072 Avoiding Gardeners' "Sophomore Slump"

This time of year, hope springs eternal in the minds of gardeners with dreams of a bountiful spring, summer and fall garden, filled with beautiful flowers, delicious fruits, and wonderful vegetables. But for many second year gardeners, as well as many more experienced gardeners, there could be a "sophomore slump".
So why does a so-so garden year sometimes follow a wildly successful garden year? Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticulture Professor, holds our collective hands and offers tips for thwarting the gardeners' sophomore slump.
Also, Phil Pursel of Dave Wilson Nursery has advice on how you can be harvesting fresh fruit from May or June all the way through November and for some, into December.
Plus, the University of California Davis Arboretum Superintendent Emeritus Warren Roberts, waxes rhapsodic about the plant of the week, the barberry.
And finally, Debbie Flower offers some words of reassuring hope about your 2021 Garden year.

 It's Episode 72 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
 
Pictured:  The Plant of the Week - Barberry (Berberis thunbergii)

Links:
Farmer Fred Rant: Growing Your First Vegetable Garden? Some Tips.
Dave Wilson Nursery Catalog
Seed starting kits
Seed starting soil mixes
UC Davis Arboretum

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Transcript

GB 072 Sophomore Slump, Barberry, Successive Fruit Harvests, Garden Hope

SPEAKERS

Debbie Flower, Steve Zien, Warren Roberts, Phil Pursel, Farmer Fred

Farmer Fred  00:03

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  00:15

This time of year, hope springs eternal in the minds of gardeners with dreams of a bountiful spring, summer and fall garden filled with beautiful flowers, delicious fruits, and wonderful vegetables. But for many second year gardeners, as well as many more experienced gardeners, there could be a "sophomore slump'. So why does a so-so garden year sometimes follow a wildly successful garden year? Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticulture Professor, holds our collective hands and offers tips for thwarting the gardeners' sophomore slump. Also Phil Pursel of Dave Wilson Nursery has advice on how you can be harvesting fresh fruit from May or June all the way through November and for some, into December. Plus, the University of California Davis Arboretum Superintendent Emeritus Warren Roberts, waxes rhapsodic about the plant of the week, the barberry. And finally, Debbie Flower offers some words of reassuring hope about your 2021 Garden year. It's Episode 72 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go. 

Farmer Fred  01:31

If you just started gardening last year, you may have had what we call Beginner's luck with your garden. And I think it happens to everybody. Anybody who ever starts a garden, they are amazed at the results come the end of summer, and they think they can do it again. But generally speaking, there's always a hitch in that that giddy-up for a year number two in the garden. Debbie Flower is here, our favorite retired college horticultural professor. Debbie, how can we avoid the sophomore slump in the garden? And by the way, the sophomore slump affects every gardener just about every year.

Debbie Flower  02:05

Yes, it's always fun for me to to start a garden in a new location of my existing landscape or to move to a new house and start a garden there, because that's the freshman year of that garden. And it's always the best. And it's the best because it's soil that has not been harvested before. And when I say that, I mean tomatoes and peppers and melons and things weren't grown on them. And those nutrients that went into those fruits weren't taken away. So it maybe had grass on it or whatever, a lot of the nutrients are still in the soil. And that's what benefits us on the first year is that there's nutrition in the soil, and the plants just do phenomenally well. But every year after that, then we have to rebuild that nutrition base and add things that the plants have taken away by growing in that location. And there are ways to do that. You could buy fertilizers, typically the one ingredient that is needed the most is nitrogen. Every rainstorm brings nitrogen to the soil from the sky. And so depending on how much rain you get, you get more or less nitrogen that way, but plants take a lot away and nitrogen travels with water and it becomes a gas so it easily leaves the soil as well. So we need to add nitrogen. We can do that in the fertilizer form. We can do it by having a cover crop in the winter, we can add mulch, like leaves, compost, something like that, and let that break down into the soil. You can get chicken manure and and steer manure and use those in the garden but some sort of nitrogen has to be added back into the garden.

Farmer Fred  03:37

I think one mistake gardeners make is if a little is okay, adding more is better. But when it comes to fertilizer, that's not necessarily the case.

Debbie Flower  03:47

No, I actually burned my corn one year. I was working at an ag Experiment Station. I already had my first degree in horticulture and I had a garden and I used ammonium sulfate to fertilize my corn. And I burned the leaves. I put it on the soil but it burned the leaves. And I actually took a leaf into one of the professors at the Experiment Station. That's what he told me, I'd use too much nitrogen. If you put nitrogen fertilizer on your garden now and you're not growing anything that's a waste of it. It will wash away with the rain, it will become a gas and volatilize and disappear that way. You have to put nitrogen fertilizer on when the plants are present. So right now other things are needed and they are more gentle sources of nitrogen like compost and leaves from the garden that you can let rot in place.

Farmer Fred  04:39

And a real popular one these days is worm castings.

Debbie Flower  04:42

Yes. The other is some people, I've seen pictures of this, I had a student telling me about this, do their kitchen composting right in the middle of their vegetable bed because that attracts worms. Worms eat the kitchen waste and you make your own worm castings that way,

Farmer Fred  04:58

I think the downside to that might be and will also attract skunks and possums and raccoons and other four legged critters that might decide to also be munching on whatever you're growing.

Debbie Flower  05:09

Yes, something has to be done to prevent them from getting in. There are ways to do that.

Farmer Fred  05:14

And for a lot of people eager to garden, to put in a garden in year two, they may say, "okay, we started last year in May, this year, let's start in March". And planting too early is usually a death knell for plants.

Debbie Flower  05:30

Yes, if  it's not warm enough, they're not going to grow, they're going to sit and wait and sulk. In some cases, some plants will just rot and other plants will just sit and wait. Tomatoes put it into early if it's too cold, we'll just turn sort of red and sit around. And then when it gets warm enough, they will take off. But other plants, seeds in particular, will just rot in place.

Farmer Fred  05:54

And we're not just talking about air temperature, it's also soil temperature,

Debbie Flower  05:58

Soil temperature is huge. That's more important than air temperature. Yes.

Farmer Fred  06:02

And you'd be amazed at how high soil temperature has to be for plants like tomatoes and peppers and zucchini to take off and start flourishing. Soil temperatures need to be in the 70s. And usually in spring, even into mid spring, soil temperatures are still in the 50s.

Debbie Flower  06:18

Especially if you've done the mulching, that's trapped the moisture. And  because there's moisture, it takes a lot more heat, a lot more energy, heat energy from the sun, to warm the moist soil than to warm dry soil. So if you have mulch on top of soil, you've got lots of moisture there, then this soil takes a very long time to warm up.

Farmer Fred  06:38

The other problem that gardeners may face on a year to year basis is boy, these plants just aren't growing the way they used to. Well, is there something different about the area, too. Those trees you planted get a little bigger and maybe they're now blocking the sun. Sun versus shade: big Issue when it comes for vegetable growing?

Debbie Flower  06:56

Yes, it is. Vegetables need a good eight hours of full sun to produce their fruit. If you're getting shade a little sooner, then you're not going to get the same output.

Farmer Fred  07:08

And maybe your thrifty, shall we say, and you like to use old seed. Old seeds may germinate, but they may not grow very quickly or very healthy.

Debbie Flower  07:20

Or you may get nothing. They may not germinate, right. I found when I was teaching, it wasn't worth reusing seed. Because I wanted students to have a positive experience. And old seed didn't always provide that. It didn't germinate.

Farmer Fred  07:33

Yeah, and I've experiment this year with seeds that are two years old in the case of Snapdragon seeds, and it took them weeks, almost a couple of months for them to germinate. And they're growing so slowly that well, you know, really, I should have just used fresh seed.

Debbie Flower  07:50

Yes. Maybe they got into a heavy dormancy.

Farmer Fred  07:53

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, we can come up with all sorts of good excuses.  But basically, lack of soil nitrogen, planting too early in the year, planting in too much shade, planting from old seed or thinking that  seed you saved from last year's tomatoes are going to produce the same thing as last year. Ahh, the dreams. But no, the nightmares.

Debbie Flower  08:17

Yes, yes, and we have to preserve. Once you've created a garden, let's say you did it this past summer, then we have to preserve that soil. We don't want to walk on it when it's wet. We don't want to really walk on it at all, we want some designated paths so that we don't compact the soil, especially don't want to walk on it when it's wet, because that will compact it even more. And we want to keep it covered, which protects it from rain. Rain can actually cause soil to compact and so keeping it covered with your leaves from other parts of the garden is is a great idea. Or if you had a Christmas tree you can cut all the branches off and lay them on the garden, something like that. By keeping the soil covered so that when it rains it doesn't further compact that soil. Compacted soil is hard to garden in.

Farmer Fred  09:06

We've said it on this program many times: you're not feeding plants, you're feeding soil. And this time of the year is the time of the year to feed your soil by doing what Debbie's talking about: putting down compost, putting down mulch, putting down anything to help feed the soil.

Debbie Flower  09:24

Mm hmm. Absolutely. That's our job for the winter.

Farmer Fred  09:27

And don't walk on it because it's probably wet. Yes. Also winter is a good time to notice the low spots of your garden and perhaps avoid planting there. After a rainstorm. I mean a good rainstorm. Go outside after 12 hours, 24 hours, and note the low spots where there's still standing water or it's really squishy. Put a big stick there to remind you where that spot is. And you may want to avoid planting your annual vegetable garden in that location or building that area up to a raised bed. To improve the drainage, because poor drainage is also bad news for plants.

Debbie Flower  10:06

Yes, it is causes those roots to rot and that's a problem.

Farmer Fred  10:09

Anything else for sophomore slump?

Debbie Flower  10:12

Nope, that's all I've got.

Farmer Fred  10:14

That's all I got, too. I'm sure I'll think of something later. Yep, another Successful Garden awaits you. If you just follow a few simple steps. Debbie Flower, Thanks for some great advice.

Debbie Flower  10:24

Oh, it's a pleasure, Fred, thank you so much.

Farmer Fred  10:28

Oh, I knew I would think of something else. Besides not walking on your soil try to fight the urge to rototill your soil. In agriculture, more and more farmers are seeing the benefits of no-till, cover cropped soil, it builds up the soil biology. And the cover crops allow roots to develop that can actually improve the drainage of your soil and provide more oxygen for the worms that live down there as well as new plant roots. But don't take it from me; take it from soil pathologist Steve Zien, who told us back in Episode 45 about the benefits of feeding your soil and not chopping it up with a roto-tiller.

Steve Zien  11:08

And one of the things that you have to realize is that what soil biology eats the most of, is organic matter. And so you need to put in organic matter and you do that not by tilling the soil. Tilling the soil destroys the soil structure, and actually ends up compacting the soil and kills the soil biology. So you just want to put these things on the soil surface. The best two things that you can put down are worm castings. Those are my favorite, especially if you've got clay soils, because they contain a lot of different kinds of soil biology. And, composting. Just put the compost on top of the soil, the rains and the irrigation we'll work that organic matter into the soil. Also, by putting that organic matter on the soil surface, worms will come up every single night and feed on that material and go back down in the morning. And they'll act as mother nature's rototillers and so  that organic material,  the compost and the worm castings, will eventually disappear because it's going to be going into the soil, feeding the soil biology and when you see that gone, its time to add more.

Farmer Fred  12:21

By roto tilling, you're not really blending in other soils, you're destroying a lot of microbiology that took a long time to develop. Plus, you're chopping up earthworms. So fight the urge to buy that roto tiller. Instead, invest your money in something useful, like a chipper-shredder, where you can take all those downed tree branches, chop them up and it makes a great mulch. 

Farmer Fred  12:47

Here on the Garden Basics podcast, we like to talk with Warren Roberts, the superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum, about plants that have a wide appeal throughout much of the United States. We call it the plant of the week segment. And Warren, another plant that puts on a show in January is barberry, also known as berberis.

Warren Roberts  13:09

Particularly berberis thunbergii, which is native to Japan and China, thunbergii in German that would be tuned back I burgie, I guess. And then the form atropurpurea, which typically has purpleish leaves, there is one cultivar called Concord  that dependently produces the little red berries. These are cylindrical, very small, but bright red. And when the leaves fall from the plant, these berries stay on for quite a long, long time. Almost look as if they're they're unconnected to anything. The brightness of  the berry and the dark stems of the shrub make a very, very special effect that I can't really think of anything else that does that. So I think it's a very useful shrub. And I love the berries. They're bright, bright, glossy red.

Farmer Fred  14:14

We should warn people though, that there are spines on the barberry, so be careful around it.

Warren Roberts  14:20

Yes. Many barberries in the genus. it's a big genus. I forget how many species but berberis thunbergii has spines on the stems but they're not very sticky. They're the kind that if you try to push your way through, it'll let you know it. But  they're not going to send you to the hospital, really. The plant when it's deciduous almost disappears; it's like a little dark cloud. That's why these varieties that have the red berries, I think, are very important. When the leaves of this atropurpurea form which is a dark leaf form. Purple, but dark purple, maroon purple, really. When the leaves turn, they actually turn red again, and then fall, so it's a successful plant in the garden. And if you don't mind the fact that it loses its leaves in the winter, then you're good to go.

Farmer Fred  15:16

And it's it's a very hardy plant, it's hardy down to 20 below zero and I guess it gets what about four to six feet tall?

Warren Roberts  15:23

I think yes, it can we can get the species itself can get rather tall. This cultivar that I mentioned, only gets 18 inches tall. So So that's, that's kind of nice. Oh, the flowers. The flowers are small. They're kind of yellowish with a little bit of red blush. But there, you have to get really close to see the manner you grow them for the foliage. This particular one for the berries. And there's a bit of a barrier because it'll remind you to stay on the path if you get too close.

Farmer Fred  15:57

Yes, it is described in this book. I'm reading as a barrier plant,

Warren Roberts  16:01

you know, berry barrier. Incidentally, it's in the same botanical family is nandina.

Farmer Fred  16:09

Ah, which we talked about last week. Yeah, the barberry we've been talking about is the Japanese barberry. And the atropurpurea is also commonly known as the red leaf Japanese barberry. Find it at a nursery near you. It puts on a great show this time of year. Check it out. barberry. Warren Roberts, Superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum, you can find out more about the Arboretum by visiting their website, arboretum.uc davis.edu. Warren, thanks for your help on the plant of the week. You're welcome. 

Farmer Fred  16:47

We're talking with Phil Pursel from Dave Wilson Nursery, getting some good ideas about what to plant in the way of fruit and berry varieties that are hitting nursery shelves. Now here in California, they'll be arriving throughout the United States in the weeks and months ahead in late winter. And Phil, I think when it comes to growing in your backyard, I think the key is to have a lot of different varieties that all ripen at different times that you can be harvesting fruit from your backyard from spring through late fall.

Phil Pursel  17:22

Absolutely, probably the number one mistake that homeowners make, when they decide, okay, I'm going to go ahead and plant some fruit trees. It's not doing just a little bit of research on when they're gonna get the fruit. So you know, they might walk in to a retail garden center and just be overwhelmed with all the different varieties. So just a little bit of homework, they can have fruit the whole summer. And the biggest mistake is, is picking they say they wanted to get three peach trees. So you know, they just pick three peach trees, and they find out that to the varieties will produce in June and the other one will produce in September. Well, then they have nothing for July or August. So kind of understanding how to plan a backyard orchard is key to really enjoying fruit throughout the whole season. 

Farmer Fred  18:18

Okay, so let's talk about various fruit trees and berry varieties that would  ripen in late spring. And then early summer, then late summer and then fall. And so take us through. So for late spring we might be talking May and June. I know here in California, you can get cherries and blueberries pretty easy in May.

Phil Pursel  18:43

That's it. So in spring, It's cherry and blueberry season. That's kind of like the heart of you know, cherries are always the first out in the market. And there are new low chill cherries that are super early. The Zaigers have varieties thatby  end of April are producing fruit. But think of May, really, as cherry season and the beginning of blueberries season. But you'll also start seeing real real early varieties of peaches. So someone who just is just a peach lover might want to get like an early treat variety, understanding that early peaches aren't going to have the sugar content that later peaches  have. So you kind of think of late spring as that's cherry and blueberry season.

Farmer Fred  19:36

Yeah, I kind of, I don't say I look askance. But I have to wonder about really early maturing varieties and really late maturing varieties of different fruit whose real season is the heart of summer, but it's worth a try and you might like it. I'm thinking of the Fair Time peach which here ripens in mid to late September. Fairtime gets sort of a so-so rating, but I've always enjoyed the taste of Fairtime.

Phil Pursel  20:06

Exactly. So Fairtime has been considered kind of the late season, peach. But a few years ago, we introduced the Oktoberfest. And the Oktoberfest is a late September, into mid October, peach. They never caught on with the commercial farmer. They moveds on to peas and beans, they were done with peaches. So the Zaigers developed this one peach that we named the Oktoberfest. It's a fantastic peach. Someone who really really loves peaches can have this variety into October, this might be the same person that might have the Earlitreat, that has May peaches. So now you know that they are covering the whole spectrum.

Farmer Fred  20:53

What about apples? People love apples, and they like to yank an apple off a tree and have that. It's a crispy sweet, or tart taste treat depending upon your taste buds. What's a good early season, and mid season, and late season apple varieties to choose?

Phil Pursel  21:10

Early season kinds of traditionals are the gravenstein varieties of apple. Honeycrisp is actually considered a fairly early season apple. We have this one variety that we call the Ghost Apple. It's a Fourth of July Apple. It's nearly white, very light blush Apple that is fantastic. Mid season, that's kind of like your Golden Delicious, your Jonagold. And then there's a whole host  of heirloom apples that fall into the mid season. mid season is kind of like in that September category. Fuji would kind of be towards the end of the mid-season. And then you come down with the late season varieties, the ones that people are most familiar with would be  the yellow Newtown Pippin, Granny Smith, Pink Lady. The one thing about Granny Smith, and they're too tart. And you get them in the grocery store that too tart? Well, that's because they were picked too early. In fact, at the nursery, we start picking the granny smith off the trees near the end of November and beginning of December, when they start turning almost like a Golden Delicious color. The tartness is gone. And you get that fantastic Granny Smith flavor that people really like. But people shy away from Granny Smiths because the commercial growers, they just pick them early, there's such a bright green, really, they should be a lighter green almost show a color. They're still super crisp, juicy. But they don't have that hardness that you're kind of familiar with, in the grocery store.

Farmer Fred  22:54

Exactly. And that's why I always advise people to not judge the quality of a piece of fruit based on what you buy at a grocery store, judge it by what you're picking in somebody's backyard, because that'll give you a true indication of when it's really ripe. And that's great information about the Granny Smith, which is naturally a green apple. But if you just let it sit on the tree, maybe through a frost or two, and it turns kind of yellow, that's when it's sweet.

Phil Pursel  23:22

A lot of varieties that you see in the grocery store is based on when the commercial grower wants to harvest it, you know, they need to end their season a certain time they pick these later varieties earlier than they should be. And they just don't reach the maturity that they need to and they start giving bad name to them.

Farmer Fred  23:45

But again, judge it by what you pluck off the tree, not what you're taking out of a box at a grocery store.

Phil Pursel  23:53

And that's what you can do when you grow it at home, you're able to decide when it's ready to harvest.

Farmer Fred  24:01

A good intermediary though, would be purchasing it at a farmers market because chances are those were picked in the last 24 to 48 hours. Correct.

Phil Pursel  24:11

So the farmers market is where you're going to get the closest to home grown fruit. You know, it's a much smaller operation. And there are you know, they're definitely able to react faster when the fruit is nearly perfect. Whereas some of these larger growers, it's about efficiencies and getting the fruit off of the tree. Not saying that it's bad. It's just a different way of growing fruit. So if you want to get the best flavor, it's going to come from your farmers market or definitely from your own backyard.

Farmer Fred  24:48

If you want a good Encyclopedia of growing fruit trees, I would direct you to Dave wilson.com, their website. Not only is there a lot of written information there, but their  series of videos, they call them the fruit tube videos, can take you from planting to harvest and caring for the tree throughout the growing season. It's also available on YouTube as well. But visit Dave wilson.com for a whole host of very good, accurate information about growing fruits, vines, and nuts. No matter where you live, wherever Dave Wilson product can be found, which is most of the United States. Phil Pursel, we learned a lot today. Thank you so much.

Phil Pursel  25:31

Thanks for having me on.

Farmer Fred  25:37

Well, as we approach another outdoor garden season for most of the United States in the months ahead, the dreams are wonderful. We have a lot of hope about what our future garden will look like every year. I don't care if you're a new gardener or an experienced gardener, you've got hope about what your garden this year is going to do, how it's going to produce, how it's going to be better than last year. Debbie Flower, it takes a lot of hope to be a gardener.

Debbie Flower  26:05

It sure does. I sometimes think that's what keeps me getting up out of bed every day. Because gardening is about hope. And it's about optimism. And it's about belief in the future. You have to believe that with the gardener's touch, the tiny seed becomes a fully grown plant, bearing flowers and fruit and lavish leaves. And the baby sapling will become a big tree, providing shade and nesting space and a strong limb to support a swing. And there's hope that where the gardener toils, beauty and human nourishment and habitat for nature flourish. Gardening is the triumph of hope over experience. There are no mistakes in gardening, only experiments from which the gardener learns and grows and hopes and believes that with the next garden, something beautiful and delicious will happen.

Farmer Fred  26:56

It's sort of like the optimism of parents, that each successive child will be better than the one that came before. Good luck.

Debbie Flower  27:07

Yes, I have to say that I did. I was doing some reading about gardening and hope and some of what I said was was inspired by quotes from Elizabeth Murray, Julie Levine, Janet Kilburn, Phillips and Audrey Hepburn,

Farmer Fred  27:24

The beauty of plants. As we know, unlike children, plants don't talk back at you.

Debbie Flower  27:28

I know. Isn't that wonderful? And you can just dig them up and throw them out if they're a problem.

Farmer Fred  27:34

There we go. All right. Oh, let's embark on another season of gardening. Debbie.  

Debbie Flower  27:40

Oh, I love it. Yes, let's do that.

Farmer Fred  27:43

The Garden Basics podcast is going to a winter schedule, maybe just like your favorite local nursery. November through January, Garden Basics will come out once a week on Fridays. Then, as the weather warms back up in February, we'll return to our twice a week schedule. Thank you for listening, subscribing, and leaving comments. We appreciate that you've included us in your garden life.