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Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast.
If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information,
well, you've come to the right spot.
What are the habits of successful gardeners?
Well, a couple of master gardeners from Santa Clara and San Joaquin counties in California
pursued that question a while back.
They discovered several tips and tricks that seasoned happy gardeners use for garden success.
Today, America's favorite retired college horticultural professor Debbie Flower and myself
share their top 10 habits of successful and happy gardeners with you,
along with our thoughts that will take us down yet again,
many scenic bypasses of good gardening information.
You might want to listen to this episode more than once,
or maybe read the transcript as well.
Oh, you could take notes if you want.
Debbie says there's a good chance a lot of this will be on the final exam.
I'm just saying.
We're podcasting for Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Lebutalon jungle in
suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast.
Brought to you today by Smartpots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
Do some gardeners have a natural green thumb?
Well, like I said, for having patience and perseverance when it comes to certain landscaping
tasks, but perhaps there are some habits that seasoned gardeners have in common.
Well, such a list was published by the San Joaquin and Santa Clara county master gardeners
a few years ago.
It was entitled The Top Ten Habits of Happy and Successful Gardeners.
It was written by master gardeners Sue Davis and Louise Christie.
It's a list that really is worth reviewing from time to time to see which habits you've made
a normal part of your garden day, along with those habits that well, you know, just might need
a bit of refreshing.
So I thought it would be a nice time to refresh ourselves on a very thorough list of good gardening
habits, speaking of habits.
Debbie Flower is here.
America's favorite retired college, Horticultural Professor.
Overall, this is a pretty good list, wasn't it?
It is.
It's pretty extensive.
Yeah, it is.
It's good to revisit these things every now and then just to make sure that what you're doing
makes a lot of sense.
So let's talk about the successful habits of happy gardeners.
Habit number one, and man, I say there's a lot feed your soil.
Happy and successful gardeners know that taking care of the soil and learning to love
in particular, our clay soil is their first priority as they point out.
And you said this a lot.
Soil has three parts.
Yes, it does.
What does it have?
Well, it has the mineral part, which is what we call the sand silt and clay.
It has the pore space between those parts, which is filled with air for the most part and some
water. And it has organic matter, which is a very small part.
It is.
It's two to five percent is considered a good amount for the for a good soil.
The pore space, the open spaces should be about 50 percent.
And then the mineral part is 50 minus two to five.
But still that little bit of organic matter has what billions as far as we know,
microorganisms.
Yes, it has a huge effect on on how the soil acts.
How it absorbs water, how it hangs on to nutrients, how it gives them back to the plant,
and how the plant grows in it.
They do much better if there's organic matter in there.
So when they talk about feeding the soil, what they're talking about is basically replacing the
water and organic matter and preserving the air by not over watering or compacting the soil,
comes down to like they say compost, compost, compost, mulch, mulch, mulch.
Right.
And another they don't say this, but one thing I always recommend is have paths through the garden.
Sometimes it's just the gardener's path.
You know where it is.
It's just where you walk all the time to get to the plants that are in maybe a very deep bed,
too deep for you to work at all from the front, but take the same path all the time.
And that way you are not compacting the soil around all the plants just in that one location.
Yeah, compacting the soil basically comes down to you.
And your equipment staying off of wet soil.
Yes, really.
Which brings up an interesting question.
You may be having Halloween throngs of little feet, little feet running up your driveway
or running through your front yard to get to your doorbell.
Right.
To beg for some sugar nuts or whatever.
If you have plants in your front yard and you don't have a dedicated walkway,
you may want to put in a temporary walkway or a barrier or a barrier to get them to go up.
The driveway instead of cutting, taking the shortcut across the yard,
especially if you live in an area where it might have rained that day.
That's critical.
That makes a big difference whether the soil is moisture dry.
If it's moist, the particles in the soil are slippery and they will slide together more readily.
I saw a good display of that in action.
Somebody actually made a walkway through your garden in an unplanted area
leading to the front door by using light-up skulls on either side.
There's like little nightlights that light up very bright,
little skull nightlights to delineate a walkway to the...
That's a clever thing to do.
Yeah.
And it would work for other seasons as well if Jesus don't use skulls.
I mean, some people would, but some sort of light, some sort of solar-triggered light.
Yeah, nobody does what we do, which is very simple.
It's yellow tape surrounding the front of the house and park up a police carton.
Or like me, live way back from the road and have no lights on.
It's so dark they can't find the front door.
Oh, but that works too.
But probably not as much as in the old days,
but we still go at 20, 30 day treaters per year by having our lights
lighting up the sidewalk and driveway and the walkway.
We avoid them stomping on the California natives.
Right.
That's a good way to do it.
So basically, yeah, solar compaction does not feed the soil.
No, the compaction reduces the air.
It reduces the air in this.
Yes, the space that roots can easily get that air.
And roots need air.
They need air for doing vital things.
So roots need air as well as the top of the plant needs air.
As they point out, when working with clay soil, a lot of people have clay soil
avoid overwatering it and let it dry until it's moist and crumbly before you dig.
And a lot of people think, oh, I'll improve my clay soil by adding sand.
Oh, boy, what do you get with that concrete or doby?
Yeah, something that's very, very hard unless you add enough sand.
And that's at least 30%.
So if you have a cubic yard of clay, which is three foot by three foot by three foot,
you need to add a huge amount of sand to that.
30% of 27 cubic feet is nine cubic feet.
That would be if you were buying sand in 1.5 cubic foot bags, six bags.
A lot. A lot.
Yeah.
And then you have to turn it in.
You have to turn it in.
You know, formally, you don't just lay it on top.
Well, then you have the other problem then that the water from the surrounding soil
is going to go to that area.
Yes, because it's now more open.
Yeah, although it will be pushed in, but that's all another topic.
So people will say, well, what am I supposed to do with my clay?
You bring in the organic matter and you lay it on the surface
and you let nature take its course.
Yeah, you bring in the compost.
I had a professor at Rutgers.
I've told this story before so you can go get a drink if you've heard it.
Rutgers campus was the ag campus was in a place that had been dorms for World War II soldiers.
So it was not, you know, all pretty and landscaped in such back then when he was a student.
And he worked.
The soil was very heavy clay and he worked in on campus to make money
to support his going to college and he worked in the animal labs.
So like the mice and the gerbels or whatever they had, I don't know what they had.
And so he had to clean out the cages, which was animal feces, urine, and some organic matter
typically would.
And he collected all of that and threw it on the ground outside of his,
what then was his dorm.
And by the end of his time as a student there, it went from being, the soil went from being so hard
that you couldn't put a shovel through it.
So soft, so soft, you could plunge your arm into it.
Oh, I think we should point out that lab animals for the most part are vegetarians.
And so you can use their feces.
Right.
They're not going to have the worms and things that like a dog's waste might have in it.
Yeah.
So yeah, mice eat greens.
Right.
So to cows.
Yeah, exactly.
Horses.
Kalmanur horse manure.
Except horses don't process their food as well.
And so if there are weed seeds coming in, there are typically weed seeds in the manure as well.
But it is a slow process building that soil.
You just got to give yourself time.
You do, but as you said, patience is important being a gardener.
Yeah, I think it's one of the primary marks of a successful gardener is to have patience
not only with your soil, but also with your plants.
Give it three years to grow.
Sleep, creep and leap as we are fond of saying.
Right.
The first year of a plant's life, especially a perennial plant or a shrub, it just sort of sits there.
Put a stick in the ground next to it when you plant it.
That's exactly the same height as the plant.
And you may not think it has grown, but it probably will have grown if you go back
the next year and look at the height of the plant versus the height of the stick.
It's probably maybe a bit taller than the stick.
Right.
And another technique is to take a picture.
When I do that, I'm blown away by, I look at it the next year and think nothing's gone on.
But if you look back at the pictures, like, wow, a lot has happened here.
Especially if you've got something next to it to compare to.
Like, yes, a fence or another plant or a structure of some sort.
Yes.
Don't use children, though, because children grow too.
And you can get to it.
Yes, they do.
They don't stop.
All right.
So, yeah, building great soil can take years, but with careful treatment and feeding,
impossible clay can become lovely garden soil.
Yes, it can.
And then in the third year, that plant will leap.
Yes.
Sleep creep leap.
Okay.
Habit number two, according to the San Joaquin and Santa Clara County master gardeners
in their successful habits of happy gardeners, learn before lopping.
And that's one thing you've drilled into my head, professor.
Oh, is the fact that there's a damn big difference between doing two cuts on a plant,
a heading cut or a thinning cut.
It makes a huge difference in how the plant grows and what it looks like.
And a thinning cut is much more preferable.
Yes.
And you need to make many fewer of them to get the same result on a plant.
Many fewer of them.
Yes.
And a thinning cut is made where that branch meets a bigger branch.
And when you cut it off at that point,
you're spurring really new growth, too.
Yes.
But you're spurring it in a natural way.
And the places the plant, places the plant would naturally put on growth,
which is at the tips of other branches.
If you make heading cuts, though, you're asking for trouble.
If you just top a plant to get it to be a certain height,
you're going to have even more growth above that height.
Right.
The growth begins right below the cut.
And it will be multiple branches.
I'm thinking of a chasurina that is a tree that was in my yard.
It's not there anymore.
And it was topped and it grew because it was under the power lines.
And it grew probably six new upright branches all around just below where the cut was made.
I sort of made some of my own notes from this list.
And under learn before lapping, I wrote, why are you pruning?
You asked yourself that.
Yes, you should never just prune because people prune or because plants are pruned.
Plants in their nativity are not pruned,
except maybe by storms or beavers or something.
In general, they are not pruned.
They grow in a shape that they are genetically destined to become.
And when we go in and start cutting on them, we make changes to that.
So why?
Why are you making the changes?
First is the three d's.
Remove the dead, damaged, and diseased.
And you do that as soon as you see it, preferably with heading cuts.
Another is to control flower formation and fruit formation and location.
Quantity and quality.
Sometimes you're removing some so that you get bigger fruit.
Sometimes you're pruning a fruit tree so that you are getting it down to where you want to,
where you can reach it from the ground.
So that's permissible growing it so that you can get good fruit and flower production and
location for safety.
You're always pruning for safety.
Remove branches that might be sticking out at shoulder level on the sidewalk.
That might impale somebody.
Somebody, an interior scaper brought up the point that when she puts plants into like the shopping mall,
she has to think about the kid in the stroller.
Is that there's some part of that plant going to poke that kid in the eye.
So you have to think about the situation.
That makes a lot of sense too.
I mean, just yesterday I was working in the narrow side yard and back into a spine on a
myr lemon tree.
And of course, my first reaction is, okay, I carry my felco pruners in my back pocket.
This is not a problem.
Snip off the branch goes to get it out of the walkway basically.
If I'm going to be going up a walkway, I want a clear path without having to hit thorns
or get popped in the head by a low hanging persimmon on the persimmon tree at the end of the walkway.
Right. I did that when my son got married and there was a tent on my driveway and I have a
lemon that encroaches on the driveway and I didn't want people getting impaled.
So yes, I went through and actually took just the sharp tips off.
So that's grooming for appearance, I guess.
Right. And safety.
Yeah.
Yeah, all right.
Yes.
To train the plant too, you want to control the shape and size of the plant.
How does it influence flowering or fruiting?
Well, I was thinking about chrysanthemums.
Back in when I was an undergraduate school, they talked about the football mom.
It was a thing.
I was on the east coast, not southeast, but the east coast.
And the thing to wear to a football game was a giant chrysanthemum flower,
like as a corsage.
But in order to get that giant chrysanthemum,
all the other chrysanthemum buds have to be taken off.
So you go that only that all the energy goes to that one.
There have been giant pumpkin contests all over the place and that's how
that's one of the techniques of getting the pumpkin huge as you take off all the other
pumpkins from the vine.
So and in apples, apples produce, they produce a cluster of flowers.
It's five, typically with one in the center, they call that the king flower.
And so you can go through and remove the other flowers
and leave the king and get a bigger fruit.
I like to do it with roses if I'm planning an event at the house in six weeks
during rose growing season, which is basically what marched through
October, November.
If I want to have a good show of roses on my repeat blooming roses,
six weeks before the event, I will deadhead the plant, which is pruning.
Mm-hmm.
And that...
And it's heading, which is...
It's a heading cut.
Yes, so then it's not a thinning cut.
It's a heading cut.
But you're cutting down in the case of a rose down to a five leaf leaflet
and that will spur new growth that will develop a flower bud.
At the tip, yeah.
We didn't define a heading cut.
A heading cut is a random cut.
Yeah.
Anywhere you want it doesn't have any definition to it other than that.
There are reasons for heading cuts.
I saw I did a 100 mile bike ride a couple weekends ago in farm country
up in Calusa County.
And I came across a cherry orchard that were all...
They all looked flat-topped.
Like the barber came in and just cut them all off at the same height.
And the reason for that is you've got workers on ladders
picking cherries and anything above what they can't reach is for the birds.
All right.
Or you take it solo that they don't need ladders
and then your workman's compensation bill goes way down.
Yeah.
There's that too.
These though were about 15 feet tall.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
And they headed them there.
I've watched them prune pecans in Arizona
with basically looks like a big pizza cutter.
We've talked about this before too.
A big pizza cutter on the end of a long arm
and they just drive down the aisles
and cut the top of the tree off randomly.
So they are heading cut there.
Again, for a similar reason,
although people don't get on ladders to harvest nuts.
They just shake the tree.
The nuts fall out.
But as trees get taller,
we do see amount of light that gets to the tree next to it.
Blah blah blah.
So there are reasons for doing that.
Also, you can prune to prevent pests.
And the way to do that is to increase airflow through the plant.
And so the beneficial insects can get to the insect
that's the aphid or whatever that's sucking your plant.
And the airflow can dry the plant out
so you don't have such fungal problems.
However, in the case of fruit trees,
when you do that,
you're exposing the interior branches to a lot more sun.
So you may want a whitewash
and those branches just to give them a little sunscreen protection.
Especially in thin bark trees like cherries.
Yeah, exactly.
Your best bet is to get some good references
about pruning and training.
In fact, there's an excellent book
called Pruning and Training.
That's a surprise.
I would say take advantage of
if not, we'll have a link to that in today's show notes as well.
So yeah, definitely learn before lopping.
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In the endless series,
entitled Top 10 Habits of Happy and Successful Gardeners,
we'll be done by dinner.
Comes number three,
which is embrace failure.
Learn from failure.
Absolutely, that's, yes, learned from it.
Yeah. Huge.
You know, the best gardeners are old people like us.
Because we've tried all kinds of things and we've failed
and we have the patience to think about what went wrong and why.
Maybe we don't figure it out and we just try again
and we see what we did differently,
but that we've made enough mistakes that we've learned from.
It could be as simple as moving a plant from a wet area
to a drier area or from a shadier area to a sunier area.
But basically, when you come across a plant that isn't doing too well,
before you yank it to toss it,
think about what it really needs or look up,
what it really needs and maybe give it a slightly different home.
Right.
That could help.
You know, we always say about, you know,
give a plant a chance, give it three years before you give up on it.
Sleep, creep and leaps.
Yes.
Sleep, creep, leap.
Most gardeners aren't very sentimental about plants.
I mean, I always like to talk with Rose Arians
because whenever they utter the phrase shovel prune,
they have a smile on their face when they're making room
in their garden for the latest newest roses.
Well, yes, it gives you a chance to do something else
and I find I grow things just because I want to see how they grow.
And once I've done it, I'm bored with it
and I would like something else in that place.
So it does give an opportunity.
But you often say life is too short to live with a problem plant.
I do.
Yes.
That is absolutely true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People do have this sentimental attachment
that I don't know where they get the idea,
but I get that idea too.
You know, you stare at a plant and it's not growing.
It's not doing anything and it's just been pretty.
It's not dancing your life.
But what's going to change to make it change?
Nothing unless you make it happen.
Yeah, exactly.
And like I say, moving the plant might work.
One thing I like to do if there is a problem plant,
I won't just dig it out and toss it.
I want to see the roots.
I want to smell the roots.
I want to see how big the roots are.
I want to see if there's anything growing on the roots.
I want to see exactly if there was a problem
with the roots maybe going round and round and round.
Right.
Use all your senses smell.
Yeah.
The smell if you smell it's like dead fish.
You probably drown the thing.
Color.
If the soil is gray, then again, you probably drown it.
Soil becomes gray when it's saturated for a long periods of time.
Obviously you're looking for holes and pests and color
and all kinds of things.
And keep notes.
Yep.
And the old bender brake test,
if you're wondering if a branch is dead or not,
is you start at the tip of a plant.
I have a dead branch on a plant.
You're wondering, well, why is that branch dying?
And maybe you start bending that branch at the very end.
And maybe it snaps.
Okay, well that part is dead.
Let's back up a little bit on that branch.
Let's go in a few more inches.
And try that bender brake test.
Does the branch bend or does it snap?
If it snaps, it's dead.
Go back a few further inches and do the bender brake.
And if you get a little bend,
well, it's alive there.
And the other technique that you like to talk about
is scratch the surface of the branch with your fingernail
and see what color is below.
Right.
If it won't come off and you can't see anything below, it's dead.
Because the plumbing of the plant is just below the bark.
And so it's very lubricated there.
And it's easy to scrape off the bark if the plant is alive.
And if it's dead, there's no moisture there.
So it won't scrape.
Probably if it's alive, it should be green.
It should be green.
Some plants have other colors.
But green, yellow, it's green, something like that, yes.
Yeah, by the way, that's also a technique for figuring out
what's wrong with your tomato plant
is scraping part of the main stem
to see if there's a pattern below it,
if there's a pattern of a discoloration.
And sometimes that can be a sign of a verticillium or fucerium will.
Oh, something that's growing in the fungus,
in the something that's growing in the plumbing of the plant
and blocking it up.
Right.
Let's move on to number four in our search for
happy and successful gardeners.
They're top 10 habits.
You know, if you throw out a plant, you've got to buy a plant
or get another plant.
Well, that's part of the fun is you do.
Absolutely.
I got a couple waiting for a home down there
that I got to figure out what I'm going to do with.
Well, that's number one is have an idea
where that plant's going to go.
Well, you have an idea and then you actually go out there
and say, well, do I really want to remove what's there?
Right.
I have a perpetual collection outside my kitchen door
of plants and pots that people gave me
or I was I bought on a whim
and I don't know where I'm going to put them.
So that's number one is know what you're going to do with it.
Yeah.
And then buy something that's healthy.
Buy one that's the plant is an appropriate size for the pot.
Not huge, not the biggest one, not tiny either.
The tiny one's probably suffering.
The biggest one's probably over root bound
and it's not going to establish well in your garden.
Only one plant per pot.
Having hosted many plant sales when I was teaching
people loved when there were two plants in the pot.
Two for one.
Right. Two for one.
I've got a deal here.
But typically the set one of the two is not going to survive
or the two are both going to grow poorly
because there's so much competition between them.
Tomatoes that are grown too close together
like if you will never bear they'll grow
but they will never have fruit.
So what's the point?
Just buy the one you want one well rooted established plant.
Now it might be the it's a case of there's one really nice plant
in there and there's a smaller scrawny or one in there.
Well you can buy that and just cut off.
Right.
And that's the way you thin is by cutting not by pulling.
Not by pulling.
Right.
Don't want to disturb the root system too much.
Right.
You don't want to buy plants there in full bloom either.
Maybe they're good luck on that.
Right.
Because what's an adage in the nursery industry
is what sells is what's in bloom.
But so you go to the bed the table with the ones in bloom
and you find the one that has a lot of buds on it
because that means in the future when you get it at home
you're going to get to look at those flowers when they open.
But if you buy the one where all the flowers are open
you're going to get it home and in a day or two
it's going to have no flowers on it.
This also brings up another good point
about not only shopping carefully
but helping it along in that transition period
when you buy a plant take it home
and before you plant it
because how many of us have ever been in the habit
of buying a plant on a Saturday
and then maybe the following Saturday
or the Saturday after that or the Saturday after that?
You finally get around to planting it.
If you buy a plant, especially a plant in a six pack
is when you get home and you know
you're not going to plant that day
pot it up.
Yes.
Move it up to a one gallon container.
You'd be surprised at how that plant will thank you
by putting on all sorts of growth
that by the time you get around to actually sticking in the ground
it's going to be a happy camper.
Right.
Mary Helen Seeger from Four Winds Growers, the Citrus
and Daphne Growers in Winters told me that
when I buy something
I just move it right into the next size pot
and I started doing that.
Boy was she right.
Yeah, it really does pay.
So always keep your one gallon containers hand.
Yes, keep them around.
Yes, and as you've pointed out in the past
you can reuse your old potting.
Yes, you can.
Yes.
You can go back and look for that episode of
I think we got three or four with that in the type.
Talk, yeah.
So you can find that there.
Well, I'll have a link to one in the show notes.
All right.
Now you're at the nursery.
You're shopping for plants.
Don't just pay attention to the top of the leaves.
Turn it over.
Check the bottom of the leaves.
You're looking for.
I'm looking for little bugs.
Little bugs.
Yes.
You want to taste or rust fungus.
Some diseases, right?
Also, I'm looking at the bottom of the container.
Cause slugs like that right inside those holes.
Yeah.
Yes, slugs and snails.
Big problem here in California.
And in other areas too, I ain't area for that matter.
If you turn over that pot and you've got roots coming out
the bottoms of those holes, would you buy that plant?
Depends.
I would go through them all.
And if I really want the plant and I can only find them with roots coming out
the bottom, then I want the one with the least number of roots coming out
the bottom.
But ideally, right, the plant has all the roots in the container.
And the media in the container is only a half inch to an inch below the top,
depending on how big the pot is.
Roots coming out the bottom and the media and or the media that has dropped
significantly from the top of the container,
indicate it's been in the pot too long.
Yeah.
And maybe if it's just roots that are sort of mad
along the bottom, you could probably just loosen them up with your fingernails
or whatever and plant it.
You can even cut them off and plant it.
Yeah, and as long as you give good aftercare to the plant once it's planted.
Well, that and two digging are being enough holes
so that there's room for those roots to grow out,
and not be scrunched in there.
That always helps.
So yeah, shop carefully and whenever you buy plants,
what about getting plants from a neighbor or a friend?
I would apply the same rules.
And that's really you really don't want it if it's got insects.
You really don't want it if there's a lot of weeds growing in the pot.
Yeah, I mean, how many times have you gotten a gallon or
bigger pot from somebody with a plant that you want,
but it's full of who knows what weed.
Unfortunately or fortunately at a well run nursery,
those weeds often still exist.
The perennial ones anyway in the pot,
but people go through and pull them.
They just don't get the root system.
And when you get at home, it re-grows.
Weeds are forever looking at you, Birklover.
Yeah, all right.
All right, let's move on to number five in the habits of happy and successful gardeners.
Put the right plant in the right place.
My heavens, yes.
That there's a tag on the plant at the nursery that says for son or for shade.
They're serious about that.
It also gives an estimated size and width of the plant.
A full growth, yeah.
That full growth.
And you want to make sure that plant has enough width
space to reach its full width.
And that's, and I talked to a landscape architect friend.
I said, if I, you know, I'm teaching people about plants,
what's the number one thing they should learn?
And that's what she said.
How big is the plant going to be when it's mature?
So give it enough room to grow.
So won't bump into the house or the fence or
go over the sidewalk and then pale people as they walk by
or cover the lovely picture window out of the living room so you can't see anything.
Yeah, there's that.
You got your privacy, congratulations.
Boy, we saw that maybe 20, 30 years ago here when people wanted privacy screens.
And what they would do for a privacy screen is put in a row of plants
right next to the fence.
And they were small.
They were in one gallon container.
They're so cute.
So I'll just plant these all a few feet apart and maybe a foot away from the fence.
Those were coast redwood trees, son.
Oh, boy, no, no, yes, the coast redwood tree is going to grow.
It's going to grow tall.
It's going to grow fast, but it's going to be so crowded.
They're going to be dead coast redwood trees in 15 years.
And you have to replace the fence too.
So think about that full size growth and plan ahead.
One landscape architect told me that makes a heck of a lot of sense is if you
want a privacy area, if you want to keep people from looking at you and your hot tub or your pool,
you want to put that privacy screen of plants closer to the area you're trying to protect.
Don't stick it out in the back 40 next to your fence.
It's going to take longer to protect their line of sight from a two-story building
to that pool or spa area.
So you want to have that privacy screen of plants.
Maybe it depends on the plant and the litter it creates, but maybe 15 feet from that area,
if not more depending on how good your pool service is.
There's that.
So you also have to look at what the plant needs in terms of sun, shade, water.
You want to hide your zone, your plants, but the ones that need a lot of water.
Hide your zone.
Yeah, big word.
Yeah, tell us about hide rezoning.
Hydra is water and zone is area.
So you want an area where it can all be watered at the same time,
the same amount, and all the plants will like that.
So you put plants together by the amount of water they need.
And there are definitions, low, moderate, high, like a swamp, soggy.
That's pretty much the range that's given, but every site, every book, every nursery,
will have nuances in those words.
But basically, you're going to have all your low water plants in one place,
and your high water plants in a different place, typically high water is closer to the house,
because that's where you get more of the lush growth and the lovely flowers,
and your lower water plants are further out.
Yeah, hide rezoning also includes just planting along the circuit of your sprinklers,
or your drip irrigation system.
Most of us have several circuits.
And most of those circuits have the same type of head on them,
and we'll put out the same amount of water.
So you want to group your plants by their water needs along that same circuit,
or you can either limit the water.
Right.
I have a circuit that just goes around the perimeter of my yard,
not along the fence.
It's in about 10 feet at least, and that is a low water zone for me.
But I know where it is, and I know that everything there is going to get low water,
and so that's how I plant it.
My wife doesn't know where it is.
She manages to find every drip irrigation lying in the spating fork.
Oh, okay.
Yes.
Yes.
I have a bucket I carry with me to for those fixes.
Yes.
Is it duct tape?
No.
No, it's drip parts.
Strip parts.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know that way.
Now's the time to plan the what and the where of what you want to plant for the future.
And to help you along, it pays to visit your favorite independently owned nursery on a regular basis
throughout the fall and winter, just to see what's new.
And coming soon to that nursery near you is Dave Wilson Nursery's excellent lineup of farmers
market favorites, great tasting healthy fruit and nut varieties.
They'll already be potted up and ready to be planted.
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kiwi, mulberries, gooseberries, figs, and pomegranates.
wholesale grower Dave Wilson Nursery has probably the best lineup of great tasting fruit and
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Find out more at their website DaveWilson.com.
And while you're there, check out all the videos they have on how to plant and grow all their
delicious varieties of fruit and nut trees.
Plus at DaveWilson.com, you can find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson's plants.
Your harvest to better health begins at DaveWilson.com.
All right, let's move on to the number six habit of happy and successful gardeners.
Water intentionally and with both hands.
You say this a little bit differently.
When you talk about watering intentionally with both hands, because you talk about
pay attention to your plants, lift up those leaves.
See what's on the underside of the leaves.
You may want to water the underside of the leaves and water deeply and infrequently.
There was actually a video I used to show the students about watering container plants.
Many people just go out and sort of and have a host with a lovely wand on the end that has a
nice breaker that produces all these little droplets of water and they just swing it around.
Turn the water on, swing it around, the tops of the plants get wet.
And though that's good, but that's not good.
You want to water the whole surface in a container, the whole surface of the soil and let it
up to the rim.
You should have some head space there.
Let it drain, watch, wait, water again, let it drain.
Then you may need to put a finger or a water meter in there and see if the water
is actually going through the container of media in the plant pot.
If it's not, it's going out and around.
So that's something you need to know.
And it doesn't necessarily go very deeply.
I was watering my raised beds yesterday because when I replant for the cool season or
the spring and summer season, I rework the soil, I basically work in compost, work in
worm castings, cover with mulch.
But and you taught me this about container plants.
And what is a raised bed, but simply a just a big container, yeah, is water that soil well
before you plant and make sure that that water does go down.
I was surprised at what I thought the water would have gone much more deeply,
turned out to only have gone down maybe an inch or so.
But then that's, boy, that's raised bed all over.
Yeah, that's what this video showed.
And the guy watered and he counted.
He had, I don't know, the same plant in the same size containers.
Let's say number one's at sacred Santa Mums.
And he watered the first one with his breaker holding it right over that pot,
right over that media.
And he went, he counted to three.
And then he did the next one and he counted to five.
And he did the next one and he counted to seven.
And he did the last one and he counted to nine.
Let them all drain.
And then he knocked him out of the pots to see and and some of them, you know,
the three only went down a quarter of the way.
And when he counted to five, it went down a half of the way.
And it said or any silly found.
I think seven was the count that he used.
So now he holds the wand over those containers and counts to seven.
And then moves to the next container and counts to seven.
You can't just swing it back and forth.
By the way, when it comes to counting and watering,
some of us tend to rush our numbers a little bit.
So I always like to go one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus.
Some people prefer to use the word Mississippi.
Right.
But one thousand.
Yes, what I use that works.
But as long as it's consistent, you can get a pretty good idea.
Of course, in this case, the soil consistency would have to be the same
in all those different containers.
Right.
Absolutely.
For that to work.
Start thinking about raised beds as just big containers and water,
accordingly, which means probably more water more frequently than you think
and fertilization as well because the fertilizer is getting leached out too.
Right.
In the yard and in the ground, especially if you have clay,
you may need to apply water to runs off.
Let's say that takes 10 minutes, shut off whatever your irrigation application is,
your sprayer or whatever.
And then leave it off for 10 minutes, come back, turn it back on for 10 minutes,
and leave it off for 10 minutes.
And at some point, go in there and check how deeply that water has gotten.
But just because it's running off, especially if you've clay soil or compacted soil,
does not mean it has penetrated the soil.
It means that the soil takes it in so slowly that it can't keep up with the right year applying it.
Another good tip too for watering containers.
If it is like totally dry and the water is running off to the side,
maybe take that container plant and stick it in a bucket of water.
A bigger bucket of water and one of my favorite tips.
I'm making this list of things I've learned doing this podcast.
Oh wow. We'll make that a show one.
Okay.
But one of them is kitty litter trays.
Now who uses kitty litter trays?
Yeah.
Okay, kitty litter tray can hold a pretty good sized pot.
Right.
So if you fill that kitty litter tray with water and stick that pot in there and let it sit there overnight,
chances are if the drain holes are open, that soil will get hydrated.
Right.
So kitty litter trays.
Yeah, they help.
Yeah.
Keep the mess in away from other places too.
All right.
It's the top 10 habits of happy and successful gardeners written by master gardeners,
Sue Davis and Louise Christie.
They're both with the Santa Clara and San Joaquin County master gardeners.
They put together this list a few years ago.
And number seven on their list is it's a very California thing.
If you're a California and you want to be a happy, successful gardener,
control snails and slugs.
Yeah.
I have not found snails and slugs in New York when I gardened at my mother's house
or in Minnesota when I garden at my son's house.
So yeah, you're right.
It's kind of a real California thing.
I combined number seven with number eight.
Never let a weed go to seed.
Right, which I turned into control pests when the problem is small.
There.
I like that.
Yeah.
And you've seen snail eggs.
God.
Yes, I have a great picture somewhere in my phone of it's probably a three inch diameter
ball all the way around.
It was only in like a four inch container.
It practically filled the container of slug eggs.
So what was it?
Was it like a plan and only the top of the soil was there in below the soil?
There was about a half inch or an inch above the mass and down one side.
There was there was some soil to the bottom.
But then the whole other rest of it was just full of slug eggs,
which are whitish and kind of slimy.
And they're all touching each other.
That, you know, it wouldn't be visible above ground,
but certainly you would see slug and snail trails,
which would indicate to you that you have a problem.
Right.
And there are some ways to control snails and slugs once they get out of hand.
You ever get up late at night or early in the morning and go out there with a flashlight
looking for them?
Um, no.
I try to do preventative care that the time that they I find them to be the biggest problem is
when I have seedlings in the ground and it's wet.
Well, if I'm irrigating, then it's wet.
So that takes care of that.
And if I'm in a raised bed or a container, I will put a slug bait around the outside
of the container and maybe a little bit on the surface.
When you say slug bait, what are you talking about?
Uh, iron phosphate, which is sold under several brand names, including sluggo,
including sluggo.
And there's, yeah, other ones as we always say, read and follow all label directions.
And I found students, oh, I know that stuff.
And they would go out to use it in our, in our Hort area.
And you could see a whole layer of they, they look like broken up spaghetti,
uh, because they're made in a pasta machine.
That used to be one of the, one of the things a salesman would tell you.
Like, oh, thank you.
I'll never eat pasta again.
But oh, well, at Olive Garden.
But um, if you look at how much you're supposed to lay, it's in a quarter,
the size of a quarter, you might lay four of those little pasta things.
And this was so thick.
And the problem with it being too thick is it kills earthworms.
By the way, these pasta things are, are maybe a quarter of an inch long.
Right.
It's chopped up pasta.
So it's, it's not very big at all.
Uh, yeah, they, they've used too much.
Or unfortunately, they may have not chosen the, uh, iron phosphate product,
but maybe a product where metalldehyde is the active ingredient,
which has toxic effects on, on dogs, cats and kids.
Right.
And it's, it's attractive because it's a, it's a bait.
It's a bait.
Yeah.
And even though you do get the satisfaction of seeing them dead on the spot,
something you won't get using iron phosphate, uh, it's too dangerous to.
They just slink, yeah, they aren't phosphate.
They just slink away and die under a bush.
Yeah.
There's always beer traps too.
Right.
Um, but you got to go out there and manage those.
Yes.
And keep the dog from licking it.
Um, um,
who likes to protein from the slugs and sales?
And by the way, uh, controlling slugs and snails does begin at the nursery too,
is you turn over that pot and make sure that there's nothing on the bottom.
They can be outside if the root, especially if the roots have grown outside
underneath the container.
They can be in the drain holes.
And you're definitely right about weeds.
Uh, you do want to pick them when they're small before they have flowered
before they've set seed.
Otherwise, you may end up with something like hairy bitter crest,
which when it has a small delicate flower on it.
And if you just pull the plant out,
the seed case explodes and things can fly 10, 15 feet.
Yes.
Yes.
Like Medicago, uh, which is buttercup.
What?
Yellow.
Is that Alice?
Yes.
Oxalis Medicago, um, has a capsule.
I was at my son's house in Minnesota and his driveways concrete is starting to break up.
And he was complaining.
He had to weed all of this stuff out of his driveway.
And and there was a Medicago there with its
formed seed pod.
And I said, you know, son, when this dries out,
it's going to throw hundreds of seeds across your driveway.
And he said, oh, and bent.
As I'm driving away, he bent down and was pulling out the weeds.
You got to get them before this before it sets seed.
Before this B.I.S.S.
Mm-hmm.
All right.
The crazy thing is those seeds can last for decades.
Right.
This is why we like soil solarization.
Because if you can raise the temperature of the soil to 120, 140 degrees,
it could, if its oil is moist enough,
that temperature can penetrate 12 inches down.
Right.
And kill all those seeds in that process.
Yeah.
In order to find the problem, the pest problem when it's small,
you have to go observe the garden.
And to me, that is the number one rule of successful gardening.
We're going to get there.
We're going to get there.
Okay.
All right.
I'm impatient.
I know.
Well, that's going to be part of number 10.
Okay.
All right.
Let's go to number nine, attract beneficial insects.
Exactly.
Build the good bug hotel.
Right.
Nature do your killing for you.
Right.
And tolerate a small pest infestation.
Well, you have to.
We won't have the good bugs because good bugs eat the bad bugs.
And so if you take away their food supply, they're moving.
Well, not only taking away their food supply,
but if you decide to spray the bad bugs,
you're killing the good bugs too.
Right.
And probably in quicker and in more number,
because they have not been exposed to the chemicals
as often in their history, you know,
their parents and their grandparents.
So they don't have resistance built up in their genes yet.
And in the war between vegetarians and carnivores,
you want the carnivores.
Because usually it's the teenage ages of the beneficial insects
that will go munching on things like aphids and white flies.
And they're all good ugly and worm me looking,
but they are good guys.
If they're walking kind of faster,
if often you see them eating, sitting there eating.
So they're sitting still, but they're eating.
So you know they're good guys.
But if they're moving around faster,
then the other thing, they're the predator.
Like the aphid is sitting there with its mouth parts stuck in the plant.
And the larva of the lady beetle is walking around
or the lady beetle itself,
finding the aphids and eating them.
So the one that's moving faster is the predator.
When you're attracting these good bugs,
you have a lot more success if you put in the plants
that they find attractive as opposed to you going to the nursery
and buying a box of lady bugs,
which are probably just going to fly away.
You're better off, like I said, building the good bug hotel,
putting a lot of plants that they want to raise their children in.
They use, for also part of their dinner as well,
not their children, but the plants themselves.
Yes, yes.
So they're looking for nectar and pollen.
Right.
And you can find lists all over the place.
You can find seeds, seed packets that are a mix of things
that would attract beneficials.
And there are, I think I last saw it on the Autobahn Society.
There's one for California that has includes shrubs
and it's to make a like a shrub border
where they will, they need a habitat,
they need a place to live,
they need something to drink and something to eat.
Yeah, these habitats are actually becoming quite popular now,
especially here in California on farms of having that hedgerow.
Hedge row, yep.
Of beneficial attracting plants.
And it includes annuals, perennials and shrubs.
Yes.
Something for everybody.
Yes.
Perennials do take work, but in that sort of situation,
I think it's easier to have them as perennials
because you don't have to think about replanting them every year.
Right.
And remember too, as you're fond of saying about chemical controls
on an insect, read and follow all label directions,
know the pest you're trying to control,
know the plant that you're spraying it on as well.
Because all of that can lead to problems.
And it should all be on the label.
Yeah, read the label.
Good luck on that.
Take your magnifying glass with you.
For weed control, especially,
I don't want to be grandpa here,
but go back to hand pulling.
Yeah, yeah.
And do it, especially right after a rain storm,
they count out really easily.
Yeah, yeah, all right.
Doing when they're little doesn't take much,
hoe them out, cut them off when they're very young.
I was out in my yard a couple days ago
and I saw this patch.
There's some oxalus, pretty oxalus,
bunches that are quite large, three feet across,
that were there when I bought the house.
And I saw a patch of seedlings that could have been that oxalus.
And it was a ways away from the bunches that I already have.
And I thought, that would be nice.
But I did some more research using an app on the phone
to look it up.
And they said, no, it was one of the bad metacoggos.
One of the bad oxaluses.
But they were just seedlings.
They were just getting their first true leaf.
So I just hoe them out,
just cut them off at the soil level back and forth with the hoe.
Yeah, it's amazing how easily some of that can come out too.
Mm-hmm.
Especially when they're young.
Yeah, all right.
Unusually brutal fall and winter storms will continue across the country in the months ahead.
Heavy winds, atmospheric rivers of rain,
and relentless snow will be toppling trees from coast to coast.
They'll be crushing cars, homes, and power lines too.
Why are so many trees falling?
It could be due to the lack of care by the homeowners,
or the city, or whoever owns the trees.
In the flashback episode of the week,
we have tips for discovering some of the structural weaknesses
that can lead to toppling trees,
and how you can help prevent disaster from striking.
It's flashback episode number 247 called,
Trees Versus Storms.
It's from January of 2023.
You can find a link to it in today's show notes,
or at the podcast player of your choice.
And you can find it along with a transcript at our homepage,
GardenBasics.net.
And now we come to number 10 on the successful habits of happy gardeners,
as written by San Joaquin, Santa Clara County master gardeners,
Louise Christie, and Sue Davis.
Number 10, Linger in the Garden.
Mm-hmm.
Observe.
Observe in the garden.
They were rather succinct about lingering in the garden as the number 10 habit to have.
They say, Linger, to stay in a place longer than necessary,
typically because of a reluctance to leave.
Well, that's true of just the way gardening is.
You go out to do one thing.
You end up doing everything else but that one.
Right.
But yeah, just observing the plants.
It's amazing when you just focus in on something
and the other things you see.
Yes.
And that's when you're going to find the problems.
You're also going to see the successes and be able to enjoy them.
I try to walk my garden.
Different depends on the season.
At least weekly.
Maybe daily when things are really active.
I love it.
I love doing it.
But I also find the things that need to be taken care of that way.
I'm a nosy kind of guy.
So I really like observing in the late afternoon
because plants that have an aromatic air to them when they might be in bloom,
or even just because of the leaf tend to emanate better in the late afternoon.
Uh-huh.
That's something to enjoy.
But it's also a way for you to notice problems in the yard
which causes you to linger longer than you intended in the yard.
That you'll start one thing.
And that's why when you walk outside to observe your garden,
you probably have a pair of pruners with you.
Right.
You may have a bucket with you.
Yes.
You may have a trowel with you.
Yes.
A trowel is not so often,
but definitely shares and a bucket.
Yeah.
I ain't got to put that stuff somewhere.
Right.
And yeah, you'll find something to do.
Absolutely.
Yes.
And I'll feel good for having done it.
Like sometimes I'll prune a plant and step back and say,
you know, it even looks bigger now that it's given some symmetry
or you got rid of the crossing that distracted your eye or something.
Things can look so much better with little effort.
I think if I was going to start all over again with this gardening thing,
I wouldn't want a flower station in the yard
which would basically consist of a table, a sink, running water.
And the ability to cut flowers and go there
and maybe a selection of vases there.
So you are spending more time in the yard
cutting flowers for vases and just because sometimes if you go down to cut flowers for a vase,
you find five or six and you're walking around with them in your hand.
Yeah.
No, you want to keep them in water and cut them in water.
Right.
They make devices for that for the industry.
We actually lay their kind of kitty litter boxes with big guillotine.
So you lay the, they have like a slope side.
You lay the flowers in there and then you bring the guillotine down to cut the stems off.
Oh, that's all done underwater.
Okay.
Well, that's probably if I got into the business, I'd want one of those.
The other thing to get, I don't have one of those,
but the other thing to get is some floral preservative powder.
And it tells you how much to put.
Mine is a scoop per gallon.
What is in floral preservative?
Oh, I'd have to look at the label.
Is it just powdered gatorade?
No.
Okay.
No, I don't think so.
But it really works.
If I put the flowers in that, they'll last a good week.
If I don't, it's just a few days.
I got to believe it's sugar.
Well, you know, people have recipes that include like seven up and an aspirin or something.
And I don't, I think there's some efficacy to some of those.
I think people have done research.
And there are answers online about that.
And I don't know them off the top of my head.
This is an industry approved thing.
It's called floral life.
What is in floral preservative ingredients?
Let's ask the internet, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
Would you trust them for information?
Yes.
Okay.
Let's see what they have to say about floral preservatives cut in the morning.
That's always good.
Yes.
See, I deal time to cut fresh flowers.
Sharp tools, clean, sharp utensils, never use ordinary household scissors.
All right.
Fine.
Whatever.
Cut all flowers in full age, about one inch from the bottom of a main stem.
Make the slice at an angle of about 45 degrees.
This cutting at an angle provides a larger exposed area for the uptake of water.
All right.
All right.
Water temperature should be 100 to 110 degrees.
I did not know that.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's pretty.
Is that for the...
Says professional florists and commercial growers always use lukewarm water for their cut flowers.
The water temperature should be 100 to 110 degrees.
Warm water molecules move faster than cold water molecules.
And so can be absorbed by flowers with greater ease.
The objective is to get the water and nutrients as quickly as possible to the head of the flower.
To survive, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden says,
flowers need three ingredients.
Carbohydrates, biosides, and acidifiers.
Carbohydrates are necessary for cell metabolism,
biosides, combat, combat bacteria,
and are necessary for maintaining plant health.
Acidifiers adjust the pH of water to facilitate and increase water uptake.
And so their formula, their homemade formula for floral preservatives, flower preservatives,
is how much is this for?
For one quart, okay.
For one quart water, you use one quart lukewarm water, one teaspoon sugar,
one teaspoon household bleach, and two teaspoons lemon or lime juice.
So I assume the commercial floral preservative is,
has some sugar, has some bioside, which the bleach would be,
and has some acid in it.
Okay, so you're lowering the pH.
You're lowering the pH.
Yes, acid lowers the pH.
Okay.
I do happen to, when I use the commercial floral preservative,
I do use warm water because it dissolves better in warm water.
All right, yeah.
The Brooklyn Botanical Garden says,
such solutions, the commercial solutions of floral preservatives,
those floral preservative solutions contain sugar for nutrition,
bleach to keep the water clear of bacteria,
and citric acid to gently acidify the water.
Be sure to follow the recommended measurements for different sized containers.
Now, what about aspirin?
It says, one common suggestion is to place an aspirin in the water
to keep flowers fresh.
It is likely that aspirin's effectiveness
is simply the result of the drug's carbohydrate content.
Another well-known suggestion is to drop a penny into the water.
Apparently, the copper in the penny works like an acidifier,
decreasing the pH of the water.
Unfortunately, solid copper pennies are no longer being minted.
I have to, I wonder when they work, because I have a penny collection of old pennies.
Oh, 1956, I want to say.
Oh, I go back before that in my collection.
All right, well then, those were real copper pennies.
Okay, if you want to do that.
Nice guess, Fred.
But no, according to the US Mint,
it was in 1982 that the penny became primarily zinc
with only two and a half percent copper.
No, I'll use my commercial floral preservative.
Okay, now we know there's even a,
I'll have this link to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
and on Cut Flower Care, and today's show,
no, it's there's a lot of good information there.
Yeah.
And a lot of people's comments.
It's a beautiful place if you ever get the chance to go.
I'll take your word for it.
Okay.
All right, did we do it?
Did we get the 10?
Wow, this was an extra long edition
of the Garden Basics podcast.
I'm sorry, I interrupted you.
No, we'll make this work.
All right, the top 10.
We just read it for Edden.
I'm going to go to the restroom.
Okay.
See, that's how long this was.
All right, there's number five.
There's, so that's it.
The top 10 habits of happy and successful gardeners,
Sue Davis, Louise Christie,
representing the Santa Clara County and San Joaquin County,
Master Gardeners who wrote the article
for the San Joaquin County Garden notes.
I'll have a link to that.
In today's show notes as well,
it's actually in two different newsletters
that they put out.
But we'll have that there for you as well.
And my thanks to Debbie Flower for helping us out
and making a lot more successful happy gardeners.
The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast
comes out once a week on Fridays.
And it's 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 find transcripts
of most episodes as well.
Thank you so much for listening or reading.