stack. And you can sign up
at the newsletter link at our homepage garden basics dot net.
All we're getting questions based on a recent episode of the Garden Basics podcast. It was in
the episode about the top 10 vegetables. Specifically, I think it was number six, which was summer squash.
And we were talking at the time with master gardener, Gail Pothower about it. She mentioned
one of her favorite squashes and how she grows it on a pallet. And the course, the questions come in.
How do you grow a squash on a pallet? How do you do it? Hey, Gail Pothower is here. We're here at
the pharaoh's horticulture center on a drizzly May day in California. Go figure. Gail, how do you
grow a squash on a pallet? Well, first off, the variety has to be a bush variety, not one that
would trail 10, 12 feet. So Butterbelly that I grew last year was a bush summer squash. I cut the
pallet and I put it on the ground at an angle, kind of a 45 degree angle or so. And then I used two
steel tea steaks on the backside to hold them in place. So I wouldn't fall over and I cable tied it.
And then I planted my plant at the base of the pallet and it just grew up it. And there's no
twining or anything. It just kind of laid on the pallet as and grew up it. So it might have been a
little, little steeper incline than a 45 degree. But anyway, it's just grew right up it. It was great.
So it didn't sneak through the back through the spaces on it? No, I had no issue with that at all.
And the say Butterbelly that I grew wasn't a vining variety. So it's pretty bushy. Yeah,
grew. I'm gonna do it again this year. Well, it certainly makes it easier for harvesting.
You can see the fruit a lot easier. Absolutely. And doesn't have a major footprint, you know,
because summer squash can take up quite a bit of real estate in your bed. And so this year,
I'm already thinking, what am I going to plant on the backside? Because now I have some open space.
But yeah, work great. Just be sure that you prop up the pallet with something that's pretty sturdy.
So I use steel tea steaks because the pallet itself is pretty heavy. And then when you get the
foliage, you can add some weight to it. But it worked great. There you go. That's how you vertically
grow a summer squash gale pot tower. Thank you. You're welcome.
Is there a way to save water when irrigating fruit trees? In today's flashback episode number
one 16, Tom Spellman of Dave Wilson nursery answers with an emphatic yes, you can cut your water
use on fruit trees by more than half by following his backyard orchard culture techniques. He tells
us how also America's favorite retired college horticulture professor Debbie Flower has tips for
growing successful citrus trees in containers. Give a listen to one of our most listened to
episodes. It's the flashback episode of the week number one 16. It's called Lesswater for fruit
trees and growing citrus in containers. It's from July of 2021. So go to your favorite podcast
outlet and do a search for episode one 16. You can also find this week's flashback 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.