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.
The healthiest foods you can grow in your garden are probably the greens.
Things like lettuce, cabbage, chard, spinach, arugula.
And they're at their most nutritious when they're consumed fresh from the garden.
Today, Renee Shepard of Renee's Garden talks about the cut and come again leafy green garden.
How anyone can be enjoying fresh greens on a daily basis,
no matter how small your yard, even if it's just a patio.
And if you want to make your own garden mulch from tree limbs,
we have tips for purchasing a chipper shredder.
The features it should have for a hassle-free experience.
It's all right here in episode 282, the cut and come again garden.
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.
And we're brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
One of the healthiest garden plants that you can grow are greens.
But if you live in a hot climate, maybe you're limited to only growing greens during the cool season.
Or if you live in a cold climate, it's your summer crop.
But because greens are so healthy, you should be able to grow them year-round.
And you know something you can with the advice of our guest today.
It's Renee Shepard, the founder of Rene's Garden.com.
She is widely regarded as a pioneering innovator in introducing international vegetables,
flowers and herbs to home gardeners and gourmet restaurants.
She founded Shepard's Garden Seeds back in 1985 and she sold the company later on.
And then established Renee's Garden to do what she likes.
Best searching out the very best seeds from around the world,
testing them in her own garden, cooking and developing recipes around their unique characteristics,
and sharing them with other gardeners.
I've been a Renee's customer for years and years and years.
Love them, especially the sunset mixed sweet pepper.
And she's the one.
Renee is the one who gave me a tip a few years ago when I was bemoaning the lack of cilantro.
To make salsa in the summertime,
cilantro here in USDA Zone 9 is basically a cool season crop.
So you'd like to have some cilantro when you're making salsa
in the summer when the tomatoes and garlic and peppers and onions are ready.
Well, she said, well, all you got to do is cut and come again with cilantro.
Just grow it in a shady spot when it gets a couple inches tall.
You cut it and use it.
Isn't that right, Renee?
Yes, the cut and come again, Matt, that gives you a way
to get several harvests of a lot of things that really wouldn't be able to take the heat.
Actually, I think it's perfect for anybody who wants to garden
because with a cut and come garden of greens,
you probably need, if you're starting a nail,
you'd need a shady spot to grow it in a large container
or if you have a garden bed.
But I would imagine too, in a sunny window inside, you could grow this.
Well, I'm not 100% sure that you would have great results on a window sill
because it needs so much more light.
You might get one cutting out of it,
but I suggest you grow it outside for the best result.
How about indoors with grow lights?
Indores with grow lights, that's certainly a possibility.
All right, we've just sold some more equipment there.
All right.
But there's a lot of greens that take well to the cut and come again method.
You have a YouTube video at renaysgarden.com that explains how you do that.
So go ahead and explain for our audience how exactly you grow leafy greens
that will come back after you cut them.
Yeah, well, we think of the cut and come again method
as the way to grow the most greens in the smallest space in the shortest time.
So it works for all lettuce mixes.
It works for spinach and charred and kale, Asian greens, a lot of different things.
It's not just for hot weather.
It's really a way to get a lot of results from a small space.
And it's a different way of growing things.
So either in a bed or in a large container,
you get a seed mix or you pour out the seed in your hand,
you prepare the soil, and then you shake the seeds through your fingers
so it kind of goes in the bed like grass seed.
You know, not semi-packed, but you could try to sped them out,
ideally, so the seeds are half an inch apart.
And then you water it up.
And when it gets about four to five inches tall at the most,
you want to take a kitchen scissors or a snips
and just cut off the top inches, leaving a one-inch crown.
So you want to leave a one-inch crown in the ground and cut the rest.
So you have four, say, three to five inches of greens
and you harvest as much as you need for a meal that day.
In other words, the greens are going to come up densely.
And if you wouldn't grow them to maturity,
because they were way too crowded and they wouldn't grow well
and they get long and lanky.
But if you harvest them at the baby leaf stage,
they're young, good, tender, and delicious.
So let's say you had a bed a couple feet on a side,
two or three feet across and two or three feet wide,
you could grow enough mesclone mix or baby lettuce mix to give you a lot of meals
and you'd cut as much as you needed.
After you cut it, you fertilize again with a high nitrogen fertilizer
like fish emulsion, if you're an organic gardener,
which we are, and then get a second growth.
In really hot weather, you would not get a third growth.
But in the cool season, you could sometimes even get a third cutting.
So it's cut and come again.
And how long does it take to produce the first crop
and then how long is it before you get a second crop?
I would say for the first crop, you're talking 30 to 45 days.
And the second crop depends on the weather,
but probably another couple weeks.
Would you grow it in sun or shade?
If it's very hot weather, I would certainly grow it
where it's an afternoon shade.
Or you can also cover it with shade cloth.
But I'm not kind of claiming that you're going to get much of a crop
if it's 100 degrees and baking in the sun.
But I have seen growers in California up in the Sonoma era
grow it under a shade cloth, which is mesh
that you cover your bed with that reduces the amount of UV going in.
But generally speaking, if it's getting really warm,
then you should ideally grow it where it gets morning sun
afternoon shade.
In the cool season, it doesn't really matter.
It'll grow just fine.
And I would say up till late spring,
soon as the weather starts to cool down.
I really like the idea of using the shade cloth
for a very different reason, to keep the pests away,
to keep the aphids, the whiteflies,
the cabbage, looper, moth from laying eggs on those greens.
Well, the other nice thing about using cut and come again,
you're only growing something four or five inches tall
and you're growing it thickly.
So they'll get as much pests because they're not in the garden long enough.
You know what I mean?
You have a lot of different mixes that you can use.
And I imagine that you can kind of mix and match all the various spicy greens
or just shall we say more, I don't know what you'd call it,
mild greens that would be very nice and especially very colorful as well
in a salad mix or however you want to use greens.
Let's say you have two containers or two places on your on a bed.
Grow one to garden masculine or baby leaf lettuce
or which is all kind of sweet reds and greens
that are either smooth and buttery and crunchy.
We make up our mixes by growing the varieties individually
and then combining them so you've got not just flavor and color
but good mouthfeel because you don't want all soft lettuces
and you don't want all crispy lettuces.
It's nice to have both.
So you grow one, let's say we're talking about lettuce,
you grow one baby leaf lettuce mix and next to it you can grow
we have a spicy greens mix that have the rubula and mustard
and spicy things and then you go out and say you want to make salad for dinner
your harvest, two thirds lettuce, a one thirds spicy greens
so you can tailor it to your own taste.
And you can certainly grow a rubula as a cut and come again
and you can grow you know lots of different things.
Rubula is very fast growing and frankly it's not bitter when it's young
so you want to harvest it at no more than four inches.
And even at that height though the plant has developed its own character
it's got that shape that you recognize it's going to be very colorful too.
Well you know most stores now sell mixes of baby leaf
everyone knows what that is but you can also buy baby kale
and baby arugula all these things can be grown in the cut and come message
it's much cheaper and it's really easy to do especially
for people in limited spaces you can grow really nice salad garden
and greens garden in containers in this fashion.
I would think then if you can get maybe two or three crops
out of a cut and come again bowl of lettuce or portion of a garden
that you'd want to have about two or three going maybe plant the second
batch a week or two after the first batch.
I would say a couple weeks but you know you don't have to have a big patch
because it produces a lot of quantity of greens so
it's a good strategy for having long-term salad.
I noticed in your video when you were harvesting the greens when there only four
or five inches tall all you did was you simply grabbed a handful
of it and then cut it one inch above the soil line
beneath your hand and took that in for dinner.
Yeah you wrap your hand around a bunch of tops
and you cut underneath your hand leaving one inch
and then you take that in for dinner exactly as you say that night
it's really tender and delicious one expression here's the other thing
it's really tender and delicious just make a real simple vinaigrette
just you know like mild rice vinegar or whatever kind of vinegar you like
and really good olive oil and that's really all you need.
We'll be back after a quick break.
If you have questions about food and farming check out
Ask a Farming. We share information about Canadian grown food
from dietitians, food experts, farmers and those involved in the agriculture
industry. Explore how your food is grown and raised and get useful
information to help you make confident food choices
at the grocery store. I'm your host Clinton Monchak,
a Canadian farmer. You can listen to the Ask a Farmer podcast on YouTube
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh you know speaking of that you have recipe books.
Well that's true we have a huge trial garden where we trial and evaluate new
varieties and grow many different kinds of the same
variety so we've always come up with recipes and what to do with it
because if we have convinced you to say grow radicule you're going to need
some radicule recipes and if you grow poll beans and you've used up the
three ways you always make beans you might want some
new ideas so our cook the cookbooks have written are all alphabetical by
vegetable so you can look up whatever you're harvesting.
And you can find those cookbooks online at renaysgarden.com
or growing lots of basil. We plan a second crop of basil so we'll have it
when the tomatoes come. There you go yeah that's uh
and basil can last quite a while as well.
I'm always amazed at parsley because it's a biennial
and so you can get two years worth of harvest from that.
Well that's true we usually plant two crops a year so when the
and one in our we're in zone eight we'll overwinter
and then we plant another one so yes I like Italian
broadly parsley better than most other or my favorite.
It's very healthy too and tastes so good.
Not only that but in its second year when it does start to flower it attracts a
whole host of beneficial insects.
Yes and that's certainly something that a lot of gardeners are really getting
into is seeing their gardens as a way to create backyard habitat
and encourage pollinators and salteries and all kinds of
beneficial insects and songbirds not just feeding them but feeding nature.
It's really important and something all gardeners can really do.
Behooves every gardener to build the good bug hotel.
Well absolutely but that does that just means plant lots of wonderful
annual flowers that they all can feast upon.
That's right and a wide variety of plants too.
If you want birds in your yard well have some ever green shrubs where
they can they can hide out in.
Yes I think creating a thinking of your garden as a habitat
and source of food and pleasure not only for you but by everything
that surrounds you in nature is really an important concept because
I think that we are the source of a lot of habitat in our suburban and
city gardens more than we know and becoming more and more important.
Anything else you want to cover in this?
This is kind of the height of the we're getting into the real
end of summer so as soon as the weather starts to cool down would be a good
time to launch another round of cut and come again.
It's something you can do really quickly and easily and if you're a
beginning gardener it's a great way to get going and
besides lettuces because I mostly talked about that
but you can grow it really is fun to grow baby
charred and baby kale which is really more tender than mature kale
and spinach and so there's there's really quite a few greens that can be
grown in this fashion. Is green kale in your estimation
tastier than ornamental kale?
All about a thousand percent.
Okay.
Um ornamental kale was bred for ornamental purposes
mostly in Japan originally. It really is designed to be pretty.
Is it also edible?
Yes. Is it delicious?
Not particularly. We should point out that at
renaysgarden.com you can find all sorts of
seeds available mixes available for the container kitchen garden so
indeed if you do have a limited space to work with maybe a sunny patio
or or less there's a lot of good mixes that will work for you in containers.
Yeah we could have specialized in varieties for containers so we have container
chilies and container peppers and container cucumbers and container eggplants
and containers zucchini a really nice french variety that
really does well on a container container watermelon lots of these
container cut and come again mixes because that that's something we really
look for and our other varieties all tend to be
in vegetables at least varieties chosen for
wide adaptability and great flavor because we eat them ourselves.
You tested yourself too?
Yes we have a large charred garden both here in northern California and near
Santa Cruz and also in Vermont.
Talk a little bit about the Ordalana day fans zucchini and I'm sure I
butchered that name.
That is not the container variety that is a very traditional Italian
striped zucchini and is characterized by a very nutty taste just really sweet
and nutty and custardy it's a very delicious one.
The french the french seed that we get which is the container varieties called
mascot and then last year we introduced the opposite which is a
climbing zucchini which will crawl up a trellis
and I really like because then you can break off the fruits off the vine
standing up you don't have to go looking bending over and trying to find them
and they don't hide so we've got one for a zucchini for any use.
The climbing zucchini by the way has the obvious name of
incredible escalator.
Yes it's from a German company and they just had a number for it so they allowed
me to name it and since it most quickly I
and off I thought I'd name it escalator.
Well just in my own defense I am growing that Ordalana day fans zucchini
in a large barrel and it's doing just fine.
That's one of my favorites actually flavor wise and they make just beautiful
fruit and if you roast them whole they're just
and with olive oil and garlic they're just delicious or any other way you can
think to enjoy them they're just really really actual and flavor.
Container zucchini works well because it doesn't
it's non-viding it grows like a bush and zucchini are
all easily pickable and it's a very beautiful plant it's very ornamental.
I would be remiss if I did not ask you at this time of the year
what can you do with an overgrown zucchini that you found hiding under the leaves?
Well I don't get them too often because
I'm too greedy I always go out and look almost there
every other day. I am not an expert on overgrown zucchini
so I mean I don't think I I don't think I'll have anything really new and
exciting to tell you you can you can cut them in half
and scoop out the inside and you know make a filling with
the zucchini inside sauteed with rice and
Italian sausage and basil basil and then stuff
the shell and bake it topped with olive oil and a little
you know Italian kind of things that's nice. I guess I'll just continue
feeding the big ones to the worms. Yeah or get a
neighbor with chickens. There's that. I would say that is the
highest use the overgrown zucchini and trade them with people with chickens
and return for an egg or two once a while. Oh I used to trade them
to the neighbor's cows. Well I didn't know. Amen.
Yes to that. And fall is for planting
August and September is for planning and think about
what your family will eat. Try some new varieties as well.
Don't start too big. Start with a small patch if you've never
grown something before. See if your family likes it
and experience something new USDA zones 9 and 8 and even 7
can have a cool season garden perhaps with some protection
but there's no reason why you can't be out there gardening most of the year.
Well I do have to tell you that I used to get invited to this one family
Thanksgiving feast every year and I really never saw the
much and didn't know them very well. I couldn't figure out why they so much
wanted me to come to Thanksgiving and I found out it was because
of the fall garden produce I bought. So there you are. There's a I brought a great
big salad with all those wonderful fall greens and
that's why they invited me so obviously everybody can
grow lots of delicious things for fall it's really worth doing and
and finally it's easier because if the weather cools down there's less pests
things stay well in the garden you can have whole another crop of root
vegetables lots of green some of the healthiest things
can be grown in the in the cooler fall weather and they don't take as much
energy because it's not as much weed actually the easiest time of year.
Exactly and with your international expertise in the world of vegetables the
wide variety of bok choy of Chinese cabbages is amazing.
Yes we've we've had more and more Asian green just because they're fast and
easy and so healthy we really try to look and feature things that are high
nutrition. Most of all deliciousness is our highest
criteria. There you go find out more at renaysgarden.com
noted seeds woman Renée Shepard has been our guest Renée thanks for all the good
advice about the cut and come again garden. Well thank you very much for
talking with me I've really enjoyed it.
You've heard me talk about the benefits of smart pots the original award-winning
fabric containers smart pots are sold around the world they're 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 these imitators are selling cheaply made fabric pots that fall apart quickly
but 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.
Those roots 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 and that'll fill more of the usable soil
in the smart pot. Visit smartpots.com slash Fred for more
information about the complete line of smart pots lightweight colorful fabric
containers and don't forget that slash Fred part because on that page your
details of discounts when you buy smart pots at Amazon.
Maybe you want to see them before you buy not a problem.
Smart pots are available at independent garden centers as well as select ace
and true value hardware stores nationwide.
Define to store near you or to buy online visit smart pots dot com slash Fred
smart pots the original award winning fabric planter go to smart pots dot com slash Fred
for more information and that special farmer Fred discount go to smart pots dot com slash Fred.
You have a small yard and you think you don't have the room for fruit trees?
Well maybe you better think again because Dave Wilson Nursery wants to show you how to grow
great tasting fruits like peaches apples pluots and nuttries 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 that harvest chart you can be picking delicious
healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December here in USDA 09 and something else you're
going to find in that home garden tab you're going to find the closest nursery to you that carries
Dave Wilson's quality fruit trees and they're in nurseries from coast to coast so start the
backyard orchard of your dreams at Dave Wilson dot com you've heard me talk about the benefits
of mulch for years and years how piling up arborist tree tremmings for mulch can improve your soil
you have a healthier garden we're talking with Brad gay he owns JB's power equipment in Davis
california what are the benefits of owning your own chipper shredder that big thing if you're
in the garden if you're just starting that in gardening or whatever level of gardening you're at
the chipper shredder is going to give you a means of changing the soil quality of your garden
and you're going to be able to get rid of stuff that you would maybe put in the container the
city or county would pick up or you would have to haul off and you can maintain your yard and
get rid of your trimmings your limbs that have fallen down and chipping them up to a size that
is used as a mulch or as a top dressing you can any of your trees limbs that have fallen you can
have though you can chip those up you can do make your own mulch and if you're just even small like
for pots just get your you can get mulch and create a good high quality mulch and and I can't
think of anything better to accomplish that than a chipper shredder chipper shredders are great
especially if you have a lot of trees on your property and you're constantly pruning your trees
instead of like you say instead of throwing those branches away chop them shred them just add
them to the top of your soil and a four inch layer of mulch on your soil it moderate soil temperature
it inhibits weed production as it breaks down it feeds the soil making it richer it's amazing
too if you put four inches of mulch or even four inches of shredded leaves on your garden surface
over the winter and you go back in the spring you move it aside you dig down a few inches you'll
be amazed at the number of earthworms that are saying thank you to you for doing that and an
earthworms improve the soil too but that's the sign of it I mean I've been doing my garden I've
fortunate I've been doing this for 20 25 years and I can go out I don't have weeds for one thing
but I can actually go into my soil even you know after it's been watered and have had made a plant
in there I can still kick my hand and kind of move it into the soil because it's porous enough
that because of the mulch and all the good ingredients have been added to it so I'm
amended to be able to do that it takes a while so a good chipper shredder is a very good start of
getting good quality soil going for you so let's talk about chipper shredder basics what people
should look for when buying a chipper shredder I would of course recommend buying it from a known
entity some company that you've heard of before that has produced a lawn and garden equipment as
opposed to going online and seeing a bunch of names you don't know but when you're looking at
the specs of a chipper shredder what are the specs you should pay attention to well the big the
big one I look at is what's driving your chipper what's driving the shredder parts there's usually
two different entities there that are combined and one is a real typically that has a cutter blade
probably about four inches long but it's a very hard steel probably two of them on on this
what I call a wheel and then the other part is on the other side of it has a bunch of little
like edger blades that are on small half inch shaft that spin around and they will shred leaves
but the the chipper part is very important because that wheel that you have on there that's
holding those blades you want that to have some weight because when they have that weight on
there that's what's going to pull the limb in and chop chop chop chop it up if you notice if you
have somebody in your neighborhood or spin around and you'll hear that worrying sound that's
going on they have this huge flywheel this turning that that's the chipper and it has some pretty
good sized blades in there that can eat up like a a nine inch limb or something like that but
you can get that same technology as a garner for your smaller chipper shredder and I usually recommend
about a 40 pound flywheel will be just about a good place to start and there's a you have to a lot
of people you have to look into see if that entity exists on on what you're going to buy and you're
not going to get it in your cheaper versions like you say you'll get something that's labeled a
chipper shredder but you're talking about things that I've been there and believe me I've had
things that have turned my my fingernails black and blue because I'm trying to force a limb through
there through a like I've got a baseball bat getting like this to feel posed it just rattles your
amp so you want to get something that's got a big flywheel 40 pounds plus and it'll it'll help
suck those limbs in through with very little effort and and grind up a hardwood versus a softer
wood that was a great job what size branch diameter branch can a 40 pound flywheel handle
well depending on what you've got usually I'm going to say three inch in some cases this
is four inch I think on our BCS you can take a four inch limb on there but with nice as you can
take a good three four inch limb shove it down into the chipper shredder and I usually get it to
where it is to the point where that now you're having the branches which which which would have
leaves or smaller limbs and then when it gets to that point you can take it out and then
take it up and put it over into your shredder and then that shredder will go in to care of the
rest of the stuff the smaller limbs but if there's leaves on there it'll take care of that as well
and it just turns it into a fine finer mulch and a good chipper shredder it will actually have
plates where that mulch exit grew after it's been shipped through a grid and you can you can put
in whatever size you want in there to make those pieces what size you want or if you're just doing
corn stalks and you just want to reduce you know like a root corn now you've got to get really
stocks then you don't want to throw up in your green waste well you can shred that down
well I take that grid out just to beat them up to go you know you know so I can actually work it
back in there but they do have grids that you can install and it can make that mulch whatever size
you want it's actually a nice feature and that's that's what's pertinent in getting the good soil
and mulch that you want for your guards you know you brought up a very good point there and the
fact that we've been talking about you know chipping and shredding tree limbs but for your vegetable
waste in your garden your corn stalks or even your tomato branches you could put those through
a chipper shredder probably the shredder solution oh I take all my great great what I've got these
runners off of my great I have a fence that this is a 300 foot fence that goes alongside of my yard
and I put it all into grapes and it's all table grapes so you know how grapes are the grapes are one
of those plants where you can literally watch it grow so you've got these runners that are you know
10 15 feet long and I'll go grab a bug just cut those off in the fall and I'll bring those over and
get rid of all of that and you mean you have to make sure when you're with your juice and your
chipper shredder by the way if you're doing this because if you get you put a bunch of these great
vines that you're sticking in your shredder it's like second spaghetti in your mouth with the
spaghetti sort of spinning around and flipping and everything except this is like a whip so you
can have eye protection hearing protection long sleeves leather gloves so that you don't get
smacked and it gets rid of a lot of stuff you just never thought of before all your fruit tree
trimming all the when you go in prune trees for the in the winter to get things ready for your
peach trees and apricot trees all those trimmings you can put through a chipper shredder too
and what you have in pile there will reduce it cheese at least 12 to one or more it's amazing what
comes out after you do that I would like to reinforce your your safety comments because anybody
who's ever owned a chipper shredder and attempted to throw in some smaller but long branches
like you might like great branches for example yes they will whip at you because of the friction
the sucking action of the shredder that just basically tries to suck it all in and in the meantime
you've lost hold of those branches and they start whipping around oh yeah you just let it go I
mean it just starts go shoot shoot shoot it's like I've got a bunch of whips in her hand so yeah you
want to be you just want to protect yourself I would say protect yourself like you're going to go
into a beehive you know you don't have to have that big beehive helmet on but you know have eye
glasses on a helmet or a hat or something here I have I wear headphones for my ears just for
the noise and all that and it deals with so I protect myself quite well when I go out there
well and if you please do wear gloves and take off any jewelry or wristwatches you might have as
well oh yeah keep track of your pruning shears dude oh god yes yes yeah don't don't don't keep
your eye glasses in your top breast pocket it's it's it's it's uh follow all safety instructions
when you get a chipper shredder so all right so safety is paramount the cost of a chipper shredder
is not cheap but I'd rather see people invest in a chipper shredder than a rototeller more and
more research coming out about rototelling soil is that it does the soil no good at all you're better
off doing no tilling whatsoever and more and more farmers are going that route as well so take
that money that you might want to spend on a on a rototeller and put it into a chipper shredder
what what is the price range for a decent chipper shredder well they start spread they start out
about I'm gonna say about 800 799 bucks with entry level if you get a fair cap and you're you're
and you're in the two inch to three inch chipper shredder range I recommend I mean that's that's
the light use and that's a good starter and and and and certainly we'll do the job but it doesn't
take care of what the next level is which is about 1200 little over 1269 and it will take on
a free inch limb and do everything I've been talking about and it's something that you know I've
had my chipper shredder for years I it's got to be 25 years plus and there's you know they just
have to maintain it but it's one that it's one of those most useful things when you need it and
then you don't have to deal with a pile of trimmings and try to get it to the garbage can or get
it out of your guard on the curb if they still do that where you live or have to haul it off to
work now you can take that and make it into a very useful product that'll benefit your own garden
so yeah you know so anyway starts about 800 bucks and you can go up to you know in in the two
to three inch up to a little over two thousand and if you go into four inch and higher then
now we'll send you get into the three thousand dollar range talk a little bit about the different
brands that are available you mentioned bearcat I own a BCS and they are both high quality chipper
shredders oh BCS is an excellent chipper shredder I that's what I have now BCS America tight if
anybody wants to go into it that is a great site just to visually see what a chipper shredder can
do for you and your garden I mean it's amazing this gentleman does the video in that does
he incorporates a lot of stuff in his in the mulch and cardboard for instance he's taking cardboard
newspaper and there's leaves of limbs and everything else it's been debris that normally you
would throw in a trash can or try to get you have to get rid of it somehow so or leave it in a big
pile and let the rodent get in there and have it take it healthy but the best way is run it through
a chipper shredder and but that's a very good video if you can just go into that site BCS America
a very good quality chipper shredder bearcat is very good we also sell DR which is country homes
products they offer very good chipper shredders we have accessibility for bearcat locally
so people want something that they can actually come in and buy it locally I can get that rapidly
if I have to get the RN that takes using seven to ten days and BCS takes to you about five days
to get their stuff so but those are all two those are three of the top names that are out there
that I would recommend when one goes online and sees the array of chipper shredders they're going to
I think see the majority of them unfortunately are electric powered I don't know if unfortunately
the right word or not but it just seems to me that a gas powered chipper shredder has more power
than something that's powered by 110 volt electric we used to sell the electric
this was some years ago and in Davis there it was a viable meat because most of the gardens
they're relatively small I would consider and they were using for table scraps and
clippings and leagues and stuff like that and they worked well but the problem with it
you had to fit it in a slot to get it to go down into this a chipper shredder contraption
and it's like it's about the old orifice or that's a lot of talk about with the size of about
old medium size book you know it was only like two inches two and a half inches wide and maybe
12 inches long it was like so now you're trying to squish thing down through this slot to get it
in there to work I even proved it quite a bit better but I know with gas powered a lot my
lot of my problems are if you get something in there you get too much in there and it starts
to plug up and then you need to stop it gas power you can shut the engine off but if electric if
you you cause that thing to run and not be you know actually turning over you can cook those
motors pretty easily and we found that there was a well not a substantial amount of electric
failures but it's like an electric one more if you use electric one more and you're out there
trying to cut grass as 12 inches tall where you're slowing that motor down a lot those motors
overheat and because you're plugged into big grid it's just endless energy and you know those
motors are overheat and so I don't give them a real thumbs up on quality I know electric
products have really kind of taken over the imagination of most people out there as far as
tools and that but I don't think this is money well spent at least at this point and with
chipper shredders you want to follow all the instructions in the booklet that it comes with and
you mentioned a problem that all chipper shredders have be the electric or gases they can sometimes
jam up and yes very important to turn that motor off as soon as you sense that it is not
chipping or shredding yeah you'll lose a belt or you'll cook a motor is what'll happen if it's
electric but the belt you know for your because if you lose the belt now you're done now you got
to go get a belt which you know we stock belts for what we sell and we have access to them fairly
rapidly but but you're done for the day you just don't go down to a hardware store or a auto
store and buy another belt that's just that's just not going to happen so it's you've got to stop
those things relatively quickly all right chipper shredder great investment for making your own mulch
from not only tree branches but your garden your grapevines your corn stalks any sort of
woody material can become your mulch in your garden oh yeah it's tremendous yeah what it is I
would recommend that I agree with you about the rhodotiller and the in the chipper shredder I would
spend the money on the chipper shredder first and then if you need a rhodotiller I use a rhodotiller
but I've got a pretty good size piece of ground but it's not used as much as I did before I don't
need to do that as much we've been talking with Brad gay from jb's power equipment and Davis
chipper shredders every gardener should own one thanks Brad thanks Fred good talking to you
in the September 8th 2023 edition of the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast
we chat with the forward thinking garden author Robert Curric I like to call him the garden
contrarian and he once again lends credence to the saying everything you know is wrong in this case
it's as much broader definition of organic gardening or what he calls cradle to grave organics
if you're looking to have a more self-sustaining garden one that uses fewer store-bought fertilizers
and soil products you'll want to hear what Robert Curric has to say if you're already a Beyond
the Garden Basics newsletter subscriber it's probably in your email waiting for you right now
or you can start a subscription and it's free find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics
newsletter and podcast in today's show notes or on the substack app or you can sign up at the
newsletter link at our homepage gardenbasics.net many areas of the country suffered through
prolonged heat waves this summer and now your fruit tree orchard might have problems we have ideas
on how to help your fruit trees get through next year's heat waves you've seen the bags and boxes
of fertilizer and soil amendments that say now containing mycorrhizae is that a goodbye Debbie
flower gives her take on that also she has tips for thwarting deer in your garden and we talk about
a garden tool that can blow your fallen leaves into a pile then suck them up and then grind them
up and that's perfect for topping a garden bed with leaf mulch for the fall and winter season
and beyond it's a combination portable leaf blower vacuum and leaf grinder where was all this
information it was in episode 236 from last September it's one of the most listened to podcasts in
the garden basic series heat versus fruit trees and deer control it's our flashback episode of
the week give it a listen episode 236 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 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 smart pots 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