Hello and welcome to Live like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Brooke Jackson, and we're here with our good friend Erin to continue our series on summer gardening, Growing a garden, growing plants and food. Aaron, you want to say hi to the lovely folks listening.
Hello listeners, and thanks to Live like the World is Dying for having me back on.
Oh, it's a delight. I love talking to you. But before we get too deep into our conversations, we're going to pause for a moment to celebrate being members of the Channel Zero network of anarchist Podcasts by sharing a little jingle from another one of the fabulous podcasts on our network. And that jingle will go right here. Where did you get this? Your friendly neighborhood anarchist. More of an anarchist militant. People involved in social struggles. And then everybody else people have been waiting for some content radio show the Final Straw. And I'm William Gooding and I'm verse of goodness, the finalstrawradio.noblogs.org if you're listening,
you are the resistor. Go.
Welcome back. We hope that was a fabulous jingle that kept you highly entertained and on the edge of your seat and gave you something new to listen to. But if not, you have us to listen to and we're amazing. So, Aaron, I feel like the people should know you because we've had you on so much, but do you want to do a, you know, quick introduction of yourself and your podcast and so forth?
Sure. My name is Aaron. I make a podcast called Propaganda by the Seed, which is all about plants, plants and people who love plants and work with plants also. Or the podcast is also a member of the Channel Zero Network and I run Edgewood Nursery, which is a plant nursery that sells especially perennial edible plants and local ecotype native plants from where I live in Wabanaki territory, AKA Maine.
Wonderful and longtime listeners. You know, because you're such good friends of the pod, that we also did one of our skills zines with Aaron about edible perennials and that's available on our website. You can get the PDF for free and print it off or you can order physical copies of that zine and we just sell those at the cost of them. Or if you're going to any book fairs this summer and you run into us, we'll have printed copies of them there. But that was, I think, our what third. Third skill scene that we did and you and Cass worked on that and it's, it's one of the best ones. I'm biased because I like Plants. But it's pretty fantastic. And we might, we may turn this cereal into maybe another skill zine about growing a garden. I think that would be neat.
Nice.
But yeah. So this is a, this is a part two. Our part one was back in, I think what was the. Erin, it was in April that we did that.
I have no idea.
I think we recorded in March, like a while ago for an April, and that one was about like getting your garden started for the year. It's a good one to go back and listen to if you're interested in the gardening topic. We're gonna cover just a little bit of the same stuff because we're going to talk about planting, but we're mostly talking about kind of the next things to do with your garden once you've got it in the ground. So. Erin, I know the answer to this, but I'll pretend that I don't for the sake of our conversation here. Aaron, what if I've been just a terribly busy human being and I didn't have time to plant any seeds and I haven't gone out yet and bought plant starts and haven't started my garden, but I still really want to garden this summer? Is it, is it too late?
For me, it is definitely not too late. Almost all crops can still be planted right now. There's still lots of stuff that I myself haven't sewn. And it's like not even, not even too late. In fact, some things are actually better planted late.
Oh, wow.
So, for instance, around here, potatoes are a big crop, but we also have a lot of annoying potato pests. And if instead of a long season potato, you plant a shorter season potato and plant it really late, like after 4th of July or right, right around 4th of July, you can still get a good potato crop, but those potatoes won't come up until after. Most of the potato pests have already done their thing of flying around looking for potatoes. So the, the pest pressure is much lower. By planting potatoes first week in July,
does that mean it's better to plant them then?
Not necessarily better, but if potato pests are like a real big problem for you, then yeah, it's probably better. The yields wouldn't be as high as if you planted a long season potato early, but it's, it's a trade off. And if you, you know, didn't happen to get around to it until then, no big deal.
Okay, that's pretty good to know. I feel like I'm getting a lot of potato volunteers that pop up from my compost and then I turn the compost, you know.
But a useful piece of information to determine whether it is too late to sow something is days to maturity. Most. Most seed packets will say like, 60 days to maturity or 120 days to maturity. And then you can look up your first frost date. Usually you can look this up just based on your zip code and get pretty decent information. And if you look it up and your first frost is like, you know, October 5th is the predicted first frost, then you can work back to whenever you're considering planting something and say, okay, I've got, you know, 120 days. So that. That kind of sets the parameters for what annual vegetables you can plant.
Is that first frost going to kill everything in my garden?
It depends.
Garden murder, murder date. Is that what a first frost is?
Really depends on the crop. Some things, like kale, say, will be completely unbothered or even improved by that first frost.
Oh, really? Yeah, Kale can. Okay, all right. Lots.
Lots of plants that have sort of like complex carbohydrates in them. When the frost hits, will convert some of those complex carbohydrates into simple sugars because the sugar basically acts like antifreeze.
Oh, man, that is some cool fucking science, man.
I did not know this. They'll actually sweeten up a little bit. Same same is true of carrots, parsnips, all sorts of stuff. So first frost, not. Not the end of the end of your garden, but important for things like tomatoes and squash, warm, warm weather annuals that will basically just melt when they get that real frost.
I think we finally found the plant sponsor for this podcast, and I think it needs to be Kale. I think. I think. You know, Aaron, I think you just identified. We've been talking about this for a while in our. In our. In our meetings of Strangers Collective, and. And I think it's Kale. I think Kale is the new sponsor of this podcast.
Yeah, you. You could certainly do worse than Kale. It's also worth noting that perennials, so plants that live for three or more years can basically be planted anytime in the growing season. It depends on what form you're planting them in. So you wouldn't want to plant perennials from seed in September. That would be too late. If you had transplants like seedlings, those could go in the ground in September and still be fine. You could plant a perennial from seed in June or July, and it would still have plenty of time to get going and get big enough that the winter isn't going to kill it. Assuming you Live in a place that has winter, which is not everywhere.
Yeah. So a good reminder for the listeners here is that Aaron and I are in slightly different climates. And I know that like the federal. We talked about this before, the USDA hardiness zones aren't the best indicator for your specific area. But just broadly speaking, I'm in one that's like an 8 or a 9 hardiness zone. And Aaron, you're quite a bit lower in your. Right. Yeah, five. Okay. So not even down to like the twos and threes. So that, you know, like Aaron was saying, it's important to know your, your frost dates and to look that up really specifically for your area, but just in broad terms for the audience here getting a range of, you know, I've got a different hardiness zone here than, than Aaron does. And so it's slightly different rules depending on where you are for things. But. Okay, so as far as planting or transplanting days to maturity do, when you buy plant starts from places, do they, do they mention days to maturity on there? Is that something you then have to look up on your own?
Depends on the place. Sometimes if they have like an informational sign or a tag on the transplants, it'll say how many days to maturity there are. And also if you're buying them from someone, hopefully that person knows what they're talking about and can advise you on whether it's too late to plant something. But if this is going to come out in like, you know, mid June for most crops in most places, you'll, you'll still have lots of time to get stuff in the ground.
Yeah, I feel like, and this may only be true of my area, but I feel like plant starts for, you know, vegetables and stuff start becoming more and more scarce at stores starting early to mid June. Here it's, you know, they bring in a nice crop for spring and they don't really restock and they start to kind of dwindle or even if you go to local farms, they're going to have less and less plant starts available for sale, so they might be a little harder to find as well. And unfortunately, you know, Erin, correct me if you have a different experience of this, but I feel like big box stores aren't necessarily always stocking plant starts based on sort of what you should plant or when you should plant it kind of a thing.
I would agree with that. That's like a less than ideal place to get anything, really. But plant starts especially are. They're just not going to be kind of tailored to your Climate, they're going to be grown with a lot of synthetic fertilizer that you probably won't be using. So those plants will be kind of primed to be ready to grow on lots of synthetic fertilizer. And then there'll be an adjustment period while they kind of readjust to growing in normal soil.
Yeah. So if you're folks, if you're just getting your gardens planted, had a chance to do it, and you go get some plant starts. If you go to your Home Depot, don't necessarily trust that. Oh, just because it's here at the Home Depot, that means it's. I can still plant this or that. This is a good plant for here. Or don't make assumptions just because the store has it. At that point, probably, you know, gonna have to look up the plants a little bit before you purchase. If that's the. If that's the source that you have to use. If you have other options, like a local farm or a farmer's market that has plant starts, those gardeners, you know, they're. They're going to be local, they're going to be growing things that probably do well in your area. And we'll have more information. You know, you have a human being you can talk to who really knows their plants that can. Can tell you things like days of maturity and stuff like that. Okay, so folks who have already gotten their plants out, there's maybe some hardening off of seedlings still to do, depending on when you got your plants in the ground. We talk about that a lot in the previous episode. So we'll let y', all, if you want to know about how to harden off your seedlings, go listen to that. I ask a lot of really dumb questions because I didn't know things and Aaron taught me a lot. But let's start from the basis of. Okay, now you have your plants in the ground and you've got lots of little baby plants going on. And it's. It's mid to late June. What do we need to be doing right now for those.
Well, what I was doing right before I came inside to do this interview was watering. Watering. How much you need to water is very dependent on, like, how much it's raining is probably number one factor. What you're growing, what your soil conditions are, what, how much mulch you have. So all these things will affect how much you need to be watering. And there's kind of two phases of watering at. At planting. I always recommend watering heavily unless the ground is already, like, really saturated. And if you're direct sowing seeds, like putting street seeds straight in the ground, which is a great way to grow things. Super cheap, less labor. But you do need to kind of keep those seed beds evenly moist for usually a week or so until the. The seeds germinate and pop up. So that's kind of like they need extra intensive watering. And then for plants that are a little more established, you know, but still planted this year, you never want to let the soil dry out completely. Unless they're plants that are well adapted to that, like xeric scape plants or cacti or something like that, they'd be fine drying out completely. But, you know, vegetables and most temperate plants that are. You're trying to establish, you want that soil to stay kind kind of damp and not totally dry out. Because when it completely dries out, several things happen and it gets really hard to get it to start absorbing water again.
Okay. I feel like I've seen that happen when I've had soil that's real dry and then I go to put water on it and like, the water just sort of doesn't want to go. Like if I like a hanging basket, for instance, and I go to. Yeah, go to water and the water just sort of like runs off the side of it and doesn't want to soak in. And I'm like, what, what is going on with this dirt? It's water. You love water. Why won't you soak it up?
There's, there's a couple different things that, that are happening. Some potting soil material just gets kind of hydrophobic when, in. When it dries out completely.
That's wild.
If it's like a living soil that has like bacteria and stuff in it. The bacteria are actually a factor in, in soil stopping absorbing water because what happens is if they completely dehydrate, they're going to die. So they actually like encapsulate themselves in this hydrophobic, like membrane sort of thing so that they can keep what water they have inside their cells. And with, you know, billions of bacteria throughout the soil, that actually has a significant effect on making the soil like, not absorb water until it really gets a good soaking again.
Okay. Yeah. And bacteria in this case is good. We're talking about good bacteria.
Yes. The vast majority of the bacteria in the soil are good and doing helpful things.
Okay, do. Are vegetable plants at risk of overwatering? Can you over water them?
Yes.
In like these hot summer months. Okay.
Depending on your soil conditions. Like I have very sandy, very well draining soil, so it would be Basically impossible for me to over water.
Okay.
But lots of places don't have such good drainage. If you have heavy clay soils, then, you know, those have pros and cons. A pro being they hold water better and you don't have to water as much. Con being you can over water and sometimes just the rain that happens to come can over water them and cause flooding or waterlogging.
Okay, so what are some of the things that happen if you over water your plants?
I guess the, the biggest thing is like healthy soil should be an aerobic environment. Like you want air to be getting into that soil. And that's kind of, you know, the, the healthy fungi and bacteria that are associated with good, good plant growth generally want some opportunity to, to breathe oxygen. And if the water gets, or if the soil gets so wet that all the little crevices in between the particles fill up with water, then there's not really room for oxygen to move or gases to exchange. And that can, that can cause things to rot, occasionally rotting.
Okay. If it starts to rot, is it, is it too late to rescue the plant? Does that mean it's dying and that's the end or.
Not necessarily. You can have some degree of damage and you know, if it stops raining more than you want it to, or you increase drainage to the area, they'll often recover.
Okay. Yeah. My naturally occurring soils here are heavier clay soils, very like claggy and hard. And so we have to do a lot of amendments to make them more workable for growing things. And I've of course built above ground gardening boxes to kind of aid that even further on that. But yeah, very different, very different soil conditions than your nice sandy, well draining soils over there.
Yes.
So since yours drained so well, you must be at a higher risk of underwatering.
Absolutely. And when I started gardening here, I had a very hard time even just keeping plants alive because I hadn't had a chance to like build up organic material in the soil. And so it's this very sandy, weak soil and it didn't hold water well. And it just, everything just needed like a good dose of compost and a heavy mulch to even stay alive and like regular watering.
Okay.
Now after almost 20 years of adding compost and mulch and building up soil carbon, you know, I'm still watering regularly when I'm direct sowing things or if I just planted little seedlings, I'll water them every day for a little while. But then for the most part, I can water annuals like hopefully once a week, sometimes less if it's you know, if we get rain sometimes, I can go months without watering stuff once it's kind of got a good root system.
Okay.
Interesting. Of course, perennials are like, they usually don't need any watering at all once they're established in this climate.
I was going to say in your conditions.
Yeah.
I think about my poor little strawberry plants. I have a lot of them. They're kind of becoming a weed in my yard Ona at this point. And they, you know, do a great, great yield because they come out in June, they start putting off berries. And of course, they've had like, lots of nice spring rains because of where I live here in Oregon, but you get into the summer and they're definitely a lot of risk of drying out of them. So if I want them to stay healthy through next year and put off runners and stuff, I do have to keep some amount of water on those, those particular annuals in, in my conditions.
Yeah. And every place is different. Every plant is different. Um, so the, the, like, native plants of any given area obviously have had a long time to adapt to the conditions and once established, generally don't need any additional watering or fertilizer or whatever.
Okay, so that makes sense. So, and you mentioned, so you mentioned that you're. You can sometimes go a week without watering in your conditions on your annuals. Right? You said that. Yeah. And mine are like, you know, if they go more than a full day without watering in the kind of heat of the summer, you can tell that they're suffering and struggling and really ideally need a little bit of water every day in the kind of like, really hot June, July months here. So again, different conditions. You know, you gotta, you gotta be in tune with your plants a little bit and your, and where you live, what your weather's like and so forth to know what they need. Are there places here in the US where it's too hot to do any good gardening? This is a question way out of left field. Sorry. But I'm thinking about my, my knowledge
is pretty localized to like the Northeast, but I, I think like the desert Southwest, like, the seasons are kind of flipped. Like, you can grow beautiful vegetables there, but you're mostly doing that in the winter. And then the summer just gets like, too hot and dry and there's not availability of, of water for irrigation as much as we have in other parts of the country. So I think where like our winter, there's like, no gardening to do other than like, pruning woody stuff in the hotter, drier parts of the country. There's like, not a lot of gardening to do in the hottest, driest part.
Okay, that's a good point that for us to make then is that there's, you know, a limitation to how much the gardening you can do depending on. Because it can be too hot. Be too hot depending on where you are. I was just randomly remembering I had a family member who lived in San Diego for a couple of years when we were much younger and was visiting her in the spring and helped her get a garden started. Planted some zucchinis and stuff, and they were all lovely and happy in the spring. And then the summer came and she was in the sort of the outside areas of San Diego where it gets much hotter. Not like on the coast where it's, you know, more moderate. And it was regularly up in the 90s and over 100 degrees. And her zucchinis just could not handle. Could not handle the heat of, of those weather since, you know, there may have been some caretaking issues too, I don't know, but seemed like it got too hot for some of those plants. All right, so watering, of course, is important for plants. It's not too late to start plants. What else do we need to be thinking about as we start to move into, you know, July and even into August?
I would say weeding is kind of the next real important thing. And weeding is a notoriously unpleasant task for a lot of people. And so I'm going to. I'm going to put a plug in for using a hoe. And we like hoes.
We're pro hoe on this podcast. Okay. Sorry, that's just Brooke being Brooke.
I am very pro hoe.
This pro ho podcast is sponsored by Kale here for it. Nailed it.
And like, number one reason you should use a hoe rather than hand pulling weeds is it's going to save your back so much.
Oh, okay.
Because a hoe is a long handled tool that you use to like scrape up small weeds and you can use it from like a upright standing position. Very pleasant.
Okay, what about weeds that have like a deep tap root? Like, you know, we get a lot of dandelions here and those tend to.
Yeah. So if they've gotten established, a hoe is not going to particularly help you with taprooted weeds like dandelion. For that, I would recommend a tool called a hori. Hori. H O R I H O R I H It is one of the two tools that I like, carry on my belt through the growing season.
Hoes and whores. Got it.
Nice I feel like that might need to be the banner over this cereal.
I'm sorry, everybody. I'm obviously in a weird mood today, but it's. This is just. It's all good. It's all good here. So you can hoe early. And if you don't hoe early, then you have to hoar. Whore. Hori. Hori. You know, I've heard of that tool, but I know what it looks like, so I'm gonna have to go look that up.
It's basically a big knife. Okay, you can see that.
Oh, yeah. I even have it.
Listeners cannot see this. Yeah, yeah. Let's see. This one has a blade that's like 7 or 8 inches long, and you can kind of stab it in the ground next to a dandelion or other taprooted weed and like, kind of pry it and then that. That weed will pop right out. Nice. Nice and easy. Also very convenient for planting, transplants, or many other gardening tasks.
Okay, that's funny. I have one of those, and I use it often. And I did not know that's what it was called. I just was like, it's my skinny trowel. Because I guess the one I have is a little more rounded like a trowel, and not quite as flat as maybe what a hori. Hori actually is. But, yeah, super useful gardening tool.
Yeah, super handy. And there's various types of hoes. I usually use a stirrup hoe, which some people call a scuffle hoe. They're cheap, readily available. If you've had it for a while and you have the tools to do it, sharpening your hoe makes it work better and easier, and they usually come with a decent edge on it. But a hoe, usually you're trying to, like, cut the little weeds off of their roots, which, for a small weed, will generally kill it. And if it's nice and sharp, it just does that more efficiently.
Yeah, hoe's one of my favorite gardening tools, too. We get. I or I get in my yard a lot of clover for some reason, red and red and green clovers that want to pop up. And that's. The hoe is so nice for just sort of like scraping across a long section of. Of clover and. And cutting those off from the roots. Really like them.
Yeah. So that. That will help you keep your garden weeds to, like, a dull roar. And the less weeds you have, also the less water you'll need to put down, because, you know, when. When there's lots of weeds growing in with your crop plants they're all kind of competing for that water. And so doing a good job of weeding will also minimize the amount of water that you have to do.
What about spraying the weeds or using something on them?
Generally not advised.
Why not?
They're.
Well, I'm playing devil's advocate here because.
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I, I think herbicides actually can, can be a useful tool. It's just not like I would, I would reach for the hoe first, but there are situations where, where I might consider using herbicides, and that would be something like Japanese knotweed, a. A weed with such intense root structure and apparent desire to keep living that there's no amount of hand weeding that is likely to get rid of an established one. Also, some woody weeds that no matter how many times you cut them, they just keep coppicing back. You might consider using a dab of herbicide on the cut stem, which is a way to use like the bare minimum of that herbicide and get a really dramatic effect. So basically, like, I, I wouldn't say herbicide is like totally evil and never ever use it, but it's like the last resort, in my opinion and should be used very sparingly.
And doesn't it run the risk of like, poisoning your plants, of getting absorbed into your, your food that you're eating if you, if you use herbicide on a weed that's next to, you know, your tomatoes or whatever? Or is that just. Is that an urban myth?
It depends on how you're applying it. Okay. And how close and how close in time. So most also. What kind of herbicide? The most common herbicide is glyphosate, which is definitely bad for you, definitely toxic, definitely really bad for aquatic ecosystems.
Okay.
But it also has a pretty short half life and binds to plants and soil pretty quickly. Um, so if it's applied carefully, it's. It's mostly going to stay where, where it's put. But if you're applying it by spraying, then there it has a much greater chance of drifting. So if a little breeze comes up while you're spraying it, it could go from where you want it to be to somewhere else, which is why I basically never spray herbicide. I do occasionally do what's called cut stem treatment for like, really difficult to remove woody stuff, which is where you cut the stem. And then I use a bingo dauber. So it's basically like a little bottle with a sponge. So there's basically no drift associated with that.
Okay.
That chemical is going to go like, into that plant and then break down inside that plant. And there's not, there's, it's not really going to stay biologically persistent or affect anything else.
Okay. So there are some herbicides that, or maybe even many herbicides that are in fact safe. And, and the biggest thing is application method on plants. Is that an accurate summation?
Yeah, and it's like, I would say, like a safer. There's always some amount of toxicity and like, you definitely want to use appropriate ppe, like wear gloves, be careful not to spill it on yourself, read the label. And if, if, if you decide that you're going to go down that route at all, you can also just completely avoid them. And that's also a valid choice.
Yeah, yeah. Handwritten hand waiting is preferable for sure.
And, and in the case of like a, a vegetable garden, say, I never use herbicides in, in the vegetable garden just because there's, there's no need to. And I only very, very rarely use them at all. But in a few very specific circumstances can be very handy.
Yeah. And so it's another one of those things that can be an advantage if you're doing some, you know, container gardening or, or raised bed gardening. Is that your, your area which you have to maintain and, and mon becomes a little smaller. You know, when I was growing up, we did big gardens in the ground, directly in the ground, in fairly large sections of the yard. So it was a lot to maintain. And now as an adult, I have several, you know, raised boxes that I do my, my growing of vegetables in at my home. And it is a little bit easier that way to keep, keep up with some of the weeds. And especially because the soil that I put in there is, you know, more mixed, it's looser. The, the hard clay soils that we have here, of course, hold on to weeds a little harder than some other soils. I don't know what, what it's like with your nice sandy soils there, if your weeds tend to root a little looser.
A little bit. Yeah. I also want to mention about raised beds. I don't do much with raised beds, but I was talking with someone the other day and they were talking about how they have like, really, really raised beds, like 4 or 5ft tall, because they have a physical disability. And if, if gardening is like, physically difficult or impossible for you, consider like really tall raised beds as a possible method that might make it easier or possible. It's kind of similar to like, oh, a hoe is really going to help out your weeding because you can use it from standing Also, if your raised bed is like at a comfortable working height, then you just don't have to bend over to do anything. And it also keeps you up above where a lot of the weeds are. It gives you excellent drainage. If you have drainage issues, there are other, you know, it's, there are other benefits. And then the, the cost is it's like a bigger infrastructure lift to get started.
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so we talked about planting, we've talked about watering, we've talked about weeding. What else do we need to be doing to take care of our gardens here? In the summer as plants are growing,
fertilizing might be a thing you need to do. If you have a relatively new garden and as part of your garden prep, you put down a good dose of compost, you may not need to fertilize. But if you're gardening in the same spot for a while and not adding compost or other nutrients, this can be a, an important time to fertilize, especially for annual vegetables. A lot of perennials have such low needs for fertility that, you know, you might get additional yields by fertilizing, but they'll probably be okay for the most part without much.
Is there a particular way to tell if, if our plants need fertilizing?
Sometimes they're like really obvious clues. Chlorosis, like if the leaves of the plant are becoming like yellow or very light green, that's like a good cue for fertilizer. Often that's lack of nitrogen.
Okay.
Can be caused by other stuff too, but that would be like, oh, this plant is like really unhappy. More likely just kind of stunted growth is like low fertility. Especially if you've been growing in the same spot for a few years. If you notice, like, oh, you know, tomatoes used to kind of burst out of the ground and be really big and vigorous. And now a few years later, not so much. It's just like growing really slow. Not getting to a good size, looking generally stressed out might be an indication of low fertility.
So if I've got some yellowing plants and, and it's not actually caused by fertilizer issues, but I, and I, but I don't know that and I put fertilizer on it, is that going to hurt the plant?
Potentially depends on what you're using for fertilizer. My, my go to recommendation of fertilizer would be a good quality compost.
So just like my garden, just my scraps from my kitchen. Right. Just throw some banana peels on the garden.
Probably not.
Oh, damn.
I wish it was that simple. And you like there, there is a method called sheet composting that would be a good way to fertilize with just your uncomposted kitchen scraps. So you can take uncomposted kitchen scraps and like spread them in a thin layer in a growing area and then cover them in a high carbon material like wood chips or straw or hay or, you know, some like basically dead, dried out plant material of some sort.
Okay.
And they'll just compost in place, which is. Can be convenient and ensures that any, like, nutrients that leach out of the compost in that process go kind of into the root zone of what you're trying to fertilize. Downside, if there's anything in your kitchen scraps that an animal might want to get into in a sheet composting situation, they're going to have totally free access and will dig around in there and eat whatever they feel like eating.
Okay, that's good to know.
So it may or may not be appropriate depending on what kind of animals you have around and what kind of stuff is in your kitchen waste. If it's a lot of like vegetable peelings and coffee grounds, that stuff is, is very appropriate for that.
Okay.
If it, if it's more like meat and dairy, that stuff can be very appealing to a raccoon or a dog or whatever that might cause more damage than, than you want.
Yeah. I know I'm not nearly the gardener that you are, but my general rule of thumb and advice that I've given people is just to never put meat and dairy in your, in your compost because of the risk of attracting creatures to your yard.
Yeah, I personally compost all that stuff.
Awesome.
Like, I recently been spreading some compost that has been sitting for a while and there were all these vertebrae in it and I was like, what was that? And then I remembered that many years ago we picked up a roadkill deer.
Oh.
And like half of it was good to eat and half of it was like really damaged. And we just like composted half a deer and just put it in the compost bin, completely buried it in wood chips and all that. Now several years later, all that's left is bone.
Okay, so ignore my rule of thumb.
I have a short episode on composting that goes into it a little bit more. You totally can compost all that stuff, but animals either might get into it or you might just need to account for keeping animals out when you build the bin. So our bins are made in such a way that they're relatively animal resistant. That's good because we don't want our dogs getting into it.
Yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yeah. I know I don't know a lot about composting, but I know that it is very complicated. And I. Several years ago, I'd asked Cassandra, fellow member of Strangers, who you, of course, Aaron have chatted with and who's been. Does lots of episodes on the pod. I asked her about composting. I was like, hey, teach me about composting. Or like, I asked some really short question, assuming this was like an easy topic, and she kind of sighed at me and was like, well, there's a chapter in this book that I, that we both have that will give you a nice overview. And I was like, an overview and a chapter. And Cassandra said, yeah, if you, if you really want to learn about composting, like, I'll recommend a couple of books to you to read all of. And I. And I. Oh, okay. Yeah.
So, yeah, composting is fascinating because, like, in order to do a sort of okay job, it's like maybe 15, 20 minutes of like, you know, focused learning.
Okay.
And then to do like an exceptional job, it's like maybe 10 years.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, so it's like, it's a very complex process, but also kind of self regulating. Like, it's, it's. It's a biological system that if you kind of set it up for success, it'll. It'll happen. It might not happen like exactly how you want it to, but to like, completely not screw it up is pretty easy. And to do it, like, really, really well is really hard.
Okay, I like that summary. That's. That's more encouraging. Yeah, yeah.
Like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't be intimidated by composting to the point where you don't try.
Yeah, yeah. I put stuff in a composter but often feel inadequate about it. But I am actively learning. That's one of the areas that I'm. That I'm trying to learn on and, and work on to get to that point.
Number one tip for composting is people tend to collect kitchen waste and put it in a bin and that's it. And all you need to do to make that so much better is have a pile next to the bin of some high carbon dead plant material, which could be the weeds from your garden or straw or wood chips, anything like that. And every time you put a bucket of kitchen waste into the compost pile, cover it in a layer of high carbon cover material.
Okay.
Just doing that you should get sort of. Okay, compost, maybe better.
That's a great starter. I like that a lot. Yeah. And. And folks, if you want to learn more, Aaron's got their own awesome podcast and you can go over and there's at least one episode. It sounds like. Yes, on composting.
There is one specifically on composting.
That's great. Okay, so I feel like we've covered a lot with our summer garden. Are we. Can we start harvesting anything here in mid late June? Will anything be ready? What can I eat?
So some things actually have, like, kind of gone by already. So, like, the earliest perennial vegetables you will have already harvested. Some of the later season perennial vegetables are still in their prime. So, like, Sochan is still really good. Sea kale, especially sea kale flower buds are great right now. And then, like, early season annual vegetables are really taken off in, in June. So peas, lettuces. Yeah, radishes, maybe beets, if you got them going real early, all that stuff can start. Start to be harvested. And also when. When we talked about it's not too late to sow things, even if you did so things real early, some of those really short turnaround crops like lettuce and radish, you might want to consider a succession planting. So if. If you planted an annual vegetable early in the spring and you are now harvesting it, there might be time to sow that one again and get another harvest and potentially do that multiple times through the season to continue to have fresh ones available.
Can I sew it where I just pulled up the last round of whatever it was?
Probably yes. It's not a bad idea to do a crop rotation, so that would mean planting it somewhere else so that you don't run the risk of building up pest and disease pressure. But in a small garden, crop rotation is not super important because if. If a pest pops up, you know, 10ft away, it's. It's still going to find that host plant, no problem. If you're working, you know, larger scale, then you probably want to pay closer attention to crop rotation. Or if you had a particular pest or disease problem, like if you grew tomatoes and they all died because of blight or something, then it would be a very good idea to grow something else there, you know, next season for a few seasons, ideally, and just grow your tomatoes in another spot in the garden.
Okay, good to know. All right. Anything else that we need to make sure that we cover here as we're in early June getting our garden started, or over the next couple of months of Taking care of things.
Well, I mentioned compost being my sort of go to fertilizer, and I don't think I mentioned that. The reason that I think compost is kind of a good go to is not only does compost come with some soluble nutrients, so your plants will get like a quick dose of nutrition, but it should also have lots of life in it. So you're adding life to the soil and it has a lot of organic material, and so you're adding organic material to the soil. It's also not something you can easily overdo. You can put on tons of compost and it's not going to cause a problem. Whereas other types of fertilizer have potential to like, burn or be too much. Another fertilizer worth mentioning is urine. So you can.
Are you telling me to go pee on my plants? What you just said?
Yes, more like apply the urine to the soil around the plants. But there's a lot of great nutrients in there, especially nitrogen. Urine's very.
I've never heard this before. I honestly have never heard this. This is fascinating.
It's called pee cycling. Like recycling, but with pee. And I just think it's a great idea because if you're alive, you're probably peeing on the regular and those nutrients are probably going somewhere where they are a problem. But if you use that urine as fertilizer, you're taking this thing that has to happen, but is becoming a problem that, you know, basically gets fixed somewhere else and using it in a positive way. So you're recapturing those, those nutrients and turning them into what they should be, which is a useful nutrient for plants.
Can you over pee your garden?
Yes.
Okay.
And like, you shouldn't apply undiluted urine to dry soil. And I would keep it off of the foliage of the plants because it is pretty high in nitrogen. It can basically burn. And if you want to just be extra careful to avoid that, you can dilute it like five times. So like put like, you know, a gallon of urine in a five gallon bucket of water or whatever.
How often can you do that? Could that be your daily watering?
Like, yeah, I would dilute it even more if you're putting it okay on daily. Like 1 in 10 or 1 in 20.
Okay.
If you're doing it daily, but like weekly or monthly, fertilizing with urine can be okay.
So I can't. Yeah, I can't pee on my garden every day.
So you can, but just in a different spot.
Oh, okay.
Because like one pea worth of urine is only going to fertilize a small area, what I tend to do is collect it and then like while it's raining or right before a rain or right after a rain, I'll go out and fertilize like a whole section. And then the rain, it does smell gross if it's collected. If you use it right away, it doesn't get a chance to smell bad. But because of the smell, I do tend to do it right around a rain so that the rain keeps the smell down.
Okay, listeners, this is probably just TMI for you, but I'm like imagining, you know, I've got lots of five gallon buckets just like going out in the morning to water my plants and peeing in a bucket and then adding water to the bucket and then putting that in my little pour over spray thing and, and going around and doing that.
But yeah, and if, if you want more information on that, I have a whole episode with the Rich Earth Institute, who. Their, their whole thing is like studying urine as fertilizer and helping people implement that.
That's so cool. Sorry.
It's also mentioned in the, my episode on growing your own calorie crops. So the, the folks, the very, one of the very few people I know who grows their own calorie crops, their fertility on their farm is based on pretty much just captured urine and tree leaves.
Hmm. Okay, that's really, that's, yes, very gross sounding, but also like, very cool. Like, you know, way to recycle your, you know, human waste in a productive way.
That's so cool.
I'm a weirdo. I'm okay with that. Can you, can you use it on. I also have perennials, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries. Can you, can you do urine fertilizing on those? Or is this more for the annual. Okay, all right. Same, same general rules. Don't put it on the leaves and dilute it and stuff.
Yep, exactly.
Okay.
And those crops don't need a ton of nitrogen. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't use urine fertilizer basically after, like July.
Oh.
On, on woody stuff. Because the extra nitrogen, like, often stimulates vegetative growth. And stimulating vegetative growth towards the end of the season can sometimes mean that woody plants take longer to harden off to like, get ready for winter. And then they might be more susceptible to winter damage.
Okay. Wow, this is really cool. I'm really into this. Okay, so we have fertilized our plants, but not too much, and we're keeping the weeds down and we're getting to harvest some things and we're keeping them well watered. I feel like we've covered the summer gardening stuff. Anything else that, that we're missing as,
as we start to get into harvesting, it's worth mentioning that regular harvesting for any, any crop that has a seed in it is important to like continued harvesting, if that makes sense. So we'll, we'll use peas as an example. If you're harvesting peas, it's really a good idea to harvest them at least every two or three days because peas are an annual and the trigger to like stop producing more peas and kind of finish ripening that seed and then die is the seeds ripening. So adds the seeds ripen, the plant is like, okay, I've reproduced, I've done my thing, I'm ready to die. But if you keep picking them while they're young, then the plant doesn't get that like hormonal message of like stop making flowers. And it'll just keep going and going and going until something, something else stops it. So it's nice to like keep on that regular harvest, even if those are just like going in the fridge or being given to a friend or whatever.
Is that true for like tomatoes and squash too?
Squash. It is true of summer squash. Okay. And tomatoes, not so much. Because tomatoes are actually a perennial.
Oh, okay.
They're, they're a short lived perennial. It's like the winter or often diseases that kill them in temperate climates. So they would, they would live a few years if it didn't get cold or if they didn't get a disease.
Okay, interesting. But does it, does it hurt them to kind of harvest in that manner? Is it bad for them if you're doing kind of regular like you would with peas?
Nope, nope. You can just, you know, as, as they ripen, keep picking them.
Okay, that's great to know.
And like a, a tomato is a, it's a fruit, so it is evolved to, to be picked. Like they, they're the plants making that structure to encourage seed dispersal. So it's, it's meant, meant to be picked and eaten.
Okay, got it. Awesome. All right. Any other things that we want to cover with our summer gardening before we wrap it up here?
I think we got it pretty well covered.
All right, we did it. Part two. I hope everyone's summer gardens are healthy and robust and you go out there and pee on them, but not directly on them, because that could hurt them. But get them some good fertilizers and start seeing harvests from your gardens. We also hope that.
Happy gardening, everyone.
Yeah. If y' all have questions for us, we're going to put this out on several different social media things. But if there are gardening questions that you want us to cover in our next part of the series or even do a separate just Q and A session where we're down to chat about that. So please feel free to send that to us on our social medias or Patreon or what have you. Aaron, how can the folks get in touch with you?
You can find me on social mediawoodnursery on Instagram, Facebook. You could send me an email@edgewoodlandscapesmail.com if the weather is nice, I might take a little while to get back to you, but if there's snow on the ground, I'll get back to you real quick.
I love it. Well, thanks again for joining us on this podcast. We love having you back every time and glad that you make the time for us.
Thanks for keep inviting me back. I always have a fun time.
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