Garden Basics with Farmer Fred

053 Mulch Basics. Fabulous Fruit Friday!

October 08, 2020 Fred Hoffman Season 1 Episode 53
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred
053 Mulch Basics. Fabulous Fruit Friday!
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

It’s Fabulous Fruit Friday! Ed Laivo of Tomorrows Harvest tells us about one of the most peach leaf curl resistant varieties of a peach or nectarine that you can grow at home: the Frost Peach. Plus, Ed and I do a deep dive into the mulch pile, singing the praises of topping your garden with wood chips, tree trimmings and more. Don’t worry, we won’t sing. But we do harmonize on how mulch can make your gardening chores a lot easier! Plus, our favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, explains why feeding your plants too much fertilizer is not doing them any good at all. In fact, you may be shortening the life of the plant by overfertilizing. Read and follow all fertilizer label instructions. I recommend using a slow-release organic fertilizer.

It’s Episode 53 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you by Smart Pots and Tomorrow's Harvest. And we will do it all in under 30 minutes.…let’s go!

Links:
The Frost Peach at Tomorrow's Harvest
Smart Pots Fabric Plant Containers
Guide to Mulching
Landscape Plants: Fertilizing and Watering
The Home Orchard by Chuck Ingels (excellent fruit tree book)

More info including live links, product information, transcripts, and chapters available at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred.

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Farmer Fred:

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 SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Farmer Fred 2:

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:

Welcome to Fabulous Fruit Friday on the Garden Basics podcast. Ed Laivo drops by, he's a fruit tree expert, and he tells us about a peach variety that is resistant to peach leaf curl. It's called the Frost peach. You just might want one for your yard. Plus, Ed and I do a deep dive into the mulch pile. We'll be singing the praises of topping your garden with woodchips, tree trimmings, and more. Oh, don't worry, we won't sing but we do harmonize on how much mulch can make your gardening chores a lot easier. And our favorite retired college horticulture Professor Debbie Flower explains why feeding your plants too much fertilizer is not doing them any good at all. It's Episode 53 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast brought to you by Smart Pots, and Tomorrow's Harvest.com. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.

Farmer Fred 2:

It's Fabulous Fruit Friday and we are talking with Ed Laivo from Tomorrow's Harvest.com and we're going to add another F to fabulous fruit Friday. Today it's Frost and we're talking about the Frost Peach. And Ed tell us about the Frost peach. I know that for people who have problems with peach leaf curl, this might be the cure that ails you.

Ed Laivo:

Fred, I thought that Frost would be a great peach to talk about this week. Simply because, you know, peach leaf curl is a pretty common problem for homegrown fruit growers. And as a matter of fact, for us, the Frost peach is one of the most popular of the peach leaf curl resistant varieties. So going into this, you know, fruit planting time of the year. And if peach leaf curl has been something that you're aware of and you're dealing with, and you really would like to get a variety that actually has that resistance to it for peaches, this is a great selection.

Farmer Fred 2:

Peach leaf curl is a disease that when you get it on your peach tree, you know there's something wrong. it usually happens in late spring, early summer, and you'll see all this puckering, red puckering going on the peach leaves. The thing is, it's not fatal, but it looks bad. And it can seriously lower the health of the tree, year after year after year. So if you live in an area where you do get peach leaf curl, it's usually areas that have wet springs, followed by a warm weather and then another rainstorm. Peach leaf curl is best controlled by choosing a variety that is resistant to it.

Ed Laivo:

Well, you know and one of the great things about the frost peach is that it actually was developed by Washington State University and it was a select seedling that was brought into the university by Mr. Herb Frost. They tested it for around 10 years up in the Pacific Northwest to determine its peach leaf curl resistance. And of course peach leaf curl is just a huge problem in the Pacific northwest. And so determined it to be you know, roughly about 65 to 70% resistant, which is good enough I mean, if you're if you've got 65% or 70% of your tree that's clean every year and as that tree gets a little bit older, a little bit older. And that small percentage that actually gets affected is it kind of blends into the tree as it gets full. You almost don't even notice it, no chemicals needed. And plus, you know it's a great variety of fruit that you know you can enjoy and don't have to worry about whether or not it's had chemicals all over it.

Farmer Fred:

And you're not kidding about that and it's getting more and more difficult to find an effective chemical control for peach leaf curl. In the past few years the amount of copper sold in the copper compounds used to control peach leaf curl has been reduced dramatically from what, 49%, to 8%, which means if you don't get a good application on there and probably a repeat application, or if it rains too soon after application, you're going to keep getting peach leaf curl and so why not just pick a peach that is resistant to peach leaf curl?

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, definitely Frost is a good piece of fruit, man. it's a really tasty piece of fruit and when it first came out, I think it really it kind of just lit the whole industry on fire because, you know, we expected this whole group of peaches of current resistant varieties to just follow but they didn't, and there are just a few and Frost remains one of the most popular of all those peach leaf curl resistant varieties.

Farmer Fred:

And it's still recommended by the University of California for choosing a peach that has a peach leaf curl resistance.

Ed Laivo:

Absolutely. And it does all those things peaches what peaches do because it's got that firm flesh. And so you know it's good for, you know, making peach pies and it's good for throwing on the grill. It's great for fresh eating. So you know, it's a multi purpose fruit let's say there's no uniqueness to it that singles out and one particular genre, it works in every and any peach application.

Farmer Fred:

Well, you know, what you're not talking about though, is it's a pretty tree too, because it has double flowers.

Ed Laivo:

It does, it has a semi double flower, it's a real big flower. And it is very pretty. And it would work at as a focal point in anybody's yard. And if you think about it, you know, not requiring, you know, much extra care whatsoever. I mean, here's a great variety that just pruning, of course, you know, just pruning and keeping the tree under size control than just enjoying the fruit and the fruit is even ornamental as well. So you go from the beautiful pink flower in the spring. And then you go to the beautiful yellow fruit, of course, in the mid season. I mean, what better tree could you have in your yard? Both fruiting and functional.

Farmer Fred:

Frost peach, it's available at tomorrow's harvest.com. Of course, caring for your fruit tree, any fruit tree will help it live a nice, long life. And I think one of the secrets we've discovered over the decades is the magic of mulch.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, you bet. You know, and I think it's probably the second most important thing besides control myself, I'm not so sure at a time when I first started in my growing endeavors, that I didn't look at mulch first, as being the most important thing and, and I think I was an early adapter of you know, soil being, you know, incredibly important in the garden, it may very well have something to do with the fact that I had to learn most of my early early techniques in gardening in Napa where the soil is absolutely terrible. Oh, man, it's so terrible. It's terrible in Napa. So I was an early adopter of mulch learning, you know, the the benefits of molds from books like California Fruits, written by Dr. Wickson, in the early 1900s was probably one of the most enlightening books that ever in my life, and then, and then of course, acting with groups like permaculturists, and some of the early edible landscape, people who are already multi adapters, and, watching those great Victory Garden shows and things like that. There were a lot of these people that were advocating mulch early on, but you didn't see it in practice in the 70s, late 70s, even or even the early 80s. It was still kind of considered hippie science. But you know, mulch, you and I both know that the power of mulch.

Farmer Fred:

Now, mulch is great for helping to preserve soil moisture. If there's a drought, it helps to keep weeds controlled. It keeps the roots cool during the hot, dry summer months. It improves the soil because as it breaks down if you use an organic mulch, if you're using like arborist tree trimmings, which is great stuff, and it's free, as it breaks down, It's adding life to the soil.

Ed Laivo:

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that that's one of the things that I looked at first. You know, it's funny, because I thought that, you know, the way nature works is it drops leaves on the ground, the leaves decompose. And I always imagined that was the cycle, you know, and I do mean imagine because it really wasn't anything that was really heavy on saying, well, this is the cycle. And so I always said, Man, you got to put stuff on the top to improve your soil. It's like I started looking at using a lot of straw when I first started out was probably straw. But I've gone to of course we all love now you know, of course wood shavings or wood trimmings, tree trimmings, they're excellent. They're the best. And that's my, my whole garden now and most of all my pathways are all in that. I love that stuff.

Farmer Fred:

And if you prefer a neater look, you can go out and buy a few yards of bark.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, yeah, I like the quarter inch pathway bark. Just because it makes a nice solid mulch, but plenty of porosity, plenty of air movement inside, but it really I find has a very, very cooling effect. I like about two to four inches of mulch spread out to two to three feet outside the canopy. So however wide your canopy is, you should go to two to three feet outside that canopy because that's how far the roots extend out past the canopy. They extend out quite a bit further than that, but you're actually optimizing what potentially is the primary root zone.

Farmer Fred:

And it may hurt you to do it, but if you're planting a fruit tree in a lawn, clean out that lawn two to three feet all the way to beyond the canopy of the tree because the lawn is going to compete with that tree for water and nutrients. And so just mulch that area. And you won't have that competition.

Ed Laivo:

I think it's always best to mound when you're in a low spot, if you're growing in a lawn as well, just just simply because I think trees benefit from being mounded. But then, of course, I've always liked mulch on top of my mound, after I get my mound created simply to maintain the integrity of the mound, it helps it keep from washing away, helps keep from shrinking and settling. And so mulch even works in that capacity as well.

Farmer Fred:

And we should point out when we're talking about mounding, we're talking about planting the tree on a mound, not mounding mulch next to the tree.

Ed Laivo:

Correct, right. mounding of course, is a technique primarily used for poor drainage. I like it in a lawn simply because the lawn is going to get watered far more frequently than the tree absolutely needs water. And so many cases, you're really encouraging, you know, a surface root system on that tree, that tree is going to be very, very dependent not dependent but but it's going to be raised on an extraordinary amount of water, I think it's best to have a portion of that root system that's established above the lay of the lawn so that we've always got oxygen available.

Farmer Fred:

That's a great idea. And it also keeps the trees number one enemy away. And that's a string trimmer. How many trees have you seen damage right there, near the bottom of the tree near the crown area of the tree that had been whipped by the string trimmer because somebody is trying to get really close to get that last weed or that last blade of grass and then they accidentally whip the tree and that can ruin the pipeline for the tree.

Ed Laivo:

That's so true. And I mean even take that one step further. If you're mulching you know I always heard people say oh, you know your mulch, it cuts down the amount of weeds that you have, well, it doesn't cut down the amount of, it cuts down the amount of weeding that you need to do I'll support that notion but actually what it does is it makes weeding so easy because the roots all of those weeds are establishing themselves and all this loose mulch that pulling them out as a breeze.

Farmer Fred:

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Farmer Fred 2:

Let's continue our discussion of mulch with fruit tree expert Ed Laivo and why mulch can be so good for your Yard and Garden. But you got to be careful what kind of mulch you use. Now you're gonna if you read a lot about mulch, you'll see that some people will use grass clippings, some people use compost. With compost, you gotta remember that that's could serve as a base for any seeds, weed seeds that blow in. It's still I mean, it's better than nothing. I would use compost before I would use rocks for example.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, and you know, I think you and I a couple of years ago had a discussion about rocks. I think we know that you see study that came up that said rocks aren't too bad. But the fact is, is that compost to me again, I like compost. If I'm going to use compost, I'm going to use compost that isn't fully composted. That's not all the way down to almost humans. So I'm gonna I like to use that compost that is unsifted, and put that on the surface and then I like to top dress it maybe with a bark or something like that. So it's almost like I'm, I'm trying to stimulate the microbiology and stimulate the, development of mycilia underneath that, into that root zone as well.

Farmer Fred:

That's exactly what I did a few years ago in an area where I planted some peach trees in in that we ripped out the lawn than I put in two inches of compost and then four inches of a woody mulch, chipped and shredded tree trimmings.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, yeah. And to me exactly, I that's the way I've done it, always, I mean, it's a little bit more involved. And I find that you know, the trade off, it's not necessarily something you have to recommend for everybody. So I'd say any mulches good mulch, but if you really want to get really good about it, I mean, if you really want to create a incredibly wonderful environment to begin with, when you're first planting your tree, I think that combination of compost down first, and then a nice decorative kind of bark or or tree to tree shredded, tree trimmings on top is a wonderful combination to activating the microbiology the soil around your fruit tree. And, and that absolutely is a benefit. mulches are incredible stuff, man.

Farmer Fred:

Now you mentioned and rightly so, to be spreading that mulch two to four inches deep out two to three feet from beyond the outside of the canopy of the tree, it's also important to remember don't let it touch and rub up against the trunk of the tree, or what's called the crown area of the tree.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, you know, and I think I've always been kind of one that might be a little identical and neglect that a little bit. My trees are almost right up to the crown side. But yes, I do support that. And what what I find is that if I'm going to apply that approach, what I do is I'll taper it, I'll start with very, very little to no mulch right up against the crown and then kind of taper it out. Going out, say three to five inches, you know, and then start kind of bringing getting deeper and deeper as you go out.

Farmer Fred:

Mm hmm. All right. Now, some people may be tempted to use grass clippings as a mulch, and I don't know, I think it can lead to problems, especially if you're growing the wrong sort of lawn. If you have a Bermuda grass lawn, for example. You really want to be using that for clippings?

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, no, not at all. But I find that grass clippings. you know, it's worth bringing up simply because in my experience, I've seen lots of people like to throw their grass clippings underneath the fruit trees and grass clippings, a lot of times will mat and they'll mat and they'll almost mat to a point where they'll cut off oxygen, they'll cut off, you know, oxygen penetration into the root zone and at the same time, moisture penetration into the root zone as well. So I'm not a big fan of grass clippings as a mulch. I like those, put them in a compost pile and you know that they work as your you know, to help keep a compost pile active.

Farmer Fred 2:

Well, if people insist though on using grass clippings, remember, moisture is your enemy when it comes to the matting effects of what you can do after you cut your lawn is spread out those clippings on a thin thin layer on concrete and let it dry out there for a few days. And then sweep it up and then sprinkle it around your fruit trees.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, good idea. Yeah, that would work well, as long as you don't allow them the decomposition process to occur under the fruit tree. I agree, fred. That makes good sense.

Farmer Fred:

Yeah, just dry them out first. mulch is your friend. It is. You told me years ago that you don't fertilize your fruit trees. The mulch does all the fertilization.

Ed Laivo:

I haven't fertilized any fruit tree that I have in my yard, ever and ever, ever. Nope.

Farmer Fred:

Not even in the first couple of years?

Ed Laivo:

No, no, I don't. I simply put, I'm really a firm believer in the fact that the whole that I plant that tree in in the environment, I plant that tree, and it's going to have to live in. And I know how to create that environment from the time it's first in the ground, to you know, when it begins to mature. And, and I do that with mulching. And I don't incorporate anything into the soil as well which shocks people, if I'm going to, I'm almost to the mind mindset thread of it. If I'm going to lose a tree, I want to lose it early. You know, I don't want to take and wait 15 years of struggling with a tree or something like that to finally say, I've had it I'm going to start something else. Life's too short.

Farmer Fred 2:

So the fact of the matter is mulching makes gardening a heck of a lot easier because it's doing a lot of the work for you. It's helping keeping moisture in the soil. It's helping to control weeds. And probably most important of all is as it's breaking down where it meets the soil. It's feeding the soil. It's increasing the biology in the soil. It's increasing everything you want a fruit tree to be getting.

Ed Laivo:

Yeah, if you get to like in my backyard here, up on the hill where I have all my fruit trees. I have about 14 fruit trees, I believe up there. And it's all bark mulch, not bark, but tree shredded, tree trimmings. And if you dig down, it's probably roughly about five inches deep. And I replenish it every year. And it's roughly about five minutes if you dig down right where the soil line meets mine. mulch line, I mean, it's the most beautiful collection of white mycilia that's just active. And that mycilia reaches up into the two year old layer of mulch, and it's so cool to look at, you know, just the way, you know, everything's working. And so that kind of gives me the idea that the fertilization is absolutely occurring, but it's occurring, you know, in, in combination in harmony with the, with the with the tree and the environment that it lives in.

Farmer Fred:

So, let's explain what that mycelia is, if you put down a layer of bark or chipped and shredded tree trimmings, and let it sit on the soil for a while, and then you go back and you turn it over, you might see some white growth on the bottom of that mulch, and that's the mycelium. And that's good.

Ed Laivo:

It's the nutrient highway. Good, good way to put it. Yeah, it's the nutrient highway. And I think that that's something that I didn't start to really realize, until probably the late 80s 90s, something like that. A lot of times before when I was using culturally, and in the early days, I used to rake it every year, because I thought I didn't want it to get too packed. So I would I would go in and I'd break it up and like almost like I was killing it. But that wasn't such a good idea.,

Farmer Fred:

Yeah, you don't have to do that you can put that in mulch down. It'll be fine by itself. Now, like you said, the only thing you're gonna have to do is maybe replenish it every year or every other year.

Ed Laivo:

Yes. So often you go into people's yards, and you look and they say, Oh, yeah, I mulch my tree. And you look in the trees, five years old, and the mulch is five years old, as well. And really, the function of the mulch, you know, just isn't it isn't performing anything anymore. Because it's, you know, it's just a few hunks of a big giant bark that happened to be left. That's it. So I don't you know, I'm, I'm all about replenishing. And it's funny because, you know, after about two or three years of replenishing, what you realize is that you can start to feel the texture of your soil as you walk on it, you know, in the environments that you're creating. You can feel that changing. It's almost like walking on a real expensive rug.

Farmer Fred:

Yeah, exactly. You get that squishy effect. And that's your, that's what you're going for in soil. You don't want that hardpacked effect.

Ed Laivo:

No, you want to extend the period between watering to you know, I mean, if after the tree gets gets established, and now you've got, you know, this great layer of mulch that's building, you know, that root systems out there and really established. Now I can start cutting back on my water, I can really start cutting back on my water. I have, I have some pears up here that probably get, they may very well get watered once a month, and they're there to espaliers. And they they get hardly any water at all. And they just they're beautiful. They're gorgeous. They just do fine. And it's just because of the mulch all that that collected around them over the last 10 years.

Farmer Fred:

There you go. mulching aids water conservation, it cuts down on evaporation in the root zone and extends the time between watering. Here we are. We came to talk about the Frost peach, we end up talking about mulch, and we can go on and on about mulching. Come to think of it. I think we have.

Ed Laivo:

You and I have talked about mulch since the first time I sat down with you and did your show. It was one of the first things we talked about.

Farmer Fred:

If you want to find out more about the Frost peach, pay a visit to tomorrow's harvest.com You can find a link to it in the show notes for this episode. And you're gonna find out about all the other fruits we've been talking about on fabulous fruit Friday with Ed Laivo, from tomorrow's harvest.com and thanks for telling us about the frost peach.

Ed Laivo:

Hey, anytime, Fred lots of fun.

Farmer Fred:

Here in America, we like to think that more is better. But when it comes to fertilizing your plants, you can overdose your plants with too much fertilizer, especially if you're using synthetic fertilizers with a high amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. That's called NPK. And you usually see the three numbers the percentages of NPK on the front of the box or bag of fertilizer, representing the content of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. And frankly, you don't need double digit percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in order to feed your plants effectively. In fact, if you're using synthetic fertilizers, there could be so much salt in them. It's actually drawing water away from the plant. Debbie Flower, our favorite retired horticultural instructor, says this is a problem, if you use too much fertilizer. That same thing can happen around plant roots with high what we call high analysis fertilizers, fertilizers, where the numbers on the bag are double digits. Are you suggesting that if you use these high energy fertilizers that have double digit NPK in them that after fertilization, you may want to water the plant again to push that fertilizer down?

Debbie Flower:

Well, you certainly don't want to apply them too often, you don't want to mix them any more concentrated than the directions recommend. In America, we often think a little is good, a lot is better. That is not true with fertilizer. If it says a tablespoon per gallon, then don't do any more than a tablespoon per gallon. In fact, it's much better if you do less, apply it only to wet soil to water First, apply only as much as as recommended or less and apply it only as frequently as recommended on the label or less frequently, we've often you and I've often used the term"weakly, weekly", particularly for containerized plants that don't have the opportunity to send their roots long distances and collect nutrients from afar. But if you are fertilizing your vegetable garden, the same would apply there and it means fertilize every week and do it with a very low concentration of fertilizer so less comes less fertilizer per gallon of water than is recommended on the label. So that's the other kind of "weak", so, weakly weekly. but yes, if you've applied it and it's just haven't done any of the things recommended Absolutely. Add some water to dilute it is your goal. You don't want the fertilizer very strong.

Farmer Fred:

There's no question fall is for planting the air is cooler than summer the soils warmer than spring ideal conditions were getting your home orchards started with the outstanding fruit and nut trees and berry plants from Tomorrow's Harvest. And that includes a lot of flavorful and productive fruits that we're talking about on fabulous fruit Friday. Tomorrow's Harvest fine line of fruit trees is the result of 75 years of developing, testing and growing three generations of the virtual family have been at the forefront of research and development of plants of the highest quality. All of these beautiful edible plants have been carefully cultivated for your home garden. Look for Tomorrow's Harvest fruit trees at better retail nurseries. And if your favorite nursery doesn't carry any of Tomorrow's Harvest fruit, nut, or berry varieties, you can order them directly from TomorrowsHarvest.com. And by the way, when you click on the link from today's show notes to Tomorrow's Harvest, you're going to get a nice discount. It's a special for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred listeners. three generations of experience take root in your home orchard, landscape and garden. It's Tomorrow's Harvest. It's goodness you can grow. Visit TomorrowsHarvest.com.

Farmer Fred 2:

Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday and it's available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, I Heart Radio, overcast, Spotify, stitcher, tune in, and hey, Alexa, play the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, would you please? Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.

Fabulous Fruit Friday: The Frost Peach
Mulch Basics with Ed Laivo
Smart Pots!
Quick Tip: Fertilize weakly for best results