We talk with nationally known family life blogger Pam Farley, also known as the Brown Thumb Mama, about garden activities to do with the kids while you are sheltered in place.
Our favorite college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, delves into your questions about controlling one of the most prevalent of springtime garden pests, aphids. More info on controlling aphids.
Tips on how you and your family can grow one of the healthiest of snack foods, Popcorn.
And we will do it all in less than 30 minutes!
Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.
We talk with nationally known family life blogger Pam Farley, also known as the Brown Thumb Mama, about garden activities to do with the kids while you are sheltered in place.
Our favorite college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, delves into your questions about controlling one of the most prevalent of springtime garden pests, aphids. More info on controlling aphids.
Tips on how you and your family can grow one of the healthiest of snack foods, Popcorn.
And we will do it all in less than 30 minutes!
Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information you've come to the right spot. One of the big reasons I started the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast was to address the, well, we'll call them the interesting times. We live in the coronavirus pandemic and really how to actually make the best of what is now downtime. And I think that for many families and singles, this p ause in normal life has given people the time to stop and think about, you know, what is really important to us. One of those realizations may be that for you and your family, you need to maintain your physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. And one way to do that is to eat healthier. And that's a good reason for starting a backyard or a front yard garden because the healthiest food you can eat is the food you grow yourself. You know who handled it. And you know what, if any, pesticides were involved in the growing of that food. And by the way, here on the garden basics podcast, we will discuss controlling bad bugs, plant diseases and weeds by using the least toxic alternatives. And there are plenty of those to choose from. Growing your own food is a great family activity. It's an activity that can stay with you and your children for your entire life and during this pandemic. You know what I'm thrilled about. I'm thrilled to see so many parents spending quality time with their children, teaching them life lessons as well as fun things to do, like learning how to ride a bike well, starting that backyard garden now with your family or even by yourself for that matter. It's like natural Valium. It soothes the savage beast. All right. Maybe savage is too strong a term. Maybe everyone is just getting kind of snippy with each other by now. Well, gardening will snip off some of that snippiness. On today's show, episode four of garden basics with farmer Fred, we'll talk with nationally known family life blogger, Pam Farley. She's also known as the Brown thumb mama. She's got garden activities to do with your kids while you're all sheltered. In place. Our favorite college horticulture professor Debbie flower, delves into your questions about controlling one of the most prevalent of springtime garden PEs, aphids, and I'm going to have tips for you on how you and your family can grow one of the healthiest of all snack foods, popcorn,[inaudible] and we're going to do all of this in less than 30 minutes. Let's go well here. We are well along to sheltering in place. How are you and your family getting along? Oh, Oh, Oh, sorry to hear. Well, have you thought about doing a little bit more gardening with your family, getting into the yard and doing some yard work? Certainly a great way to blow off some steam and grow some healthy food and one person who has been growing healthy food for years and has been blogging and writing about it at our website, Brown thumb, mama.com is Pam Farley. Pam, pleasure to have you on the garden basics podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me. This is a blast.
Farmer Fred:Tell us about your yard.
Speaker 2:Well, my yard faces South, so the best light is in my front yard. I have artichokes, strawberries and some herbs and green onions growing in my front yard. My backyard is almost all swimming pool, so I have three raised beds tucked back in the corner where I grow loads and loads of vegetables for my family and our friends. And this year I am trying potatoes in containers as a fun experiment. So fingers are crossed.
Farmer Fred:And tell us about your children.
Speaker 2:So my son is a teenager and my daughter is eight so she is my primary garden to help her right now my son is my primary tech support helper.
Farmer Fred:So I would imagine they are at the age now where if you want to get them to do something in the yard it has to be monetized.
Speaker 2:My son definitely is work for hire. He has blocks of things that he wants to soup up his computer. He wants to buy new video games. So outside of their normal chores, which we all have tours to contribute to the household, he's the one that definitely needs to get paid to help. But our daughter is still ready to get out in the dirt with me. And just look for roly polies and dig up worms. So she's still in it just for the love of garden.
Farmer Fred:Oh good. So in this time of self quarantine and shelter, you have a willing family.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Farmer Fred:Well that's good. Now maybe we can offer some tips to those who, whose families may not be so willing, but they're looking for something to do together because well they have to do it together these days. Uh, what would you recommend?
Speaker 2:Something that's fun for the whole family to do together and you can even drag your unwilling teenagers out to do this is to have a garden scavenger hunt. And this is something that you can cause everybody's going to need to go for a walk. Little bit, little ones. Don't mind if it's raining, but um, right now as we're talking on the phone, it's a beautiful sunshiny day. So you can um, grownups can draw up a list and you'll know the ages of your children best. Preschoolers might need to look for a flower that the same color as my shirt or something with leaves that bigger than my hand. Teenagers might look to see if there's a type of vegetable or plant growing in people's yards or they might have be a challenge to look for a yard that's been zero state things that are appropriate to the age level of the searcher.
Farmer Fred:Just as a word of explanation, a zero escaped yard is one that has mostly drought tolerant plants and it doesn't begin with a Z. It begins with an X zero escape. Very popular here in California ripping out lawns and putting in plants that don't require much water in case there is a drought
Speaker 2:and different kids can have different scavenger hunt list that they can go off of. I know when my little one has a clipboard, she feels like the most important person ever.
Farmer Fred:Well this is great because you're getting some aerobic exercise taking a walk through the neighborhood and they're keeping their eyes peeled in places where normally they wouldn't be looking.
Speaker 2:Exactly. They, you can't do the scavenger hunt on your phone. Sorry kid. You have to walk around with a piece of paper and look around
Farmer Fred:and what are the prizes at the end of the day,
Speaker 2:that is a fine question for little ones. They'll be happy with a certificate that you print out on the computer or something like that. Older kids are probably going to want to get out of one chore free card that every, every parent is going to know what the, what's the important thing for their family.
Farmer Fred:Or maybe you unlock the freezer at night for the ice cream.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Or you get to pick the movie on family movie night next time. There's always something that is a prize thing in every family.
Farmer Fred:That's a great tip for a families that want to do something together or have to do something together in this day and age. Take a walk, have a scavenger hunt and get some exercise and learn some things about nature. By the way, if you want to learn some things about nature or get some great recipes and gardening, even though Pam, you call yourself an attempting Gardner, uh, actually you'd have a lot of great garden tips there at Brown thumb, mama.com.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I have been learning and gardening in my city garden for upwards of 20 years now. So even though my last potato crop, they were all the size of golf balls, I keep on learning and I keep on trying and everyday families can do this too. So I, I am out there to show everybody that I'm just a regular mom and everything doesn't grow great every time, but we can keep trying.
Farmer Fred:Plus you have an emphasis, uh, on your website and your blogs about natural living and healthy eating.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. So making your own cleaners, trying to get away from boxed foods. I have a great recipe that the copycat for those red lobster, cheesy biscuits, make your own rice a Roni make your own granola bars is super popular right now because everybody's[inaudible] the kids are hungry or when they're not at school. And I'm also doing live videos on my Facebook page to show people how to do things like bake bread and make tortillas and make stuff from scratch that they might not have thought that they could do.
Farmer Fred:How is school being taken care of during this a Corona virus? Pause in the action.
Speaker 2:In our school district, we, I think every teacher in school are taking it on their own recognizance. We got a helpful email from our principal and from our teacher with ideas about things that you can watch, computer games that you can, that you can use. I'm also happened to be friends with a lot of homeschool bloggers, so I'm taking information from every possible portal and adding it together. So last night I needed to double a recipe so my daughter and I went through and doubled all the fractions and, and figured all that out together. And I'm going to chalk that up for a math lesson.
Farmer Fred:Well, there you go. Plus all the horticulture and biology lessons you have by, uh, doing a little scavenger hunt during a daily walks
Speaker 2:as there's, there's so much you can do. You can stop by the nursery and get some plants and maybe test them out in different growing mediums. Do you could plant sunflower seeds and then plant a sunflower seed that you would eat for a snack and see if they grow differently. If the cooked one grows at all. There's little tiny kids will like the project that we all did in grade school where you put a a bean seed inside a paper towel, a wet paper towel inside a Ziploc, hang it on the window. I think that's a traditional first-grade science experiment.
Farmer Fred:And then if it sprouts, you can plant it.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And they can see how it, how the bean seed breaks open and it grows. And I remember when mine were little, they just thought that they were just, Whoa. Like we've been doing this for years at home guys. Wow. Ooh.
Farmer Fred:Despite the fact you may be self quarantined and you and your family may, uh, have to sell, shall we say, take shelter. You can still have fun. You can still learn a lot. I would suggest to, for more tips, you visit Brown thumb, mama.com Pam Farley. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for a few minutes of your time.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me
Farmer Fred:here on the garden basics podcast. We want to answer your garden questions a couple of ways you can do that. Give us a call,(916) 292-8964 that number again,(916) 292-8964 you can either leave a message or you can text that number as well. Be patient. There are a lot of rings before we pick up and another way is email. Send your garden questions to fred@farmerfred.com that's fred@farmerfred.com one benefit of email is you can attach a photo of a bug or a plant that you're trying to identify. We're looking forward to hearing and seeing your questions and thanks for listening to the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. I appreciate all your support and all your comments.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Farmer Fred:we like to hear your garden questions here on the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. We just found out how you can call us with your questions. Email. Of course you can send it to fred@farmerfred.com don't forget all the social media where you can leave a question that includes the get growing with farmer Fred Facebook page at farmer Fred on Twitter or farmer Fred Hoffman on Instagram. Any of those will work to help us out answer some of these garden questions. We bring in retired college horticulture professor Debbie flower, who has been involved in horticulture throughout the United States. I'm paying her, I, I've probably in zinnias and pepper plants. It's a low budget program here. So Debbie, let's talk about a very common springtime problem and that's aphids. And Rick writes in and says, I have a problem with aphids in my greenhouse, and he says, I am surprised that the aphids survive. Some of them do dry up, but they still seem to be flourishing. I'm growing mostly greens, leaf lettuce, arugula, kale and spinach. Do you have any suggestions on how to solve this problem? If I pull up the plants and replant, will I continue to have issues with aphids, Debbie?
Speaker 4:Well, I think the answer would be yes. If he pulls up the plants in growth new plants, he will probably continue to have problems with aphids. If it's love soft new growth, and he's growing greens, which would be lettuce and a rugala, mustard beet greens, things like that where you do have lots of soft new growth because that's what you want to eat. So it's, it's getting rid of the plants is not going to solve the problem. It might reduce the population for the moment, but it will not solve the problem. He could do some control on the plants. He has now a very hard stream of water on the leaves, will knock them off. And once they've been knocked off, they don't always very often do not get back up on the plant, but he's going to have to look at the bottom side of those if it's often are on the bottom side of the leaf and direct the water at their bodies. Uh, you could use an insecticidal soap application. Um, but I would also encourage him to modify the environment a little bit, uh, by planting, let's say sweet alyssum in the greenhouse. Or if, if the, uh, temperatures in such soil and things are correct around the outside of the greenhouse and that will attract, uh, aphid predators that will then come in for, they come to the flower for their sugar meal and then they will find the aphids and eat them as their protein meal.
Farmer Fred:That's a great idea for anybody that has aphids. And this could be aphids outside and this time of year there's plenty of new aphids going after that new growth, just like you mentioned. And in a greenhouse, you don't want to use any harsh chemicals. And so sticking with insecticidal, so for one or just that the scream of water, uh, should help control them. Maybe a put out a yellow sticky trap just to let you know that you have a problem before you start seeing damage to your plants. And like you say, aphids like to live on the underside of the leaves. So always pay attention to the underside of the leaves. And this is also true if you do some nursery shopping and especially if it's a cut rate nursery or a big box store, check the underside of the leaves of any plants you're buying and make sure they're clean.
Speaker 4:Right? Absolutely. Um, he's probably fertilizing those greens quite a bit and outdoors. We, we may, especially in spring, go out and fertilize things like our roses with nitrogen and that causes a spurt of soft green growth and that is very attractive to the aphids. So if possible, reducing the amount of nitrogen fertilizer used or eliminating it altogether will, uh, toughen up those leaves just a little bit so that the aphids are not so interested in eating them. I don't know if that will work in the greenhouse situation. And I had one other idea for that greenhouse. There is a company, uh, there's more than one. There are many companies they're called insectory and they actually grow beneficial insects and you can buy the beneficial insects from them. And then in a greenhouse situation you can release them in the greenhouse and they will, uh, take care of your pest problem.
Farmer Fred:There is a, a couple of really good garden, good guys that love aphids, uh, ladybugs and lacewings. Now they've done tests with lady bugs, uh, as far as purchased lady bugs and releasing them in a greenhouse. They tried this at UC Davis in their greenhouses and they still over the course of a week, lost 95% of the ladybugs. They just flew back home or, or flew away. So it's kinda hard to keep lady bugs around. Lacewings probably a bit of a different story. I think lacewings is a good idea for a greenhouse situation. Uh, but again, any gardener, you don't have to, you know, go to that kind of expense if you just establish a lot of attractive plants that bring on the garden. Good guys. And generally speaking, those plants are flowering plants that are in the Daisy family, the Astor ACA or composite family that have Daisy like flowers and uh, the good guys love those. Yes, absolutely. Once again, you can phone in your garden questions here to the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast, nine one six two nine two eight, nine, six, four. Email them to fred@farmerfred.com or leave them at the get growing with farmer Fred Facebook page or at farmer Fred on Twitter or farmer Fred Hoffman on Instagram. We learned a lot today from Debbie flower. Debbie, good job. Come back and do that again.
Speaker 4:I would love to thank you Fred[inaudible].
Farmer Fred:We've been speaking today about fun things to do with the kids and that of course includes gardening and also growing kid-friendly crops and here's one they're sure to enjoy. It's popcorn. Have you ever grown popcorn? Yeah, you ought to give it a try and especially as interest in healthy eating continues to grow this time of year, late April, may through early June is the time for backyard gardeners to make room for that family favorite and it's good for you. Popcorn, it's a dent corn relative and it's one of the best all around snack foods you can munch on. It provides almost as much protein, iron and calcium as beef. A cup of popped unbuttered popcorn contains fewer calories than half a medium sized grapefruit, about 40 calories. Popcorn is a whole grain and that means it has as much fiber as brand flakes or whole wheat toast. And if you've never tasted homegrown popcorn, you are in for a treat. Unlike the drab sameness of store-bought hybrid popcorn, there are many different kinds available for the home gardener via catalogs, nurseries, and seed stores. But as we found out last week, listening to Renee Shepard of Rene's garden seed company, seeds are getting hard to come by in this era of Corona virus. So if you're looking for popcorn seeds, you might want to start at your local big box store or local hardware store, then go to the nursery and if that doesn't work, try online and see if they have any popcorn seed left. Some of the better outlets for heirloom popcorn seed include the Southern exposure seed exchange as well as Baker Creek heirloom seeds and you'll find them occasionally as well. At burpee seed company park seed company, Johnny's and Harris. Now you're probably familiar with the traditional big and chewy movie style yellow hybrid popcorn. Well, you can choose among several smaller crunchier white varieties and that includes many heirlooms as well as hybrid varieties and you know for fall decorations it's hard to beat the colorful popcorns that include blue, red and black colonels. Now order to about heirloom versus hybrid popcorn. What do we mean by that? Well, hybrid varieties are bred to produce more cobs per stock as well as larger cobs and hybrid popcorns tend to pop up bigger as well. That sounds really good, doesn't it? There is a downside. The seed you collect from your popcorn harvest from hybrid popcorn will not come back true to the original if you planted again the following year, heirloom popcorn tends to have the same problems as other heirloom vegetables. They're more susceptible to insect and disease problems. It's a smaller harvest and smaller kernels, but there is one big upside to growing heirloom popcorn and that's better flavor. Plus if you planted the heirloom popcorn away from other varieties of corn, the kernels you collect this year can be planted again the following year. The result being the same. Great flavor among my favorite heirloom popcorn seeds to grow and include Wisconsin, black Dakota, black Cherokee long year. But my favorite is Pennsylvania butter flavor popcorn. The time to plant your popcorn, usually late may through June, anytime in there. And you would plant popcorn the same way you would plant sweet corn. By the way, don't ever plant sweet corn and popcorn together. You'll have two conflicted crops. You might break a tooth when jumping down on an ear of sweet corn. And uh, the popcorn won't be popcorn, it won't pop up. So to repeat, you have to separate the distance that you plant sweet corn from popcorn by quite a distance. But if you're growing popcorn by itself isolated and none of your nearby neighbors are growing sweet corn, you should be okay. So what does a popcorn required to grow? Much of the same requirements as sweet corn, full sun, a soil that drains easily, no standing water. And what you do is you plant the colonels about two inches deep, six inches apart. Now for better pollination, don't plant them in a single row. Plant them in squares in short blocks. There are wind pollinated and that AIDS the pollination thin out the seedlings when they come up to stand about 10 to 12 inches apart when it comes to fertilizing popcorn. Three fertilizations work best at planting time when the stocks are knee high and again when the tassels appear at the top of the stocks, because popcorn can grow tall six or seven feet tall. It does use a lot of nitrogen to get growing. Perhaps choose a high nitrogen fertilizer where the nitrogen is about twice the amount of phosphorus and potassium. The numbers on the bag of fertilizer would say something like ten five five or eight four four. No need to get the really super duper heavy stuff. Nitrogen fertilizers, those ones in the single digit would just be fine. You want to irrigate the popcorn thoroughly once or twice a week and then stand back and wait. Watch those stocks grow. Usually early fall is the time when you're going to be harvesting your popcorn. Here in California, it's early October. The stocks will be mostly Brown. The husks will be dry and the colonels will be hard, so we'll wait for those stocks to turn completely Brown before you start harvesting those cobs of popcorn. When will it be ready? Try popping a few kernels on the stove in a pan of hot oil at this stage. If most of them pop, that's your sign to remove the ears from the rest of the stocks in your garden. Strip the outer covering from the ears, the husks, and then place those cobs of corn with the Colonel still intact in a mesh bag or an old nylon stocking to cure for two or three weeks in a warm ventilated area. After that period of time, pop a few kernels again, if they pop, then strip the kernels from the cobs and store the kernels in an airtight container in a cool dry place. Now if that popcorn you munch on is a little chewy, that means it's still too wet. Let the kernels dry. Some more, popping a few every couple of days until the popcorn is no longer chewy is the way to go. Now if you get too many unpopped kernels, add moisture to the storage container, pour a tablespoon of water over that chord of popcorn kernels. Shake it up a couple of times on day one by day three, try popping up another batch. Repeat this procedure until most of the kernels are popping. Probably the most difficult part about growing popcorn, and this is where the whole family can join in, is stripping the kernels from the cob. It's a little difficult. It's a little hard. Buy a cheap pair of gloves and wear those, or you can buy this device that a lot of seed companies sell. It's called the little stripper. Okay. Now that your imagination has run wild, let me tell you exactly what the little stripper is. It's actually a cone shaped device that fits over the ear of popcorn. It has plastic or metal ribs on the inside and you turn it as you go down the Cobb and that strips off the kernels. Again, you can find this online. I think the Junge seed company may have some, and then again, storage is important. You want to store the colonels in an airtight container in a cool dry place and be sure to label it dated as well and you'll want to put the name of the variety on there because if your family really likes it well then you can set aside as a small bag of those kernels to plant next year. If you want more information about growing popcorn, checkout the farmer Fred rant blog page and look for the post called grow your own popcorn. And one thing I always like to do during this time of sheltering in places to refer back to what Brooke Anderson wrote, she's with the greater good science center at UC Berkeley and she posted six daily quarantine questions, something to think about while you're sheltered in place. Number one, what are you grateful for today? Right now I'm grateful for the view of the California poppies growing in my side yard. The sun is hitting at a just an angle. It is just exploding. The bright orange color of those California poppy flowers. Absolutely gorgeous. Who are you checking in on or connecting with today? And it's always nice to write someone who lives alone, asks them how they're doing. Maybe a phone call. It could be as simple as when you're on your daily walk or in a store, just smiling at somebody. Smiles are free, but they go such a long way. Question three. What expectations of am I letting go of today? Well, I think we're all wondering about what the future holds for us. How different will it be? Is there going to be school in the fall? Is there going to be sporting events this year? We don't know. So until things settle down, well we just have to make our own fun and maybe get our own education as well. Question four. How are you getting outside today? Well, gardening is one great way to get outside. I went out this morning and tended to my young tomato and pepper crop, seeing how it's doing, getting ready for planting day. How are you moving your body today? That's question five while exercise and gardening go together. Just think if you're moving mulch in a wheelbarrow or pulling weeds and there's plenty of weeds this time of year, you're getting some good exercise and plus that daily walk to see how all your neighbors are doing, how their yards are doing. And don't forget, some of the best plant ideas are in your neighbor's yards. You don't have to steal their plants, but you could steal their ideas. And question six, what beauty are you either creating, cultivating, or inviting in today? Maybe open up the shades on your windows. Look outside, see what's growing. Look at the birds, look at the animals. Look at, look at life. That Corona virus doesn't realize it's springtime where we are. And spring is a great time of the year.
Speaker 3:[inaudible]
Farmer Fred:thank you for listening to garden basics with farmer Fred. I appreciate you listening. Would you please subscribe? You can find the podcast at Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcast, attic, and Hey Alexa, play the garden basics with farmer Fred podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 4:When evergreens get new, a new set of leads, they will lose an old set. And so there will be yellow leaves. Uh,
Farmer Fred:I'm sorry. No. That's okay. Yeah,
Speaker 4:the yellow leaves. Um,
Farmer Fred:well let's let it ring through first, cause I'm sure my dogs will start barking anytime as well. So there's that. It's okay. My husband took care of it, I think. Oh, I thought you threw it across the room. Okay.