Episode 300: The Questions You Keep Asking (and What the Research Actually Says)

[00:00:00] 300 episodes. I want you to sit with that for just a second because I kind of have to. 300 times that I have sat down, done the research, written the notes, pressed record, and sent something out into the world hoping it would land in the right pair of ears at the right moment. Hopefully yours. And I know, because you've told me, that some of these episodes found you when you were brand new to gardening and you were completely lost.

[00:00:28] Some of them found you when a crop failed and you needed to understand why. Some of them you listened to in your car or on a walk or while you were actually out in the garden doing the thing. And that is not something that I take lightly. So thank you for being here. Welcome back to Just Grow Something. I am Karin Velez and for this milestone episode, I wanted to do something just a little different. I didn't want to make a like greatest hits episode or take a long look back at 300 episodes of

[00:00:58] my own voice. What I wanted to do was something genuinely useful. So I spent time researching, really researching the questions that home gardeners are asking most right now. I went into Reddit threads, Facebook gardening groups, extension service Q&As, the Master Gardener helplines, emails and DMs from you to me.

[00:01:20] I looked for patterns. I looked for the questions that came up again and again and again season after season. And then of course I went to the science, right? University extensions, peer reviewed publications, horticultural research, my own horticultural background.

[00:01:34] And I wanted to bring you the best answers possible. So the result is today's 300th regular episode. Your top 10 most common gardening questions answered with evidence. Just the best information that I could find through my own experiences and through science backed research delivered in the way that I always try to deliver things on this show. Practical and honest and grounded in the science. Let's dig in.

[00:02:07] So if you're new here, first of all, thank you for being here. And you might be wondering, wait, she says episode 300, but my podcast player says episode 324 or something like that. And I get that. We're talking like regular episodes. I'm not including any bonus episodes or like replays, which I've done before. This is 300 regular episodes.

[00:02:29] And if you're new here or you haven't been listening for a very long time. I guess I probably ought to reintroduce myself because, you know, sometimes you jump into these things and you go, wait, what is she talking about? So I started my gardening journey back in 2004 ish, I think. And that was in a little corner of my suburban backyard where I just kind of threw some seeds out there and said, OK, good luck in there.

[00:02:56] Gross. Let's see what happens. And thankfully, a few things happened. And then eventually my family and I moved to a five acre homestead and we started growing a really big garden for ourselves. I started with a quarter acre and then a half an acre. And at some point I found myself looking out my window as I was working on client work. I was a small business management company at the time and I was looking out the window and wishing that I was spending more time in the garden rather than at my desk.

[00:03:26] And then decided to find some ways that I might be able to make a little side money from that garden. And long story short, ended up on a 40 acre market farm for the last going on 19 years. This is my 19th season as a market farmer. And I drug my husband into it, too. So that has been our full time gig. And then I went back to school to get my degree in horticulture.

[00:03:48] And when I graduated in the spring of 2020, if I remember correctly, I was trying to figure out what I could do with that degree other than just helping our farm business, because I figured out along the way that there is so much power in food. And I really wanted people to understand how to grow their own food and how to do it better with better advice and advice that was backed by science.

[00:04:17] Everything that I had learned, everything that I spent four years going through school for, I now wanted to share. And so in February of 2021, I started this podcast. And it's hard to believe that it's been over five years. And we are in sort of our sixth season of this show. And I am so, so glad at the response that I've gotten. And how many of you who have been here listening along and have found value in what it is that I'm talking about.

[00:04:47] And how many of you have reached out to say that I have helped you in some way with what it is that you are doing in your own gardens. And so that is the short story of how we got here. And so if you are new, I am very grateful you're here. And I invite you to stick around or go back and start listening to some of the previous episodes. If you're an OG and you've been around for a while, I truly, truly am grateful for you, my gardening friends.

[00:05:14] So without any further ado, let's dig into our questions. Okay, question number one is, how often and how much should I water my vegetable garden? If there was one question that shows up literally everywhere gardeners ask for help, it is this one. It is the one that I am asked most frequently when I am talking with gardening clients.

[00:05:39] In fact, my most recent gardening client, hey, shout out to Brooke there in Bakersfield, California. Hey, Brooke. She actually asked a question very similar to this. There is always some misunderstandings or, you know, unsurety about watering. And I understand why. Watering feels like it should be simple, but then you overwater or you underwater and you lose plants and suddenly it's not that simple. So we'll start with what the research actually says.

[00:06:06] And then I will give you the practical guidance that I generally give people that I work with one-on-one. The most widely cited guideline everywhere is that most vegetable gardens need approximately one inch of water per week during the growing season. Okay, that's rainfall plus irrigation combined. So one inch total.

[00:06:29] But what that actually means in practice, like if you're in the heat of the summer, you know, here in the Northern Hemisphere, that would be like July, August, and September. Especially if you're in the further like Southern states in the U.S., your gardens are going to get, you know, really hot in those months. And they may need closer to like two inches per week.

[00:06:51] But if you are in a cooler northern area here in the Northern Hemisphere, or you've got some overcast days that you're seeing in your gardens, then you might need less than that. So my mantra has always been less frequent, more thorough waterings. Okay, deep and infrequent beats shallow and frequent. This is the principle that matters most. And it is completely backed up by every extension publication I can find on this.

[00:07:20] Okay, we want to avoid shallow frequent watering because that encourages shallow rooting. And that makes plants more susceptible to drought damage. So you want to water deeply. And I'm talking getting that moisture down to like five or six inches of soil depth. And then let the top few inches dry out before watering again. Deep roots mean drought resilient plants.

[00:07:49] Shallow roots means that that plant is going to panic anytime you miss a day of watering and you're going to have to water every single day. Now, how do you know when to water? The finger test, that is legitimate science, okay? Push your finger down into the soil a couple of inches. If it's dry at that depth, well, then it's time to water. If it's still moist, then wait.

[00:08:12] This is the most reliable method, especially as you're learning how your specific soil behaves in your specific climate. Now, a soil moisture meter can also help here. It's one of those ones that you can stick down into the soil and it will tell you wet, dry, you know, soaked, saturated, whatever. A rain gauge is also going to help you because it's going to tell you how much your garden has actually received when it rained.

[00:08:38] And sometimes it's a lot less than you might think, especially if you have a lot of tree cover or if you have, you know, beds that are like over have overhanging structures near them. So that's an easy way to sort of track, okay, how much rain have we actually gotten? And then you can water on top of that. Now, of course, we want to be watering at the base of the plant. We don't want to water the leaves, especially tomatoes, right? Overhead watering is just going to promote fungal disease. And it's because you're keeping that foliage wet and tomatoes are especially susceptible to that.

[00:09:08] You also want to water in the morning so that foliage, if it does get wet, has some time to dry before the evening. Drip irrigation and soaker hoses are really the most efficient methods. But drip irrigation can actually reduce water use by about 50% compared to just regular overhead watering. And if you have listened to me for any amount of time, then you know what I'm about to say. Mulch. Yes, baby, mulch is your best friend.

[00:09:37] It is one of the most impactful things that you can do to reduce the water frequency. A two to three inch layer of organic mulch is going to dramatically reduce the amount of evaporation from the soil surface. And then if you're doing in-ground beds, your soil type actually matters pretty dramatically. Sandy soil is going to drain really fast and so it's going to need more frequent watering. Clay soil holds water longer but can also become waterlogged.

[00:10:05] And so the best long-term solution for both of these is adding organic matter. And that is going to increase the water holding capacity for those sandy soils and the draining capacity for the clay soils. So when it comes down to it, the short answer is water deeply when the top like two to three inches of soil have dried out. Aim for the equivalent of one inch of water per week as a baseline.

[00:10:33] And just understand that in the summer heat you may need more. Mulch is your friend. So mulch and it doesn't matter whether you are in-ground beds or raised planters or in pots on your porch. Water at the base of the plants. And then drip irrigation is going to save you both water and headaches. Okay, question number two. Why are my tomato leaves turning yellow or curling? Tomato problems.

[00:11:01] Yeah, this question is probably gets asked like in every gardening community every single season without fail. And I get it. Tomatoes are the most popular home garden vegetable in the U.S. And they are also famously reactive to anything in the atmosphere. Okay, most tomato leaf problems can basically be traced back to one of just a handful of categories.

[00:11:29] It's either nutrition, environmental stress, pests, disease, or unfortunately herbicide exposure. So let's walk through the common symptoms and what they actually mean. So yellowing leaves can mean a couple of different things and it sort of depends on how the yellowing is happening.

[00:11:47] If it's only the bottom leaves on the plant and they are turning yellow and then they're getting like brown with spots, this is likely early blight. We get this every single year here in West Central Missouri. This is a fungal disease, right? It's caused by Alternaria soleni. It starts on the older, lower leaves and then it works its way up. Okay, this is one of the most common diseases or tomato diseases in a lot of areas.

[00:12:18] So to fix this, we need to remove the infected leaves that are along the bottom. You want to make sure that you're improving your air circulation. You want to avoid overhead watering. But sometimes you're not going to be able to avoid getting this like in our area. It's just prevalent because we get a lot of rain in the spring, but we also have some cooler temperatures. And so that water just sort of sits there. It doesn't necessarily burn off and the fungus just moves right on in.

[00:12:46] So the way that I prevent this to include removing those lower leaves and making sure that I've got them spaced properly for air circulation is to use a fungal spray. So usually I'm using copper fungicide to spray them down and that usually will take care of the situation. You can either do it as a preventative, which is what I do. I put it on my calendar because I know I'm going to get hit with it. So I make sure that I get ahead of the game.

[00:13:12] And I generally only have to use it during the early, early part of the season on the regular basis that, again, the package tells me to do. And then eventually I can stop using it because we start to dry out and it's not a problem anymore. Okay. The second thing about yellowing leaves or the second sort of symptom would be overall yellowing, but it's starting on the older leaves. This is going to point to a nitrogen deficiency. So tomatoes are really heavy feeders.

[00:13:41] And oftentimes, especially if you're gardening in any kind of a container whatsoever, they're going to need to be fed throughout the season. So you likely need to be side dressing your tomato plants with some sort of a balanced fertilizer about every three to four weeks, even if you're gardening out in the ground. Those older leaves, we say that nitrogen is a mobile nutrient.

[00:14:05] So if the plant feels like it doesn't have enough nitrogen, it's going to suck the nitrogen from those older leaves, which are usually the ones on the lower part of the plant. And they'll start sending it up to the new leaves. So the new leaves can use it. So what you'll see is this sort of progression from the bottom of the plant going all the way up. They look worse at the bottom. They look a little bit less pale yellow as you go up, and then you'll have the dark green leaves at the top.

[00:14:32] So this is a classic case of a nitrogen deficiency, which can usually be corrected with just feeding the plant. And then the third type of yellowing would be yellowing between the veins on the older leaves. This is called interveinal chlorosis, and this actually usually indicates a magnesium deficiency. So if you have really acidic soils or if you've had really, really heavy rains that leaches these nutrients,

[00:14:59] then oftentimes you can have a magnesium deficiency, and you can often supplement with magnesium in order to be able to take care of that problem. Now another problem with tomato leaves would be curling. So sometimes you might get upward leaf curl on what otherwise looks like a healthy plant. This is almost always some type of environmental stress. It could be heat. It could be inconsistent watering. It could be wind.

[00:15:24] These can all cause leaves to sort of roll upward as the plant just tries to conserve moisture. So this is also really common on very heavily pruned tomatoes, and it doesn't harm the growth or the yield. Usually some deep watering and some good layers of mulch are going to help to resolve this. Now if you have a downward curl with like twisted, really strappy new growth on the top,

[00:15:53] this is the pattern that should stop and make you think. So this downward curl with like this twisting or like cupped new leaves, especially when it appears very suddenly across the entire plant. This is a classic sign of herbicide damage. Tomatoes are extremely sensitive to certain herbicides like 2,4-D or Roundup and dicamba,

[00:16:20] and it can drift from people applying it on their lawns, even if the wind is as low as like 5 miles an hour. So you have to be aware of not only what you're doing in your own yard, right, and making sure that that is not drifting over to where your garden is, but also maybe what your neighbors are doing. And unfortunately I have seen this cause a lot of animosity between neighbors

[00:16:47] because you have one neighbor who is, you know, bound and determined to make sure that there are no dandelions or anything else in their pristine grass. And so they're using everything known to man to keep it looking nice and golf course like. And yet when they're spraying, it's drifting over into their neighbor's vegetable garden, and it's causing damage and it's causing plant death. And then we have a whole other situation, right? Another increasingly common source is just contaminated compost or manure

[00:17:15] that contained hay or grass that was treated with persistent herbicides. So this is another problem. And, you know, a way to test some of these things is by doing the bean test. So if you get hay or grass or compost, and you're maybe not completely sure about the source, or you just want to test anyway, even if you do trust the source, take two cups,

[00:17:42] one with whatever substance it is that you're planning on adding your compost or manure or whatever, and then get a regular cup of like potting mix and plant bean seeds in both cups. Beans, again, are also very sensitive to herbicide damage. And so you'll very quickly realize once they've sprouted, if the one that is in the compost or the manure starts to look like it's diseased,

[00:18:09] it's dying, it's getting that warping, that twisting, those cupped leaves, then you know you have some herbicide contamination. So unfortunately, you know, this is a reality. So when you're trying to diagnose the tomatoes in terms of what's happening, you know, ask yourself, where is it happening on the plant? You know, old leaves affected first usually points to a mobile nutrient issue or some sort of a disease.

[00:18:34] If the new growth is affected first, that usually points to environmental stress or herbicide or a pest like mites, right? Is it on one plant or is it on multiple plants? If it's just one plant, well, it might very well be a disease or even some mechanical damage, like something just happened to it, right? But if it's multiple plants in a pattern, that might be environmental or it might be some sort of a systemic issue.

[00:19:01] Is it happening really quickly or is it maybe gradual? If it happens really fast, oftentimes that's a disease or an herbicide problem. If it's gradual, then it's more likely nutrient or stress related. So, you know, anytime you're seeing these problems, it is possible for you to call your local extension office. And, you know, they usually have an ask an expert resource or your local master gardeners and ask them. You can look and they usually have weekly hours where you can call in.

[00:19:29] Or, again, you can always try just DMing me or sending me an email with a photo and a description of what's going on. And I can try to help you diagnose specific tomato problems with those photos. Okay, question number three. What is that black rot on the bottom of my tomatoes or the bottom of my squash? And this one comes with a lot of alarm because it looks really bad.

[00:19:58] And once a gardener loses a few tomatoes or squash to it, they really want to know why. And what's being described is blossom end rot. And I want to spend a minute on what it actually is because the most common fix, and I'm using air bunnies here, that you will see recommended online is largely very ineffective, at least in the immediate term. Okay, so blossom end rot is a physiological disorder.

[00:20:28] It's not a disease. It doesn't spread from plant to plant or from fruit to fruit. It is caused by a calcium deficiency in the developing fruit. Specifically, the cells at the blossom end of the fruit will collapse because they didn't get enough calcium while they were forming. So this can affect tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, and even watermelon.

[00:20:54] But in tomatoes, from what I have seen, it is most common in those paste type or very large plum varieties. I have actually never seen blossom end rot on a cherry tomato. I'm not sure why the paste tomatoes, and for me, very specifically, San Marzano's. San Marzano tomatoes seem to really have a problem with this where my Amish paste tomatoes don't, and they'd be growing side by side next to each other. So here's where I want to save you some time and money.

[00:21:22] A lot of the online advice, and I don't care where you look, if it's in a Facebook group, if it's in a TikTok video, if it's on YouTube, whatever, they're going to say sprinkle in crushed eggshells or water with milk or use calcium sprays. Add calcium in some way, shape, or form. So the problem is most of this isn't going to help, okay?

[00:21:49] For most of us, in most gardens, calcium is already in the soil. There are very few areas, at least in the U.S., where we have a calcium deficiency. And even if you have created soil in a raised garden plant or in a pot, you also likely are not actually seeing a calcium deficiency. The problem isn't actually that there's no calcium.

[00:22:12] The problem is that the plant can't move the calcium into that developing fruit fast enough. Calcium can only move through the plant in water. When watering is inconsistent, so if you have a really dry week, followed by really heavy watering or heavy rains, followed by, you know, a really harsh drought, the plant prioritizes water movement to growing roots and leaves.

[00:22:41] And so the calcium just doesn't make it to the fruit in time. So the actual fix isn't about adding more calcium. So what we want to do is to practice that consistent deep watering, right? A mature tomato plant may need two or even three gallons of water per week if you haven't had any rainfall. Remember what we said about that one inch of water? How do you measure that? Well, it's about two to three gallons of water, right?

[00:23:11] So that is going to help. Mulch, okay? A layer of organic mulch is one of the most effective ways to moderate your soil moisture fluctuations, which is the root of the problem. We also want to avoid synthetic high nitrogen fertilizers, ones like urea. You get that really fast, really lush vegetative growth when you use high nitrogen fertilizers.

[00:23:38] And what that does is it increases the plant's demand for calcium faster than it can be supplied. So we want to go for something as we're feeding those plants. Yes, initially they want nitrogen because they need that leafy growth. But across the entire season, we want to look for something that, when we're looking at those three numbers on our fertilizer, the first one is the nitrogen. We want that one to be lower than the middle and the third numbers, okay? And then when you do see that you've got blossoming happening,

[00:24:08] remove it from the plant right away. They're not going to recover. And so if you're keeping them on the plant, number one, the plant is using resources to try to continue to grow that fruit. And then also it can start to attract fungal diseases because they like that rotting material. And it might also start to attract pests. So once you see it, pop it up. Now, another thing that you can do is just do a soil test, right? And you can't use an off-the-shelf soil test for this because those are only going to test nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, and maybe your pH.

[00:24:38] This is something that you're going to actually have to mail off. But if you can do it, get a soil test. If calcium is genuinely low in your soil and the pH is below 6.3, then you can add some limestone. That's going to help to raise the pH just a little bit. And that's going to add the calcium back in. But for most gardens, this is not an issue. So the most impactful thing that you can do to prevent blossom and rot

[00:25:06] is to water consistently and mulch. That's it. Okay, question number four. How do I improve my soil? And I think every new gardener asks this. And a lot of experienced gardeners keep asking it because they just sense that something is still off. Soil improvement is the work that underlies everything else in the garden. And I'm going to say this, and I mean it. Before you add anything to your soil, get an initial soil test done.

[00:25:36] Either, you know, do the off-the-shelf one or go to your local extension service. They can direct you to your state's soil testing lab. And in a lot of states, the basic testing costs are very inexpensive. Or they're available at low cost through like your cooperative extension. The best way to determine what fertilizers or amendments you need for your soil is to do a soil test. Without it, you are basically just guessing.

[00:26:03] A soil test is going to tell you your pH, your nutrient levels, your organic matter content, and what specific amendments your soil actually needs. Without this baseline, you can easily overcorrect in ways that just create new problems. If there is one thing that improves virtually every soil, sandy soil, clay soil, somewhere in between, it's organic matter. Okay? We can go back to my alma mater, Oregon State University.

[00:26:32] Then they say adding organic matter can improve any soil, no matter how compacted. Now, I will caveat that by saying if you have to improve the soil with large amounts of compost or, you know, other organic matter, you might have to continue to do that the entire time you're gardening. Our soil out here is one really good example of that. We have such a heavy amount of clay in some of these areas that we have determined

[00:27:00] if we wanted to continue to garden in those spots, we would have to continue to add organic matter every single year and turn it in and turn it in and turn it in, which is why we eventually went to a no-till system and we started using a lot more in terms of raised beds. So just keep that in mind. But in most circumstances, organic matter is going to improve the soil structure, it's going to improve your water retention, your drainage, the aeration,

[00:27:30] your nutrient availability, and your biological activity. It is the foundation of a productive garden. And the primary way to add organic matter is compost. Okay? About a quarter to one inch of compost per year to existing garden beds is kind of the rule of thumb. We're trying to target an organic matter content to be at around 5% to 10%. And this is measured by weight in a soil test,

[00:27:59] which is why it's really important to go ahead and send off that initial test so you know the baseline of where you're adjusting from. So for existing beds, you want to spread the compost on the surface and you can work it into the top six to eight inches or just simply top dress and let it work in over time, which is what we have started to do in our largest garden beds. So for raised beds, a blend works better than filling the bed with pure compost.

[00:28:27] So we want like a mix of topsoil and compost in roughly a one to one or two to one ratio. That is the standard recommendation. Generally speaking for raised beds, I like to start with a good layer of, you know, carbon. So twigs, twigs, twigs, twigs, twigs, twigs, and sticks and even, you know, wood chips and cardboard and those types of things. And then we layer in the compost, the compost topsoil blend.

[00:28:55] And then I will usually top it off at least that first year with a really good potting soil, just so we can immediately work into it while we wait for that compost to sort of get activated, right? Right. Composted materials are more stable in the soil than like fresh organic matter. So like fresh leaves and that sort of thing aren't going to be as stable in the soil as your composted stuff is. They're going to hold longer

[00:29:21] and they're less likely to introduce like weed seeds or pathogens. Well-composted manure is very, very valuable for this. Fresh manure has its risks and it, you know, involving like food safety and you also have a risk of nutrient burn. The only one that is safe to use without having been aged is rabbit manure. Rabbit manure is, you can just, you can use it right away. It's not too hot and we're not worried about,

[00:29:50] you know, any type of pathogens or anything. On top of annual compost applications, maintaining a good two, three, even four inches of organic mulch on the soil surface is also going to do double duty for you. It conserves moisture, right? And it suppresses the weeds in the short term. But as it breaks down, it's contributing to organic matter in the long term. And this is really, really valuable in established beds.

[00:30:18] You can get into this habit of, okay, we top dressed with our compost, we plant our plants, we put down our organic mulch, right? At the end of the season, you come back through, you're chopping down those plants, you're letting them lay down. All of that, so long as they aren't diseased, all of that is adding that organic material back into the soil. The next year you come along, you layer a little bit more compost on top of that, you plant your plants direct into it, and then you cover with more mulch. You're just kind of layering

[00:30:47] because you will see it all sorts of starts to shrink down into, it's breaking down at all times, right? So soil improvement is not like a one season project. It is a multi-year process. It's a continual process that just compounds over time. So start with a soil test, add compost consistently, mulch your beds, please. And the soil you're working with in year five is going to be dramatically better

[00:31:17] than what you started with. You just have to have the patience and the consistency to get there. Okay, question number five. Do I need to fertilize? And if so, what kind and when? So this is the question that sort of naturally follows from the soil improvement question because once you understand that your goal is a soil with high organic matter content, then the fertilizer question gets a little bit simpler. The starting point, once again,

[00:31:45] is always a soil test, okay? You know, some gardeners with well-established, high organic matter gardens are going to achieve really large harvests or can without using any fertilizers at all because a soil with that 5% organic matter releases roughly two pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet on its own. So if you've been building your soil for years, you may be surprised at how little additional fertility

[00:32:14] you actually need. But for most gardeners, especially those with newer beds or native soil that hasn't been improved or if you are working with containers, then some fertilization is going to be necessary. So every fertilizer bag has three numbers on it. These are the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, so NPK, by weight.

[00:32:42] So nitrogen drives that leafy green growth. Phosphorus supports the roots and the fruit development. And potassium supports the overall plant health and basically, you know, helps with stress resistance. So the important thing to know here is that too much nitrogen is just as problematic as too little, okay? That excess nitrogen is going to cause plants to grow way too fast

[00:33:11] and become really leggy and it can interfere with the flower and the fruit development, especially in tomatoes and cucumbers. So more is not better when we're talking terms of nitrogen. The good news is, or I mean, I don't think it's good news, but the comforting fact is that most of us are kind of depleted of nitrogen if we have been gardening in areas where we haven't really been adding much back into the soil and we've been gardening pretty consistently for a while. The thing about it is that not all crops need

[00:33:40] the same amount of fertility. So, you know, you have those really heavy feeders that probably need some regular feeding. You know, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, all of your brassicas, corn, and cucumbers and squash. These all tend to use a lot of fertility because again, they are those fruiting ones with the exception of your brassicas, but you, you know, are still developing right? Or cabbage and broccoli.

[00:34:09] The more moderate feeders, these are things like beets, carrots, chard, spinach, all of your leafy greens. And then you've got some really light ones, you know, that often don't really need anything at all. This is mostly your legumes, your beans and your peas. In fact, excess nitrogen is actually going to delay the flowering in those legumes because they, they fix their own nitrogen from the air. And that's actually one of the reasons why legumes are really good in the garden.

[00:34:38] So the general approach to this is to incorporate a balanced fertilizer or compost before you start planting. And then you do likely want to side dress those really heavy feeders with something that's a little bit higher in nitrogen the first time that you feed them. So again, those, those tomatoes or the corn or your brassicas. This is also important too for things like onions, right? And garlic before they start forming their bulbs. They're going to want that nitrogen.

[00:35:07] And then you can just continue to side dress all of those other vegetables and actually all of them with a, again, a balanced fertilizer or something that's a little bit lower in that first nitrogen number and a little bit higher in the second too or that is across the board all three numbers a 5-5-5, a 10-10-10, whatever. Those are going to be okay and you can do this you know, in tomatoes maybe one to two weeks before you see that first like ripe tomato and then again a couple of weeks

[00:35:36] after you have picked your first fruit that's pretty good timing. You just want to make sure that you are not using like lawn fertilizer on your vegetable garden. They, generally speaking, have way more nitrogen than what the vegetables need and a lot of them have herbicides in them that can actually damage or kill your vegetable plants. So, some of your organic options are things like compost and when I say compost I need you to keep in mind

[00:36:06] that that, that compost is not going to have the nutrients immediately available to the plants. So, this is something that you do want to be adding but it's something that builds the fertility over time, okay? But, things like fish emulsion or like plant-based fertilizers like, you know, kelp meal and stuff that release their nutrients more slowly, these are less likely to cause over-fertilization problems than using something like a Miracle-Gro or something that is synthetically derived, okay? So,

[00:36:35] just be careful there. I'm not saying you can't use Miracle-Gro if that's your favorite go-to. It's not my favorite but I will say in most instances what I see is it tends to be very nitrogen heavy and if you overuse it you are going to see your plants are going to look really, really green and they're going to look really, really good initially but you might see that your production is affected by that if you use it too frequently, okay? So, I tend to go towards the organic options but your garden, you do you.

[00:37:07] Question number six, how do I get rid of pests without chemicals? Since we're on the chemical question, right? And this is becoming more and more common every year and I think it reflects a really genuine shift in how home gardeners think about their gardens, you know, less as a production system to be controlled and more as an ecosystem to be managed and that framing is actually more scientifically sound. The approach

[00:37:35] that university extensions and research institutions consistently recommend and the one that I was taught when I was in school is called integrated pest management or IPM and it's an actual system and it starts with prevention. So, you know, if we look at the four different categories of control, we're looking at cultural controls, mechanical controls, biological controls,

[00:38:04] and then chemical controls and this includes those organic options. Prevention always comes first, right? Because healthy plants resist pests better. So, well-fed, well-watered plants in good soil have stronger natural defenses. So, this means if you have experienced certain diseases in your garden, then you might want to choose resistant varieties when they're available. A lot of modern vegetable varieties have been bred with built-in

[00:38:34] resistance to common diseases and some pests and no, this does not mean that that plant is genetically modified if that is a concern for you. This is good old-fashioned hybridization, this is plant breeding that they have been able to do in order to be able to build up those resistance to those diseases. So, if you have those problems, you can look in the garden catalog or in the seed catalog for plants that have the code that say it's resistant to whatever disease it is that you've been facing, right? The other thing in terms of prevention is to keep the garden clean,

[00:39:04] removing those diseased plants and any plant debris very promptly. A lot of pests are going to overwinter in garden debris and so if you can clean up a little bit if you have had those pests, in the fall, that's a really significant reduction in like next year's pest pressure and you also want to avoid working in the garden when plants are wet. Anytime we're moving through a wet garden we're spreading spores and bacteria and all of these things that can lead to diseases

[00:39:33] hopping from one plant to another, okay? So, that all falls into prevention. So, if we're looking at mechanical controls, we also want to look at like row covers. These are one of the most effective tools for pest exclusion. I use insect netting over just about everything in the garden. Not just for the insect pests but also for the deer and the rabbits and the other things that want to get into the garden, okay? You can do the same thing with floating row cover. You secure it at the edges, right? This is physically

[00:40:02] preventing insects from reaching the plants. I would not be able to grow anything in the brassica family if it weren't for insect netting just because of the prevalence of cabbage worms, okay? So, you know, again, exclusion is a really good mechanical control. Hand picking is another thing. This works for those larger insects like tomato hornworms or squash bugs or potato beetles. So, in the early morning when the temperatures are cool, it's the best time because the insects are a little bit less active and you can snatch

[00:40:32] them really fast and you can also put sticky traps out to, you know, monitor those pest populations so you can see if you have things out there that you're not visibly seeing when you go out there. Maybe they're active at different times than you are in the garden and so if you put those sticky traps out there, it can help you figure out those issues before they become a real, real problem. And then, you know, we also want to think about biological controls in terms of a garden

[00:41:01] that supports beneficial insects, right? That's a garden that can actually manage its own pest pressure over time. You know, if you have an integrated pest management strategy that uses biological controls, that can reduce your pest pressure by up to 90% with minimal environmental impact if you're worried about, you know, spraying, you know, pesticides and stuff. So, you know, what this looks like in practice

[00:41:30] is planting a diversity of flowering plants, especially ones that have the really small flowers, so like dill or fennel or yarrow or sweet alyssum because those all feed parasitic wasps and lacewings and the lady beetles and all the other natural predators. So, even if you have an organic broad-spectrum spray, it's going to kill indiscriminately. And so, you might only be targeting the aphids,

[00:41:59] but you're also going to kill the ladybugs that feed on those aphids, right? So, if you can encourage the biological activity and not be so quick to jump in if there isn't any plant damage, then you might be better off. Now, if you do need to use something, we want to, you know, start with the least toxic option that addresses that specific pest. So, insecticidal soap is really good on things like aphids. Neem oil has both

[00:42:29] insecticidal and antifungal properties, so you can use it for both pests and diseases. BT, that Bacillus thuringiensis, that specifically targets caterpillars without harming other insects. You can use diatomaceous earth or first Saturday lime. These both work mechanically against soft-bodied crawling insects. Even with organic methods, though, make sure that you read the label, right? The label is the law that was drilled into my head in school. The label is the law when it comes

[00:42:59] to any type of a pesticide. And then make sure that you are applying it at times when the pollinators are less active. So in evening application, not the midday. We want to target the pest, not the entire garden. All right, moving along, question number seven. Do I really need to rotate my crops? And does it actually matter in a small garden? And I love this question because the skepticism behind it is fair. You know, crop rotation is one of those gardening recommendations that sounds like it might be optional, especially when you're working

[00:43:28] with a small raised bed set up. And you have just three tomato plants and you've got nowhere else to put them. So the short answer is, yes, it matters and it might matter more than you think, but the reality of it is you just have to do the best you can. Okay? You know, crop rotation matters because it disrupts the life cycles of soil-borne pathogens and nematodes and insects by removing

[00:43:58] their host plant from that location. Okay? So planting your crop in a different location is like moving and not leaving behind a forwarding address. It takes the pest a little while to find your crop. So it might give you a year or two respite depending on the size of your garden. Okay? The other thing is that soil-borne diseases can actually survive in the soil for many, many years even without a host. So if you have fusarium wilt, for example, it will hang out in the soil for many, many years. Verticillium

[00:44:28] wilt, that actually persists in the soil indefinitely. So I think the part that most home gardeners miss is that we want to rotate by family, not by crop. You can't just move your tomatoes to a different spot and then plant peppers where the tomatoes were because they're in the same family. Peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, they're all in the solanaceae family and that means they're going to share the same diseases and the same pest vulnerabilities. So moving crops within

[00:44:57] a family doesn't break the cycle. So you should move your solanaceae family, which is tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and potatoes, move anything that's in that to another spot and then follow that up with the curcubit family, right? Cucumbers, squashes, melons, pumpkins, they all share the same diseases, right? Your brassicas, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, radishes, turnips, they all share the same thing. The fabaceae family, these are your legumes, so beans and peas. We have

[00:45:28] amaryllidaceae, that's onions, garlic, leaps, and shallots, and we have apaceae, that's carrots, parsley, celery, parsnip, and dill. Each one of those families, they all share the same problems. So if you are going to rotate, rotate the families, okay? And, you know, the extension services are going to consistently recommend a minimum three-year rotation, which means a crop family doesn't return to the same location for at least three years. If you can get away with four

[00:45:57] or five years, that's even more effective. But for small gardens with very limited space, you know, even moving crops just as far from their previous location as possible is going to provide you some sort of benefits. The important thing is to keep good records. You know, I love me a good garden journal, okay? If you can keep a garden journal with a little map of what went where, that is a tool that's going to help you with some rotation. Also,

[00:46:27] making notes. If you have no choice but to plant the same thing in the same spot, make sure that you are paying attention to whether or not you're seeing diseased plants or whether or not you're seeing more pests than what you usually have seen before, right? I understand space limitations can make an ideal rotation impossible, but even a partial rotation and then you combine that with like good garden hygiene, so removing the diseased plant

[00:46:56] material and putting down fresh mulch, that is going to provide meaningful benefit. And the one thing I will say is if you cannot rotate your plants, then the advice that we generally give about leaving roots in the ground to break down, to add more organic matter, in that instance, you might not want to because leaving that plant matter behind might actually encourage the buildup of disease. So if you are going to have

[00:47:26] no choice but to plant your tomatoes in the exact same space for the third year in a row, then make sure in year two you are removing the entire plant so that you're not leaving anything in that ground. Okay, this episode is getting long, but I want to get through these last few questions for you. Question eight, how do I know when my vegetables are ready to harvest? And I like this question because it means that your garden is actually producing something which is actually the goal, right? And it's a real question because

[00:47:55] those days to maturity on the seed packet generally just gives you a ballpark answer or I guess a ballpark idea, not really an answer. And I have seen, especially in, you know, some of the Facebook groups here lately where people are like, okay, I planted my onions and now I'm at day 100. This is what they look like. It says I'm supposed to harvest them now, but they don't seem big enough. And that is because they're following the days to maturity that they were told

[00:48:25] it was and not the actual signals that the plant is ready. So days to maturity tells you roughly when the crop might be ready and that is based on ideal growing conditions, okay? So it doesn't tell you when to pick. Your climate, your weather, your soil temperature and the actual growing conditions are all going to affect the timing sometimes by weeks at a time. So harvesting at the wrong stage of maturity is going to

[00:48:54] permanently change the texture, the flavor, and even the nutritional quality of what it is that you're picking. So you want to be in that window and for most crops the window leans towards picking earlier rather than later, but we just have to watch the cues. So tomatoes, for instance, right? We want to pick them when they're colored, but they're still firm. You do not have to wait for a tomato to be 100% red and we don't

[00:49:24] want them going soft, okay? They are going to continue to ripen off the vine at room temperature. You also don't want to refrigerate them, right? They ripen better at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit or so. Do not put them in your windowsill. That light is not required for ripening. It will actually possibly make them go bad, okay? And then we also want to store those ripe tomatoes at room temperature, not in the refrigerator because that reduces the flavor and we're going to create a mealy texture out of those. That's just a little side note. For cucumbers, we want to harvest before that skin starts to turn yellow. We don't want the

[00:49:54] seeds becoming hard in there. The slicing types that's usually when they hit around 6 to 8 inches. The pickling types that's around 2 to 4 inches. But to be honest with you, cucumbers can be harvested at almost any stage. When they're big enough that you want to eat them, pick them and eat them, okay? Just understand that you probably need to check your cucumbers every single day because they can go from perfect to overripe in a matter of hours. And then, speaking of checking every day, summer squash and zucchini. This is the same thing. You want to pick these guys when

[00:50:24] they're small and you actually want to harvest them very, very frequently. Zucchini is best at about 4 to 6 inches because when you leave them too long, they start to become very seedy and they also get very bland. The yellow squashes, same thing. The skin will start to become very hard and thick and we don't want that. And if you have a really good zucchini plant that's been producing all season long and you've all of a sudden realized that the production has slowed down, start checking under those leaves. There is almost

[00:50:52] always a hidden baseball bat sized zucchini that just got missed and it doesn't take very long for that to happen. And when those fruits start to get that large on the plant, it's actually signaling the plant to slow down production because basically it's achieved its goal. So that's another one where zucchinis and summer squashes you want to be checking every single week and harvesting them small. For green beans, we want to harvest when the pods are fully grown but before you start to

[00:51:22] see the seed bulging. One of the things I like the least out of the garden is what I call beany beans. I like very skinny, very slender beans. The moment you start to see the seeds pushing through the pod wall, the beans have already become kind of starchy and tough so you want to pick them fairly frequently and just at about whatever size they say they're supposed to be at maturity. Some of them are six inches, some of them are eight inches but you don't want beany beans. For peppers,

[00:51:52] honestly you can harvest these pretty much at any stage. If you have bell peppers, you can harvest them when they're green and they're at their full size or you can leave them on the plant and leave them to ripen to their final color. This could be red or yellow or orange or purple or whatever depending on the variety is. Ripe peppers that have gotten some color to them have a bit more flavor and more vitamin C. They're also sweeter but when you harvest them when they're green, that keeps the plant producing longer and obviously have a

[00:52:21] more sharp flavor to them. If you're looking at your hot peppers, then basically whenever they are to the size that you think they should be, again, you can generally harvest them when they're green but the longer the stay on the vine or the plant, the hotter they're going to get because that capsaicin is continuing to build up in there. So, you know, it just depends on what you want to do because if you don't realize that a ripe jalapeno is actually red. For corn, this

[00:52:51] one is really hard sometimes. We always want to say for sweet corn you want to harvest it when it's in the milk stage and when the silks have dried out and are brown, okay? So, the best way to do this and when we say milk stage, it means when you take your fingernail and you pop it into one of those kernels, it releases just that milky, juicy goodness, okay? Sweet corn loses sweetness very, very quickly after it's harvested and it

[00:53:21] can also not be as sweet if you harvest it too early or too late. So, this one is like, it's tough and especially for beginners. Honestly, you really want to look to see if those tip kernels have filled out so you can just kind of pull back the top part of the ear of corn and just kind of peek in there to see if they have fully filled in and then just kind of pop one of those kernels to see what it does and then harvest immediately

[00:53:50] if it looks like it is, right? And honestly, if you can eat it or process it the same day, you are going to have the best sweet corn I have ever eaten has been literally me standing out there in the field and just eating it right off the plant. You don't need to cook it, you don't need to heat it up, it's just that good, okay? If you can throw it in the refrigerator to store it in the husk until you can get to eating it, you can. I would do that within about four or five days if you can. If not, then I

[00:54:20] would go ahead and freeze it. Winter squashes and pumpkins, you want to leave these puncture it with your thumbnail. You also want to look at the nearest little tendril to the fruit to see that it has dried and died back. And then the stem should have sort of corked over by now. You don't want to harvest these too early because they will not continue to ripen off the vine and if they're not completely mature, they won't store well either. And then for

[00:54:49] carrots and beets, you know, these can be harvested basically whenever they reach a size that is usable for you. You know, the smaller and the younger they are, the usually more tender they are. But for carrots, you can leave them in the ground well past their listed maturity date without any real quality loss. In fact, if you can do this in the fall, you get a little light frost on them. That actually helps improve the sweetness a little bit. You know, with beets, sometimes they can get a little tough if you don't get too big, which is why a succession planting is usually

[00:55:19] really good. But, you know, this is what I do with carrots a lot of the time is I will plant them kind of close together and I will harvest baby carrots as a way of thinning those carrots out and then I get an edible crop out of that while I'm waiting for the other ones to continue to grow. So, the general rule really with any plant is when in doubt, pick it a little bit early. Okay, most vegetables are at their best when they are young and tender. If you can harvest frequently, that's also going to encourage continued

[00:55:48] production in those plants that are supposed to produce all season long. If you leave over ripe produce on the plant, that is going to tell the plant to slow down or even stop producing altogether. Okay, question number nine. Why are my plants flowering but they are not setting fruit? And this one can really cause heartbreak like mid-season. The plant is there, it's flowering, and then nothing happens. The flower drops or the tiny little fruit shrivels and falls off and you're trying to

[00:56:18] figure out what went wrong. And there are a few main culprits and this kind of varies by crop. For tomatoes, temperature is usually the most common cause. Tomatoes are really temperature sensitive when it comes to pollination. Pollen in tomatoes becomes non-viable, essentially sterile, when daytime temperatures are consistently exceeding 85 Fahrenheit or when the nighttime temperatures are dropping below 55 Fahrenheit consistently.

[00:56:47] You know, so if you have a heat wave or a very cool early season, the flowers are going to form and then they're just going to drop off without setting fruit. Nothing is wrong with your plant, it's just the weather is outside its reproductive comfort zone for all intents and purposes. Okay, so the fix to this is just to wait it out. When your temperatures kind of moderate, then your tomatoes are going to start setting fruit again. If you're in a really hot area or if you're having a serious heat event, you can try shade cloth. That's going to help to reduce the daytime temperatures during those events.

[00:57:17] Adding proper mulch and making sure that you are watering consistently is also going to reduce that heat stress. Another reason for this for a lot of fruiting vegetables like your squashes, your cucumbers, your melons, and your pumpkins is a lack of pollinators because those plants require insect pollination. So if you're not seeing bees visiting your flowers, you may have low fruit set and this is really common when you have very hot or very rainy weather because your pollinators are less active during those events.

[00:57:48] If you have gardens that don't have very many flowering plants nearby that can support those bee populations or if you are somewhere where some broad spectrum pesticides have been used that can also eliminate your pollinators. So squash and cucumbers produce separate male and female flowers on the same plant. So the male flowers appeal first and then the female flowers appear. And they are, you know, you can tell they

[00:58:17] have this tiny little proto fruit at the base of them so you can tell the difference between the two. If you see male flowers only and no females yet, just wait. If you see both but no fruit is setting, maybe those bees are absent, you can actually go and hand pollinate. Just grab a small paintbrush, you know, and transfer the pollen from the male to the female plants or you can actually like pick the male flower and peel back the petals and go and tickle all the female plants with it. Another option

[00:58:47] or another problem would be too much nitrogen. If you have very lush or very dark green aggressively growing plants with lots of foliage and not very many flowers, then you might have some excess nitrogen going on. This is especially common in tomatoes and peppers that are being grown in very rich soil or heavily fertilized beds. That high nitrogen pushes the vegetative growth at the expense of the reproductive growth. So you either have to reduce or eliminate any nitrogen

[00:59:16] fertilization that you're doing and wait for the plant to shift into reproductive mode or you're going to have to plant some other plants in a different pot or something and just kind of wait it out. And then the final thing would be the plant maturity, right? Newly transplanted seedlings just need time to establish before they start to set their fruit very heavily. If you have really young peppers that you put into the ground and they already have flowers on them when you're transplanting them, they would actually benefit from pinching

[00:59:45] off that first flower or two just to let them direct their energy towards like the root and shoot growth and that will help with higher production later on. And finally, question number 10, how do I prevent or treat plant diseases like powdery mildew and early blight? So if you have grown squash or cucumbers or even phlox for more than one season, you likely have met

[01:00:14] powdery mildew. If you grow tomatoes, you've probably dealt with early blight depending on where you live. These are probably the two most common fungal diseases in home vegetable gardens and the approach to both is actually pretty similar. We always want to start with prevention. Okay, so again, air circulation, your water management, making sure we have clean tools. We're not trying to spread those diseases by working in the garden. You know, when it's wet, we want to remove the disease materials, you know, right away and

[01:00:43] again, planting those resistant varieties. This is probably one of the most underused tools for home gardeners. Like commercial gardeners get this, but home gardeners don't always. Modern tomato varieties often carry these resistance codes on the tag or in the catalog. You know, V for verticillium wilt, F for fusarium wilt, N for nematodes, A for alternaria or which is early blight, right? T for or TMV for tobacco mosaic virus.

[01:01:13] So you can select resistant varieties and this is probably one of the most sustainable long-term disease management strategies that you can do without having to take any extra effort whatsoever. Now, if a disease does appear, for powdery mildew, that of course is like that white powdery coating on the leaves. You want to remove the affected leaves if the infection is really mild, improve the air circulation as much as you can right away. You can use neem oil or a baking soda-based spray,

[01:01:43] right? You can do a mix of baking soda and a little bit of water and just spray it. Now, this isn't going to cure an established infection, but it can slow its spread down. Most squash plants are going to develop powdery mildew by the end of the season regardless. The goal is just to delay it long enough to get your harvest. And then if we're looking at like early blight in tomatoes, this is going to show up as those dark concentric ringed spots starting on those lower leaves and the leaves are starting to yellow, right?

[01:02:12] You want to remove those infected leaves from the bottom up. Mulch really heavily so we're not getting that soil splash which can spread those spores. Use a copper-based fungicide and that is going to be both a preventative but also help to sort of slow down the spread. It's less effective if you've already got that established disease. So if you can apply it before you get an infection like I said, put it on your calendar and catch it ahead of time then that's going to help. And then of course

[01:02:42] crop rotation if you can because those early blight spores can survive in the soil and on plant debris. The theme across all of this is basically the same. You know, what we call good cultural practices so spacing, watering, you know, the methods that you use, the timing, the cleanup, all of this does more for disease prevention than any spray or treatment that you can possibly buy, right? If you build these habits and you do them ahead of time then your disease pressure is essentially

[01:03:12] going to go down every year. Okay, that was the longest episode I think we have done in a very long time. 300 episodes ago I started this show with just a simple idea that home gardeners deserve practical, honest, science-backed information to help them grow the best gardens and harvest the best food that they possibly can,

[01:03:41] right? Not like the myths that get passed around gardening circles for decades because no one stops to check them. Information that actually helps you grow. That was the goal. And what I hope today's episode showed you is that the most common questions that home gardeners ask, the ones that you see over and over again in the Facebook groups and in the Reddit threads, they're also the ones with really good science-based answers, right? The research exists. The extension services have done the work. The science is accessible.

[01:04:11] And I will tell you what I have learned over 300 episodes. Most garden problems come down to just a handful of fundamentals, right? Consistent water, good soil with plenty of organic matter, the right plant in the right place, keeping good records. Hello, garden journal. Mulch is your friend, and then patience, okay? Every question we answered today, the watering, the yellowing leaves, the blossom end rot, all of it, every

[01:04:41] one of them traces back to these same fundamentals. When you get the basics right, most of the problems in the garden either don't show up or they are much more manageable when they do. Your healthy plants are going to do much better for you than something that is struggling or something that is stressed. So give them the foundation to work to build off of, right? So here's what I want you to do with today's episode. Pick the question that

[01:05:10] describes something that you have been struggling with or something that you have always wondered with and take one action based on that answer, okay? Whether it's fixing your soil or adding mulch or grabbing a garden journal, whatever it is, just pick one thing that is going to make your garden better. I mean, that's how 300 episodes of information becomes one better backyard garden, okay? I have included all of the research references

[01:05:39] in the show notes, okay? So extension publications and the university sources, everything that I use to put this episode together. I try to do that for you for every episode so that you have some place where you can go and read the full information about what I'm talking about because one thing that I have believed from the very first episode is you deserve to know where the information comes from and you deserve to be able to go deeper when something resonates with you. If you really want to know more about it, I want you to have the opportunity. If you're happy to hear me just yammer on about it, well then that's fine too.

[01:06:09] So to everyone who has been here since the beginning, my OGs, to everyone who found me somewhere in the middle and to everyone who is tuning in for the very first time today, thank you. And here is to the next, I don't know, 300 more episodes? Until next time, my gardening friends, keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.