019 Watering Tips. Zucchini Sex. Worm Bin Basics.

Today we tackle a summertime evening tradition: drinking while watering. No, we’re not going to try to sober you up. But we do have advice on how long to stand there with a hose, while mindlessly watering the lawn and garden. (hint: half a beer per plant)
 
While you’re mindlessly watering, you might be thinking: why aren’t my squash plants having sex? What? YOU never used the excuse, “It’s too hot”? Sex and the single zucchini. We’ll tell you how to help those plants make more zucchini. Yes, the boy and the girl flowers have to be in the mood.

And, our soils expert Steve Zien LOVES worm castings as a soil amendment in the vegetable and flower garden. He loves worms so much, he keeps them in his kitchen in a worm bin! And he may be on to something. We have tips for making your own worm poop uh, castings… at a fraction of the cost of what you’d pay to buy a bag of worm castings at the nursery. 

This episode is brought to you by Smart Pots. Visit smartpots.com/fred for a money-saving offer on the original, award-winning fabric planter, made in the USA.

College horticulture professor (retired) Debbie Flower offers advice on how long to water a lawn and garden, as well as how to determine how much water you've applied. Bottom line: apply an inch of water a week to those plants (and turf) that need it. You can measure the water using cat food cans, tuna fish cans, or go in to the kitchen and get several of these. Or, spend some money for something fancy like this.

Vegetable expert and Master Gardener Gail Pothour channels her inner Masters & Johnson to explain the birds and the bees to us, as it relates to squash plants and why you might not be getting any zucchini right now, or why the fruit is small and falling off. Common reasons for fruiting failure: the male and female flowers are not opening together; heat has killed the viability of the pollen; lack of bee activity.

And yes, Steve Zien really does keep his red wigglers and worm bin in the house.

It’s all in Episode 19 of Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, as always, we will do it all in under 30 minutes.
More episodes and info available at Garden Basics with Farmer Fredhttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1004629.

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Transcript

Farmer Fred : 0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by smart pots the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA visit smart pots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's smart pots.com slash Fred.

Farmer Fred : 0:20

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 : 0:33

Today we tackle a summertime evening tradition drinking while watering. No, we're not going to try to sober you up. But we do have advice on how long to stand there with a hose while mindlessly watering the lawn and garden. While you're mindlessly watering. You might be thinking, why aren't my squash plants having sex? What you never use the excuse? It's too hot? on today's show sex and the single zucchini. We'll tell you How to help those plants make more zucchini. And our soils expert Steve Zien loves worm castings as a soil amendment in the vegetable and flower garden. He loves worms so much. He keeps them in his kitchen. And you know, he just might be onto something. We have tips for making your own worm poop or worm castings at a fraction of the cost of what you'd pay to buy a bag of worm castings at the nursery. It's all part of Episode 19 of Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, your official home for zucchini sex tips, and we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.

Farmer Fred : 1:38

Do you know how to water? you know you can go to college to learn how to water what you don't want to go to college? Well, I'll bring college to you Then. here is college horticultural Professor retired Debbie Flower. Let's talk about watering established plants. Now, in America there is a tradition at 530 in the evening. Lady or a gentleman will be standing out by a plant with a hose. Hopefully it's on a shower setting. They have the hose in one hand they have a drink in the other, they're yelling at the kids. Yeah. How do you determine how long to water an established plant? Is there some sort of trick like do you go one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, or something along those lines?

Debbie Flower : 2:26

Well, the rule of thumb, especially for a vegetable garden is an inch of water a week. And so I saved Cat food cans. Tuna Fish cans would work with success, you can use coffee cans, as long as you have a number. Let's say I've seen in literature people recommending as little as few as two containers of the same type of straight sides and up from there. I like to have more than two containers because I don't water everything by hand. But your goal is to get About an inch of water per week on that plant, in most soil situations, in most plants situations, that will be enough for that plant to survive through the winter. There's lots of math you can do to figure out exactly how much based on where you are and what your soil is. But it all comes the upside of and I've read it for many different places, and done by many different academics. It also comes down to about one inch of water a week. Now that's rainfall as well as supply, whether it's applied with a drip system or a spray system or using an oscillating sprinkler, or you're standing outside with your the hose in your hand. And so you put those cans down. And the beauty of the shallow cans is that they're only about an inch deep and you water until you've got an inch of water. Sometimes your soil can't absorb water as fast as it's coming out of your hose. So you get run off. If you start to get run off then stop watering whatever technique of applying the waters stop, measure what's in the can maybe it's a half inch, and maybe you were watering for 15 minutes. So that means that you take a break let the water soak in. As soon as it starts to run off, you don't want to turn off it's not useful to the plants anymore. You want to soak into the soil. So give it at least 15 minutes at least the same amount of time that you were applying water to soak in and come back and apply the rest of it again. So you can use cans straight sided cans that are about an inch deep or you can mark inside of a you know like a tall coffee can what is an inch, put them out throughout the area you're watering. And as soon as you've got an inch of water in that per week you're done.

Farmer Fred : 4:43

I like using the tuna fish cans or raiding the kitchen cabinet of even sided flat bottomed Tupperware containers.

Debbie Flower : 4:54

Yes,that would work. what's critical is the straight sides.

Farmer Fred : 4:57

Well this is also dovetails nicely into The correct way to water your lawn if you have a sprinkler system on your lawn, you have some brown sections, you have some really green sections, doing the tuna fish or cat food can trick of putting several flat bottom even sided containers around that zone, turning the water on your sprinklers for a set amount of time putting some of the cans in the really Green Zone, some of the cans in the really brown zones and in the intermediate zones, I would use about six per sprinkler, turn the water on for maybe 10 minutes and then measure the amount of water in each of those containers. Theoretically, there should not be more than a 25% difference in the amount of water in each of those containers. And if there is you've got a problem.

Debbie Flower : 5:45

Yes, you need to work on the system. You know most of the country doesn't use in ground irrigation systems. If you're using an oscillating sprinkler for instance, that's a very popular way to apply water to lawns and vegetable gardens. Many places I live that's what I used for the vegetable garden. You having those cans out they do not apply water evenly. So having those cans out shows you where the water is being deposited most heavily and where it's not coming down very heavily and that tends to be right next to the sprinkler is tends to be the dry spot. And so you're going to have to have a plan to move that sprinkler at least once so that you can cover that area that is not receiving as much water with a second set of sprinkling.

Farmer Fred : 6:36

And once again time of day plays a part of it. If you live in an area where the winds like they are here in Central California, we get the Delta winds every afternoon you don't want to water when it's windy because you losing a lot of water to evaporation and getting blown onto the patio. And besides that one really needs to water with rising temperatures, not with Lowering temperatures.

Debbie Flower : 7:02

Yes, so better to do it in the morning. If you're going to use an overhead system, you're going to get water on the leaves of the plant and in some cases, that in many cases that can cause the plant to have disease issues unless the water dries off and if you're applying the water in the morning, it should dry off fairly quickly as the temperatures are rising. The other part of time of day is water pressure varies. If you live in an urban or suburban area, and everyone takes a shower at seven o'clock in the morning, or run the dishwasher at three in the afternoon or whatever the available water pressure can vary can dip and then what comes out of your spigot may not be as strong so if you set up a water system and walk away, all you have all the water pressure to yourself you'll get more water applied to your garden. But if the neighbor is also watering their lawn or taking showers or filling the pool or whatever their water use is, then you may not get as much water that time. So using the cans on a regular basis can help you be sure that you're getting enough water where you need it.

Farmer Fred : 8:12

Water is hard.

Debbie Flower : 8:14

It is. And it's critical to plants. Yes.

Farmer Fred : 8:17

It's complicated if anybody's ever taken an irrigation class, you know, the amount of math that's involved in figuring all this out?

Debbie Flower : 8:27

Yes. And I have done that.

Farmer Fred : 8:31

We need to reassure people that you know, what you're probably doing is okay, if the plants are living,

Debbie Flower : 8:36

right. And the simple techniques of just putting some cans out, measuring what water you're applying, that's really the easiest way to go. I think.

Farmer Fred : 8:45

Half a beer per plant.

Debbie Flower : 8:49

Yeah, that's a way to measure. The other is a moisture meter. But again, you have to learn how to use it,

Farmer Fred : 8:54

right, but those aren't that hard to use, but still, watering is critical. There are several ways to do it. But my gut feeling is that most people, if they're watering by hand, they're not watering enough.

Debbie Flower : 9:12

Well, I don't know about that. It certainly looks watered before it really is watered. The soil looks dark and moist, the plant looks nice and clean and is dripping water droplets. That all happens before enough water has entered the soil and the root zone. The plants can live with less water than then maybe we think they need but their roots will be near the surface of the soil. And that's the most stressful place for roots to grow. It's the place where temperature gets hot very quickly, cools down very quickly. where water when you apply water, it gets saturated with water very quickly and it dries out very quickly. So it's a very stressful place for plant roots to live in. It leaves To a stress to plant and a stress plant is the one that gets the pest attack first. It is better to apply water deep and infrequent. Too much watering is based on how frequently you water. If you water every day, You're probably applying too much water. It may only be in the surface but it's too much water. You want to apply water deeply and infrequently. So once or twice a week and let the water go down deep into the soil. That's the best way for the plant.

Farmer Fred : 10:36

We should point out that this is for plants that are in the ground, not in containers.

Debbie Flower : 10:41

Correct. Containers may need water every day in the summertime maybe even twice a day in the summertime. Depending on how hot and dry it is where you are.

Farmer Fred : 10:51

Again I'll say it: water is hard. Debbie Flower we learned some more What a beautiful scenic bypass. We took teaching people how to water.

Debbie Flower : 11:01

Well, I hope that they listen and ask you questions so that we can, we can be sure they understand.

Farmer Fred : 11:08

You can get your questions in by leaving a message on the growing with farmer Fred Facebook page at Twitter at farmer Fred. Or you can call us with your garden questions. What's the phone number Fred? You can call us at 916-292-8964 916-292-8964 if you want to send a picture, you know you can text it and you can always send email. I like email send it to Fred at farmerfred.com dot com. With your garden questions. Debbie Flower Let's go out and water the garden.

Debbie Flower : 11:43

Sounds like a plan.

Farmer Fred : 11:49

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Farmer Fred : 13:00

Getting a lot of email here at the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast from people wondering why am I not getting any squash after all there there's flowers on the plant but the fruit that comes out it's small it falls off. What's wrong? What did I do wrong? You didn't do anything wrong. Squash melons and cucumbers have a flowering habit which is unique among vegetable crops Here to tell us more about sex with zucchini, vegetable expert Master Gardener Gail Pothour and Gail we need to I guess explain sort of the birds and the bees to the people here about boy squashes and girl squashes?

Gail Pothour : 13:07

Absolutely. It's squash and melons and gourds things like that are in the same family and they're what's called monoecious, it means they have male flowers and female flowers on the same plant. So part of the problem in This time of year is you're not getting any fruit is because the male flowers start first. Typically on cucurbits, the male flower will open up first. And then there will go through a phase where the female flowers will open up. And they've got to get synchronized where the male and female flowers are flowering at the same time for that same one hour in the morning, a real short time period when the pollen is viable, usually in the morning, and they've got to get synched up at the same time and you got to have pollinators there like bees spread the pollen around. pollen for squash tends to be pretty thick and heavy. So you don't have to worry about it blowing in the wind and getting wind pollinated but it's typically honeybees. And what I've noticed, most of my squash are the native squash bees, they tend to pollinate my squash. Honey bees tend to pollinate my melons but squash bees do my squash

Farmer Fred : 15:00

Boy squash flowers, especially on zucchini plants, are very noticeable because beneath the flower is a long thin stem.

Gail Pothour : 15:09

Uh huh, that's correct. And the female flower has a miniature fruit. So if it's a zucchini, it's going to be long and skinny. If it's a melon, it's going to be round or whatever and fuzzy. But yeah, the female flower will have an immature fruit at the bottom on a shorter stem. The male flower does not have that immature fruit has a longer stem. And depending on the variety of the squash, that male stem could be, or the flower stem could be very long. I had a squash last year that I grew, it happened to be a winter squash, but it had a two foot stem on it, the male flower I've never seen anything like that. But generally it's not that long, but it will be longer than the female.

Farmer Fred : 15:51

And as I mentioned earlier, people complain that when fruit does develop, it tends to either be small and it falls off

Gail Pothour : 15:59

probably what has happened is there was not adequate pollination, maybe the male flower wasn't open at the same time the female was and so the the pollen didn't get transferred at the right time. Or it could have been that during the heat spike we've had, the pollen could have become no longer viable and the bees are now transferring pollen that's dead basically. So it's not going to fertilize the female fruit. And then there's always things like if we have a long hot stretch, pollen can can die. Also, the heat can make the zucchini or squash plants bear more male flowers and female. So it tends to be more maleness during longer days and hotter weather, whereas female flowers tend to come on when it's shorter days and a little bit cooler weather

Farmer Fred : 16:54

timing is key here can us humans help out this process at all?

Gail Pothour : 17:00

Certainly, you can either get a little artist paintbrush and transfer the pollen from the male flower to the female flower. Or you could actually just take the male flower off and remove the flower petals and use that as the brush and kind of transfer the pollen. And especially if you want to try to save seeds if you're growing an open pollinated variety and wanted to save seed, that's the preferred way to do it is to pollinate it yourself and then put a bag or something over it so it can't get cross pollinated. That's a lot of work and my bed is

Farmer Fred : 17:35

my philosophy is just wait Mother Nature will figure this out.

Gail Pothour : 17:40

That's true. This seemed like a lot of work to me as well.

Farmer Fred : 17:43

Let's talk about something that I get a lot of questions about and they're wondering if they if gardeners plant several different varieties of squash are members or members of the curcurbit family together you've got your pumpkins and melons and zucchini perhaps in the same garden. Is there going to be a chance that you're going to get some wacky fruit that first year?

Gail Pothour : 18:06

No, because for one thing, there's several different species in the Curcurbit family. So if we're talking summer squash, zucchini, Patty pan, crookneck, the typical pumpkin, acorn squash, what else spaghetti squash. Those are all in the same species, Cucurbit pepo. And if you were growing several of the squash in that particular species, they could cross pollinate. However, it's only going to be will affect the fruit that you grow next year from seed that you saved this year. So it's not going to affect the fruit this year. So you can grow a melon next to a cucumber next to zucchini next to a big giant pumpkin. If they all could cross pollinate Which they wouldn't. They're different species but if they could, it would only affect the seed that you saved that you would plant next year.

Farmer Fred : 19:08

Gail Pothour, explaining to us everything we need to know about sex with zucchini, the boy flowers, the girl flowers and what they're doing and when they're doing it and the bottom line folks is: go back inside, worry about something else. They'll figure it out. Is that right?

Gail Pothour : 19:25

That's absolutely correct.

Farmer Fred : 19:26

All right. Gail Pothour, vegetable expert, master gardener. Thanks for a few minutes of your time.

Gail Pothour : 19:34

Welcome, Fred. It was my pleasure.

Farmer Fred : 19:39

We've talked in the past with Steve Zien of living resources company, our soils expert about the benefits of composting But did you know he has a favorite composter? And they're alive. Steve has the squiggly details.

Gail Pothour : 19:53

So we've been talking about composting and one of my favorite methods of composting and I think it yields the highest quality without a doubt, is worm composting. build yourself a little worm bin. And those are my pets right now. We used to have cats, but now we've got worms. They're actually sitting about three feet behind me, I'm sitting here in my office and they make excellent compost. And the the real advantage of this material is the biological content, the numbers of organisms in this material is much, much, much greater than conventional compost. just by the nature of the way worms function. They add that biology. If you ever touch the worm, they're they're really slimy. And that slime is just loaded with microscopic organisms and that slime is actually food for the microscopic organisms. When you add the biology that's in that's in the compost even more so with the worm casting. That's what opens up your clay soil. that's what makes the it's the microscopic organisms that make the nutrients available that fight off pest organisms that make your plants drought tolerant. It's all about this soil biology and and the worm castings really do a great job you can just get a couple of Tupperware bins, drill some holes on the sides of both you and you want them stacking, and you put drill some holes in the side and then put some landscape fabric so the worms aren't going to get out. And so you cover those holes with landscape fabric on the inside the top bin you drill holes in the bottom so that if any excess moisture develops in that top bin where the worms are living, it'll drain into the lower bin and then you'll have worm Leachate that you can put out in the garden is fertile as a liquid fertilizer and then you get some composting worms. There called Red wigglers. And they're available for mail order some nurseries sell them as well. And the easiest way to start a bin is to get your kitchen waste. You throw those on the bottom of the bin throw in the worms and then shred some newspaper, I just take newspaper in one inch strips, and then submerge them in water or run water over them. And then squeeze the water out and then put those strips of newspaper pull them apart and put them loosely over the vegetative material that's in the bin. And they'll do the job.

Farmer Fred : 22:41

What can you use instead of newspaper? I don't know if you know it or not, but newspapers are an endangered species.

Gail Pothour : 22:47

I guess you could use cardboard. I actually that's an interesting question. People are still printing things. Mail, any kind of paper, okay. All right. Any kind of paper product, shred it up. And just moisten it up. Now, you know, squeeze the water out so it's not dripping. And so the worms will feed on the vegetative material. Typically, depending upon the size of your bin on how many worms, you might have to feed them once a week or once every two weeks or maybe twice a week, you want to put the newspaper on top for for two reasons. One, if they if you're not getting out there and looking at the worm bin to see whether they need food or not, they'll at least have that newspaper to feed on. Also, the newspaper will act as a protective layer between that raw vegetative material that can attract things like fruit fly, and it'll keep the the insects out more effectively as will Covering the holes with the landscape fabric.

Farmer Fred : 23:51

So you mentioned worm food, can I go down to the local farm supply store and buy a bag of Purina worm Chow?

Gail Pothour : 23:57

Well, you don't need worm food. worm food is any kind of vegetative material, you know, I like kitchen scraps because they're, they're you know, very easy to for them to digest, but a lot of your leaves from the garden grass clippings, any kind of vegetative material they will eat. Now though the like the vegetative material from your, your, your kitchen scraps because typically the material is thinner. And so they will be, you know, like leafy greens I like to give them leafy green, it's very easy for them to digest that, as opposed to a leaf that is much thicker. It's going to be harder for them to digest that. If that's all you have, you can you can, you know, shred that material up. One way to do that is to take the leaves from from various plants, Bay leaves or camellias or things like that, where the leaves are substantial in thickness compared to a lettuce plant, and you can put that in a garbage can and then you take your weed eater and push that weed eater down there and whack it up and just chop it up into small little pieces that makes it a whole lot easier for those worms to ingest that realize that typicall., Most people are aware of the worms of the garden, those are earthworms and they're rather large in comparison to the little red wigglers. They're probably 10 to 20, maybe 30 times or more larger. The earthworms are larger by a lot.

Farmer Fred : 25:36

and they're not as good at composting.

Gail Pothour : 25:38

Typically, most people that have done the research and most commercial composters use the red wigglers. I only know of in a one commercial worm composting company that actually use Nightcrawler all the rest of them use the red wigglers they're they're fun. It's you know, it's very rewarding. To to, you know, open up a worm bin and see all those guys, you know, munching on the food and then you you know, you take the lid off and they'll be on the surface and they don't like light so very quickly they're moving into the into the compost that they've made or the food that's left to hide from you. It's absolutely excellent excellent food for your soil.

Farmer Fred : 26:26

Of course there are commercial worm bins you can buy you don't necessarily have to get a homemade one. You can, you can purchase worm bins and, and as far as what they eat out of the kitchen in my experience with my worm bin, they don't like too much in the way of citrus or egg shells but everything else as far as vegetative matter not meats or oils, but vegetative, right. They don't have a problem with Yeah,

Gail Pothour : 26:53

again the big you know, like green peppers, things like that. That Are you know, thicker and bigger. If you You can chop them up, grind them up, put them through a blender or something to get the particle size smaller, going to be easier for them to digest that material.

Farmer Fred : 27:09

An easy way to get you started on composting or worm composting is to keep a empty large coffee can under the sink and as you're preparing meals, just take some of the vegetative waste and put it in that can when the cans is full take it out to the worm bin. Yeah. Steve Zien has been with us, pedologist, soil expert, organic gardener for over 45 years and organic garden and landscape consultant for over 45 years as well. We've been talking about worm composting. Thanks so much for the information. Good stuff.

Gail Pothour : 27:41

It was fun.

Farmer Fred : 27:44

Thanks for listening to Garden Basics with Farmer Fred brought to you by smart pots garden basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday. It's available on many podcast platforms including Apple, Spotify, Google, play stitcher and many more. And if you're listening on Apple Please leave a comment or a rating that helps us decide which garden topics you'd like to see addressed. And again, thank you.

Farmer Fred : 28:10

Because you used two words that people are going to stop and wonder about

Gail Pothour : 28:14

parthenocarpic and gynoecious?

Farmer Fred : 28:17

right, exactly, yeah. So I'll just ask you. So what exactly is partheno...? Oh, man.

Gail Pothour : 28:26

Hold on a second because I always get that one and gynoecious...

Farmer Fred : 28:31

I know parthenogenesis because it was a name of a canned heat album.

Gail Pothour : 28:38

yeah, I don't know anything about that. Let me let me know. I'm always getting...parthenocarpic I think that's the one where you don't have to have any. And how come I don't have that in my notes? Let's see. Hold on a second.

Farmer Fred : 28:54

This is somebody was listening to our conversation on Google and says... Johnny's Seeds was listening and they say parthenocarpic varieties do not require pollination to produce fruit. Gynoecious varieties have mostly or only female flowers, the flowers that produce fruit and typically are earlier and have higher yields. Alright. There's that