Learn from Angelee Kirkland about how to plan, select, prepare, and plant a backyard vegetable garden. She’ll be discussing expected yields, layout, soil prep, planting, and care.
#shonnardsnursery #howtogardening #vegetablegarden #ediblegardening #springgarden #planting
All right so today we’re going to get talk about starting a vegetable garden which there’s a lot of basic information involved in that and it’s gonna um I’m gonna kind of nail it at you I’m trying to make it as entertaining as I can but uh if you have
Any questions don’t hesitate to ask I’m happy to hear them and try to make things a little more clear where I maybe skipped over something so what is a vegetable garden uh growing vegetables either for subsistence which is totally feeding your whole family on it or supplemental which is generally
What we’re going to be talking about which is just a few things you know buy your Roma uh grow your Roma of heads of Roma rather than buying them from the store it is much easier than you might think so I like to encourage people to not be discouraged because it’s just get
Your hands dirty you’ll be surprised what you can make happen uh it’s also really great for your mental and physical health um I’m getting a question would I share my slides after this meeting um this whole video will be uploaded to YouTube in a matter of days and that will be the
Easiest way to probably re reference um if you’d like you could always email me too and I’ll see what I can do for sharing so where do we want to grow our vegetable garden we’re really looking ideally at full sun a lot of these things are going to
Need uh six eight hours of direct sunlight to be able to produce uh fully for you and in our summers here in the wamit valley we have a really semi-short growing period before the rain starts setting in before the cold hits so our vegetables really have to do a lot of
Work for us in the main Burling season you want to use uh ingr planting if you’ve got the space raised beds that they’re kind of nice for drainage and helping your back out a little bit uh if you’re like me you’re going to be using a lot of container gardening
Because you don’t have the land you’re may be renting and want to take everything with you when you go uh greenh houses are really nice for early and late starting or winter growing really use whatever you got um this picture down below is a real picture of someone’s Garden where they
Just had one of those back patio areas and they managed to grow mass amount of vegetables in their tiny little space so the what we’re going to be looking at is vegetables cruly vegetable gardening uh we’re going to break them down into annuals and perennials annuals is generally what
We’re looking at for our summer gardening period your lettuces radish broccoli chared peas and kale things that are going to kind of die back when the growing season is done and won’t come back likely uh the perenials are things like artichoke asparagus rhubarb horseradish things that live in your garden for a
Long period of time they you’ll see them pop back out of dormy Springtime going into summer when really anytime I keep talking about summer like it’s our main growing season it is because it’s hot but you can grow vegetables any season of the year right now in Spring you’re planting for summer uh
Harvests um we’re still kind of in our uh Frost zone so I know this week was incredibly warm 70 Dees is kind of outrageous but um we might still see some nights of frost and that’s something to be aware of when you’re handling with sensitive uh plant material little
Babies in the summertime you’re going to be doing a lot of your planting for uh fall harvests these plants are going to be really heat tolerant if not heat loving like tomatoes and melons and squash uh in the fall you’re going to be planting winter crops which again need
To be frost tolerant uh we’re going to look at them to over winter through our harsh Winters uh for a winter or a spring Harvest so let’s first talk about spring summer crops these are a lot of the things you’re going to be actively seeing right now and the things you can
Get your hands dirty in on uh pretty much immediately uh I’ve got these little asterisks here one asterisk uh can be direct seated mid-march two asterisks can be seated late January early February so uh right now you can be getting started on your potatoes peas radishes
Beets carrots all of these things are a little um cold hearty for this beginning period uh the rest of them you’re going to want to if you’re getting started on them you’re going to want to be starting them indoors for transplanting to give them a little bit more of a stronger
Start uh this is an example of what your bed might look like at this period um you can see cabbages kalees and um violas and pansies summer fall crops again you’re really heat loving crops tomatoes cucumbers Peppers squash greens beans melons and corn here in the wut valley our last
Hard Frost day is April 15th that’s around 28 degrees that’s when the ground will still get pretty cold um and your plants will be unhappy at that point but you can uh push it if you’d like um because the last light frost that we can
Expect is May 15 so that’s kind of a transition period in between the frost periods that you you can push it if you’d like but if you want to play it safe really just wait a little bit longer the heat loving crops with the Asis next to him on this page really
Would rather be planted later when it really warm um May 15th uh to June um it’ll feel a little hard to put the brakes on and um on your tomatoes and stuff but if you were to start a set at um at that period or like now you started them now or it
And then wait waited until it actually got warm out and then put another tomato of the same size you’d actually see that warm weather tomato kind of probably outdo the other one just cuz they love the heat these are vegetables that we love to eat in the summer we sell a lot of
These gallon sized you’ll see those so um if you didn’t want to do your starts you know you can always buy a foot long plant from here us here at sh so the ones that are already in the container like that picture of your Tomatoes you could plant them now because I’m
Starting to see them out um you’re they’re going to want to be protective so tomatoes are incredibly heat loving you put them out now they’re going to they’re going to struggle if you have a greenhouse that’s that’s an exception to where you can start to um push it a little bit
Fall winter crops that we love to see garlics onions shallots leaks all of these things are incredibly cold hearty and some of them will over winter for spring Harvest um there’s not a lot of really great growing days through our winter time so they really take advantage of of
Our random sunny days if we do end up getting a few days of really great weather during our winter time that’s a good time to maybe think about liquid fertilizing um say your garlic now now is a really great time to be liquid fertilizing garlic because it’s still a
Little cold but 70 degree weather every once in a while they do a lot of a lot of growing with that little bit of window they’re allowed so my goals and my focus of today is to really try to help create a strong basic Foundation of your understanding of the
Vegetable garden we’ll be focusing mostly on the annual vegetables that will switch over with the different seasons I’m going to include tips and tricks on how to navigate the early climate and weather of our area and help you feel a little more confident on getting maybe a little earlier season of a
Start um talk a little bit more about the transition from Winter crops into these spring and summer crops and to do this we will be discussing starting seeds indoors versus direct seeding or starting seeds versus transplanting we’ll try to go over a little bit of everything so right now um I’ve included
These pictures right here because this is kind of what this transition of at this moment is going to look like these are colder season crops in here um my gosh this little bar keeps showing up on my screen sorry and this is you know we’re going
To be going into still a little bit cooler season like your peas and your kale there at this point if you wait a couple weeks you can start your seeds now wait a couple weeks and get your start more warm loving props in then so where do I start I really recommend
Planning any little bit of planning you can give yourself uh you’ll be doing yourself a favor as you can maximize the use of your area maximize your yield and productiv productivity while minimizing the amount of effort that you have to put in after all we have to enjoy working in our
Gardens so take not to your space uh think about your sun availability where you have more sun in your garden where you have less um full sun you know you’re obviously want going to plant going to want to plant your sun loving crops your Tomatoes strawberries squashes
Melons um your leafy greens can kind of get pushed maybe over into little shadier regions how much space do you have for these mature plants they grow they grow a lot and when you look at them in those tiny little sixpack trays they they’re just so tiny you’re you’re like why would it
Recommend planting it three feet apart well you’ll know by the end of the summer why um where are you growing this is going to influence how you tackle your vegetable garden a lot are you going to be using containers rais beds greenhouse and ground gardening what kind of work do you have
To do before you can get started um and you got to make sure that you can water this thing in the summertime uh whether that be by hand can you can you Huff your um little watering cans from the sticket or are you going to have to set up some sort of
Um irrigation system for yourself so that you can leave on vacation in the de of summer or not worry about having to water um consistently through the summer because it is a real it’s a real deal once that heat starts to set in figure out what you want to grow what
Uh what’s important to you what can you handle space and labor when and how often would you like to harvest how much do you want to eat um would you rather do perennials or would you rather do animals put a little more effort in for more continual Harvest
Um and staggered planting is also something you can consider you know uh seed every week so that you can Harvest your lettuce every week is something you can think about doing I also recommend crop rotation especially if you’re doing um raised bed gardening or gardening for long period of time in the same
Space of soil if you’re doing container garden you can just kind of toss out your soil put in new stuff but your raised beds and your native soil needs you needs to be consistently worked and thought about uh so you’re not depleting what’s available to your plants and that you’re just
Adding into your soil to make it better and better over time uh so to talk a little bit more about crop rotations we’re going to talk about uh the families of the main vegetables in the garden so uh there’s six major families in the vegetable garden there’s more
Than that but I am only going to talk about six today you want to do crop rotation for your soil health and pest disease management it’s not it’s not you know it’s not not black and white you know it’s not you’re going to do this so you can
Prevent getting that is the idea but it’s not like if I don’t do this I’m going to get it like if you plant your tomatoes in the same spot every year the bugs that eat your tomatoes are going to know I can find a tomato there every
Year um and tomatoes they’re going to eat the same thing out of that soil every year and eventually they’re going to just deplete the soil of what it likes to eat from the levels it can eat um and tomatoes in particular can have some pretty bad diseases and that
Can be soil born and live in the soil so by doing crop rotations it’s just a prevention of any issues you may see and any thought that you can put into it is helpful for your garden and your should so first we’re going to talk about the
As asri cases um also don’t mind my PR pronunciation I’m terrible at it but we’re gonna give it a go so the daisy family is easier to say uh here you’ll find your lettuce your artichokes and sunflowers uh your it might sound a little funny like well how is lettuce
And sunflower a part of the same family well you you’ll notice they their key characteristics when they start to bolt or flower in your garden and you can kind of see how those the heads of those flowers seem very similar it’s very Daisy like uh this family has the highest
Number of species and all the plant families so you’re going to find many weeds in the garden with the same family brasic cases is your broccoli family your cabbages mustards radish rud Baga and turnip the really really cool thing about the broccoli there’s a really couple really cool things about
The broccoli family but um is their fumiga qualities in the garden so you can if you think about broccoli you can kind of think about how smelly it is and pests notice that too um when the cell cell walls of these plants are ruptured it releases uh toxins and
Smells into the garden that pests fungi bacteria nematodes and weeds don’t like so a lot of farms will use this intentionally in their crop rotations uh one of their main characteristics are their swollen tap roots and herbaceous Woody stems this allows them to be harder in the cold
You’ll find so these are all really great winter plants um they also have really intense root systems so they do really great for um breaking up compaction and stuff the cucerit uh whoa I hit the wrong button cucerit the gourd family cucumbers melons squashes and pumpkins um you can kind of tell they
All kind of grow the same way they’re character characterized by their trailing Vines and their climbing tendrils they have a large vegetative mass that can be used to shade out weeds in the garden that’s one of the few intentional thoughts behind them another thought is they are very heavy feeders
With high water needs as they produce extremely large fruits um so it’s a good idea to plant them after light feeders like your carrots and your leafy greens or after nitrogen fixers like your legumes then we’ll talk a little more about legumes the legume family beans peas and
Peanuts it’s a good idea to use these in the GU guys in the garden before and after heavy feeding plants or after they create really neat root systems with ryms that have nitrogen fixing bacteria and fungi in them uh which doesn’t sound very interesting to us but it is
Incredibly great for the soil so a lot of people will just um till in their legumes right into their soil just let them be some organic material into your soil the roots are really what you want to keep in there because that’s what’s doing all this hard work um it takes
Nitrogen from like the air and converts it into usable material in the soil for plants for future plants so it has a really amazing place in the garden the Garden in legumes to PE and fun so the tomato and the nightshade family is one to really pay attention to
These are your potatoes eggplants and peppers they tend to be pretty sensitive to viral diseases and pests um this is why we really use good crop rotation particularly for this family say um fun fact about them is they have the most utilized they’re the most utilized plant family in the world but
They also contain deadly toxins uh deadly plants like badon mandr tobacco and catsin so be careful with your night shades um I’ve heard don’t let your uh um like chickens fluff in the green part of your tomatoes and stuff because uh they can be the night just the night
Shades can be a little toxic and I wanted to throw the rose family in here too these are your strawberries your raspberries and your blackberries they’re often a little more long term in the garden um and they are related to the Rose which is why they get that really fragrant um smell to
Them and they’re often coupled with spines to to herbivores because they’re highly edible so if you just incorporate some of the thinking of what what I just said uh into any part of your garden it will help with the overall health of future plants and of your garden in the
Future yes do you all uh you can do what works for you um spreading it out uh is best uh you don’t have to use all six families but just any sort of intentional thinking about it you’ll be doing yourself a favor I I think you probably said this already when you’re
Talking you talking rotate the whole family not just certain class within that uh correct okay yes the members of the same family share a lot of pests and diseases all right so when to get started it depends there’s a lot of limiting factors this especially this time of
Year for us uh temperature being one of the main limiting factors so you’re just going to have to start thinking if you’re going to direct seed into your cold outdoor soil or if you’re going to start indoor for later transplanting outside either way I’m going to give you
Some tips tools for timing and how to help make that work for you first we’ll talk about direct seating this is referring to putting planting seeds directly into the soil of its final maturing place you’re not going to move it it’s there until it’s done uh germination of that seed
Requires ad adequate temperatures and moisture um only needs sunlight post emergence once it has green growth on that seed uh the adequate temperatures and mo uh it varies depending on what kind of seed you’re looking at and the seed packet you’re using will tell you the adequate temperature you you
Need however uh generally most seeds require a soil temperature above 55 degrees to do their germination um and this is soil temperature this isn’t um air air temperature soil temperature this time of year may be a little warmer than you might think it is uh that’s when it’s a
Good idea to even get out there with a thermometer and see what you’re working with uh again last hard frost date April 15th last soft frost date May 15 so we might have a late Frost and you know just got to keep it in mind this time of year it can be a
Gamble your seed packets will really tell you all of these specifics the soil depth soil temperature spacing emergence date how long you can expect to see it after putting it in the ground and watering it and how long it takes to mature before you can eat
It here is a list of some direct um seeding crops that you can do January February March April um but really like again you want to be pushing your cucumbers melons into that late May mid late May indoor seating you get quite a bit more flexibility um this is the idea that
You’re going to be starting your seeds inside with the intent to transplant them later some plants do not like this but uh they can tolerate it but will likely Thrive with direct seating again your packet will tell you this um this is because their Roots can be a little more
Sensitive germination requires adequate temperature and moisture sunlight post emergence same with indoor ones so however because you can provide the Heat and moisture inside your temperature or inside your home a little better than you can outside uh sunlight becomes your major limiting factor once it has um
Germinated do you really want to use sterile soil when you’re gerting your seeds inside and that refers to sterile for nutrients and sterile from any weed seeds or um fungus micro that might be in there and this will just stop you from setting it off on a a bad foot by
Accidentally introducing something into the system it also is really light and Airy and seeds really like really light Airy um soil to be able to push through because they’re very tiny little guys um because the soil is sterile you want to keep an eye out for these for
True leaves so the little seed will push out first uh its first tiny little leaves that kind of look like nothing all all little tiny seeds basically look the same they’ll put out a second set of leaves that are called their true leaves and maybe are a little more identifiable
To your eye and look a little different those are when they’re going to be start getting a little hungry and that’s sign that they need more fertilization or to be repotted up slowly I have a schedule here for starting your veggies inside I believe this is a
Handout we should be able to find here at chard’s and I also have one prayer the people um this is slightly different one this is a really cool one so that are here I can send you out with this one uh side is a main season crops so this is
The summer season crops on the back side it’s when to plant early season crops and when to plant fall and winter crops it’s a really nice breakdown of just about everything so some tips and tools for early seasoning gardening I’ll suggest um green houses if you can have them
They’re really great for increasing humidity and temperature both factors needed for adequate germination uh this time of year you can be using soil covers or dark Fabrics to help preheat the soil in your ground or raised beds you might be seeing that in the farms around Corvalis right now just
Getting ready to start planting it’s just like a preheat on in your oven it’s a little preheat on your on your growing beds now is a really great time to be amending your uh soils for a desired texture for direct seeding like I said seeds really
Like a light fluffy Airy soil um and after a winterlong um drenching of rain soils are getting really compact um so it’s a good idea to do some amending or getting in there and help breaking it up so it gives them a a good chance to poke
Out now is also really a great time to be using things like May or cloes to help protect from freezes ice hard rain and and potential snow we’re supposed to start raining again here soon a lot of things planted love the rain to get watered in but too
Much rain it and you just will Dam physically damage the plant H these are two things we sell here the Harvest guard that you can see and the the Poes you can also use like a cut up your milk jugs and it creates a tiny little Greenhouse for your
Plant some useful indoor seed starting supplies you might want to think about getting is our seed starting soil again it’s sterile seed starting trays inserts and domes this is to help uh keep them separated keep and keep them moist heating mat help uh help with that desirable
Temperature um and labels is something I would highly recommend because like I said when they’re just little tiny babies a lot of them look a lot a lot alike and you might be kicking yourself in the later thinking of well which one’s which I guess we’ll just have to plant in SE
It’s not the worst thing ever but and the lights which are nice too if you’re going to be doing a lot of seating and they can get the seeds like I said um indoor seeding you your biggest um issue is providing enough light once they’ve popped out of germination
They’ll tend to get really really long and really laggy if they don’t have enough light and having grow lights is one way to help prevent that from happening as we generally want to keep them nice strong compact plants question would you recommend a grow light over just having by a window that
Gets lot of light um so uh windows will work if you can have it like smashed up in there but you’ll even still see them kind of reaching towards the window every day you might see yourself having to turn it so that it reaches the other way um and those are
Signs that it’s hungry for more light when it’s doing that beaching thing so it’s just work with what you got uh if you got a window you can make it work uh if you have the ability to include a little light into your seed starting area your plants will thank you well I’m
Also curious because um it can get yeah yeah that’s a also a thing with lights too um sometimes it you you can set them real close to your your little plants then your plants will maybe grow faster than you intend and they’ll grow right into the light and can burn
Themselves so it’s something you got to pay attention to either way if it’s getting hot enough in your window to burn them yeah that’s what I was thinking actually was the window window yeah get can get yeah this time of year shouldn’t be an issue uh I
Wouldn’t think um middle of summer or once we actually start getting pretty dang warm you might maybe be able to pull them away from the window or throw your little starts outside so how do I plant it well you’re going to have to get dirty um don’t be afraid to push through
Uh and fail I mean don’t be afraid to fail just push through and you’ll be happy about what you are able to accomplish and if anything it’s a learning experience if if you don’t get the outcome that you were expecting um we’ve got a question here on how
Close the grow lights need to be um I’ll be honest I’m not entirely sure most gr lights have instructions on the distance of the light and the color of the light because now they’re multicolor LED lights so you can have either red green or blue so you can
Adjust the color so they’ll recommend certain colors for certain plants at certain times okay okay so if you’re trying to get the bolt and get a nice head on it you’ll change the color and it’s a a frequency of light changes so yeah and then as they get taller here
Got to make your your lights need to be adjustable I have GRE they’re I have them all adjustable so you can raise them or over so when they’re starting yeah you’re going to have them down pretty close to them maybe four Ines but when they get taller
Your plants up to about 8 in you you got to keep raising it up until you’re ready to move them thats side or you keep them in there all year right around if you don’t get it too hot that’s Bott with Greenhouse during summer yeah it’ll cook up I learned last
Year so you want to be able to move them out or shade them I shaded the whole greenhous yeah and it still didn’t help I lost that’s a really good point the instructions are usually with the gr lights if not whoever sells it usually there’s somebody around them thank you very any other
Question all right oh yeah so little more about soil preparation um you’re going to want to try to keep things a little bit clean um this help reduce pests and diseases by picking up old leaves off the ground especially if you know they were diseased the year
Before um think about tilling in cover crops paying attention to the timing of cover crops if you let your cover crops go to flour they become a weed um know your soil native soils especially here in the wamt valley have very very heavy clay um it can lack
Nutrient availability and drain AG so the really cool thing about our native soils is it has the nutrients in there it’s just locked up tight in the clay and inaccessible to the plants raised beds have really great drainage um they can struggle with um nutrient density whether that be not enough or
Too much like if if you keep dumping the same fertilizer in there every year and planting the same plant every year it’s going to be maybe a little depleted of one type of nutrient in there that the the plant specifically likes whereas it might have a an abundance of too much in another
Area containers are entirely dependent on inputs what you put in there um growing or soil amendments wise so amendments is a a word we use for the different types of soils we sell here at the shinard center um you can use them to change the qualities of your
Soil things like drainage pH moisture retention and nutrients whatever your goal is for that soil there’s an amendment to help you get there um I recommend mounding especially in Native clay soils as it helps increase your drainage and think about your soil temperatures uh whether it’s what you’re
Given or if you want to to manipulate it a little bit little more about native soil versus raised beds so again our area high in clay but really high in nutrients too often has too great of moisture retention so or not enough in the summer it’s just clay it starts cracking in the
Summer in the winter it’s overs saturated uh it’s very nutrient dense however it’s locked in by the clay and inaccessible to the plants this is where you need to add in organic matter the breaking down of this organic material will help create available bonds between the soil and the plant and the
Nutrients the great thing about planting in Native soils is there’s less temperature fluctuations it’ll take a little longer to warm up but it’ll stay a little longer in the fall uh another really great thing is it has a natural reservoir for water and nutrients of the plants you put in
They’re able to scavenge outside the resources of what you give it so it’s able to reach into the surrounding soils see what it can find uh if you’re this is um a little soil survey off of the nrcf the natural resources soil Sur conservation website um it’s there’s a
Link right there but you can also just Google web soil survey and it’ll come up and you can specifically look into any area and see what the standard soil makeup of that area is so this is a picture of the shinard area and there’s two main clay or soil types here in this
Area the Dayton silt Loom and the wamit silt Loom uh on the website if you were to click on those these are um both links right there and it’ll tell you much more information about your soil um probably more than you can understand but it’s really really great um and I’ve
Got this little blurb here if you’re interested in learning more about soil I highly recommend watching our um we did a class with osu’s soil science teacher James Cassidy um and he talks a lot about soil and how how it works how it’s manipulated in um it’s it’s really great um the problem
With that video is the audio is a little messed up so it’s kind of hard to hear but if you put the Clos captioning on the subtitles it it makes it a little easier to pay attention uh and it’s very much worth a worth a look uh rais beds things to know about
Them they will warm up sooner than our native soils uh they can tend to struggle with moisture and temperature consistency it can be completely saturated on the bottom and maybe dry on the top it’s just something you have to think about they tend to be hungrier and thirstier than our native soils they
Don’t have um that natural I mean if you have a closed bottom uh raised bed they can kind of scavenge into the native soil below them but sometimes they’re closed off so they’re just again given what you give them um we used to have these nice raed B here we don’t have them
Anymore but uh those were those were closed bottom ones they were put on right on uh the asphalt or uh I believe so they didn’t weren’t able to scavenge for the native soils around them so as you’re working in your garden uh these some valuable soil amendments
I’d like to mention uh I’d also like to recommend keeping track of your additives and amendments don’t always use the same thing as different plants use different things out of the soil at different rates this is also the argument for crop rotation um we sell a few different just soils
Good to grow in um things that will be great for your containers potting soil Blue Ribbon blend SE Coast compost um the garden soil and raised bed planting mix is something you can also put into your raised beds to help grow in a lot of amendments uh that will help some soils
That you can put in to help create different um qualities you’re looking for uh to help increase drainage or moisture attention the soil building conditioner is really great we recommend that a lot here it’s our biggest bag and it helps with breaking up clay soils the acid planting mix helps change
The pH this thing is really great for blueberries aelas and rodendan that like acid so and then the Harvest Supreme is also really great in your vegetable bed as it’s got 15% chicken manure in it which is a lot of added nitrogen you can also use things for
Your pH adjusting um sulfur lowers pH acid planning mix will also lower it lime will help raise it fertilizers uh the three little numbers on the fertilizer bags stand for nitrogen phosphorus potassium NPK you might hear it referred to uh fertilizers they can be plant specific uh allpurpose works too allpurpose
Um I the three I included here are Tomato vegetable and herb butd and Bloom and all purpose are the ones I’d recommend in the vegetable garden especially the um the tomato and button Bloom for your vegetables that you want to to bloom repeatedly like strawberries squashes if you’re trying
To do leafy greens I maybe would stick with like your allpurpose as you don’t want your leafy greens to flour that’s when it’s bolting and no longer delicious I wanted to talk a little bit about granular versus liquid as well uh granular is a really nice long lasting
Fertilizer um very consistent you just throw it in your hole at planting or scrape it into the top of the soil and it will last like 3 months just consistently feeding your plant that liquid is a very quick fertilizer it’s very easily uptaken by the plant and once it’s gone it’s basically gone
So right now at planting it’s great to use granular but on our really nice sunny days because we’re not quite as warm as we want it to be a liquid works really great because it’s really easily taken up by the plant again interested in learning more soil
About soil look us up on our YouTube page when you’re direct seating you really want to make sure that your soil is moist and fluffy uh sock soil preferred those seeds really need to be able to poke out um pay attention to your seating times some can handle colder
Temperatures some really really like and need that heat always read your seeding instructions on your packets plant at the appropriate depths and spacing um keep in mind seed germination rate it’ll say this on the packet um how many you can expect out of a certain set to actually germinate and then if it’s
An old seed packet you can expect that number to get a little worse over the years uh you can always overseed and thin later for Yummy Little Sprouts I love broccoli sprouts they taste amazing better than actual broccoli heads in my opinion be sure to water in your nude
Seedlings they really need that moisture and beware of cold snaps this can kill your seed it can make it rot burying it too deep this can also rot your seed seeding Too Close sometimes they can get upset about that um and then germination rate thinking about thinning as you go if you need
To indoor seeding and transplanting is kind of a one uh one to process here so read your planting instructions on your packets they often give indoor seating instructions as well as direct seating start your germination in sterile soil um once green Sprouts appear provide as much Sun and light as
Possible L will start to stretch out a little bit indoors if you don’t have lights uh once those true leaves appear nutrients are needed uh you can think about transplanting into a slightly bigger pot with potting soil or think about planting directly into its final growing space liquid fertilizer again is quick
And easy absorbed by the plant and granular is more is consistent and nice after transplanting um buying grown treay packs is easy I mean someone’s already done the hard germination part for you uh there’s no shame no shame in that but be sure to bury your plants
Close to the soil level at which they are at in the treay packs or that they poked out of your uh your soil at home uh you can put organic granular fertilizer in the hole at planting as well as on top of the soil um compact
The root make sure the soil is compacted so that the roots touch the soil and supports it and always water it in I would also I said organic granular fertilizer here too because um some stronger things can burn new and delicate plants so I like the granular
Organic um especially the stuff we sell the GB organic stuff it it’s not not going to burn your plants all right maintaining uh getting the plant into the ground is half the battle keeping it alive is the real trick um we’ll talk a little bit more about it
But also I wanted to shove this what to know about pollinators in here get on my little Soap Box um always always keep your local pollinators in mind when you’re doing anything in the garden especially chemical application um you could if you’re applying chemicals inappropriately you
Can poison birds and bees or you know neighbors stealing out of your vegetable garden just when you’re growing food you have a responsibility to make sure that it’s not toxic to the wildlife around you pollination is required for some producing plants but not all of them uh
Being like leaf few greens you don’t want them flowering you don’t want them bolting you don’t want them pollinated uh cross pollination is especially important in squash melons and tomatoes um dble quadruple asteris is your Tomos Tomo is kind of like a fruit producing Tree in that it needs two
Different varieties of a Tomo to produce Tomos so if you if you’ve been trying Tomos and you haven’t been getting any fruit um this may be your reason why uh I also wanted to include these easy peasy pollinator practices that we can employ in our garden that helps our bees in our
Area surprisingly one of the main things you can do in your garden to help your pollinators is to do nothing at all uh leave your branches in uh leaves and your trimmings out as uh bees can live in there um don’t trim your perennial stems and if you do you can
Leave a good stock on there some bees like to Nest inside for the winter don’t mow where you can uh and don’t weed where you can sometimes just giving their them their own area is great um leaving leave your bare soil alone sometimes we can beat oursel up
Because there’s that part of that Garden we’ve never gotten to and it’s just bare soil will make yourself feel a little bit better in knowing that a lot of our native bees are ground nesting bees that need empty bare soil to nest in to help with these uh soil nesting
Bees you can use drip irrigation um so that you don’t flood them out and you just keep the water where you need it on your plants native bees love uh plant native and pollinator plants bees go where the food is so they’re going to find your vegetables really regardless but it
Always helps to put a little bit in between uh especially things like your melons and your squash we planted a couple tiny Salvia plants in our squash out here and just had an amazing amount of yield uh and if you’re planting for thinking about the bees uh long longer
Term plants in your garden think about diversity um different bees like different things always follow your chemical directions keep your pollinators in mind and I thought I had a little zoom up on these guys too because Oregon has so many different kind of native bees uh there’s not just a honey
Honeybee is not native to our area it’s a European honeybee we have a lot of bumblebees bumblebees nest in the ground we have a lot of uh sweat bees we have a lot of bees that look like honey bees um I believe we have over 500 different types of bees in
Oregon so they’re big part of our garden whether we like it or not okay so weeding is a consistent chore in our garden healthy soil means happy plants which means weeds will want to grow there too um keep plants and weed or weeds six inches away from your uh Fring plants
That you’re trying to eat it’ll help them absorb more water and more um fertilizers without competing here’s some tips on how to minimize weeds uh mulching is really important in the garden two inches thick at least will help block out the light of the seeds of the weeds and we help
Try to keep them away I recommend watering at the root zones only or using drip irrigation because this will minimize water availability of the weed of your bed it’s a good idea to use weed barrier fabric especially if you really don’t want the weed this again reduces light availability consider cover cropping resting
Soils you can use different cover crops with different intents some can fix nitrogen the legume ones we talked about earlier some can be used to break up compaction some can be used to reduce pests and diseases and some are just great for adding organic material into your
Soil you must remove or till them in at the right times to avoid them becoming a weed um and we carry bulk seed and have a cover crop class on our YouTube page if you’re interested in learning more about that I included this picture again because I wanted to tell you about the
No no on it um I told you to water at the base of the plant but here I am just watering the the soil around the plant I did this for a nice Instagram picture but when I’m really watering my plants and raised beds I really get that head
Of that hose right at the base um because you can really tell the weed difference once you’ve cut down U from Watering your whole bed as a hole to just the root MK that you wanted at feeding is incredibly important for in the vegetable garden um as we have a
Very small growing window for things that we want to produce high yields it’s important to use a balanced granular at planting and that’s usually good enough especially for your leafy greens your long seasoned crops that are o over 50 days may want a second application of this granular
Fertilizer your early or late plantings can benefit from a liquid in addition to the granular and your heavy feeders which is your tomatoes and your squashies and your pumpkins will also benefit from uh these liquid applications as well um in the top right corner I have the allpurpose right next to the organic
High growth um that organic high growth is really great for green growth on plants which is great for your leafy greens um however it’s not as great for things like your tomatoes that you want to be blooming in order to produce lots of tomatoes yeah there we go watering needs this is something
You’re definitely going to have to think about in our area our native soils hold a lot more water than and will need watered only around two or three times a week in the dead of Summer much much less in Spring and fall we just we never get rain here in the
Summer hardly ever so you can’t be guaranteed you can’t be falling back on that different crops and different soils are going to have different water needs it’s just the way it is there’s no one- siiz fits all I recommend keeping the water off the leaves of your plant again
Uh recommending against this overall watering of your garden uh keeping the water off the leaves decreases your chance of disease and physical damage uh in our area we really struggle with like powdery mildew on things and that’s can be caused from an added amount of moisture on the leaves uh so
You can reduce your um chances of getting that by doing that in addition our summers are so hot so when it’s 100 degrees out and you’re watering all over your plants you might think you’re cooling it down but really you’re adding a bunch of tiny magnifying
Glasses to the plant and it will burn the plant um drip irrigation is really really great idea it’s efficient can be automated with a timer you don’t have to think about it instead it forget it and uh it’s great for the bees it’s great for the weaves not great for the weaves
Great for keeping the weeds out pests and diseases you’re likely going to run into into in the vegetable garden aphids slugs and beetles treat as you find them on on your plant U there’s not a whole lot of prevention that can be done except for maybe for your your
Slugs slugs really don’t like um hazelnut shells the filbert shells if you do a layer of that over top of your plants they’re not going to want to go over that physical barrier you can also use like copper stripping and stuff to keep the Slugs out um prevention is the best thing just
A crop rotation think about things uh give them adequate food and adequate water and I’ll will give the plant a very strong base to be able to fight off issues on its own we’ll often see animal pests in the garden uh here you’re going to have to use physical deterrence barriers
Sprinklers or bird tape to keep them out uh you can also use chemical deterrence things like bone meal is very smelly it smells like a dead animal to them they don’t want to go around or capin which is spicy so when a deer comes up and
Takes a bite off that plant it labels it in its brain that’s spicy and it’s less likely to come back and give it a taste this is especially effective on the little ones who are still learning I the uh bone meal or the capsacin the bone meal is kind of like a granular
Spread so it’s kind of an area the capsacin we sell it in a spray deter so that’ll go physically on the plant uh diseases you’re going to likely run into fungal diseases like our our powdery mildew if you can remove those sick Parts as you see them there’s a very
Short life cycle on powdery me do it’s about three days so you give it three days of sitting there in your garden it’s going to reproduce and throw out a new generation around viral diseases once you’ve got a viral disease it’s pretty much pretty much over you’re going try to get what
You can out of your plant but sometimes it’s just a just a dumpster plant at that point so you just want to learn about why it happened and try to prevent it in the future I created this really this is my own little Vin diagram I created here uh
This isn’t a so it’s not a foolproof thing but it’s gives you a really good idea on the symptoms you might be seeing and what might be causing them so for pests you’re going to see a possibly webbing yellow dotting that sticky um de tunnel boring holes white FL or even the bugs
Themselves uh diseases you’re going to see Brown dead tissue Brown streaking through the stems melting of the plant white dusting environmental issues these are like physical issues that are like the easiest thing to handle legginess reaching over underwatering uh Browning on the tips full Browning of the leaf
Um and you can see the connections environmental pests Browning tips it could be it could be either um smelly soil is another thing I like to point out we should all know what good soil smells like it smells just like nice dirt bad soil is going to
Smell like a dirty sink of dirty dish water that’s been sitting there for too long and you’re not you’ll know trust me um that can be either environmental from over watering or it could be a disease going through your soil uh hopefully overwatering you can just lighten up on your watering and
It’ll fix the issue deformed New Growth is another really great one to pay attention to that can be a sign of pests um but it can also be a dis a sign of disease for all of them you might see defoliating wilting yellowing stunted New Growth or even death so not a full
Proof thing but kind of gives you an idea we do a lot of um Diagnostics here at chard’s so you can always bring in a picture I recommend bringing in a picture and a leaf and that will help us figure out what’s going on with your plant and so that we can fix
It so next steps think about your maturity dates what open space are you going to have in about 60 days so what what can you look forward to in the next season’s crop think about your crop rotations and what’s available to you uh in that bre it’s 60 days from now it’s
Going to be dead of summer or Not Dead of Summer but close to it uh what issue what issues did you run into this year in your gardening did you have trouble with your consistent watering did you have trouble feeding were weeds your number one problem how
Can we address these issues next time but more importantly I like to think about looking back at what worked what harvests you liked what uh and what did you like about growing it because this is what really matters we really want to be able to enjoy what we’re doing or
There’s really no point in doing it because we can just go to the store and buy ahead of rain lettuce so you really got to enjoy what you’re doing to make it all worth it um and that is that’s it I just wanted to say thank you again for joining me I
Really appreciated you guys coming in you can find this video on the YouTube page or find any previous um classes yeah a couple chat messages come in thank you talk I’ve heard that tilling destroys soil structures how balance that with your need to add organic material and
Break up Clay so yeah tilling can destroy the soil structures which can reduce your amount of Iration and pores in the soil so if you watch the soil video I Really highly recommend it you find that uh just as important of soil what like what’s in the soil is like the
Lacking space of soil so like the pores in between the soil holds up just as much importance as the soil itself um so that’s where the person’s worried about is breaking up those pores and this will increase compaction and decrease availability of water and nutrients to the plant that’s um a
Totally valid idea to be worried about um some some Gardens like to employ a no tilling um kind of rule in their Garden where they just won’t ever hit it with the tillage you can balance that with adding the need to add organic material by using the cover crops I’d recommend
So if you’re really struggling with compaction you can use a soil or a cover crop um that will have giant Roots it’ll grow really deep into the soil creating much of those pore spaces and then you can just cut it cut the head off um take out
The top part of it and leave the roots to decay in the the soil and as those roots Decay it leaves behind all that empty space in behind it so it’s kind of kind of like an organic way of tilling I guess I mean tilling is organic but if
That makes sense I really bumbled my way through that so I would highly recommend watching the soil science video it is incredibly interesting and he’s a really entertaining um post did that make sense or did that bring up any other question all right