014 Garden Myths. The Best Mulch. Blueberries!

The college horticulture professors take over Episode 14, but we keep it to the basics. Don't worry, none of this will be on the Final.
Linda Chalker-Scott teaches at Washington State University, but she may be better known as the author of a couple of best-selling garden books: "The Informed Gardener" and "The Informed Gardener Blooms Again". Both books deal with persistent garden myths and why they don't work. We talk about why rocks in a plant container actually can harm your plants (it's a water issue). But she gives us a cure for soil that might come pouring out of the drain holes the first time you water. Chalker-Scott might also convince you to quit buying landscape fabric to thwart weeds (there's a lot of issues with those fabrics that effect your soil, your plants...and, it doesn't stop weeds, in the long run). Other myths that get shattered here: why adding sand to clay soil will not improve the drainage; why Vitamin B-1 does not help your plants; and why it's OK to water your leafy plants on a hot afternoon (the leaves won't burn. really).

We dive into a big pile of oak leaf mulch with college horticulture professor Debbie Flower. Is it gardener's gold? After listening to this, come autumn, you'll be rounding up all the fallen oak leaves in your neighborhood! I discuss how I grind up my neighbor's oak leaves: put them in a metal trash can until the can is half full, stick in my lightweight electric string trimmer, and whirrrr away! About a 5:1 reduction of leaf volume that makes an excellent fall, winter and spring mulch! If you want more leaf reduction, you might want to invest in one of these.

Flower also explains why the most common mulch available, bark chips, isn't good for vegetable gardens. And, why you shouldn't be using fresh lawn clippings or sawdust as a mulch, period. Here's more about the pros and cons of various mulch products.

It's OK to plant fruit trees in the heat of the summer. We'll tell you the whys and the hows.

Finally, it's blueberry harvest season here. Is there a healthier, sweeter, more versatile taste treat that can grow in anyone's garden? I think blueberries take that trophy. Why are blueberries so healthy for you? Soluble fiber!

Got a garden question? There are several ways to get in touch: call and leave a question, or text us the question: 916-292-8964. E-mail: fred@farmerfred.com or, leave a question at the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram locations below. Be sure to tell us where you are when you leave a question, because all gardening is local.

Thanks for listening to Garden Basics with Farmer Fred. It comes out every Tuesday and Friday (so far, so good). It's available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. Please subscribe, and leave a comment. That helps us decide which garden topics you would like to see addressed.

All About Farmer Fred:

Farmer Fred website: http://farmerfred.com

Daily Garden tips and snark on Twitter

The Farmer Fred Rant! Blog

Facebook:  "Get Growing with Farmer Fred"

Instagram: farmerfredhoffman

Farmer Fred Garden Videos on YouTube

Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.

Transcript

Farmer Fred : 0:03

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information well you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred : 0:12

There's this persistent myth about putting rocks or broken pot shards in the bottom of plant containers before adding soil. Professor Linda Chalker-Scott of Washington State University will tell you why that's a bad idea. She also blows away a few other gardening myths as well, such as the mistaken belief that you shouldn't water your plants leaves on a hot afternoon because they might burn and why adding sand to clay soil will not improve drainage and we get to dive into a big pile of oak leaf mulch. Professor Debbie Flower will tell you why that's gardeners gold. Oh, it's blueberry season here and we'll tell you why this sweet and tart taste treat just might be the cure for what ails you. It's all an episode 14 of Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, and we're gonna do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.

Farmer Fred : 1:10

There's a couple of books that came out about a decade ago that are still sitting on my garden bookshelf and they're excellent reference books. One is called the Informed Gardener, and the other is called The Informed Gardener Blooms Again, they both explode a lot of garden myths, and they're written by Linda Chalker-Scott.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 1:28

Well, thank you, Fred. Glad to be here.

Farmer Fred : 1:29

And Linda Chalker-Scott works for Washington State University. She is a part of their horticulture department there. And as part of the WSU horticulture website she has maintained over the years, a list of so called truths that have damaged both plant and environmental health, things that you would think would be just common sense that you've heard for years, so they must be right. Well as the title of a 1970 Firesign Theater album, once proclaimed, everything you know is wrong. And it's certainly very true when it comes to horticulture as things change, plant names change, chemicals change, research changes. Well, your book is certainly a compendium of information that is going to make people scratch their heads,

Linda Chalker-Scott : 2:16

or sometimes worse. Yes.

Farmer Fred : 2:18

But just looking through the index as far as the the myths that you tackle, there are several that I have checked marked that people may think, oh, that can't be true. But it is. And first off, you deal with the myth of drainage material in containers. And for years and years and years, we have heard about when planting in containers put some gravel or some broken up shards of a pot at the bottom to improve drainage. And it always struck me that wouldn't that actually clog up the drainage holes, but you take it a step further and look at the flow of water involved.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 2:54

You know, and Fred, I used to do the very same thing. In fact, many of these myths, if not all of them are things that I used to do. And this is even when I was getting my PhD in horticulture, so it's not for lack of knowledge, it's, it's just understanding now a lot of a lot of these myths that have just come across as being fact and drainage one is a really interesting one, because intuitively, it just makes sense. You know, to all of us, if you think about water, you know, percolating through soil that all of a sudden when encompasses pebbles or, or pot shards, it's gonna flow faster. And actually, what happens is that it stops flowing and starts moving horizontally through that same soil that it's already in and creates this perched water table.

Farmer Fred : 3:37

And that would explain sometimes the white ring you might see around a ceramic pot.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 3:42

Exactly.

Farmer Fred : 3:43

But it's interesting that it actually inhibits the flow of water through the drainage holes.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 3:48

Yeah, and the reason is because water moves really readily through soil or materials that had about the same particle size and pore size. And once it started to encounter something that A little bit smaller or bigger than it stops. And it's not until you get a lot of gravitational force behind it, it continues to move downwards.

Farmer Fred : 4:07

And a lot of people complicate matters by having a few if any drain holes and there may be too small and then they put the pot straight on the ground, and that inhibits the outflow even more.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 4:17

Oh yeah,

Farmer Fred : 4:18

so it's always a good idea to raise your containers off the ground by a quarter inch or a half inch or so on a plant stand or some container legs just to allow some airflow beneath it and also to help keep those holes unplugged

Linda Chalker-Scott : 4:30

right.

Farmer Fred : 4:31

And so I guess the bottom line would be to whatever you fill the container with be consistent.

Unknown Speaker : 4:37

Exactly. And it makes a little bit tough you know when you get down to those drain holes if you're using some kind of potting media that is kind of run through the draining holes and what I've found is if you just take just a little piece of newspaper or tissue paper, something that's going to break down pretty quickly and just to temporarily cover that hole. It'll hold the soil in and then by the time that paper breaks down, you know the soil is not going to be moving through there anymore.

Farmer Fred : 5:00

Another myth that you explode in your book The informed gardener has to do with landscape fabric and and for years and years and years, a lot of us use landscape fabric because oh, it allows air and water to flow through. So just put down this plastic like material and cover it with mulch and you'll never have any weeds again.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 5:21

Well, and you know, it does have its purposes as a temporary barrier. In fact, I think that using it between rows in your vegetable garden is a great way to keep that area of you know, weed free. But the problem is, is that those holes that are in those fabrics stay clear for about a day and then they start filling up with you know, bits of soil and other materials and then you're restricting constantly the movement of water and air through that fabric. Plus, it doesn't stop weeds from growing as you've probably seen in older landscapes where there's been fabric down for a while, you know, dirt starts to settle on top of it. weed seeds blow in and then you have a nice crop of weeds going right on top of your fabric.

Farmer Fred : 5:57

And a lot of times too, you'll see those weeds and You're gonna yank them out and you bring up half the landscape fabric with it.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 6:02

That's right. You have time for a little story. A little story. When we moved into the house we have right now I'd gone out to work a new bed, put some perennials in, it kept on hitting something hard about six inches below the surface of the soil, finally dug it all up. And it was fabric that the previous owners had put down to keep the weeds out. And it was just completely colonized with bind weed and with horse tail, it was just a mess. And so it obviously wasn't keeping them out at all. But it was really inhibiting water movement, earthworm movement, you know, anything that needs to go up and down in the soil gets really bound up by these fabrics.

Farmer Fred : 6:40

One thing I have noticed in areas where I have put down a landscape fabric and then went to remove it when I removed it. roots from nearby shrubs were close to the surface.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 6:51

Well, yeah, and that's and that's partially because they'll go through, you know, before you have edge seams of fabric coming together, you know, they'll find those those breaks into go through them. And more damaging is when you do pull those fabric sets and you're yanking up all those fine feeder roots from your trees and shrubs.

Farmer Fred : 7:08

The option then is what?

Linda Chalker-Scott : 7:10

Well, the option is not to use them in the first place. But if you do have them down and you want to remove them and use something that's a little bit more root friendly, I would certainly not be removing it in the summer when you're really going to be having a lot of water stress anyway, and wait till wintertime when trees have gone dormant and you can remove those fabrics and replace them with a different kind of mulch.

Farmer Fred : 7:29

Yeah, and that's the key isn't it putting down an organic mulch Exactly. And that can be maybe wood chips or wood your own trees chipped and shredded, sometimes it's a good idea to invest in a chipper shredder, rather than a roto tiller because with a chipper shredder, you can take those fallen tree limbs or prunings and make a really nice mulch and you're not importing somebody else's problems into your yard with their chipped wood.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 7:55

You know I keep on saying that's what I want for Christmas is my very own Shredder. reason because I would love to be able to use you know the downed limbs and other cuttings and shred them up and use them on my own landscape. Barring that, I do use arborists, wood chips for the very same reason. Although I don't know where they come from at least they're local. And it's keeping them out of landfill and they make a really great organic mulch for landscape.

Farmer Fred : 8:09

Do you let them age before you use them?

Linda Chalker-Scott : 8:22

I personally don't I've never had a problem and sometimes with some of the work that I was doing with students, we didn't really have the luxury of letting them sit. We had to use them right away. And actually I love I love them because they smell so great when they're fresh and I really like working with men. A lot of concerns with wood chips in terms of well would they have you know, if you have diseased Woods chipped up, is that going to be a problem? Research has shown that no, we don't transmit disease from disease wood down through many inches of mulch down to roots. And I I always caution people you know if you're concerned about pest pathogens now by all means let them sit on site. For a while, and compost, but I've seen no damage from anything using fresh chips.

Farmer Fred : 9:05

And being a lazy kind of gardener. I really like your advice when it comes to using wood chips as a mulch as far as you have to take the weeds or get the weeds down before you put the mulch on, obviously, but what I like is you say to prune or mow the perennial weeds at the root crown, because pulling them out destroys the soil structure.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 9:24

Exactly. And you're just like me, I'm also a lazy gardener and a cheap gardener. So anything I can do to save myself some labor I do. Yeah. And if you wait until things are really starting to go dormant anyway, and then you're mowing them down they have less of a chance of coming back.

Farmer Fred : 9:38

For years we have heard some rather unsound advice if you have clay soil add sand to improve its texture. But seems to me that's a recipe for making bricks.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 9:47

That's exactly right. That's how you make concrete, isn't it? Yeah.

Farmer Fred : 9:50

How did that ever start?

Linda Chalker-Scott : 9:51

it's partially because of what the perfect soil consists of and if you look at a soil triangle, you know the ideal loamy soils are a certain mixture. sand and clay and silt. And that's what makes a perfect loam. And so if somebody has a landscape that maybe isn't as perfect, you know, they're thinking, well, the easiest way to solve that is is to add, you know what they're missing. But unfortunately, most of us don't know exactly how much we would need. And the problem is, especially with a clay soil that you have to add about 50% more volume of sand just to get that to more Sandy texture. If you add just, a little bit of sand. It creates some, as you say, Adobe, and so you'd have to just add an awful lot of sand to really change the texture. And then the problem is, is that you know, you're, you may you may understand the boundaries of your property, but your trees and shrubs roots don't, and they'll continue to grow outside your boundary. And if you've changed the texture, you know, dramatically from what the surrounding soil is like. You're going to get to have a problem with water movement, air movement and root movement.

Farmer Fred : 10:52

We see that a lot with people who will dig a hole to plant a tree or a shrub and instead of using their native soil, go out and buy some premium potting soil And throw that in the hole and plant their tree or shrub in that. But as you just pointed out, what happens is the surrounding water will flow into that nice loose soil and it's like a constantly flooded zone.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 11:12

Exactly, and then and it dries out faster too. So the summer when you've got the drier time of year, you're gonna have that area evaporating water faster and surrounding soil doesn't so the roots are exposed to constant drought or constant flooding. It's not a great way to get your plants established.

Farmer Fred : 11:29

In your book, The informed gardener you also tackle an another myth and it's one that I can't believe is still around yet people will buy vitamin b1 and you talk to anybody and they'll describe how they put in a new tree or a shrub or a plan this Oh yeah. And I added vitamin b1 to reduce transplant shock,

Linda Chalker-Scott : 11:49

right? Well, that's what marketing will do for you and especially when we tend to think of things in the context of what we do for ourselves and, and you know, if we take vitamin supplements many of us do take Vitamin B supplements. And so you just kind of extrapolate that and think, well, it must be good for the plants too. And what people don't realize is plants make their own. So they certainly don't need us to add that it's just an extra cost and waste of resources to add those kinds of fertilizers to plants.

Farmer Fred : 12:17

And it isn't the vitamin b1 in that bottle that's probably doing your plant any good. There's a small amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and perhaps some micronutrients that are the real keys to that,

Linda Chalker-Scott : 12:28

right. And sometimes there's also a hormone, usually an auxin that might be IAA, or NAA or something like that. And those actually do have a stimulatory effect on rooting, so that that type of rooting hormone or transport hormone actually does do some good and so those mixtures of transplant elixirs, if they happen to have a little bit of that hormone, they will have an effect but it certainly is not the B1 that does it.

Farmer Fred : 12:55

So if you think thiamine is going to help reduce transplant shock, I can save you a lot of money. Just go to the grocery store, buy some vitamin b1, the generic brand and throw a tablet in them. If you pick up a copy of the informed gardener, you're going to find all sorts of exploded myths, the myth of wound dressings. We talked about how we didn't talk about hot weather watering, but briefly it talks about there really is no damage to a plant, if you will water your plant on a hot afternoon is there.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 13:23

As long as you're not using saltwater, there's absolutely no damage and you're just going to reduce the shock to it of being drought stressed. What usually happens is what people do water watering when they see wilt and then of course, those leaves have been fatally wilted, they're going to develop brown edges and so people tend to blame the watering rather than the lack of water for that brown development. That's not the water that's burning the leaves.

Farmer Fred : 13:47

And it's why I like is a lot of your solutions: Apply mulch.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 13:53

That's right, I like that. Yep, I did to you know, a decent healthy soil. You're gonna have decent healthy roots and a decent healthy plant.

Farmer Fred : 14:00

Linda chalker Scott, author of two great books, the informed gardener and the informed gardener blooms again, thanks for a few minutes of your time.

Linda Chalker-Scott : 14:08

Thanks, Fred. I enjoyed it.

Farmer Fred : 14:14

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 another way is email. Send your garden questions to Fred at farmer fred.com. That's Fred at farmer fred.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.

Farmer Fred : 15:06

we like to answer your garden questions here on the garden basics podcast. I like to bring in Debbie Flower to help answer them. Debbie Flower retired horticultural professor has gardened and taught horticulture throughout the United States. And Debbie, we got a question here from Carol who says she lives on a ranch and has access to naturally composted oak leaves. And you Yeah, Lucky her. She says, Do I mix it in with soil or I do I just use it as a mulch around the garden and landscape plants.

Debbie Flower : 15:37

She's lucky boy. She uses it should be used as a mulch. Mixing in is called amending the soil and we there are specific things you can buy as soil amendments or added soil amendments, but oak leaves is not one of them. Many things that we use as mulch, straw arborist chips, sometimes we use bark chips in our ornamental garden or leaves should just be laid on top and used as mulch. We don't want to till them in or turn them in with a shovel. We don't want to amend the soil with them. We just want to leave them on top. They'll break down naturally.

Farmer Fred : 16:12

Yeah, I guess it really depends on the weather, wherever you might happen to be. Let's get into that in a second. But first, I think we should talk about the benefits of oak leaf mulch man oh man, that is such good stuff.

Debbie Flower : 16:26

It sure is. It sure is. Benefits of mulch in general our many, they protect the soil surface from Believe it or not, water droplets can cause soil compaction. They can hit the soils they hit the soil so hard if you've ever seen a time lapse photography of a drop of water hitting soil, boy it just creates this huge puff of soil coming up around it. So it can prevent the soil from compaction due to water droplets. It can moderate the temperature you cannot prevent freezing or really hot soil with mulch but it moderates in temperature the change in temperature will happen more slowly. And plants can adapt better to that. It slows down the loss of moisture, and that allows the water that's coming in from rain or from overhead irrigation to trickle into the soil. And so it preserves the soil structure and it breaks down if it's an organic mulch, like we're talking about oak leaves, it breaks down and improves the quality of the soil.

Farmer Fred : 17:27

Yeah, it feeds the soil. It's like a natural fertilizer.

Debbie Flower : 17:30

Yes, commercial people who I'm thinking tree fruit or nuts, who only use mulch to fertilize their plants.

Farmer Fred : 17:40

And because it's there year round, it's slowly feeding the soil consistently. Yes, as we have talked about on this show. The other big benefit of mulch is it helps control weeds too. And you were telling me that when you lived in Portland, Oregon, you were able to get a steady supply of oak leaf mulch and you You put it on how thickly in your yard?

Debbie Flower : 18:03

Well it was mixed mulch. It wasn't just oak leaves Portland city of Portland this was a long time ago but the City of Portland collected homeowner green waste at the curb and you can leave big piles and and and I collected it I had a small city lot and I moved I got a big delivery and moved it wheelbarrow load by wheelbarrow load up a hill both ways of course to my backyard and dumped it there and spread it it was two feet deep. And then the next spring I when I went out it was almost completely gone. So it had broken down it had decomposed and made my soil so rich and there were so many earthworms. It was just amazing. How, how many earthworms were there and how dark and rich the soil was and I had such a wonderful garden that year.

Farmer Fred : 18:52

I can vouch for that too. I've been putting down chipped and shredded tree branches on my property here for the last four years and Whenever I'm digging into it, I am finding more worms and I've ever seen before.

Debbie Flower : 19:04

Yes, and we like worms because they keep paths open in the soil that allow water to move through the soil and oxygens move through the soil. And that makes for good root growth, regardless of what we're growing, but some people there, the vegetable garden has some there are some things I would not use as mulch in the vegetable garden and one would be bark, which you can buy in a bag, I would not use that as mulch, because it breaks down incredibly slowly and it can cause if some of the gets buried, some of the bark gets buried into the soil, it can cause a nitrogen deficiency. sawdust would be more likely to cause a nitrogen deficiency because it's carbon and it it it actually breaks down very quickly. And nitrogen is needed for that breakdown process. Something like leaves I would use. you say they have a nice carbon nitrogen ratio and this is a sort of a technical thing about composting. And oak leaves break down more slowly than other leaves, but that's fine. But you can speed that process up by shredding them.

Farmer Fred : 20:19

Right? And you can use your lawn mower or what I like to do is get my neighbor's Pin Oak Leaves, put them in a metal trashcan and put my string trimmer down into it and chop up those leaves a little bit more, and then put them on my raised beds in November and just let them sit there on top all the way through spring.

Debbie Flower : 20:38

Yes, yes, people sometimes worry that oak leaves are not a good choice as of most because they are high on something called tannins. Tannins. Oak leaves do have tannins in them and they do slow down the breakdown of the oak leaves but it is not a problem for other plants in the garden. And they People also wonder if oak leaves will cause the soil to become too acidic, lower the pH will change the chemical balance in the soil but that again, that will not happen. So oak leaves are a good choice in vegetable garden and in the ornamental garden as a mulch,

Farmer Fred : 21:18

and you can put it on it, I guess about as thick as you like.

Debbie Flower : 21:22

Yes, as always, you want to keep that mulch away from the bases of particular woody plants, but all plants leave some oxygen space around between the base of that plant and the mulch. But you can use it for pretty much anything.

Farmer Fred : 21:41

Yeah, I've often wondered about that as well. The when you because we talked about that a lot. It's not piling mulch up against the trunks of trees, for example, which is not a good thing to do. But I'm wondering how far away from the trunk should it actually be should the crown area which Don't ask me why but The crown area, the tree is actually the part where the roots meet the trunk down on the ground, it's not up at the top of the tree, it's at the bottom of the tree, should you keep the crown area clear as well?

Debbie Flower : 22:11

There's some debate and reading about that recently, but the generally accepted method is is to keep the the crown area bare it's, it's where the you can see root flare. So when a trunk goes into the ground, you It shouldn't look like a telephone pole going into the soil, you should it should fan out become bigger as above the soil before it disappears into the ground. And so yes, we want to keep that part exposed. We don't want to put mulch on it.

Farmer Fred : 22:41

Alright, so if you see that that root area exposed on the top of your soil attached to your tree, there don't mulch on top of that. Keep the mulch a few inches away.

Debbie Flower : 22:52

Right. we're only talking inches from the trunk. Yes, right.

Farmer Fred : 22:56

Okay. Give it a chance to breathe. Really.

Debbie Flower : 22:58

Yes. I don't want to trap moisture mulch can trap moisture against bark and that can cause rot in the in the trunk of the tree. And we're trying not to cause that to happen.

Farmer Fred : 23:10

And one more note about sawdust. I get that question a lot of people who want to use sawdust in the garden as a mulch, and sawdust has a lot of problems, not the least of which if you're using it as a mulch, because it is such a fine product, it could create an anaerobic environment. And I'll let you explain what I just said because I just use big words.

Debbie Flower : 23:33

anaerobic means without air. And the other thing that comes to mind for me that will cause an anaerobic environment is a thick layer of newly cut grass. And it it's not quite as small as sawdust in some dimensions, but in other dimensions it is and so that's the organic material, either the sawdust or the grass blades lay down so close to each other that there's no space in between them for air and over time. They just It just gets tighter and tighter and then it creates an almost impenetrable layer on the soil and so neither air nor water can get through them, and it will hit that layer and slide off to the side. And roots need both water and oxygen to live. If they don't get one or the other of them then they will not live in if they're not living the plant isn't living. So sawdust is a potentially great product for the garden but it must be composted or mixed in with other compost.

Farmer Fred : 24:32

And you made a good point too, about the drawbacks of using your lawn cuttings as mulch. If anybody's ever piled up wet grass after just cutting it and you go back to it a couple of days later, you notice how matted it is. And that was what would happen if you put it from the mower straight to your garden as a mulch. It would form a mat and I've heard some people get around that who want to use lawn trimmings as a mulch by spreading those lawn cuttings out on asphalt or a concrete area first and leaving it there for a few days to let it dry out a bit first,

Debbie Flower : 25:09

yes, or laying very, very thin layers one day come back the next day that first layer is dry and laying another layer on top. So you can see between the blades, they shouldn't be so thick that there's that they completely cover the soil each day. That to me sounds real tedious. I would rather mix it in with other things and or put it straight in a compost pile and then move it.

Farmer Fred : 25:33

Well. Once again, we have taken the scenic bypass the long way here in the question and answer session of finding out if oak leaf mulch is a good mulch. And yes, it is. And so that's the short answer. You've heard the long answer. Debbie Flower Thanks for a lot of minutes of your time and in answering all these garden questions here on the garden basics podcast

Debbie Flower : 25:56

I love all these trips we take in the gardening world together. Thank you

Farmer Fred : 26:03

Here's a quick tip for you. It's perfectly okay to plant trees in the summertime. The only time not recommended for planting is in wet cold soil during the winter rainy season. Roots actually grow quickly in the summertime because of higher soil temperatures but don't add fertilizer during the first year. Let the plant get established on its own, however, do add several inches of mulch to the top to keep the soil cooler and that also helps to retain soil moisture.

Farmer Fred : 26:35

This is one of my favorite times of the year because it's blueberry harvest season. I love blueberries and they're easy to grow. They are a big part of growing and eating heart healthy fruits and vegetables loaded with fiber. Most people are familiar with fiber. fiber is a component of all plant based foods which can't be absorbed or digested. It travels relatively intact through your body and then out. That's the role of insoluble fiber, the roughage found in many fruits, vegetables and grains that passes through your digestive system and helps promote regularity. But there's another type of fiber. It's called soluble fiber. It's a type of fiber that dissolves in water to form a gel like material. Studies at the Mayo Clinic and other institutions have shown that soluble fiber may help lower blood cholesterol levels by reducing the bad cholesterol the low density lipoproteins. soluble fiber may have other heart healthy benefits as well, such as lowering blood pressure, lowering blood glucose levels, very important for type two diabetes patients, and it reduces inflammation as well. And blueberries are one of the top five fruits and vegetables with the most soluble fiber that you can grow in your backyard. The others are artichokes, shell beans, apricots, and green peas, but blueberries have Many uses in the kitchen. They have about three grams of soluble fiber per 100 grams. And just about every part of the country can grow some sort of variety of blueberries. The northern tier states love the northern high bush blueberry varieties. down south, They have the rabbit eye blueberries. here on the west coast, the southern high bush blueberry varieties have a low chill requirement and are heat tolerant and you can plant a succession of them to get a continual harvest for three or four months. One of the favorites I'm eating right now is called Emerald. It's a large tasty blueberry. other varieties that we've had success here in California, sharp blue Jubilee, South moon, blu ray, sunshine, blue, and misty, but there's plenty more. It's tasty, it's healthy. It's blueberries... plant some, soon. if you want directions on how to do it. Go back to Episode Two of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast we talk about how to grow blueberries and here's the secret: Do it in containers. To your health!

Farmer Fred : 29:11

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. I appreciate your ears. How about a subscription you can get the podcast wherever podcasts are given away such as Apple, Spotify, Google, I heart, Stitcher, and many more.