Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long-lasting fabric plant container.
It's made in the USA.
Visit smartpots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount that smartpots.com slash Fred.
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.
Despite the triple-digit temperatures of late August and early September,
this is the time to be planning your fall garden, and that includes starting the seeds of some
of the healthiest, most nutritious vegetables that you can grow.
America's favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower,
answers the fall garden questions of a college student who wants to try to grow a cool season
garden for the first time.
And Nurse Reowner Dunn sure talks about the best varieties of vegetables to try
in your fall and winter garden.
It's all in episode 279 Fall Garden Basics.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Labudalon jungle
in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast,
and we're brought to you today by Smart Pots, Dave Wilson Nursery,
and heirloom roses.
Let's go.
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics podcast,
Farmer Fred here.
Debbie Flowers here, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor,
you are here.
I am here.
Okay, yes.
Let's answer some questions.
Marina writes in, actually she texted us from Santa Cruz, California, along the coast.
Santa Cruz is a wonderful beachfront city with a great old wooden roller coaster.
But it is an area of the coast that has many climates because the ocean front is maybe one
mile two miles wide before it starts to go uphill immediately.
Right, very many different micro climates as a result.
And this will all make sense to you when I tell you what Marina is asking.
She says, this fall I will be moving into a small apartment with some college friends
and plan to start my very first food garden to provide fresh produce for the four of us.
I got some free seeds from my University of California, Santa Cruz Life Lab Garden Internship,
including bok choy, lettuce, spinach, arugula, and radishes.
I also got two onion varieties, parsley, lark spur, and stock to plant for the spring.
I will only be living in the apartment for one year.
So I'm looking for advice on small area, temporary first time gardening strategies,
including soil and containers, pest control, watering, and what I should and should not plant.
Thank you.
Well, get us an estimate.
Oh, not much at all there.
Well, Marina, you know, what I really like the fact is it's not fall yet.
And she's already thinking about fall planting as a good gardener should.
Yes, she's planting ahead.
That's wonderful.
Yeah, and especially it doesn't make sense at all that in the heat of the summer,
you actually could be starting your fall garden.
Yes, you could.
Well, in a lot of situations, it might be starting seeds indoors.
The nurseries don't realize it's fall till about September or so,
and then they'll start getting in the cool season plants.
Right.
But for our seeds are out there already.
Yeah, right.
For gardeners who like to try different varieties,
and especially in the world of Chinese cabbages, the bok choy,
there are just so many varieties.
Yes, there are.
Worth trying.
So you're off to a good start there, Marina,
by doing some planting.
I think at the Garden Basics podcast,
you could probably find some episodes that we've talked about in the past
that you would find helpful.
I know episode number 12 on your first garden could be helpful.
Also, since this is a temporary garden, I imagine you'll be doing it in containers.
I didn't see that, though, in your past.
She's looking for advice, including soil and containers.
Okay.
All right.
So we don't know.
It might be a mix of a small plot there at the apartment complex.
Yes, could be.
And and containers.
So there's that.
We do have a good episode that we did on containers.
Episode 256 called a container gardening
that you may want to check out.
I like her selection of easy to grow crops
that she has.
She has a lot of root crops and greens.
And those are easy to grow.
Right.
And she has them separated pretty much
as they should be for the seasons.
The bok choy, lettuce, spinach,
arugula, radishes,
onion from seed.
You've done that before.
Start in fall.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Parsley,
Larkspur,
stock stock is a flower as is Larkspur.
We'll definitely do well.
I would plant them now for the fall.
Also, but they could be a spring crop as well.
And with some crops,
you do get them started in the fall.
The harvest may not be till.
Oh, I don't know.
For me, it was today with onions
that I planted last October.
And you planted them from seed.
And I planted them from seed.
So it does take a while.
Yes, some things do.
So she's going to be there a year.
She should be able to get a crop out of those onions.
Yeah.
But the first thing I thought it was location
where should she grow these
edibles and flowers?
I have been to,
you've seen many gardens that were started by
first-time gardeners and they were in full shade.
And that's not going to work for these crops.
So they need to be in a place that gets
six to eight hours of full sun,
so unobstructed sun.
No shade from a tree above or from the house
or anything like that.
But only six to eight hours out of the 24
that we call one day.
My concern with it being Santa Cruz
would be marine influence
where your light is limited.
Could be, yes, and running fog.
Yes, and that will,
so if you have lots of fog,
you need to double those hours.
If it were foggy all day long,
you would want them in a sunny place,
a sunny as you can get for 12 to 16 hours.
So that's, now we should point out,
that's really only for certain crops.
A lot of the greens that she suggested
could be grown in the shade.
True, they can take, they can produce with less sun.
Actually, everything, the bok choy, lettuce, spinach,
arugula, radishes, everything except the flowers.
The flowers, they could take their cool season flower
so they can take some, the shorter end,
the six hour end of that sun exposure.
Yeah, generally root crops aren't too picky.
Right.
About that as well.
So being that she was an intern at UC Santa Cruz
the gardening inch.
Yes, she has a good start.
She knows some things.
Yeah, so that's a good thing.
So besides looking at the sun conditions,
the other couple of other things I like to think about
when I'm locating a garden is, is it in your water?
Because you're going to have to water these.
Now, not as much as we maybe have to in the valley here,
because Santa Cruz is a foggy or place,
but she's still going to need to water them.
And some place where you can see them
on a regular basis from inside the house.
So that you remember, oh yeah, look, they're wilting.
I better get out there and water.
And in an apartment house, it might be on your way
from the car to the apartment.
If you pass it by and reminds you to get out there and do something.
And do something or it might be on a deck or a patio.
And if you are in container,
your least expensive source of potting soil
might be the bag soil.
I wouldn't use soil from the parking lot.
Correct.
Right. And a container you want to use
what's called soilless mix.
Right.
And you can make your own.
And that might be required too many inputs
for somebody who's going to move quickly,
because you're going to need a big bag of several things.
But if you make your own, it's a one-to-one-to-one,
which means one part of an organic component,
which would be peat moss or coir or compost,
then one part of a rock component,
pearlite or pumice or sand.
And then one part of vermiculite.
Vermiculite's kind of a unique product.
For me, I like to definitely include some vermiculite.
And you mix them together and that's your media.
Then you'll need some nutrition.
And that's not left over beer, I would think.
That sounds like it's a college apartment house.
Yeah, or close to it.
Yeah.
Yeah, no beer, fertilizer.
If you're using peat moss,
you'll have to add a little bit of lime.
Garden lime to the oyster shell lime is a one type
to the mix to adjust your pH.
But everything, once they have germinated from seed,
they don't need it to germinate.
But once they're growing, they will need nutrition.
They will need fertilizer.
Being Santa Cruz is a fairly organic place.
Right.
I would think manure might be readily available.
But I would be very cautious about your source of that manure.
And what those animals were treated with.
Right. Were you thinking fresh manure?
I don't know why I was thinking.
Not bad.
I was thinking there may be a petting zoo on the campus.
Santa Cruz or something along those lines.
I don't think they have a petting zoo.
But you never know.
Right.
But cattle, chickens, goats,
all have, that would be something you'd have to research
because their horses too.
They'll have different, their manure all has different qualities to it.
And yes, you need to know what they've been eating
because what they've been eating comes out in the poop.
And if they've been eating stuff that has been treated with herbicides,
that can also come out in the poop and can ruin your garden.
Yes, especially if it's fresh manure.
Yes.
And I would say that if you have availability to manure,
probably the best place to put it would be in a hot compost bin.
And yes, and leave it for a while till the smell goes away.
And it has broken down.
So, Marina, if you wanted to, you could go up your parking space
there at the apartment house and convert it to a three bin composting system.
Oh, there you go.
I thought you were going to say you could have the manure delivered there.
I had that done in my driveway when I first had a house in Portland, Oregon.
And the guy who came, it was from a dairy farm.
I didn't want to, I wasn't work.
So I wasn't home.
He didn't want to drop it off because apparently that's a joke people do.
Is order manure for someone else's house.
But he did.
Eventually, my neighbor convinced him I was the type of person who would want this.
Yes.
Yes.
You know, one nice thing, though, if you had the space there to build a raised bed,
would be the ease with which you could attach a translucent top.
Made a glass polyethylene or fiberglass and have a cold frame.
Just in case it gets a little too cold for whatever you might be growing in the winter time.
Yes.
You could trap some heat.
You know, you could do it with containers.
You would have to group them together and then use a heat mat, a heat blanket, which is
typically sold here.
I'm thinking of Santa Cruz being so close to the ocean.
I don't know how readily available that would be, but it certainly would be available male order.
Yeah.
And when you use a heat blanket and it's not that heavy,
not as heavy as I think of blankets being.
It's something different.
You need to spread it all over the plants and all the way to the ground
because you're trapping the heat that's coming out of the ground.
Now, if this is a second story apartment and you're on a deck,
it's not going to be as helpful.
We'll be back after a quick break.
Hey, quick question for you.
Are you someone who wants to be fit, healthy and happy?
And what if I told you you could get your dream body by simply just listening to a podcast?
I'm Josh and I'm KG and we're the host of the fit, healthy and happy podcasts.
Listen, we get it.
Fitness isn't easy, carbs, no carbs.
Just stop. Okay, it doesn't have to be that complicated.
And that's why we made this podcast.
We get straight to the facts so you can become your best you.
So the way to check us out is click the link in the show notes
or search fit, healthy and happy podcasts on any of the major podcast platforms.
We'll see you soon.
When you say heat blanket, can I say frostcloth?
Yes, you can.
Okay, would it be the same thing?
Yes, right.
So and frostcloths come in different weight.
They do.
And I wouldn't get the lightest,
but maybe one of the thicknesses that's in between that and the thickest one
for most, you know, mild areas that would be sufficient.
You're just looking for two to three degrees of protection.
Right, that doesn't take much.
And it's, you may not need, in fact, if they are in containers,
you could probably bring them inside if you had to.
Right, or closer to the house anyway,
that gives them less exposure to the coldness outside.
All right, fertilizers.
Yes, for a container, you would have to,
because if you're watering it,
you're also leaching out nutrients.
Right.
So your containers are going to have holes in the bottom.
They have to have drainage.
Oh, yeah.
And the water's going to go through and out.
And when you plant into the container,
you want some what's called headroom,
which means that the media does not come all the way to the top of the container.
You have half inch inch between the top of the media
and the top of the container.
So that when you water, you water thoroughly,
meaning you fill up that whole headroom,
that space between the media and the top of the container,
completely, and then let it go through.
And you do that maybe again,
so that you're getting some water out of,
it's called the leaching fraction,
some water out of the bottom of the container.
And that, yes, it will contain nutrients
that the plant has not used.
And that's a good thing because of those unused nutrients
built up in the container.
It raises the media's pH or alkalinity
and it can limit the growth of the plant.
As far as fertilizers go to replenish the plants,
I like single digit fertilizers.
By that, I mean those three numbers you see
on the front of the box of the bag or the bottle
are single digits.
You're nitrogen phosphorus potassium content
like a 5-1-1,
which is typical efficient motion
or a triple four or something along those lines.
You would have to do it probably more regularly
than you would if it was planted in the ground.
I have this nine memory in the back of my head
of creating a problem in an apartment thousands of years ago
where I was watering plants
on the little outside deck of my second story apartment.
And I didn't think twice about where the water was going.
And when the water goes down,
well, it's going to leave the pot
and then where it's going to go.
Oh, it's going to stick around the wood of that second deck,
which eventually rotted.
Right.
So you might have to get pretty creative
when it comes to thinking about
how are you going to drain the water away?
Right.
Well, and how are you going to protect
the surfaces of something you don't own?
I like to have all my containers on a rolling platform.
They sell smaller ones at the garden center.
They're not cheap.
You can make your own out of wood.
Skateboards.
Skateboards, that would work.
Yeah, I like to have wheels on it
so I can move the plant around easily.
But I also like that it lifts.
The wheels also lift the container
and the platform that is the lift off of the deck
or whatever it is.
So air can get underneath
and that will help it dry out
and prevent this rotting you're talking about.
And then on top of that,
I like to have a dish to collect the water
because maybe my neighbor below
is sitting on their deck
and I'm watering and down comes this water.
And then so it could be a cash pot
with no a pretty pot
that you put around the outside of the container
that maybe doesn't have drain holes
and allows whatever comes out the bottom to collect.
But then you have to empty that water
out of that where it's collected
in the container under your grow pot.
And turkey basters work well for that.
Yeah, that's a good idea too.
But you just can't take that tray of water
that's drain there and throw it off your balcony.
Unless you really have a strong throw
and can get it very far away from any humans
or other structures or vehicles nearby.
Marina was a little concerned too
about pest problems.
She wanted some tips for pest control.
Fortunately for the fallen winter garden,
it's not as bad as it would be
if it was the spring and the summer.
You'll probably get aphids.
Right, that's where your discussion
of a single digit fertilizer comes in.
If you use too strong nitrogen,
meaning that that number is not just a single digit
or you apply that single digit fertilizer,
it's the nitrogen is the first number
in those three that are on a fertilizer bag.
If you apply it too often,
you get lots of green growth,
but it's young and thin and it is aphid candy.
And you get so many aphids on it.
In a container garden,
you could probably get away
with just removing them by hand.
Or a hard stream of water.
A hard stream of water if you have access to a hose
and it's not going to make everybody all wet.
Exactly, and there's that.
You have to be kind of careful when that goes.
But I was thinking in terms of building
the good bug hotel along with the vegetable garden too
and by putting in plants that attract beneficials.
Yes.
And so I like the idea that she had like
Luxper and stock in there,
but I would add some other winter bloomers
that also attract beneficial winter bloomers.
And of course, now we're in Santa Cruz.
You know what blooms in the winter time in Santa Cruz
are Australian plants.
They have a wonderful in their botanical garden there.
They have a beautiful Australian section
in there a long time,
which is resplendent in December and January.
Oh wow.
But for annual flowers, probably calendulas,
thinking of sort of flat,
daisy-like flowers that might attract more of the good guys
that you want.
Sweet elism.
Sweet elism, that's easy.
Yeah, that grows your round.
Yeah, it grows your round.
And it's attractive to the beneficials that they need
besides eating the aphid, that's their protein meal.
They need some sugar.
And so they need to go to a flower
that's going to give them some of its sap,
of its nectar.
And that's what they get through the flower.
I like that idea because sweet elism is a plant
that you could ring if it's a big enough pot.
You could ring the pot.
It could include elism and have whatever plant you'd have grow.
So the size of the pot is going to be important.
It's something that you want to be able to move physically,
but you don't want it to be too small.
If it's too small, then the plant will be limited
and it will become a very difficult plant to manage
because the roots will quickly fill it up
and you're going to have to water all the time
and it's going to get crowded and it's going to suffer.
I like what we call 15s.
A 15 is 18 inches tall and wide, approximately.
They're black and that's a problem.
But other things would be like half-wine barrels,
but you do have to drill holes in the bottom.
Benefit of those though is they have nice bottoms
and you can just screw the wheels into the bottom.
If they're big enough wheels.
If they're big enough wheels.
Yeah, that's true.
I would suggest if you're using a half barrel,
use a furniture dolly.
Yes, you said that once before, that's a great idea.
Well, yes, and I'm told everybody wives.
I won't go through that again.
There's a lot of winter bloomers that can be planted
in Santa Cruz.
If you go to your local nursery or even a big box store,
you're going to see a fine selection
of winter blooming annuals.
But again, they're probably not going to get them in stock
until September or October.
And so that's where you can buy seed.
You're right.
And do it that way.
The sweetleism is very easy from seed.
It comes in colors.
And so you have the big pot.
You have maybe a crop of chard in it.
I don't think she mentioned chard, but that's a nice,
also a nice green to grow in the winter.
And around the edges you have, or it's the plant, the chard.
You have some sweetleism.
If this is all in containers,
you could safely plant mint in a few pots
too to attract beneficials.
And it's not going to get out of control.
But don't plant mint with other things.
Mint will take over.
But yeah, I like that idea of sweetleism.
I think that's a fine entry for the mild climate
good bug hotel.
And it's not such a problem.
Temperature in the container is not such a problem
in Santa Cruz in the winter.
But if she's starting now, let's say, or in the next month,
those black grow pots could heat up tremendously.
And so that causes the media to become very hot.
Temperatures of 140 degrees in a half an hour
have been recorded.
And that means you've got dead roots
wherever that part of the pot is being hit by sun.
So you need to prevent that.
And to prevent that media from heating up,
you can do a bunch of basic things.
You can wrap it in that frost cloth
we were talking about if you have any leftover.
Which is also good for pest control.
Yes.
By keeping them from landing in the first place.
Right, they can't get to the plant.
And some close pins or tape it around the pot.
You can put aluminum foil on the sunny side of the pot.
And it will reflect the sun off.
You can get some spray paint.
And I've done this with students
and just clean the pot off with a nice rag
and then spray that side that's going to be facing the sun
or spray the whole thing so you have options.
And that reflects enough light
that it doesn't allow the roots to get that hot.
Yeah, favorite colors.
We used light colors.
But I got silver and gold and white and pink and yellow
and let them do whatever they wanted on their pot.
OK.
Did it bring down the, since you were teaching a class,
there had to be soil thermometers involved in this?
No, there weren't, unfortunately.
Yeah, that would have been a good check.
But nothing burned.
OK, all right.
That's good.
I think really the big question, though,
is Marina, are your food habits the same as the people
you're living with?
Will it be their food habits as well?
In other words, you want to plant food crops
that everybody's going to enjoy.
Right, that you're actually going to eat.
Yeah, you don't want to waste them.
Unless you could have a worm bin, I guess, inside.
You could feed them the leftovers, that too.
But Marina's off to a good start here.
And I think she will be successful.
I think so, too.
Just don't do too much too fast.
All right, Marina, thanks for writing in.
Debbie, thanks for your help.
Oh, I'm pleased to have helped, Fred.
Looking for a hard-to-find rose plant,
looking for a rose that's grown on its own vigorous root
system.
And that ensures you're going to get a healthier plant.
You want to avoid the problems that
might come with grafted roses from the big box store.
heirloom roses has that rose for you.
They carry over 900 rose varieties.
And as a special offer for our listeners,
heirloom roses is offering 20% off all roses
when you use the checkout code, Fred20.
Use this code at checkout now through October 31, 2023.
It's time to experience growing roses
the way nature intended on their own roots.
Visit heirloom roses to find your next rose today.
And be sure to take advantage of that 20% off at checkout
with the code Fred20.
That's Fred20.
It's heirloom roses.com.
If you have a Japanese maple tree,
you just might notice that some of the leaves
may be looking rather brown and crinkled right now.
Well, welcome to late summer when the onslaught of heat
might be causing those leaves of your Japanese maple tree
to suffer a little bit.
This week's Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter
and podcast is all about summertime care
of Japanese maple trees,
along with information about those varieties
that do best in the sun and the heat.
It's the Japanese maples versus summer heat edition
of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter.
If you're a subscriber, it's probably in your email
waiting for you right now.
Or you can start a subscription.
It's free.
Find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter
and podcast.
It's in today's show notes.
Or you can find it on the sub-stack app.
Or you can sign up at the newsletter link
at our homepage gardenbasics.net.
It's cool season vegetable time for much of the country.
That would be USDA zones nine, eight, seven, and six.
If you feel real, real lucky.
But let's just concentrate on the warmer areas.
Let's say south of the Mason Dixon line,
along with most of the west coast
and getting into Arizona and probably parts of Texas
and Florida, of course.
So let's talk to somebody who's very familiar
with cool season vegetables.
Nursery owner Don Shore owns Redwood Bar Nursery in Davis.
And Don, it's cool season vegetable time.
There's a lot to choose from.
And I hope people don't give up
after their summer garden.
Maybe they're already tired of tomatoes and squash.
They've already started ripping it out.
You can put in crops that will do well
in the cooler weather ahead.
It's a funny time of year here
because our summer vegetables are still going along strong.
But it's a good time to get started
on broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts.
A lot of those things that we grow and harvest
in the cool season, but they need a good lead in.
Well, the first thing people have to do
is either plant from seed or pick out the plants.
And one of the easier things to do
is to pick out the plants.
Go to your favorite local independent nursery.
Your local independent nursery
is always a good place to shop for plants
because they're going to carry the varieties
that are known to do well in your particular area.
And for instance, here in Northern California Don,
what would you have in stock now
in the way of cool season vegetables
for people in Northern California?
We've just started bringing in broccoli, cauliflower,
romanesco, the different types of cabbage,
napa cabbage, regular headed cabbages.
And we have the very first of the leafy greens,
lettuce, spinach, and we always have Swiss chard.
There's things you can plant now
all the way through November, here in our area.
And many of those are planted again
in late winter, early spring,
depending on where you're listening.
But right now, end of August, early September
is really the beginning of the planning season
for a lot of these things.
For most of the zones you talked about.
And for those who may be wondering,
what the heck is romanesco?
Well, that's a little controversial,
but it's usually described as a type of cauliflower.
But to me, it looks more like broccoli.
And it's a fascinating looking for everyone
to grow once.
It makes a huge plant two to three feet across.
It makes this enormous head with a fractal pattern.
You can look up Fibonacci patterns.
It's great for those of you who are homeschooling kids right now.
And it's a very tender, broccoli-like,
flower head that sort of resembles cauliflower and texture,
but broccoli and flavor.
And it takes up a lot of room it sounds like.
Yeah, it's a big plant.
And I think people need to know that.
If you're limited for space,
you'll get a lot more of your money out of just regular broccoli
that re-sprouts.
But it is a beautiful plant
and very fascinating to grow at least once.
Not difficult, it's very similar to broccoli.
So what about to containerizing these plants too?
Many of them take well to containers?
I do that and I use large containers.
I use anything from a seven to a 15 gallon size.
You want at least half a cubic foot of potting soil,
a cubic foot's even better,
because these are plants with extensive root systems.
And they don't want to get drought stress.
It's very important with all the coal crops,
things like that, that they have a good root volume.
If you're limited and you have a smaller container,
go with the leafy greens.
Lettuce, spinaches, you can crowd those together.
Harvest leaf by leaf and have them
over a very long season.
What are the best-selling varieties
that you've worked with over the years?
The broccoli, I'm a big fan of Decicho,
and she's known heirloom variety.
I like the newer ones like Green Magic,
which is very similar.
What I suggest home gardeners look for
is broccoli that is listed as re-sprouting,
side sprouts, lots of side shoots.
Commercial growers want a very large head of broccoli.
They want something six inches across,
and they're just gonna get one in done.
They get one big head, and that's it.
You as a home gardener can plant Decicho or Green Magic
or Gypsy, some of these that have been around for a while
and some newer hybrids,
and you'll get one four inch head
and immediately new side shoots come up,
and you can be picking those all winter.
So that's really better for the home gardener.
What is the spacing for broccoli?
I know on some of the older varieties,
like Green Goliath, Green Duke, and Waltham 29,
they recommended planting them 10 inches apart
in 20 foot rows.
You can go closer with these re-sprouting types,
so that sounds about right.
I usually go about a foot apart.
I may crowd them.
The more you crowd them, the smaller those initial heads
will be, but you'll still get good results.
And really, I think broccoli, and it's cousins,
broccoli, rob, things like that,
are some of the easiest things for home gardeners
to start with.
Easy to grow from seed, easy to buy them plants,
and they'll produce quickly.
All right, so much for broccoli.
Let's move through the alphabet.
What's next?
Brussels sprouts.
You ever grow them, Fred?
Brussels sprouts are a challenge here,
because even though they're a cool season crop,
if you want to plant them correctly,
here you have to do it in the heat of July.
Right, they need to go in mid-summer.
They need a really long start to the growing season,
and you're not going to harvest until March.
And I guarantee you'll be battling aphids the whole time.
So I would not rush into Brussels sprouts
if you're a novice gardener.
It can be fun to do, but I don't know how much
you like Brussels sprouts.
They're probably not the easiest.
So maybe let's move down the alphabet to cabbage.
Well, let's point one more thing on Brussels sprouts,
though, for people in other parts of the country,
maybe this Brussels sprouts are best treated
as a spring planted crop?
Yeah, and they're heavily grown in the coastal areas
of California.
Most of the production for many years
was over in the coast of the Bay Area.
That long season planting them early in the spring,
cool mild climate.
They'd be harvesting them over a very long period.
So it's a challenging one,
because it takes literally about six months
from plant to harvest.
Wow, all right.
Can we go to the letter C?
Now remember, these are all related.
And these are all basically the same plant.
They were Brasica Ola Ratia.
That's the botanical name of the ancestor of all of them.
And from that, we got broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage,
colarabi, Brussels sprouts, kale, collards.
I feel like I'm forgetting something.
They're all basically the same plant.
And they like a mild climate to grow and expand
and get their major initial start.
And then we're harvesting different parts.
We're harvesting the flower buds.
We're firing the inflorescence.
And in some cases, the weird stem, like on the colarabi,
what they want is to have a long period of development
and then initiate the flowering.
And then we eat them before they get a chance to flower.
Now I'm fond of the Chinese cabbages,
the bok choy and the pot choy.
Very easy to grow, and you can crowd them.
They're a really good one for folks who like stir fry,
have maybe one container to crowd a bunch of things in.
bok choy, bok choy, there's a bunch of different names
and different styles of those.
You can harvest the leaf at a time or the whole thing.
And again, all they want is cool mild conditions.
They're okay with frost, light frost,
okay down into the mid-20s Fahrenheit.
So they're pretty easy to grow in almost all the climate zones
you mentioned.
And in coastal areas, the places where tomatoes don't do well,
peppers don't do well, so let's say Seattle,
or Corvallis, Oregon, those are great choices.
Those will do very well for you pretty much year round.
Cabbage varieties I'm familiar with are early Anna,
Copenhagen, Market, Savoy, King, and the Burpee hybrid.
Are there others that you like?
Green anchor, that's become one of the most popular
because it will produce quickly.
You'll look on the label, you'll see some cabbages
listed just 60 to 70 days, others in the 90 day range.
The faster ones are gonna be better for some of the listeners
who are in the colder USDA zones.
They get them planted now, they're listening in September.
And we get frost in November, they'll be okay with that.
They can get them out of the ground before a hard freeze sets
in our climate, those tend to head up
in the late winter early spring.
Here we can do all of them
because we don't get that cold in the winter.
But that green anchor in particular is a fast producer.
Well, let's talk about another relative
of those then, cauliflower.
It's more challenging.
The issue with cauliflower is that the heads
are susceptible to cold damage.
And you'll get cosmetic damage on the head.
If it's open and we get, you know, open to the sky
and we get 24, 25 degrees as we can do here
in mid-December early January, it'll damage it.
So an old technique is to pull those leaves up,
clamp them over the top, and that protects the head.
And with that colder weather, you get a sweeter flavor.
It's a little more tricky though
because they're more susceptible to slug damage,
ephids, and more challenging to manage that way.
I would say for, again, for a novice gardener,
broccoli is going to be a lot easier.
All right, well, cross cauliflower off the list.
No, I'll try one now.
Oh, can I try?
Yes, exactly, try everything once.
Yeah.
One of my favorites to grow, and I won't say it's bulletproof,
but if you have good, deep soil,
it's kind of hard to go wrong with carrots.
Yeah, as long as the soil drains well,
and you can do them essentially any time of year
as long as the moisture is consistent.
So in the summer here, they can be pretty challenging
just because of how hot and dry we are,
but almost anywhere someone's listening
unless the ground freezes over,
they can do carrots right on into the winter,
they can do them early in the spring,
even later in the spring.
I suggest for areas with denser soil,
they use smaller types, like little finger,
hand-danswers, half-long, try the round one,
orbit, those are cool.
And there's a lot of new carrots on the variety,
a lot of new colorful ones,
but I think you really can't go wrong with those first two,
I mentioned, little finger and danswers, half-long.
They develop quickly, you get three to four-inch,
very sweet carrots, and remember,
the sweetness increases a little frost.
I realize you're a nursery owner,
but would you buy a six pack of carrots?
I would sell one.
Would I buy one?
No.
No.
You would plant from seed.
Absolutely.
The thing to remember, though,
is the carrot seed germinates very slowly.
There's an inhibitor in the seed coat.
So first thing is to soak the seed overnight
before you plant it to try and get some
of that inhibitor out of there.
Then it'll only take three to four weeks
to germinate instead of five to six.
And an old trick is to plant carrots and radishes
together in the same bed.
And the radishes come up right away.
You're harvesting them in five or six weeks.
Just as you're pulling them out,
the carrots are beginning to sprout.
So you're making maximum efficient use of your bed,
and you're waiting and waiting and waiting
for the carrots to sprout.
You're getting something else out of that bed
at the same time.
You've heard me talk about the benefits of smart pots,
the original award-winning fabric container.
Smart pots are sold around the world
and are proudly made 100% right here in the USA.
Smart pots is the oldest and still the best
of all the fabric plant containers that you might find.
Many of the imitators are selling
cheaply-made fabric pots that fall apart quickly.
Not smart pots.
There are satisfied smart pot owners
who have been using the same smart pots
for over a decade, actually approaching 20 years.
When you choose smart pot fabric containers,
you know you'll be having a superior growing experience
with the best product on the market.
And your plants will appreciate smart pots too.
Because of the one million microscopic holes
in smart pots, your soil will have better drainage
and the roots will be healthier.
They won't be going round and round
on the outside of the soil ball,
like you see in so many plastic pots.
The air pruning qualities of smart pots
creates more branching of the roots,
filling more of the usable soil in the smart pot.
Smart pots are available at independent garden centers
and select ace and true value hardware stores nationwide.
To find a store near you or to buy online,
visit smartpots.com slash Fred.
And don't forget that slash Fred part.
On that page or details about how for a limited time,
you can get 10% off your smart pot order
by using the coupon code Fred.
Use it at checkout from the smart pot store.
Visit smartpots.com slash Fred
for more information about the complete line
of smart pots lightweight, colorful,
award-winning fabric containers.
And don't forget that special farmer Fred 10% discount.
Smart pots, the original award-winning fabric planter,
go to smartpots.com slash Fred.
You wanna start the backyard fruit
and not orchard of your dreams,
but maybe you don't know where to begin.
Or maybe you're currently growing fruit and netries
and you've got a million questions,
such as what are the tastiest fruits to grow?
Where can I go to buy some of these
delectable fruit and net trees you've been reading about?
And then how do you care for all of these trees,
including planting, pruning and harvesting?
I've got one online stop in mind for you
where all these questions you might have
will get answered.
It's Dave Wilson dot com.
That's Dave Wilson nursery,
the nation's largest wholesaler of fruit and netries
for the backyard garden.
They have planting tips, taste test results
and links to nurseries in your area
that carry Dave Wilson fruit trees.
Click on the home garden tab at Dave Wilson dot com
for all of these links, including a link
to their years of informative videos
about growing fruit and netries
that they've posted on the Dave Wilson nursery YouTube channel.
Start the backyard orchard of your dreams
at Dave Wilson dot com.
Let's get back to our conversation
with nursery owner Don Shore.
He has more cool season vegetable garden planting tips for us.
Another one of those slow to germane ones
I'm trying this year are parsnips.
It could take three weeks for it to show its face above ground.
Anything in that family,
they have an inhibitor in the seed code
and a simple trick is to soak the seed overnight.
Parsley well known for five to six weeks to germinate.
Put them in a bowl, pour hot water on them,
let it sit overnight, drain that off
and that'll help somewhat.
But you're still looking three to four weeks to germination.
Yep.
And all the regrettables I would recommend
planning direct in the ground if you can.
Yes, people I suspect.
Yes.
So root crops we're talking carrots,
we're talking about turnips, parsnips.
Yeah, you grow them?
This is going to be the first year I'm growing them.
Those will let you thought I said parsnips
as far as taking three weeks to germinate.
Yeah, they are a story a lot of starch.
And thing to remember with anything that stores starch
is when we get cold,
the starch converts to sugar.
So even the leaves of your kale,
you'll get better flavor when you get some chilling on them.
This is one of the reasons they're popular.
Don't harvest your parsnips until Christmas.
I'll remember that.
Okay, I'm going to write that down.
Don't harvest parsnips until Christmas.
Okay, got it.
Now that brings up onions and garlic.
Now around here we're used to planting from starts
or transplants usually in October or so.
November.
The rest of the country I'm not sure.
It's highly variable hot areas in the southern parts.
They generally plant in the fall
and they harvest in the spring much as we do.
Here we plant November harvest in May to June.
A little later for Walla Wallas
and the colder tier states they plant
in the spring for summer harvest.
So it's going to vary.
And you'll have short day, long day, intermediate day types.
We're very lucky.
In segment of alley, we could grow all of those.
We can go any kind of onion we want.
Wherever you're listening locally,
you should find out what the suitable varieties are
for your area because there are generally varieties
that are better for you and varieties that aren't as suitable.
I love the Stockton Red onion and they're hard to find
but when you find them, get them.
They're good.
Stockton Yellow Walla Wallas is a fun one to grow.
We always get demand for the Red Torpedo.
It's a little dicey here
because it tends to bloom, honestly.
And when it blooms, it's hollow.
It does keep as well.
But you have Stockton Red or the new Red Burger
which is an improvement on that.
Onions in the segment of alley arrive in November
and you plant a bear root.
It's one of the easiest things in the world to do.
Yeah, they usually come bundled 50 to a bundle.
Yeah, be happy with one bundle, folks.
I get people special ordering 200 to 500 at a time
and they call and call and call.
I don't know what it is with these old guys and their onions.
They're very concerned about them
but they want to get them in November
when they can water them in,
get some nitrogen on them early in the season
and then they're just as easy as can be
from that point on.
You just harvest in the early summer late spring.
And that's part of the beauty of living where we live
in other areas of the country.
It's more of a challenge.
What's nice is that there are some mail order firms
like Peaceful Valley.
They won't even mail out their garlic and onions
to a zip code until it's right for that area.
Right.
There's a big gun and grower down in Texas.
I think it's Dixon Dale Farms.
They know everything there is to know about onions
and they ship millions of them all over the country
and they tell you, they're gonna ship them
to you when it's appropriate for your region.
I guess the most frost sensitive plants would be those
with water in their leaves like the leafy greens.
Yeah, they're easy to grow,
but of course they're a little vulnerable to temperatures
in the low 20s or below.
So wherever people are listening,
they need to take that into consideration.
On the plus side, you can plant and harvest right away.
You can start picking leaves immediately,
especially the leaf lettuces and spinaches.
And you can let them grow and form ahead
and harvest the whole head, if you like.
This is probably where early novice gardeners go best
is with the leafy greens in a barrel
or some plant or like that,
crowd them in, put in 30 plants.
I mean, go overboard because you can thin them out
and use them.
And if something is used up, there's a space,
go buy a plant, stick some more in or do some more seed.
And we're talking about lettuce, spinach.
You can do those stir fry greens
like you were talking about earlier.
You can do broccoli rob, which is used for the stem
and for stir frying.
And you can even put some Swiss chard in there
just be aware that it's ultimately gonna outgrow
all the other things we talked about.
So keep them trimmed and pinched and use them all winter long.
Here in the valley and in the Sacramento Valley of California,
you'll be harvesting out of that barrel
all the way into April.
Perhaps in colder climates,
you hear that you're gonna hear 21, 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
You might wanna rush out and have a salad that night.
Yeah, some of my favorite loose leaf lettuce varieties
are ruby, bib, salad, bowl, green ice.
Hand lettuce has always been more of a challenge here in the valley
but it's easy to grow if you live in a milder
climate.
Sure, it just has more risk of getting problems
on the interior of the head,
bawling up and getting a rod.
Look for the Salanova series.
These are amazing.
They're like bibs style.
They make a perfect little head.
Even when they're only half grown,
you can harvest them whole and they look absolutely great.
They taste wonderful.
Also, romaine, if some of you're listening in places
where it's hotter, romaine seems to be more heat tolerant,
lowlerosa.
And then an old standby for almost every region
I can think of is the black seeded Simpson,
which is tolerant of heat and cold.
So it can take almost the whole range of the lettuce growing season.
And in the world of spinach,
I've always loved the bloomsday along standing
and the melody hybrid.
Melody is in the sort of new class of spinach
where there's smaller leaves that are thinner.
So probably a little more vulnerable to cold,
but they're tender, people like to use them in salads.
The bloomsday is a cooking spinach,
been around forever, tough, reliable,
and said to be pretty tolerant of both cold and heat.
So there's a whole range of spinach now,
basically thick leaf types and thin leaf types.
And we touched on kale.
And one thing I've learned about kale over the years
is the plain green kale has a better taste to it
than the ornamental kale, which is very colorful,
but kind of bitter.
Not really intended for eating bread.
It's like the parsa on your plate of the restaurant,
but it's a different plant.
The kale is incredibly popular.
It has become far and away the most popular
of the cool season vegetables for most retailers.
It's easy to grow.
There's the dino-cales, which have the thick,
kind of a lumpy leaves.
You've got all kinds of frilly leaf types.
They're all very easy to grow.
And they can go down to 19 or 20 degrees
with that much difficulty.
And I'm said that they have flavor improves
against sweeter when that happens.
Yeah, they're really pretty ornamental ones.
We get this question over and over
through the winter.
Are they edible?
Sure.
Does that mean palatable?
Tasty?
No, you want to eat it?
I suggest buying Lissinata or dino-cale
or something like that.
Red Russian, winter bore, bunch of new hybrids.
There's some really cool kale on the market now.
Well, one solution around the bitterness of maybe kale
or charred or even spinach is to do it in a stir fry
and that helps it out.
Anything that's bitter, this is true.
If you add salt, that masks the bitterness.
So the soy sauce takes care of that in your stir fry.
Thank you.
That's good to know.
All right, so most people, if you're a first-time gardener
and you're gonna start a cool season garden
for the first time, if you really want success,
start with transplants, not from seed
because it's a much longer process
and frankly we're running out of time here.
So people are going to the nursery.
What do they look for at the nursery?
By younger plants.
I'm really concerned when I see overgrown root bound six packs.
All these coal crops we just talked about,
if their roots are bound up,
the plant's gonna get off to a slow start.
So transplant it if you have to.
If it's not ready to go into the garden,
then move it up to a four-inch pot and just some nice soil.
Look for a healthy, green, deep green,
not purple discolored ones
and not super root bound in the container.
I think that's real important for these winter vegetables.
And then when you take it home,
what should you do with it if you don't plan
on planting it that weekend?
Well, just this morning I took some six packs
of Napa cabbage that were fully rooted in
and I didn't want to put them in the ground yet.
So I shifted them up into four-inch pots
just so they get them up to another little stage
two to four weeks of growth before they go in the ground.
Keep them growing, keep them moving.
Don't let them sit around in those packs
and get root bound.
So go ahead and do that extra step,
putting them in a reasonable quality potting soil
in a four-inch pot.
The plants will be growing and vigorous
when you put them in the ground.
I was chatting recently with Brad Gates.
You know, I'm from Wild Boar Farms.
He's famous for his tomatoes.
And he came up with a rather ingenious way
to keep lettuce coming throughout our hot summers.
And every week or so, he plants a nursery flat with lettuce seed.
He takes a nursery flat.
He puts a sheet of newspaper on the bottom,
fills it with soil and then scatters lettuce seed
or spinach seed or a charred seed into the surface
of the soil, keeps it watered.
It pops up and within a month,
they're using their scissors, cutting it off
and serving it in a meal.
It's right in the winter time.
You could do that in the winter time too
and you could do it indoors.
And a lot of places people are listening,
you could do it in a sheltered front porch,
something like that.
I mean, look for those microclimates
where we're not talking about where places
where there's snow on the ground,
but places where it's maybe in the low 20s,
they could be a few degrees warmer up close to the house.
He's growing microgreens.
And that's really easy to do.
You're just, you're clipping them
and you're not, you're never trying to grow them
under their full potential.
You're just using them as little greens.
I know people who do that was cilantro
just to have a steady crop of it as well.
The other group of plants that we should mention
for some listeners are the peas and the beans.
Not green beans, but fava beans.
These are two cool season vegetables
that we grow here for different purposes.
Peas of course for shelling, stir fry,
depending on the different type.
The sugar snaps have just dominated the market now
for 30 years ever since they came on
because you can eat them whole.
And then fava beans are great for building the soil
even if you don't happen to eat them.
So they're very popular as a cover crop.
And those are both planted going into the winter
in this climate.
Now this is something where you're gonna have to find out
locally in a colder climate, perhaps USDZone 76.
I'm guessing those are planted in the early spring.
But here we plant them for the winter time.
And we have the benefit of the fava beans
all through the winter, suppressing weeds,
building the soil, adding nitrogen,
and then people harvest and eat the beans as well.
From what I've been reading about USDZone 7,
which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas,
Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama,
Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Those cool weather vegetables can usually
be planted outdoors in early February.
Sure.
And people do that here and it's a race against time
to see whether they'll develop
before we hit our first 90 degree temperatures.
So we're doing the same thing,
but our preferred season is September, October,
November for best results.
And as we've talked about in previous shows
in discussing cool season vegetables,
if you live in a colder climate,
nothing beats a cold frame or a greenhouse.
There you go, root seller.
There you go, exactly.
Don shores with Redwood Bar Nursery
and Davis, California,
some great cool season vegetable recommendations.
Don, thank you so much.
Great to be here, Fred.
Thanks.
One joy of having a garden
are aromatic plants.
You know, the annuals, perennials, shrubs,
and trees that emanate a pleasant smell
while you're strolling through the yard,
especially in the afternoon or evening.
We talk with New York-based aromatherapist Amy Anthony
about the power that various aromatic plants
can instill in us, making us happier, calmer, and braver.
Originally aired last February in episode 254,
this is our flashback episode of The Week.
Give it a listen,
find a link to it in today's show notes
or at the podcast player of your choice,
and you can find it at our homepage,
gardenbasics.net.
The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcasts
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 Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
The Garden Basics podcast is available
wherever podcasts are handed out,
and that includes our homepage, gardenbasics.net.
And that's where you can also sign up
for the Beyond The Garden Basics newsletter and podcast.
That's gardenbasics.net,
or you can use the links in today's show notes.
And thank you so much for listening.