GB 093 Tomato Transplanting Tips. Mulch vs. Compost. Fringe Tree.
29:58
SPEAKERS
Pam Bone, Debbie Flower, Warren Roberts, Phone question, Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 00:00
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 SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Farmer Fred 00:20
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred 00:33
Are your tomatoes getting a little too big for their britches, but you want to wait to plant? Our favorite retired college horticulture Professor Debbie Flower has some tips about transplanting overgrown tomatoes from small pots directly into the ground. Plus, she shares her tomato and pepper planting secret for turning those newly planted vegetables into even stronger plants. You may never plant your tomatoes the same way again after you hear what she has to say! Master Gardener Pam Bone tackles a vexing topic. What's better to put on top of the garden soil: finely sifted compost, or coarse mulch? Maybe tree trimmings! And the Plant of the Week is a small, flowering tree that has what Warren Roberts of the UC Davis Arboretum describes as the purest white flowers of any blooming plant. It's the chionanthus, also known as the fringe tree, which is native to many areas across the United States. It's all on episode 93 of the Garden Basics podcast, brought to you by Smart Pots, and we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
Farmer Fred 01:41
Here on the Garden Basics podcast we like to answer your garden questions. There's a lot of ways you can contact us. You can give us a call at 916-292-8964 that's 916-292-8964. Don't want to call? You can text us at that number, maybe send a picture or two as well. You can also contact us via Speakpipe. You just leave an audio question with your computer, at speakpipe.com slash gardenbasics. it's easy. give it a try. Emails are fine, too. Send it to Fred at FarmerFred.com or you can leave a message at the Get Growing with Farmer Fred Facebook page, or the Farmer Fred Twitter page or on Instagram to Farmer Fred Hoffman. Debbie Flower is with us, our favorite retired college horticultural professor, to help us answer these questions. And we have a question that was phoned in about tomatoes. Debbie, you want to give a listen to this?
Debbie Flower 02:40
Sure thing.
Phone question 02:42
Hi, my name is Jennifer. I live in Woodland (CA). I started tomatoes in my greenhouse, it's a non-heated greenhouse, in late January, I think, or February. Anyways, the tomatoes and tomatillos that I have in there, they've both outgrown the four-inch pots that they're in right now. The plants are more like about two times as tall as the pot. They're starting to get, but they're not root bound yet, but they're starting to get there. I've been wanting to wait until the end of April to plant them in the garden like you recommend. But I'm a little concerned that the plants are going to start suffering if I leave them in those four inch pots any longer. We have prepared garden beds, their raised beds that we built. The soil in the bed is a mixture of the native clay that we have, subsoil, it's a brand new development we live in, and it's mixed with about honestly about 80% compost that we got from a local landscaping company. We have got the drip irrigation already installed and ready. I just didn't want to plant the tomatoes and the tomatillos until the end of April but I'm not really sure what to do. I don't have enough one gallon pots to pot them up into a larger size. So I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and plant them and just cover them with a cloth at night. I don't have frost protection stuff, but I guess I could get some anyway, if you could let me know what I should do in this circumstance. I'd really appreciate some advice. Thank you so much.
Farmer Fred 04:08
Debbie, it sounds like Jennifer's a new gardener.
Debbie Flower 04:10
It does and she's really going after it with the greenhouse and baby plants from seed. Good for her.
Farmer Fred 04:17
Yeah, exactly. To bring people who don't live in the Sacramento area up to speed here. For years I have advocated on local radio, that official tomato planting day is April 28. That's just a cheap ploy for me to get birthday card greetings basically, But April 28 around here in these parts is actually a good time for planting tomatoes outdoors because overnight temperatures are above 50. Soil temperatures are creeping into the mid 60s by late April. And so late April is a good time, but people can't wait and people around here have been planting since March. I don't know how they did during the hailstorm in March, but we won't go into that. But good, good for you, Jennifer. Holding out for April 28, but it sounds like your plants may need some surgery, or transplanting.
Debbie Flower 05:10
Right transplanting, I can commiserate with her about having started tomatoes early and having big ones. And I did move mine into gallons, and now they're taller than the gallon pot is tall.
Farmer Fred 05:20
When did you plant seeds?
Debbie Flower 05:22
Late January, right about the time she did. And actually some came up right away. I have only have two types, I have Ace 55, which is a bush tomato, and that's the one that came up fast and is big and the stems are fat, and they're looking really fine. I pulled them out to harden off, which is something she should do. Get them out of the greenhouse and harden them off. But I also planted Early Girls, and the seed was old, and it took much longer to germinate. And they're just in four inch pots and about the height of the four inch pot. So the Early Girls can definitely wait until your birthday to be planted in the garden. But I'm considering putting the Ace 55 in the ground already. I was out yesterday measuring the temperature at about four inch depth in both my raised bed and the area around it, which are the places that I plant my vegetables. And in both places, it was about 45 degrees, I'm sorry, it was about 55 degrees. And that's not perfect for tomatoes, but it's certainly not going to harm them. So what I will watch, so I will plant my tomatoes out, which Jennifer can do. And I will watch the night temperatures and if we're going to get below 40 for sure, maybe even below 45, I will go out with a sheet. I don't have floating row cover available for the places that tomatoes are going to go. So I'll just go out with a bed sheet and cover them to keep them warm overnight, they may turn a little bit red, red in the stems a little bit red in the leaves if the soil gets too cold, and that's okay, they'll outgrow that. There is no evidence yet but that I've seen that soil temperatures at the 55 degree point will harm the tomatoes. They just may sit there and do nothing until temperatures warm up a little bit more. One thing I'm a little concerned about but we have not had rain and I would like to see that bed moist before she plants into it.
Farmer Fred 07:30
Good idea, to moisten the bed thoroughly before you plant it. I think at this time we should reiterate your secret recipe for planting tomatoes and peppers.
Debbie Flower 07:44
Well, I can't say it's so secret, but it's planting them in a trench, As I said the ACE 55 which is a bush tomato, a determinant tomato, terms we've talked about other times, but it is the tall one. And the first thing you want out of a plant you put in the garden is roots, and tomatoes are able to make roots out of their stems as are peppers and so you can plant them deeply. That brings to mind a very big hole, very deep hole. Rather than going straight down in the bed. It's better to make a trench or a gutter and lay the plant in sideways. The root ball obviously, a little bit lower than the stem but the stem part of that. Bury part of the stem, leaves and all, it may need a stake to have the whatever sticks out of the ground, stand up straight you may need to attach it to a stake and then cover it up and what the plant will do is create roots out of that buried stem along with the existing root system and that will make the stronger plant in the long run.
Farmer Fred 08:45
Now with peppers you don't have to bury them in a trench because most usually they aren't that big. They may be six or eight inches tall you could bury most of it couldn't you?
Debbie Flower 08:54
Correct. you can go straight down if I were doing the four inch Early Girl that I have in four inch pots. They've got maybe three inches of root ball on them and I might bury them another three inches but with that I could go straight down. Yes.
Farmer Fred 09:06
So Jennifer, basically, Yeah, if those tomato plants are getting too big for their britches, yes, save them before they get to rootbound. Now if Jennifer takes those tomatoes out of their four inch pot and she sees roots circling the plant, Should she untangled them?
Debbie Flower 09:23
She should do something about that. It's it's not as critical with an herbaceous plant like a tomato as it would be with a woody plant like an oak tree. But circling roots are not going to change direction once you put them in the ground and what we want is the roots to spread out. And so the best thing to do is use a sharp tool and cut the roots. I know it sounds horrible and brutal. But cut the roots I try to do for a cut on each side four. So four cuts down the side from the top of the soil to the bottom and then an X across the bottom and that will set the plant back. If you've done root damage, you'll always do root damage when transplanting, whether you cut the roots or not. And so I actually then might make a teepee out of a piece of newspaper and put it over the plant and anchor it with a stake or so for about three days to allow those cut roots to close off the wounds and make new root tips. The root tips are where all the water nutrients are absorbed. And it takes about on average two to three days for new root tips to form. And once that's happened, then the plant will take off and have roots going in all directions and be able to absorb more water and nutrients really well. If you don't cut them, you're gonna have these circling roots and the plant may never really establish a wide, fibrous thick root system and may suffer down the road.
Farmer Fred 10:46
And for those who don't know, a newspaper is this thing they used to throw on your driveway. So maybe you could make that tent out of any sort of paper product you can use. Could you use an Amazon box?
Debbie Flower 10:57
I was just gonna say you could you could use an Amazon box. You don't want it to sit on the plant you might have to put in stakes and sort of hold it up on the on the stakes. This was first taught to me when I was attending University of Nevada - Reno. And when I started my graduate school, it was a very wise, older woman who had been into native plants and she always suggested just putting like a piece of cardboard on a stake on the sunny side of the plant. Just make it tall so that it provided more shade than the plant will get in the future. That's just something to shade the plants a little bit.
Farmer Fred 11:36
All right. So Jennifer, have fun with your tomato plants. I get It's okay. I'll live. You don't have to plant on my birthday April 28.
Debbie Flower 11:45
Send Fred a birthday card. Call him up with birthday greetings on the phone.
Farmer Fred 11:51
The Garden Basics hot line. Yes, yes.
Debbie Flower 11:53
Thank you
Farmer Fred 11:55
916-292-8964 Thank you so much, Debbie Flower. I love solving problems with you. Thank you.
Debbie Flower 12:02
Thank you.
Farmer Fred 12:07
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Farmer Fred 13:06
We like to answer your garden questions here on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. We're bringing in a tree expert for this one, Pam Bone. She's a Sacramento County Master Gardener also an urban Forester, a member of the Sacramento Tree Foundation, and we're going to talk about tree parts, especially the mulch that you might get. Wendy writes in and asks: "I have noticed that several of the gardeners keep talking about mulching with compost. I have always thought of mulch as bark. I thought bark mulch was supposed to hold the moisture and provide weed control. Does compost do the same thing? Are there circumstances where one is preferred over the other? Also, you mentioned tree trimmings as a preferred mulch. I have considered using a chip drop, but I wondered if someone is removing a sick tree and that could bring a disease to my yard. I've been hesitant to try this for that reason." All very good questions, Wendy. Pam Bone, where do you want to start? How about compost versus bark?,
Pam Bone 14:09
Yeah, let's just give the definition of what a compost is and mulch. And first of all, compost is something that has already been broken down. It's much smaller in texture. It's been composted. So it's plant material of all kinds. It could be bark, it could be, though, that takes a long time to compost most of the time. You think of grass clippings, you think of food scraps, you think of leaves and all of those things that you've composted. When you buy commercial compost, however, that may not be made up of your food scraps and other things. It's made up of sometimes yard waste, and sometimes it's made up of waste that comes out of plywood mills and other lumber operations that they've composted down so it's already more finished material that we don't normally use on top as a mulch. So what's a mulch then? Mulch is usually something used on top, it is usually a much larger component. You can have bark mulch, you can have wood chips that come from arborist tree trimmings operations. And I'm talking organic mulches. I mean, you can call anything that covers the soil a mulch. And so for instance, black plastic, which I don't recommend, or landscape weed fabric, which has, to me limited uses.
Farmer Fred 15:36
Or ground up tires.
Pam Bone 15:38
Yeah, ground up tires, I mean, all of that stuff that's inorganic. Organic is stuff that comes from a plant. And so mulch is something that basically you put on the surface of the soil. And I think it enhances the appearance of the soil and improves the conditions for the plants to grow in. Compost, on the other hand, is often worked into the soil, especially with vegetable gardens, or annual beds, or other things where you're putting stuff in on a regular basis, though, and maybe this is where she gets a little bit of the confusion. You and I are both real strong proponents of using compost as a top dressing. So even though I use a lot of wood chip mulch on the surface of the entire landscape everywhere, then I will often use my own compost and use it as a top dressing where I put it over the top of the woodchips, particularly around my fruit crops and fruit trees or the vegetables or the berries.
Farmer Fred 16:41
And then I water it in? Well actually, I do it the other way around, I will put the compost down first and then top it with the mulch knowing that the compost will break down and feed the soil quicker that way.
Pam Bone 16:52
Oh, exactly. If you're doing that for the first time, let's say that you haven't put your mulch down yet. But wood chips in my landscape usually are on for at least a couple of years before I have to refresh them and put more on and one of the cost benefits of putting any kind of organic mulch like that is to reduce the weeds. And once I've noticed that they're starting to get more thin and the light can get through and then it's not going to have the weed protection, then I'm going to put more on. So oftentimes I'm having to top dress over the top of the mulch because the woodchips are already down, or you're talking about before putting the woodchips down.
Farmer Fred 17:32
Do you then water that compost into the bark?
Pam Bone 17:35
No, I just wait until the next time that the irrigation system goes on or that it rains or whatever so and I usually do it in the late spring. It was actually already done about a month ago. And top dress all over everything. I grow a lot of raspberries and boysenberries and a lot of citrus, a lot of fruit trees. All of them get it and you know what it's good for? It's instead of fertilizing.
Farmer Fred 18:02
Yeah, exactly. The soil. The Compost Appreciation Society is already emailing me and they are saying why not just have compost as a mulch because we have it and the rain will work it into the soil. Why not just lay it on top of the soil?
Pam Bone 18:21
Well, that's fine.
Farmer Fred 18:22
Yeah, okay. But one good reason to cover it with another coarser bark or mulch is because weed seeds can easily get embedded in that fine compost, and all of a sudden you're pulling out weeds.
Pam Bone 18:36
Not only can it get embedded, but the fact is the compost is much thinner anyhow, who has that much compost to put it on as thick as you would mulch, you have to usually put on anywhere from three to four inches thick at least. And you want to make sure no light can get through. And compost is pretty valuable stuff. And even though I actually have about eight compost piles, most people do not do that much composting. And if you were to go purchase compost, you're going to be spending a lot of money. So Fred for the reason of getting weeds that couldn't get through on their own into the soil down below, or the ones that are already in the reservoir into the that are in the soil right now. And that go on, there's some light I can see and they they poke on through. So compost as a mulch by itself is usually not practical.
Farmer Fred 19:26
It's expensive to say the least. But it will work if you don't mind pulling weeds. But again, we both are big proponents of using ground up bark, chipped and shredded tree trimmings as a preferred mulch. Wendy in her letter to us talks about her hesitancy to using a chip drop which is what an arborist would drop off in your driveway of chipped and shredded tree parts. She's afraid that it could have been from a sick tree and that disease could be transferred to her yard and that she's been hesitant to try for this reason. Do you want to allay her fears?
Pam Bone 20:04
Definitely. For the most part, I would not be concerned at all, almost 99% of the time. Now, depending on where you live, and knowing your own diseases and insects and that that might infest your trees, you do need to find that out. So for instance, here in California, not in our area, but it in Southern California, they have a problem with a particular kind of shot hole borer. And so they specifically say that you either need to chip up your tree into really tiny little pieces to make sure the little borers don't stay alive inside those chips, or you need to cover the stuff and solarize it or basically steam it and try to make sure that you've killed off any of the insects that are there. And there's a couple of different borers that might do that. And some depending on what state you live in, you might find that you've got a borer or some sort of other thing that you have to do for that specific tree, if you know that's a problem in your area. It is the same thing with fungus. Occasionally, there may be some specific kind of fungus that is a problem in your area. But the general type things, if the tree just died, and you didn't know why it died, most of the time, that is not a problem at all. In fact, dead trees make very good mulch because they're nice and dried out. And they are just excellent for chipping up and, and work out very, very well. In fact, a dead tree or a tree in the winter months doesn't have leaves in it so that you don't get a big giant stewpot full of leaves in your mulch pile. So I've been putting down arborist type wood chips for the last 40 plus years in my landscape. And I've never ever brought in any kind of insect or disease from every single kind of tree you can even imagine that have come. Now there's occasionally that you will say, maybe you don't like a particular item that comes from a tree. And Fred, I know you're notorious for saying, "I do not want those spiny balls from the liquid Amber".
Farmer Fred 22:21
Amen to that.
Farmer Fred 22:22
Or perhaps off of a sycamore tree, and you don't like those that are going to be spread around your landscape, then you might say, Oh, please don't bring a load like that. Now here living in California, I will specify, gosh, if you've cut down a redwood, could you bring that because they last forever? And the chips are absolutely phenomenal. But that's limited to those that live in California. Yeah, I would say that for the most part. Just understanding if you've got any news bulletins from your area about specific kinds of pest problems that you have to treat them differently, that you have to chip it, you can't transport it, or you know specifically otherwise, don't worry about it. Just use them. They're fine, they work great.
Farmer Fred 23:09
Contact your local tree company and see if they have a chip drop program because they may be very glad to drop off a load into your driveway without any questions at all. So you might want to give them a call and see if they do provide a chip drop service. Pam Bone, urban Forester, Master Gardener member of the Sacramento Tree Foundation. Thanks so much for the good advice about compost and mulch.
Pam Bone 23:32
Well thank you very much for having me, Fred. I'm very passionate about trees and I'd be happy to come back and give even more information about how to keep your trees healthy, safe and happy.
Farmer Fred 23:45
Here on the Garden Basics podcast, we like to talk with the superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum, Warren Roberts. He always has a Plant of the Week for us. And Warren, here is the Plant of the Week that I think shouldn't be on the fringes of the nursery. It should be up front and center and maybe people will want to take a look at the fringe tree, especially since it comes from many places in the United States. Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas.
Warren Roberts 24:14
Yes. And with fringe like these who needs enemies .Chionanthus retusus is the Chinese fringe tree. But the name Chionanthus, We talked in the past about Chimonanthus, like chim chiminey. This is Chionanthus, Chionanthus retusus the Chinese fringe tree. It's a small tree in the olive family, in fact it produces an olive-like fruit. It has the whitest flowers, the most pure white flowers of almost anything I know. There's no pink, there's no green. It's just pure, pure white, and it forms like a cloud of white flowers in the springtime. It's not been is easy to find until sort of recently, during the current decade, you can get it at nurseries. It has attractive bark, kind of pale tanbark. With a netlike pattern, the fruit is slight blue, and produce sometimes in abundance and never enough to be a real nuisance, I'd say.
Farmer Fred 25:21
It's not an overwhelming tree or shrub. It gets, what, maybe 18 to 20 feet tall, if that?
Warren Roberts 25:27
Yeah, it's not really very tall. So it's kind of easy to tuck into a garden. If you want a small deciduous tree, the advantage of deciduous trees that is to say in this case, trees that lose their leaves in the in the winter time, is that it lets in the winter sun, so you'd think you'd want an evergreen tree, but that doesn't work very well, if you want winter sunshine. So this is a good example of a rather small shade tree, which has beautiful flowers. Occasionally it will give a kind of a yellow sometimes pinkish fall color, not much. That's not its strong suit, the leaves are attractive, the flowers are just gorgeous. And it's called fringe tree because the flowers, the petals are very, very, very long and narrow for the size of the flower. It's a very attractive flower and gosh, I'm very fond of the tree myself. Now there is a relative of this Chinese Fringe tree, native to the eastern US from Pennsylvania to Florida, to Texas, and that's Chionanthus virginicus, which blooms later. It is more of a shrub than a than a tree usually. And the flowers are abundant again, like a cloud. But the flowers are kind of greenish white. It is very attractive, though we're greenish, grayish white and it's just called fringe tree in its native range. It's also called Old Man's beard because of the gray white color of the flowers, and again, the petals are very, very string-like. So both of these are very attractive plants and unusual. So you know, you'd be the first on your block to have one. You know, it's a funny thing about successful plants. Often the plants are so successful in the garden, that they become common, and then people don't appreciate them as much. I remember the late Lester Roundtree living in Carmel and she lived, Oh gosh, didn't she live to be 100? At any rate, towards the end of her life, she slept much of the time. And then when she was up, she was just bright and sparkling personality. She had come home from being invalid. And she looked out on the the porch and her sister in law had planted geraniums. And she staggered back and she said, "Oh, geraniums, we've gone common." I think it'll be a while before Chinonanthus retusus and Chionanthus virginicus become common. But they're certainly worth thinking about when you're planning a landscape.
Farmer Fred 28:12
Warren, let's talk a little bit about the University of California Davis Arboretum. The COVID-19 situation has put its annual plant sale in sort of an online situation. And this might be something for those of you who are listening to the Garden Basics podcast say within 50 miles or so of Davis, to take advantage of is the online plant sales that are going on during April and May at the UC Davis Arboretum. It's a rather extensive list of plants, isn't it Warren?
Warren Roberts 28:43
Oh yes. There's hundreds and hundreds of different things where they're mostly grown right here in the Central Valley of California with with It's a challenging climate and water. So yeah, so many different kinds of things, shrubs, perennials, even a few trees, succulents. It's a wonderful, wonderful list of plants and you can get it online.
Farmer Fred 29:05
Find out more about the online plant sales going on there and the times of the sales and what you have to do to pick them up at the Arboretum website, which is arboretum.uc davis.edu. The fringe tree, Chionanthus, it's the Plant of the Week. Warren Roberts. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Warren Roberts 29:26
You're welcome, Fred. I appreciate the opportunity.
Farmer Fred 29:32
Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday and is brought to you by Smart Pots. It’s available just about anywhere podcasts are handed out. And that includes Apple podcasts, I Heart Radio, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast, Podcast Addict, CastBox and Google podcasts. And for Northern California gardeners, check out this podcast: the Green Acres Garden Podcast with Farmer Fred, also available wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, subscribing and leaving comments. We appreciate it.
