Mary and the Master Gardener’s Podcast

Weeds - how to mitigate them OR encourage growth of the beneficial ones

In this episode we discuss weeds, both mitigation, and propagation. Some weeds are a problem, but some have beneficial properties
You can find us on Facebook, and also join the Facebook group.
If you have a gardening question, please email Mary at lewis.mary.e@gmail.com or Liz at liz@greenrootsfarm.org
00:00Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Well, that all depends, but that's not really what this podcast is about. We're here to help you grow your garden. Welcome to Mary and the Master Gardener. Today, Liz the Master Gardener is going to talk about how to keep weeds down or suppressed or gone, preferably.
00:24Yes, as best as I can, as best as I can guide. Okay. Michelle Bellin asks, what's the best way to prevent weeds from taking over? Go ahead, Liz, tell me all the secrets. I don't know if there are any real secrets to weeds, but so here's a few methods that I use, and then there's methods that, right,
00:54that are available to everyone. I don't use chemicals. I don't use herbicides. I don't use anything like that. I, I pull weeds. That's my method. But there's a lot of methods that you can use to get ahead of it, right? So so it's a big garden if you're doing vegetables, you know, using tilling sometimes can be
01:24the best method at the beginning of the season. But if you're trying not to disrupt the ground too much, the number one would be mulching. So mulching using natural mulch, right? So straw, wood chips, shredded leaves, you can buy mulch at the store. It blocks sunlight, it prevents weeds from germinating and coming up.
01:53you can also use weed barriers, right? So they make the landscape fabric that you can use. And it does a pretty good job, you know, of allowing air to come through, which plastic doesn't. So I don't recommend using plastic because it kills everything that's under it, right? It's gonna kill the worms. It's gonna kill all of this lovely ecosystem that you have going. So weed barrier is another
02:22method and I've done that in my garden before. I go back and forth between that because it can be helpful especially if you're doing a lot on your own. But I think the number one is going to be mulching. Okay. Or staying ahead of it, right? Yes. I know it's the simplest and it's the most difficult.
02:48because I always forget to lift with my legs and I always lift with my back and then the next morning I'm in pain and wondering what I did wrong. Yep, even though you know exactly what you did wrong, we all do it. It's so dumb, but we all do it. Right, yep, yep. Okay, so I have things to share on this too. In our newly built greenhouse, it's, I think it's 40 by...
03:1618, 40 feet by 18 feet or 40 feet by 20 feet. We aren't necessarily gonna be growing anything in the actual dirt of the greenhouse. It's gonna be more seed starting and hanging pots and things like that. So my husband took the bags that our chicken feed comes in, cut them so they're flat, and he's laid those down in there to kill all the grasses and weeds that are still coming up because it was field. It was...
03:45before the greenhouse was built where it is. And so we're not so concerned about screwing up the ecosystem in that soil because we don't intend to grow anything in that soil. And someone suggested to him that he use the feed bags because they're gonna cover the dirt, the sun won't be able to get to any seeds in the ground and nothing will grow anymore. So we're trying that for the greenhouse. I wouldn't try that for...
04:15for a garden outside because it will ruin the soil. Right, yeah, that's true. So there's other methods too that are, I mean, go find some cardboard that you have laying around your house and you can put the box, unfold it, put it down, and that it allows oxygen to come through, it allows minimal sunlight, but it actually can be good bedding to create
04:45different growth. That way you're not having to go and disrupt the soil in any way. You're just kind of creating a new layer, right? A new start. Right. The other thing that I wanted to mention is in Minnesota, I don't know if this grows everywhere, but I really noticed when we started our gardening 20 something years ago, there is a weed that grows in Minnesota called purslane.
05:13It is a weed, but it's also really good for you. You can eat it. Yes, you can. And I've read up on it and it actually has more nutritional value than spinach does. Yes, it's very good. You can see the, the, you know, how the purslane leaves get kind of chunky. Like you can see the moisture in them and they do, they do really well. So that's kind of a natural ground cover, right? And there's.
05:44ground covers that you can plant or plant spacing, right? Plant spacing and plant planning, right? So planting certain plants next to each other, companion planting, one might shade out the other so that one will grow on, I have chamomile all over and I have mint in a lot of the garden to kind of be that weed barrier, right? And it's edible.
06:14So a lot of that too can be just how you, like I think about creeping Jenny, right? That beautiful little yellow plants that grows, it's a ground cover and you can put that down, that can be beautiful, keeps the weeds out. And then if it's overgrowing where you don't want it, pull it. Yep. And yarrow or yarrow, however you say it, I don't know if it's a...
06:41if it's a narrow A or a big open A, but Y-A-R-R-O-W. Yep. That's a really good one too. And yarrow has some really good uses as well. Yes. And it grows naturally, at least in my area. It's all over. And it's really pretty. When it blooms, it's gorgeous. So there are weeds that are...
07:08I don't want to use the word bad because no plant is bad except for maybe poison ivy. But there are weeds that are not beneficial and there are weeds that you actually do want to encourage the growth of. Yes. Yes. Some that are beneficial, right? And they're gonna keep other pests and other things. It'll protect the other plants as well. Yeah. Someone I talked to for the other podcast last week mentioned that she
07:37grows comfrey plants under her apple trees as a way to keep the weeds down around the apples. And she said that it's excellent nutrients for the ground because as the plant dies off and compost basically rots on top of the dirt around the apple trees, it puts all this gorgeous nutrition back into the soil around the tree. Absolutely. And comfrey is absolutely a weed.
08:04There's no doubt in my mind that it is a weed, but it can be a beneficial weed. So, so the big answer is no matter what you're trying to do to keep weeds from taking over, it's going to require work. It's either, it's either you have to be creative and use the weeds to your advantage, or you have to pull them by hand, or you have to put something down to smother them.
08:32So it's going to be work no matter how you try to eradicate them. Yes. And you know, if you're trying to grow plants, you know, if, if, if you live in town and you, and you have the ability to have raised beds, um, that's, that's always easier to manage and control because you can determine what's in those boxes, but, you know, I think it, like you said, it, it comes back to.
09:00you got to put some edible grease into it and make sure you get the root of the weed or it's just going to come right back. Yes. And while we're talking about weeds and beneficial versus not, we grew a garden at a neighbor's house five springs ago now because we didn't have our place where we live now five years ago. And she had these beautiful weeds.
09:30that came up in our garden. And the blooms looked like the blooms on a potato plant, but they were not potato weeds. I don't know what these weeds were, but they were gorgeous. They were like cream with a burgundy center to them. And they looked like the bloom on a potato or an eggplant. Do you have any idea what those were? I am- Does this ring a bell? I am in my brain right now, trying to...
10:00think of what it could be. They were sort of viney, but they weren't viney like a sweet potato vine. But they were beautiful. They were probably the size of a half dollar when they opened up the blooms. Oh.
10:20I have been trying to find out. It wasn't night shade, was it? It didn't know. I don't think so. It didn't make the little berries that night shade makes. Okay, okay. So I don't know what they were, but they were beautiful. And I ended up cutting some and putting them in like a little dish, a little short dish, because I couldn't leave them there. They were too pretty. I had to bring them home. Yeah. I understand that. So.
10:47I just didn't know if maybe it would ring a bell. But if you do happen to think of it at some point, let me know, because I would love to know what they are. They do not grow here where we are now. I have not seen them yet. So, okay. So that's pretty much the answer on what's the best way to prevent weeds from taking over. Work at it. It takes work. Yes, it takes work. I can go through kind of a checklist here, right?
11:17mulching, ground covers, plant spacing. So spacing and putting in the right plants that are going to be able to help prevent the weeds from coming up because they're the ones that are there. The hand weeding, you know, you can use your hands, they have so many different tools now to pull weeds out. And I struggle with dandelions at my place. So I've got in, you know, in my flower beds, I've got
11:47some tools that I don't have to lean over. I don't have to do any of that. I can stick it in the ground, turn it, and it pulls it out. So there's other methods. Killing, kind of that cultivating to allow the weeds to be pulled out once they're there, if that's the point that you're at. You can use like pre-emerging herbicides, right?
12:16like what is the name of, I'm trying to think of the name.
12:23of the of the pre-emerging herbicide that a lot of people like to use. It's kind of you sprinkle it down and then it stops. I have no idea. I'm sorry. That's the name of it. Okay. Yeah. So I know a lot of gardeners use prune. You can, it stops them from coming up, but also it's an herbicide. So you're putting that into the soil.
12:54Yeah. Solarization, covering soil with, you know, like a clear either cloche or even something that's going to allow sun to get through, but not the weeds to pull out, right? So landscaping fabric, heat trapping kind of under under some
13:22you know, like a poly plastic type of thing. So I know that there's a lot of people talk about using vinegar or salt solutions or boiling water to get rid of weeds. I have never done. I have tried it. It doesn't work well. Yeah. And for one, I've heard from people, it's not always the most effective method, but I
13:48know, I know that sometimes some of this stuff can just get so out of control that it is very difficult to manage. So getting ahead, again that's number one, getting ahead of the weeds before they come is going to be the most important. Yeah. Okay. But these are all things you learn as you go, right? Yep. Yep. The worst weed that we have here on our property is the grass.
14:18I don't know what kind of grass grows in the field that we till under every year, but I'm telling you, it doesn't work. We till because we have to get stuff in the garden. If we could do the no-till method, we would do that, but it doesn't work for what we're trying to do. And my husband, by the end of July, is just like, I can't pull any more grass. I just can't. And we're on our fourth.
14:48we think 21, 22, 23, fourth spring here. And because he has tilled the garden every fall and every spring since we moved in, the growing area of the garden is now very good soil and we've amended it and we've made it really nice and it grows wonderful produce. The edges of the garden, grass everywhere to the point that you can't even see into the garden
15:18by the end of August because the grasses are so tall. Because the mower doesn't get the very edge and he'll take the little hand scythe thing out and knock stuff down. But you know how hot last August was and the previous August was. By August, he'd just given up. He was like, I don't care. The stuff in the garden is doing great. I'm just gonna let the grasses grow. I said, okay, you do that. So.
15:46So I guess the point is that when you're trying to do a garden plot or a raised bed or something where you want your stuff that you put in to grow, you do have to figure out a way to control the weeds because the weeds compete with the plants you put in and they don't do as well. Right. They steal nutrients and moisture from space. Yeah. But you can also cave.
16:16at the end of the season and be like, okay, we've got one more month to go. Everything is established. It's not taking away from what we put in. Just let the weeds do their thing. You can do that too. Yes. So here, the problem with that though, is allowing any weed to go to seed. Once it goes to seed, it's going to be very difficult to get it out. It can take a lot longer. So if you can prevent.
16:46any weed or anything from going to seed that you don't want. That is the best of it. Yep. Yep, that's the way to win the war, not the battle. Yep. Yep. Yep. The other thing that I was going to say is if you're not growing a big garden, we have peonies. Here, peonies. How are you saying? They're my favorite flower. The beautiful, the poor man's rose are my favorite
17:16And peonies are great at keeping weeds down. Cause they shade out underneath. Yes. So I know. You need like a lot of sun. So you can always plant and I always plant either irises or some hostas around it. Because those are, yeah, the, the hostas are going to be lower and they're going to, they're going to shade out a lot of weeds as well.
17:43Yeah, but they like shade. Yeah, right. They'll do well underneath a lot of that stuff. Okay. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm so silly. I get talking to you guys, you other people on the other podcast, and I realized that I'm being dumb about something we're doing here. We should be putting peonies around the outside of the garden because the garden gets sun all day long. Yeah. Anywhere. So I do a lot. I have a cut flower garden.
18:12Um, and a lot of those taller, taller ones. So I have like the, the binaries that I grow and those very tall, those I'll plant next to, you know, I'll do all of the cut flowers kind of over there, but I'll do stuff in between some of that tall, those tall plants, just to make sure that nothing can come through and they're mutually beneficial.
18:37I need to start checking Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and all those wonderful resources for free peony roots this fall. Those are going to be hard to come by. There's always some, somebody's splitting peonies somewhere in the area. They're hard to find for free, but I grow peonies, so I've got all of them. Mm-hmm. Yep.
19:01I'm going to talk to my husband and be like, if you want to not have to deal with the grasses around the edge of the garden, let's put peonies all the way around the garden. Yeah. And then, and as those spread too, right? Because I, I've never thought of them as the poor man's rose. I've always, like they've always been one of my absolute favorite flowers. Forever. They, there's so many different varieties. I've got the fern, peony, the red, they're gorgeous.
19:29There's some that smell wonderful, some that are bush, some that are tall, and they're magnificent. They make the most beautiful flowers.
19:41Yes, you are preaching to the choir. I love peonies. They are my absolute favorite flowering plant to grow. Yes, and if you can get them, if you can get your husband to put those in the garden, those will continue to produce for years. They'll spread. You can move them, you can sell them, you can give them away.
20:05Oh yes, absolutely. We have, I think we had 60 blooms this year from plants that were put in in the last three years. Isn't that lovely? I love perennials. I, I, oh my god, they're so wonderful because they're so easy. The problem with perennials is you have to wait because I know that for peonies, the first year is sleep, the second year is creep, and the third year is leech.
20:34So basically you put in peony roots and three springs later, you will maybe have some flowers to put in a vase in your house. Yeah. I don't know if that's true of all rhizomes and, and bulbs. Is it true of all of them? Not always, right? I just planted some, some verniculus bulbs and they're coming up right away. So it really,
21:04It depends. I'm not a fan of hauling bulbs in the fall. I don't like to mess with that. I like as much easy, beautiful gardening as I can get. So if something can come up every year naturally and I don't have to do as much work, that's what I'm going to go for. Otherwise, some of those things are best grown in pots.
21:27Mm-hmm. Yep. We tried growing dahlias last summer. I'd never grown them before and After we put them in I realized that we're gonna have to take them out you know winter because they don't winter over and I decided to be a rebel and I was like I didn't like them enough to grow them again So we're just gonna leave them right where they are and see if they somehow do winter over They do not and I do not care because I'm never growing dahlias again
21:57They're really pretty, but I don't love them enough to keep growing them. So, but those are bulbs and I don't wanna have to worry about digging them out and doing all the work to preserve them over the winter time. I know lots of people love it and do it and they do it really well. I am not one of them. Yeah, I've kind of been that person too. I know, and I've planted them.
22:25You know, you can get them in the baskets with all the holes in it so that it's easier to pull them out in the fall. And still I'm like, uh, we'll see. Put some mulch on it. See what happens. Yeah. I didn't think they'd make it. And my husband said, do you want me to dig those out? And I was like, no, leave them. We're going to be rebel gardeners for the winter. We're going to see if they come back. I don't cut anything back in the fall. Nothing. I don't cut anything. Yeah. He said, you don't really like it.
22:55Yeah, he said, you don't really like the dollies, do you? I said, nope, I would much rather grow peonies. They're easy, they're low maintenance, and they're beautiful. He said, okay, I will get you all the peony bulbs you want. I was like, really? Honest, can we make the whole property of peonies? He said, no.
23:11I was very sad in that moment because I really wanted to make the whole property peonies, but he said no. Slowly accumulate. I'll work on him. It'll be okay. Especially when I tell him that if he plants peony plants all the way around the garden, it'll cut down on the problems with the grass coming in. So yeah, I planted mint around the garden and that has been doing a really, really good job of keeping and chamomile.
23:40of keeping weeds coming and grass. Yeah, time too. Time is good because it's a lower to the ground plant and it's really thick. Yep, creeping time is really great for that.
23:55Yeah, and actually culinary time too. We had some and we didn't have a single piece of grass coming up through the time because it was so thick.
24:05So yeah, time can do it. The pineapple weed, I don't know if that's the real word for it, it's like wild chamomile or something. That grows here everywhere. And I would love to have my lawn be wild, a wild, sorry, pineapple weed. Because when you step on it, it smells so good. Yeah, it does. I have a wooly time all over because I love the smell of that and the texture of it.
24:34Yeah. Yeah. So there are solutions here that are lovely and useful and smell good and are fun to talk about. So I'm really glad that our friend on Facebook asked on the gardening group that I pulled the question from asked the question because weeds are. Let's be honest. Weeds are a pain in the ass. Yep.
24:58But if you can, if you can, I don't know, tame seems to be the wrong word. Corral them and direct the ones that you want to do things you want them to do for you, I think they can be fine. Absolutely. Oh, and I recommend anybody get like a weed app or an identifying, like a plant identifier app. I think Google has one. I know there's a app called Seek. And it's not always 100%, but if you're unsure about what something is, you pull that up.
25:27open the app, it'll, it'll look at it and likely identify, you know, the genus species, all of those pieces for you. So you can, it'll tell you if it's, if it's got medicinal qualities, if it's natural, if it's invasive, those types of things. Because a lot of those things that we probably think are weeds that are like I, for years, I probably went in my woods and thought, you know, a lot of these things are weeds and then come to, to investigate that no, a lot of that is
25:56natural and medicinal.
26:01Yes, and one of the coolest ones is catnip. Oh, yeah, I have it everywhere. Mike, and that's probably why I have so many cats. I'd like to think that's the reason why. Uh huh. Yeah, we have catnip growing all over the property and catnip actually likes its feet wet. I didn't know this. So last summer, last, okay, last spring, I was so excited because I knew catnip grew, grew everywhere on the property. And I was going to.
26:31harvest it when it started growing and I was going to dry it and put it in cute little bags and put a cute label on it and sell it at the farmers market for people who have cats. And then it dried out at the end of what? June last year? And all the catnip died. There was no catnip growing anywhere in our yard last year. I was like, well so much for making the cats happy this summer at the farmers market. Well, this year. Yeah, it was just so dry.
27:00Hopefully, yeah, I haven't seen any yet, but who knows, we'll see what happens. That's not true. My cat, my barn cat, actually did find some catnip. She's crazy. Her name is Floof, and she found the only catnip that was growing so far this year, and she walked up to my husband with it in her mouth, and he split it off because she has...
27:29We kept one of her kittens from last fall and he split the catnip and gave the other piece to the other cat and Chirp had never seen catnip before and she was crazy. After she ate it, she was running around our yard like she was on steroids. So our cats have benefited so far this spring from one place of catnip on the property. Oh my!
27:52Well, you need some more. You let me know. So it's growing. I just gotta find it. I got it all over. Yes. I would love to do the cute little packets of it to sell. Because I think that, I think the catnip you get at the store is crap. We bought it for our cats before, you know, before we had our own source of catnip. And they would, they'd sniff it and bat at it and chew on it. But they didn't ever seem very happy with it.
28:22The catnip growing here is so fresh that it's more intense. And so they love it. And the other thing that I didn't know about catnip is catnip has exactly the opposite effect on dogs. It actually mellows dogs out. I have not seen my dogs try to eat it yet, although maybe they have, but even the raw catnip, right, you pull a leaf off, my cats will go.
28:52Crazy for it. Two on it, rub on it.
28:58Yeah, when we had our dog spayed three years ago now, we had catnip dried from the first crop from the first year we were here. And I had read that catnip had a sedative effect on dogs. And the vet had told us that she absolutely should not be jumping at all because the incision would tear.
29:24And she's a mini Australian Shepherd, so she's crazy. She's always jumping and running up the stairs and stuff. No. And so she immediately, the morning after she was spayed, she was trying to jump on the couch and jump on the bed and just be her normal self. And I grabbed some of the dried catnip because I knew she liked catnip. She was always sniffing it when we gave it to the cats. And I put some in my hand and I was like, Maggie, come here. And she walked over and I rolled my hand open and she stuck her nose in there and just like.
29:52ate it out of my hand and went and laid down and was laid down for a good hour. And she wasn't passed out, but she was just actually being a good girl and being in a restful state. So anytime she wound up for the next few days, I would give her some catnip and she would go lay down. So apparently it works. Okay. We'll be harvesting that then.
30:16I've got to... Yes, catnip is one of the best. My two big English mastiffs, I don't think I'd have to give them anything to just be chill. They're probably still in bed right now, actually. So while you were... Since we've been talking about weeds, and I know we don't have a whole lot of time left, I wanted to... Yeah, that's fine. I do a lot of research on herbal medicine. And...
30:45I like to grow and use plants for their natural potential. And you were talking about comfrey earlier. So I pulled out my big book and started looking up the medicinal uses of comfrey that grows naturally here. So the self-help on it is
31:14acne and boils fractures fungal skin infections healing wounds inflamed skin rashes and stiff and aching joints. And it does talk about clinical research that's been done. It was mostly done in Germany. But making like a poultice rates or an ointment out of out of the leaves had a let's see in a 2007 study.
31:42Physicians rated that the efficacy of a comfrey leaf cream and healing abrasions was very good effective in 93% of cases and complete healing took four days with comfrey and seven days with a placebo. So it's known for its anti-inflammatory in osteoarthritis, back pain, sprains.
32:12So that's, it looks like the leaves, the leaves are the best poultice are going to make the best, but you can make an infused oil also. So if you were to take comfrey and make a salve or an infused oil out of it, and then add honey, you would have antibacterial as well as anti-inflammatory.
32:35That's interesting. I may have to look into this because I make stuff like that. Oh, I love it. Yeah. So that would be this one wouldn't be recommended for like, the retina gestion necessarily, right? Like, so there's some that you can write, you know, you can make a tincture, put it on your tongue. This would be you're going to make an oil to you know, like a if you think of like a tiger balm or you know, something like that, it's going to be something that you're going to want to put on your skin.
33:05instead of, yeah, ingesting. Yes. So again, just prove the point that not all weeds are terrible things that need to not exist. We need some of this stuff. Yes, yes.
33:19All right, awesome. All right, Liz, thank you so much. Thank you, bye. Bye.
 

Permaculture - How you can use permaculture practices to improve your gardening

In this episode we discuss the rain Minnesota has been dealing with of late, and permaculture - what it is and why it's important.
You can find us on Facebook, and also join the Facebook group.
If you have a gardening question, please email Mary at lewis.mary.e@gmail.com or Liz at liz@greenrootsfarm.org
00:00Mary, Mary, quite contrary. How does your garden grow? Well, that all depends. But that's not really what this podcast is about. We're here to help you grow your garden. Welcome to Mary and the Master Gardener. Good morning, Liz. How are you on this not raining morning? Well, I'm doing all right. Hoping to get outside a little bit. Yeah, my son was out shifting all the quote unquote
00:28dry wood to the end of the woodshed toward the wood burning boiler thingy we have for our wood for our furnace this morning because it was just dry enough to get on it because we have wet wood that needs to get moved over there and he was like I'm going to go do it now before it starts raining again. Smart. So why don't we chat about rain and what it is doing to whatever we have planted.
00:57and why rain is beneficial, but what happens when there's too much.
01:02Yes.
01:06So what happens? Yeah, what happens when there's too much? Well, depending on where your plants are located, right? So if they're in a lower lying area coming down off of a hill, you're going to get a lot more water. But depending on how you're able to kind of secure drainage in a way.
01:32And then maybe doing a little bit of protection too for some plants. Um, like my garden, half of it is kind of underwater right now. So trying to get just some of it is just allowing it to try to rebound naturally.
01:53But then also making sure that you can put things down on top of it to help with some absorption, but some of it is taking your hits. Yeah, and some of our plants are doing great. Our onions are doing great. I'm guessing that's because onions like water because they need to make that big fat bulb. Right, and there are a lot of water-loving
02:23plants that will do very well in this, right? So we've got the humidity, we've got a lot of rain, and then we are getting some intense sun when it is not raining. So a lot of perennial flowers love this. All of mine are doing magnificent, but that also means some of the weeds are doing just as well. Yes, gotta love those weeds.
02:52They don't care. They're gonna grow whether it rains or it suns or it pours or it snows sometimes even. So yeah. Weds are great. Okay, so I know that we have little tomato seedlings in. They've been in for, oh my goodness, at least three weeks and they are pretty much stalled out and they're starting to yellow.
03:19Does this mean we're gonna lose our tomato plants this year? No, not completely. If they're getting just too much water, if they're just getting too much, but I would start by maybe putting some mulch or something around it. And you can even do some of those, you know, like a, like a clutch to kind of cover them and protect them from some of that direct, that direct rain coming onto it.
03:47And it'll give it a little bit of protection then from some of the pooling water as well. But take some of the leaves off, if you can, the lowest. That'll help. That'll help it a bit. And then yeah, allowing it to try to get some protection in those places. But I don't think they're lost. I don't think they're lost. Tomatoes like it too. They like the heat. They like the humidity.
04:18Okay, good. I had looked at the AccuWeather forecast, you know, the long range forecast a week and a half ago. AccuWeather said that a week and a half ago was when all this constant daily rain was going to stop and it was going to get hot and dry. And they lied. I also talked to a lady from the old farmer's almanac on my other podcast weeks ago.
04:45And I asked her what the forecast was according to the old farmer's almanac for our area. And she said, hot and dry summer. Today or tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first day of summer. Um, I'm hoping that she's correct because this, this daily rain is, is not really great for anybody right now. Yeah. And hopefully there's enough time in between that, that it's able to absorb into the soil, but yeah, it's.
05:15It is good for plants that are trying to transplant or grow right now, but if it's too much, it's going to drown them. Yeah. Our garden is a part of our business. It is mostly my husband's favorite thing on earth to do, to decompress from work. And so he's going to keep going at it all summer long. He's going to do everything he can to make it go.
05:45But I'm not going to lie, I'm very happy that the garden is not our sole source of income because I suspect we would not be making a lot of money this year.
05:56Yeah, I think part of this too is, is, you know, kind of what we talked about in the last episode was like that being able to adapt. So what is kind of coming and then learning, it's a learning curve, right? You're you're learning as you go. I think, you know, things I've done in the past have been like, even put straw down in between to kind of absorb some of that and take it away from away from the plants. Yeah.
06:26But even though that's not something I generally like to do, I don't like to put, you know, I'll do compost sometimes, but it's, it helps. But, and then figuring out too, like different places to plant that aren't going to be.
06:42heavily watered. Yeah, where it's not gonna hold the water for as long. Mm-hmm, yep. Yeah, our issue here is that we dig down six to eight inches into beautiful black, healthy soil, and we hit gray clay. So the whole area where we garden is basically a pool if we get massive rain, because that clay doesn't let the water go anywhere. And...
07:11we're not going to dig out the entire area where the garden is to dig out that clay and then backfill it with good compost and start again. So we're going to adapt and learn and figure it out and it will be okay. In the meantime, our radishes are doing great because radishes love water. The onions are doing fantastic and we have like, I think 200 onions planted. Oh, yummy.
07:40So people at the farmers market are going to get onions this year and they're going to be gargantuan. So there are some benefits to this, but I know that everyone is concerned about the amount of water that is falling from the sky right now, especially if they are growers. So I thought we should probably hit on that. The actual topic for today's podcast is permaculture and Liz knows all about it. So Liz is going to tell us all about it.
08:10Yeah, so I wanted to add a little bit on to, you know, what you were talking about with your soil issue. So you don't necessarily need to dig it out and backfill. You can add, so leafy compost is really, really, really good for earthworms. And the earthworms, as that, so as that compost goes down, those earthworms are going to be able to get into that soil and aerate it and create a
08:40moisture flow, keeping it away from your plants. So that was just one thing I wanted to add while it was in my brain. Okay, before we jump to permaculture then, and that kind of leads into it, what kind of leafy compost, how would we do that? Because we have three huge compost piles right now, but leafy is not something I've heard before. Yeah, so leafy compost is fantastic.
09:10I save all my leaves, they're incredible nutrient source, and I have a compost pile just of that. And then it can be added at any time. Because if you look at the layers of wet leaves, and I'm sure we've all done this as gardeners at one point, you picked it up, threw it off of something, but you look at those layers of leaves, and you can see in between the layers, it creates a lot of room for oxygen.
09:39to get down into the soil. And it creates space for worms. And those worms then are gonna create those holes in that clayish soil that you have, and then continue to push those nutrient rich leaves into your soil.
09:59Okay, all right. That makes sense. Okay, did you have anything else to add about that? Yeah, keep a compost pile just of your leaves if you'd like.
10:11Okay, cool. I didn't know we could do that. Check box. Oh yeah. Matt, we're good. I don't bag leaves. I only, I will mulch them because that those nutrients are really good for your yard, anything growing.
10:26Okay, I didn't, I had no idea. See, this is why I love talking to people who do things on a big scale and learn everything about it because I learned so much from you. It makes me so happy. Okay, so. And it saves you time, right? No one likes begging. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yes, that's a great plan. I like that a lot. So we had a question from, I can't remember who it was. I emailed you the question. Do you know who?
10:56who I sent you the email from. I don't recall, but I can. Oh, I'll look it up. It's fine. I got it. I think. It's gonna be quiet for a minute, guys, because we're both looking at things on our computers.
11:13I don't have it.
11:18I just want to read the name of the person who posted on Facebook the question and then the question. Okay. Evan Binsfield asked, some info on permaculture design, specifically tree bush species for cold climate.
11:38Most of the info that he's finding is on Zone 6 Plus, where they can actually have fruit trees. So actually you can have lovely, lovely fruit trees in Minnesota, in Zone 4, in Zone 5. I have tons of apple trees. I've got plum trees. They grow really well. Some of it is where you're planting.
12:07and how close together they are. But these are some really good, like Minnesota, right, we know the Honeycrisp Apple. Everybody knows that one. And I have many of those. And those do amazingly well in our zones in Minnesota, even in northern Minnesota, up in the three.
12:38So, some other species- How many zones are in Minnesota, actually?
12:44Um, so I believe, you know, we range from three in Northern Minnesota and then I'm down in Southern Minnesota and, and I'm a five, although some, some maps say I'm a four, I'm kind of on that order, but, um, I think we have, we range from those, those three major. I'm not going to look that up to make sure, but. I'm sorry. Oh, no, no, no, no, no problem.
13:15Okay, so I think creating, you know, permaculture is really, how do we work with the soil that we have? How do we work with the environment that we have without putting in a lot of different plants that aren't from our area, right? So really kind of natural, sustainable planting is what
13:41I think the question is, or at least what the answer is for permaculture, especially in our shorter growing season. So managing your soil, composting, mulching, cover crops, because cover crops really put a lot of nutrients, structure, make the soil really nice and fertile, and it kind of prevents the erosion too of some of this water that we're getting too. And then harvesting rainwater.
14:12I think that was another, it's another good practice. I don't water any of my plants from water from my home because I don't want anything that's gone through any kind of pipes. I don't want anything that's gone through a softener, anything like that. I want naturally sourced water, as much as you could get, right? So collecting rainwater, even though this rainwater definitely is pulling the atmospheric
14:42unhealthy, I would say on the healthy atmosphere into your water, it's still better than likely the water that you're getting from your home. It's just natural.
14:55Okay. Can we back up just a titch and define what permaculture means? Is it permanent culture? Is that where it's based from? Sure. So permaculture, they're designed to create sustainable, kind of self-sufficient ecosystems, agricultural ecosystems if you're trying to produce.
15:22But otherwise, it's, you know, you see, if you drive through your neighborhood, I can guarantee that you're gonna find somebody with a permaculture yard, right? So they've got natural plants there that can prevent erosion. They've got natural plants there that just grow in our season. And you'll see those, those are the ones that don't need to be mowed. They've got these big, beautiful flowers and they keep coming back every year.
15:51And that also helps kind of.
15:56continue, it helps keep weeds down, it helps create continual feeding for insects, for birds, for all of these species that really kind of, you're not just creating an ecosystem for the soil and the plants, you're creating it for all things that live on it. Okay, yeah, because I mean I have a vague idea of what permaculture means, but not everybody does, so I thought we should probably
16:25define that a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. Thank you for that. And then cover crops. I always hear cover crops in relation to big, big operations. Oh yeah, so most people think a big field, right? Yeah, like acres of corn or acres of soybeans or whatever. So if you're talking about a garden like
16:52hours which is maybe 100 feet by 160 feet. We empty out the garden every fall when it's done. You know we take everything out and my husband tills it and then he puts some of the compost that's been developed over the summer from the big bins that we have and he lets that sit. And we also have chickens so he puts the chicken bedding with the chicken poop on the garden and lets that sit over the wintertime.
17:20So we don't really do a cover crop. I mean, I suppose we could try a winter rye or something, but then it's covering where we want to plant again in the spring. So when you're talking about cover crops, how would that work for a situation like ours? Would it work at all?
17:44Yeah, absolutely. So it doesn't have to be, you know, something that you're gonna, it could be something that you could even harvest right in the spring and continue, you know, allowing the farm to produce for you, right. So the big farmers, that's what they do, they're going to plant rye, they'll do winter wheat, there's all kinds of or alfalfa, right? alfalfa is fantastic, especially if you have animals to feed. So or you can sell it.
18:14So allowing anything that you can kind of put in the soil when you're not utilizing it, and it's a little bit more work, but you're adding, if you think of it as treating your soil as you do in the fall, right? If you're putting that compost in, all of those other things, this would just be an additional step to create soil health and improve the fertility of it.
18:46It prevents erosion.
18:49And then you can always, you know, continue to just change crops also, or, you know, if you choose not to, you don't have to. But I think it could be a little bit more challenging too, if you don't have something to harvest it with.
19:08Yeah, and you know, you really don't smaller farms that don't have. Yeah. So that that can be a bit of a challenge. But if you do have animals, or a way to pull it, you can always just till it in also in the spring, if that's something that
19:26that is a practice that you do in the spring? We do, we till it in the spring because we have to break it up more than it's already broken up by the earthworms in the dirt. We have lots of earthworms, the chickens absolutely love the earthworms. Oh yeah, that's one of my favorite things to watch. Yeah, we kife a couple and throw them in the run and they lose their mind. It's very, very funny to watch. And honestly, chickens, if you live where you can have chickens, have chickens. They are entertaining as all hell.
19:54They're great. Oh my goodness, yes. So, okay. So, did you have more you wanted to say about permaculture? I didn't mean to back you up too far, but it's one to hit on things that I didn't know about too. Yeah, no. And so I think the cover crop, even if you plant a cover crop, you decide that you can't harvest it. You can till it in because you're ultimately adding nutrients. You're changing that soil structure, right? So you're talking about clayish soil that you have. It's gonna kind of help break that up.
20:24and create soil that is going to be able to regulate and conserve moisture in a healthy way. And disperse it in a healthy way because disperse the moisture is the thing we're having trouble with right now. Yeah. And if we want to go to that, right? So going to that subject, I think being able to kind of create like a berm.
20:52to protect some of your plants that maybe might be getting too much water. That's things that I've done in the past. You know how you you amount different plants, right? So melons, things like that, that you you plant those in amount. You can also do that with some of you know anything else that you have at the garden that you really need to to keep away from that heavy moisture. Malt helps as well. Okay.
21:19We're going to have to work on that Sunday when it's not raining, because it's going to rain tomorrow and it's going to rain Friday and it's going to rain Saturday. Go fig. I don't mean to sound so pissy about this, but I'm just over it. We need rain to make things grow, but I don't think we need buckets poured over our heads every day. Right. Yeah, I agree. Looking outside and seeing...
21:47Even my yard flooded. I'm in a flood zone today. And I could look out at the neighbor's field and see Lake Monsanto. It's a little, it's a little troubling. That is so funny because, um, we have a useless garage that sits directly behind our house and there's a cement pad in front of it and every time it really rains, all the water pools in front of that garage and we call it Lake Lewis.
22:14because my last name is Louis. So yeah, Lake Lonsanto, that's awesome. Okay, so with permaculture, I don't wanna beat a dead horse here, but we have a tree line that borders the left side of our property and the back side of our property. And we have two wild elderberry trees.
22:44there we have wild plum and we have wild black raspberries and we have not messed with any of those trees because they were here when we got here. They are a natural source of food and we love everything about it. And my question is, because I got distracted by thinking about my tree line, if a wild version of a fruit grows on your land,
23:12Does that automatically mean that a domesticated or cultivated variety will grow on your land? Not necessarily, right? I have a preference towards organic heirloom varieties, right? And anything that grows naturally, I tend to leave, unless it's something that's going to harm, anything else that I'm growing.
23:42but you can always add to those too. I would leave them. I have elderberry growing in my grove as well. And I actually just bought yesterday 10 black elderberry plants to add to my farm. Because I love black elderberries. They're so good, so nutritious. But those kind of also, right? So elderberry gets huge. And that also will create kind of a natural windbreak. Because
24:10Yes, they're they're big, they're leafy. So things tend to grow. Sometimes where they're beneficial for you. Yeah. You can add to those two, right? So you could try putting in a cultivated, you know, apple tree or plum tree, something like that, and see how it does. Because they, you know, apple trees, you need at least two varieties to pollinate. Yep.
24:43Yep, we have, I think we have eight different varieties of apple tree growing that we've put in. I think it's eight. Oh, that's wonderful. And we have honeycrisp trees. We have two of them that we bought two years ago. And they were saplings when we bought them and they're finally starting to branch out and fluff out with the leaves. So we're hoping against all hope that we might get a few honeycrisp apples.
25:11not this fall, but the following fall. Oh, yeah, it takes with most trees. I don't recommend people going out and buying giant expensive trees. Because if you have a sapling or you have a giant tree, those first two years, go towards root development. Yes, so it save your money, get yourself a little sapling and you could usually get them especially
25:40If you're a farmer, through your county programs, there's county programs that offer big tree and shrub sales that are perennial to your area, that are natural to your area. And you can get them in bulk for very good prices. And I recommend putting a lot of those in.
26:05Yes, and if you don't know how to find that information, I bet the University of Minnesota's Extension Services would probably be able to direct you. Absolutely, and most county, every county website is going to have their, it's usually their soil environmental kind of management program, and that's usually, at least in my county, Blue Earth County, that's where
26:31that's where you would order it. And I kind of live on the border of Blue Earth and Brown County. And Brown County has their own program. The county my parents farm is in, they have their own. And you'll be able to get the plants that my mother can get are not the same ones that I can get in my area.
26:50Is it because it's specific to that area? Is that why? Yes. Okay. Okay. Um, we also bought cherry trees and peach trees last year. And my husband brought home a supposedly cold, hardy, sweet cherry tree. And he bought two of the same kind. And
27:16I figured that cherry trees were like apple trees and that they need another variety so they will pollinate. And I was like, bring me the tag from one of the cherry trees. And he did. And I looked it up to see what other cherry tree we would need to buy to actually get cherries out of these things. And come to find out the best one was the Rainier cherry. That was the one they recommended to use as a cross pollinator.
27:43I don't know what you know about cherry trees, but Rainier cherry trees are expensive. So we ended up buying a $60 Rainier cherry tree sapling from somewhere, ordered it, it came in, it was healthy, it was fine, and we put it in. All three cherry trees bloomed this spring. I don't think we'll see cherries this spring because I'm assuming they need time to adjust their new environment as well as apple trees do.
28:11but we're hoping that we'll actually have sweet cherries in a couple of years growing here. Oh, I'm excited for that. I don't have a lot of experience in cherries, cherry trees. I just, that is something though that I would love to learn about. Me too. And faith, oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, all I've known about cherries.
28:40All I've known about cherries my whole living existence in Minnesota, which is over 30 years now, is that the sour cherries do really well here. I didn't know you could grow a cold hardy cherry.
28:53So yeah, we'll see. There's a lot of.
28:57There's a lot of native that do really well and they make insane with crab apples. I want to say that too. There's some varieties of crab apples and most people think like I was crab apple. No, but you can make really, really good jams and jellies with them.
29:18You don't, it doesn't have to be, you could use a lot of the native species that are growing.
29:24Yes, and the wonderful thing about Minnesota, okay, I'm glad you said that. The state land that is around us everywhere. We talked with one of the rangers or whatever they're called here. I grew up on the East Coast, so I don't know what the people who patrol our forests are called. But they said that as long as you don't pick any plants from state land.
29:52as long as you don't cut any plants from state land. You are allowed to harvest any fruit from state land you want to. So if there are wild plums growing and they're ripe and they taste good, you are more than welcome to take plums from state land. Asparagus, asparagus grows wild everywhere in Minnesota. If you want asparagus in the spring, ask anybody if they know of a patch growing somewhere wild.
30:22Minnesota is one of the best states for foraging that I know of. It is. My daughter loves to go asparagus hunting in the spring. I have an asparagus patch, which I'm grateful for, but she's got these secret spots and mushrooms. So, I love to go look for mushrooms. I have a few species that grow in my own woods.
30:51love to go look at different spots and I know them in my brain, I can get to them without having to, you know, without having a map, I just go there. And I love looking for morels and different, different fruits that are growing different things that I can harvest and enjoy and then create more out of right, you can, you can keep the spores for morels and create your own. Uh-huh.
31:19Yep. And you want to collect your morel, any mushrooms actually, in a mesh bag so the spores can get dropped as you're walking out of wherever you picked them from because you want them to propagate. You want them to keep going. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And we have an asparagus patch as well. We have a huge asparagus patch that we put in from crowns when we moved here. And
31:46some guy pulled it, oh it was the propane dude, the propane guy that brings our propane fuel for our tank. And he saw, it was after they had all done their thing, so there were all these, I don't know what they're called. Asparagus is a grass, so it had gone to seed. And he was talking to my son, and he says, I see you have a very nice asparagus patch. And my son said, yes we do. He said, you know it grows wild all over the place here, right?
32:15My son was like, yes. He said, you don't have to grow asparagus in your garden. And my son says, well, where are the patches around here? And the guy says, I can't tell you. Yes, that's a good word. My son said, well, that doesn't help us. I think we'll keep growing asparagus because at least we know where this one is. And the guy just laughed. So.
32:39The reason I tell this story is some people are very, very secretive about their spots. We knew of an apple tree, like it had to have been over 100 years old, on state land up in, I think it was Scott County. And we stumbled on it because we were out driving around, big old apple tree full of beautiful apples. And we went and picked that tree clean because it was state land. We're allowed to pick apples.
33:09And we did it two years in a row, picked hundreds of pounds of apples, made jelly, made applesauce, froze some for pies. Third year we went back and someone had cut that tree down. I cried, I sobbed. It was our secret tree and then it was gone. So yeah, it's really interesting how you find things and they're a wonderful resource.
33:37on state property and then it may not be there anymore. Yes, this is true. And I don't know what variety those apples were. The closest I could get in doing my research was called a wealthy variety. Okay. But I have no idea what it really was. They were gorgeous. They were at least the size of my palm, you know, with my fingers wrapped around the outside. They were big
34:07So anyway, we like that on my farm. When I moved here, there were two trees. One looked like a smaller honey crisp and then one was this massive, huge, like baking apple. And those ones always did just incredibly well, that tree. And I could never figure out what variety it was, but it...
34:34It still does, produces massive huge apples and I've noticed they're best for baking. Apple crisp, making sauces, things like that. They're fabulous. We're going to have to do an episode just about apples. I agree. Let's do that. Let's put that on the list because I love fall and I love apples and my family actually has a branch that has an orchard in Maine still to this day.
35:03And we don't really know that branch because my dad's mom passed away when he was two years old and he just didn't have any way to stay in contact with that side of the family. It's a long convoluted story. I don't know why everything happened the way it did. But we know that the bracket apple orchard in, I think it's Lemington, Maine is part of our family tree. So we're going to have to talk about apples on an episode. I think that would be really fun.
35:33Yes, I agree. Yeah. And I know it's Minnesota, but Minnesota is a big apple growing state, just like Maine is. So I think we could, we could definitely do a deep dive on apples and how to grow them and what it takes and the different root stocks and all that. So yes, I'm going to put that on the list. Okay. So we're at 35 minutes and 41 seconds. I'm trying to keep the episodes to half an hour. So that's it for this one. Okay. Thank you, Liz. Thank you.
36:03Bye.
 

Mary and the Master Gardener

Learn about Liz, the Master Gardener. How she got into gardening and what inspired her to help other gardeners. You can find us on Facebook, and also join the Facebook group.
If you have a gardening question, please email Mary at lewis.mary.e@gmail.com or Liz at liz@greenrootsfarm.org
00:00Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Well, that all depends, but that's not really what this podcast is about. We're here to help you grow your garden. Welcome to Mary and the Master Gardener. Today is the inaugural episode of Mary and the Master Gardener and the Master Gardener is Liz. Good morning, Liz. Good morning, Mary. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you for wanting to do this with me. I'm so excited.
00:29So you are a master gardener. How did that happen? How did you get into it? Well, I learned about it from my mother who herself was a master gardener. And I didn't have a green thumb when I was younger to save my life. But as I watched her, I was always very envious of what she could grow and how beautiful she made it. And she always did all of this incredible.
00:58giant work for such a little woman. And I kind of, once I moved out to a farm, decided that I wanted to be able to do something like that as well. And there were plants here that I couldn't identify. And so I think the idea may have been a little selfish in my own understanding, but it was also to be able to become good at what I do now.
01:27So the process is going through your, in Minnesota, going through your county, your U of M extension office, and every county has one. You can sign up online. They, at the time when I did it, which is almost 10 years ago, you could do an in-person course. They had some courses over the weekend up at the Arboretum. And then you also get a free.
01:56membership to the Arboretum as a master gardener, but you do your training. You learn everything from basic seeding to how to manage grass to managing deer coming in. It's pretty extensive in a short amount of time. And then you get to group up with these wonderful people within your gardening programs through
02:26County Extension Office. And I was definitely the youngest one there. And I learned so much, so much. I learned how to graft plants. I learned how to judge at different county fairs, which was interesting.
02:44Okay, so it's everything. Mm-hmm. You're volunteering your time. The first year that you do it, they want you to put in 50 hours. And that's people calling the Extension office asking for help with some problems that they have. You can go out there and you can consult. And you could have community gardens and kind of volunteer in ways like that.
03:13And that's kind of what I ended up doing through actually my therapy practice was doing a lot of a lot of gardening teaching to people who were incarcerated.
03:31Okay, cool. So I don't know how to ask this question right. Is it mostly learning by reading or is there a lot of hands-on as well? Yeah, so I did the online portion and that's a lot of reading, a lot of studying. You get this lovely book and you have all the resources. It provides you with
04:01I suppose a semester or two of coursework in a short amount of time. But the goal is really that you're able to help find a resource to solve any problem or to learn something that you need to learn. All righty. So you've been doing this for eight years or 10 years? About nine. Nine. Okay. So in those nine years.
04:30have you actually gotten phone calls from people and they're asking about, I don't know, the freaking potato bugs that eat potato plants? I got that more through the volunteering piece. I think I got maybe one call because I mostly dealt with vegetables and things like that.
04:56there were, I didn't have a lot of availability at the time. I had an infant and a full-time job and the farm. So, but yeah, I definitely put my hours in learning those things as I was teaching gardening to lots of, lots of people. Yeah. Okay. So like I said, I don't know what I'm trying to get at here. It's a question that's...
05:25that's bubbling. I guess what I'm trying to find out is like how much time do you spend now over the course of a month helping out people because you are a master gardener? Oh, it's constant. Yeah. Even this, right? Like I'm bringing this and trying to educate others on different aspects of gardening and growing.
05:52I feel, yeah, I help friends out all the time. I've got farmer's market setups, you know, as I think you do too. And it's kind of constant, just answering questions and.
06:07planning gardens and things like that. So it's just part of your everyday life at this point. Oh, absolutely. It's part of my dreams too. It's constantly in the brain. Yeah, here too. Because we are just now, last weekend, not this past weekend like yesterday, but two weekends ago, my husband finally was able to get into the garden and get stuff planted
06:37two weeks straight because of all the rain we've had. Yeah, mine is right now. But yeah, it's, whenever you get it in, you get it in. Yes. Yes, and luckily, and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but we got our heated greenhouse built. It's been built for three weeks now. And so we picked up some of the buckets that the nursery...
07:02has their potted plants in with the holes in the bottom already. A lady in Mankato was giving away a whole buttload of them. And so my husband and son ran down to Mankato and got these empty nursery pots and brought them home. And he is putting tomatoes and things in those for now, because it's now raining again. So we're trying to get the growth happening, even though we can't get them in the garden when we want to, because then once we can, they'll already be growing and budding or blooming.
07:33Yep, that's what I do. I start seed early and get them out. Since I sell and doing the CSA piece, I need to be kind of stagger planting, right? And I do a lot of companion planting for pests and other diseases. So it feels like it's never ending. The seeding process is just constant. But then, I mean, you can extend the growing season for quite some time then and have several crops.
08:04Yes, and I'm not even sure we're going to be doing potatoes this year because he hasn't, we usually put them in raised beds so we can add dirt to the, or soil to the boxes as the plants grow. So we get more potatoes, but he hasn't got those set up. I don't know if we're doing potatoes this year. Oh, that can be simple as getting some chicken wire, bending the bottom, putting a couple of rocks down, put your seed, put your potatoes in.
08:33and then just put some dirt on top. It doesn't need to be anything fancy as long as you're not having to dig in the dirt to try to find them and then stabbing them. I've ruined a lot of craps doing it that way. Uh-huh. Yeah, I just, I haven't heard him say anything about getting the potatoes in. I don't think he's even bought seed potatoes yet. So I don't know if we're going to do potatoes this year. I should probably ask him later. I've got to cover them. I've got all of them. Yeah. Good.
09:02As for extending the growing season, stagger planting helps, weather helps, obviously. And the greenhouse is going to help us immensely this fall because... Oh, you're going to have stuff all year. Yeah. Once it frosts, we're pretty much done up until now. So we're very excited about this and I've talked about it on the other podcasts a lot. So I don't want to get too far into it, except that this isn't brand new, different channels. So I thought I'd bring it up.
09:32That's very exciting though. I would be over the moon about that. Yeah, the actual big issue with it right now is that it's been so warm that the greenhouse is at like 90, 95 degrees during the day. And so we have exhaust fans that blow the hot air out, which helps. If they're blowing, it brings it down to about 85.
09:59So I suspect that the tomato plants and the peppers are going to do really, really well. Almost definitely. Mm-hmm. And the basil. The basil is very freaking happy right now. I bet. Yes, there's like 40, 40 basil plants out in the greenhouse right now in separate pots. And he said they're about a foot and a half tall already. Oh, lovely. I think I got all mine in the garden.
10:25Yeah, we won't be lacking for pesto or bruschetta or any of that stuff over the summer. Yummy. Yes. And the other thing that I actually want to touch on just for a second is that if you're gardening produce, it's really good to actually use the produce. Lots of people will have a veggie garden and you know, they grab a couple of tomatoes now and then and a whole bunch go to waste because they don't actually cook, so they don't actually use them.
10:54And I want to encourage people if they start a garden to make a plan to actually use the produce that comes in. And you can freeze tomatoes, you can freeze, you can't freeze cucumbers because they go to mush, but you can freeze squash, you can can. And so if people are going to start a garden, do the research and see how you can preserve your food for the winter. Oh, absolutely. And we could talk about
11:23food preservation all day long too. I'm an avid canner, I'm an avid freezer of veggies. I've got three deep freezers on the farm. It's good. You can outsource a lot of that food also to feed others. You can donate to the food shelf, all kinds of things.
11:45share it with your neighbors, sneak zucchinis into their cars. Yeah, exactly. Or all their horses. Put buckets of apples out next to their car. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anything to get it to someone who might use it if you can't use it. Yeah. And even animals. My pigs, my horses, well, my goats will eat anything, but all of the animals really will take all that in, and then the next year you're going to find those seeds growing everywhere. Yep.
12:15our chickens end up getting the extra kale and spinach and lettuce when there's just too much and they love it. Oh yeah. They go nuts. My husband just throws the greens in the run and the chickens come from everywhere they are in the run, just zoom into the pile of greens. Oh yeah. It's very funny. So, okay. So now that we know how you got into this and what you had to do.
12:43How can people contact a Master Gardener in their area? Because I don't want you to get inundated with calls, but there are Master Gardeners for every county in Minnesota. So do you go out to the extension website to get hold of them, or how do you do it? Yeah, so your county will have an extension office. And 4-H usually runs out of that as well. There's a website. Let me try it up.
13:12pull it up for my own. But every county has an extension office even through their county website. So if you're in Blue Earth County, it should be able to show up on the county site. And then there's usually a number to contact or an email. And there's always a coordinator. There's always somebody who's running that and is knowledgeable about all of these things. It is just an amazing program.
13:42that our state offers. Yes, the only master gardeners I've ever chatted with in person were at the Arboretum. Yep, they train out of there. Is it Chaska or Chanhassen? I can't remember which city it's in.
14:01Yeah, I think it's Chan. Okay, yeah. Yep, and fantastic people. There was a lady there, and it said Master Gardener in front of her on the little nameplate thing. And I bopped over and I was like, I need to talk to you. I didn't even say my name. I was just like, I need to talk to you. I was all excited. And she was like, what can I help with? And I don't remember what it was, but I was like, I have this thing happening in my garden. I don't know how to fix it. Do you? And she was like, I sure do. And talked to me for 10 minutes. She was great.
14:31Now, I'm going to share a quick story about growing things because why not? Because we're both growing things. When we lived at our old house, we lived on a little city lot and the neighbors were real close together and I was fortunate enough to have my next door neighbor, who's my friend, she was two degrees short, sorry, not two degrees, two.
14:57credits short of a horticulture degree. She didn't actually get the degree, but she was damn close. And it was really funny because she moved in a few years after I had moved in with my husband. And she is a gardening fanatic. I mean, her yard is beautiful. And she came over one day and she said, I don't understand something. And I said, what? She said, you have no background in gardening, no education. I said, no.
15:25She said, but you just throw stuff in the ground and everything does really well. And I said, yeah, I put it in the ground. I talk to it, I say, please grow and it does. And she said, I spent all that money to try to get a degree and you just work your magic. And I was like, uh-huh. But I didn't know enough. And so anytime I did have a question, I would go to her. So one of the weird things that happened,
15:52is I wanted to grow daffodils in my front garden that fronted on the sidewalk. And she had daffodils growing in her area that fronted on the front sidewalk. Same street, same south-facing light, same everything. I could not grow daffodils in my garden and she could. She could not grow blooming tulips in hers, but I could. It was the weirdest thing. So finally, I just picked out some really pretty
16:21daffodil bulbs, they were cream with like a peach center. And I took them over to her and I said, will you please grow these for me and I will grow tulips for you. And that following spring, we just traded flowers for vases. Neither one of us ever figured out why we couldn't grow the one thing. It was the strangest thing. Do you have any idea why that might be?
16:51bulb gardener. I'm still working on that piece, but I'm wondering if it's any kind of, it would have to be. If all conditions are the same, you'd need to check the soil would be my first go-to.
17:11making sure that, you know, is there, does one require, you know, a certain pH level?
17:26So I would check first with the soil.
17:32Okay, well, I don't live there. I don't live in that house anymore. And I certainly can tell her that. Um, but it was so funny because we were both so frustrated and we finally figured it out that we just swap plants. It was, it was great. Um, okay. And I don't want to get too deep into anything today because this is kind of the introduction to what we're going to be talking about. What we're really going to be talking about on this channel is gardening.
18:01and all the things that go with it and from, I assume, from the simplest to the most complex things that happen. Is that your take on it, Liz? Liz Huffman Yeah, absolutely.
18:17Okay. So I guess since it's the first episode, is there anything that you can direct people who are just getting into starting a small garden? Like what's the simplest steps to take? Well, location. I know I've done backyard gardening when I lived in town and trying to figure out which plants will grow where.
18:46knowing the amount of light that a plant needs and the amount of light that that area that you're trying to plant is going to get. And are you trying to grow plants that come back on their own every year? Are you trying to grow plants that are ready this year? Annuals.
19:10So simple things like that, but you can always consult a master gardener, you know, knowing what you want to plant. Are you planting a vegetable garden? Are you trying to do flowers in your yard? So knowing just, you know, having a basic plan is likely your first step.
19:33Okay, and what's the simplest plant to start with? Like if you've never garden in your whole life, you just want to grow something green to get your hands dirty or your feet wet as the case may be. What is the simplest thing to start with? Because I would venture that it's probably lettuce, but I might be wrong.
19:55Yeah, I guess I go right to perennial plants. That's where my brain goes. Yeah. If I think about hostas and different perennial plants like that. But if we're thinking vegetables, yeah, I would say lettuce is fairly easy. Carrots aren't all that difficult, as long as you have the space and the depths. Oh, yes. OK. So.
20:23Yeah, I think a lot of those early crops are pretty easy to start. Radishes, radishes are quite easy. And radishes are quick. Yes. Yep. Yes, they are.
20:39like 30 to 35 days from seed two, actually, radishes you can eat. Yep, and those are all direct seed too. I just made pickled radishes last night from the first four out of the garden from the shift. And they were good. A quick pickle, not an actual canned pickle, but a quick pickle. Yep. So, yeah, I love radishes so much. Okay, well, that's the simple part. And...
21:08I'm going to say that if you're new to gardening, don't jump in the deep end of the pool if you can't swim. I think that gardening is a very zen, very slow, very intensive learning curve and starting slow is probably the less stressful way to do it. Yeah, I agree. And also just patience.
21:37I kill shit all the time still. Like, oops, that happened. Lesson learned. Continue on. I mean, that's how we learn and grow. So same when you're starting out. We can't master something until we experience it.
21:56Yes. And like when we started, we had the city lot. We had like a, I don't know, 70 foot by 20 foot area to grow anything behind our house. And we rented a tiller from somewhere and we tilled up the backyard and got rid of all the grass because you can't eat grass. And we started with herbs. We started with herbs because herbs are easy.
22:27Yeah. And then we put in lettuces and then we put in peas and we did some tomatoes and cucumbers, not many because we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't want to get the stuff and have it die. And we were pretty successful the first year. And once you're successful the first year, you get brave and you want to add things in. And so we added in winter squashes. We added in winter squashes, but we were growing them along the ground.
22:55in a small backyard that doesn't work very well. So the following year we built trellises and grew them up instead of out. And that worked great for a small lot. So you can start out not knowing anything and then as you figure out what works and what doesn't, you just adjust. Absolutely. That's the beauty of it too. It's flexible.
23:19Yeah, and this is why I wanted to do this with you, because I know just enough to chime in with things that worked for us, but you know what works for a lot of people.
23:32Yeah, and that's part of it is learning and being able to at least help, try to help anyway, somebody who's experiencing maybe something similar. And I think this show is going to provide a really nice platform of people being able to ask questions and chime in and be able to collectively solve some problems possibly. Yes, and there will be a Facebook group for it so that people can come and leave questions. So that'll help.
24:01And I had a thought and now it's gone. I, I'm not going to lie. I got a headache. It's driving me crazy. So I'm trying to do this. Not being quite with it. Um, Facebook group and people can know it's fine. And people can email me and Liz. Once I get Liz's email, if you have questions you want us to address. And the next episodes will actually be answering specific issues. Cause I already have some questions from people.
24:31answers so that would be fun too. Oh that sounds wonderful. Yeah so welcome to Mary and the Master Gardener people and I hope it helps and I hope you enjoy it and Liz thanks for your time today. Thank you kindly I hope your headache goes away. Me too I was not gonna say anything but then I blanked out and I was like I sound like a dumbass I should probably say why. No I get migraines I understand.
24:59Yeah, that's what it is. I've been fighting it since yesterday. So, all right. Thank you so much, Liz. Thank you. Bye.