Fall Vegetable Gardening

Vegetable gardening does not have to end when summer does! Mark Lyons, an experienced garden coach, reviews how to prepare your garden for the fall, and discuss what vegetables are ideal for planting and harvest during this season. Grow a bountiful crop of delicious, sweet, crunchy vegetables for good healthful eating throughout fall and even into winter!
A recording of this program is available for two weeks.

Oh, no. It’s Well, there’s no way. Test check. Test one, two. All righty. Test one, two. Can people Is it coming through? Yeah, you should be good. Okay. Can everybody hear me? All right. So, for them, it’s just going to be your voice specifically presume. Gotcha. Gotcha. Hi, everybody. Uh, welcome in. We’re going to get started. My name is Chris. I’m your adult programs coordinator here at the Shamberg Library. Happy to spend another evening with you all here in person and of course on Zoom. I see a lot of familiar faces. So, we’re going to go through the same rundown that we always do. If you are in person, if you could take a moment to silence your cell phone and any other electronic device that may make noise during the program. Sounds and lights emitted by those devices are distracting to your fellow patrons as well as the speaker. If at any point during the program you need a restroom, you’ll find them located straight out this exit right here. ladies is immediately on the left. Gentleman’s is a little further down the hall and there is a water fountain located in between both if you need. All three doors to the Rasm room are unlocked on both sides so you can come in and out as freely as you need during the presentation. We will take questions at the end of the program. And for my friends here in person, if you have a question, if you could just do me a favor and throw your hand up high in the air, that way I can come over to you with my clip on. Don’t worry, I’ll take it off so I’m not leaning in your space. Um, and I’ll hold it by your mouth. That way, our online audience will be able to hear any of your questions and our speaker can focus on just answering and not have to worry about repeating. For our online audience, if you have questions for the speaker, don’t worry, you’re not left out. Just use the Q&A box or the chat box if you’d like um on Zoom and I’ll be fielding that throughout to make sure I see all the questions. And at the end during Q&A, I’ll make sure to field some of yours to our speaker as well. For our online audience, you’ll notice that closed captions have been enabled for your convenience, and you can turn those on or off as you wish using your Zoom toolbar. If you have any technical difficulties during the program, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. It’s probably best to use the Q&A. That way, you don’t get uh pushed out by if there’s an active chat this evening and I can go back and forth with you directly through the Q&A and help to solve the problem. I’m not a tech expert, but every now and then I have a trick up my sleeve. Now, I’ve already taken up too much of your evening. We’re not I’m not talking about uh vegetable gardening. Mark is. So, let me introduce Mark to everybody. Mark Lions, aka the garden trouidor, is a master gardener, consultant, and educator. He has been gardening since he was 10 years old, and his first success came when he grew a foot long, 2 and 12 lb cucumber and was featured in the local paper. Today, Mark runs a successful business called Green Thumb at Your Service, dedicated to inspiring and coaching people on growing their own food. Based in Palatine, Illinois, Mark travels around the country to deliver dynamic presentations on vegetable and mushroom gardening, harvest preservation, and home cheese. He is also an accomplished singer, songwriter, and performer who plays guitar, ukulele, and washboard. Everybody, Mark, thank you, Chris. That’s actually the second best introduction I’ve ever been given. The best was once no one was around, I had to introduce myself. Well, I’d like to welcome you to our presentation today on fall vegetable gardening. Um, when it comes to gardening, most people think of it as something that you do. You plant in the spring, you cultivate in the summer, you harvest in the fall, and then you’re all done. Not necessarily true. You can garden in the fall and sometimes even into the early days of winter. And we’ll talk more about that, but that’s what this presentation is all about. Vegetable gardening in the fall. Little bit about Well, Chris already introduced me, but I’ll just mention that I’ve been gardening since I was kneeh high to a grasshopper. I got my start when my parents had a vegetable garden, and they were nice enough to let my sister and me sharecrop a portion of it. And as we all got older, I did more of the labor. And then my parents were able to get all of the tomatoes and cucumbers they wanted with no work on their part. I also have a six years, six plus years experience as a management consultant, which essentially means that I’m qualified to tell people what to do. And lastly, I have a BS in agriculture when, as everybody knows, if you want a successful garden, it requires a lot of BS. And in fact, I’m actually predicting that next year will be an excellent year for gardening because next year will be an election year and Lord knows there’ll be BS all over the place. Fertility for the taking. So, what we’re going to talk about in our presentation, I’m going to give you a brief intro to fall vegetable gardening. Talk about the planning process, getting the site ready for planting, a little bit about your tools, the actual planting, talk about the uh soil, soil fertility and plant nutrition, control of diseases, weeds, pests, and animals. And then a little bit about if we have time, fall preparation for gardening next spring. All right, let’s start with a brief intro to fall vegetable gardening. Fall is actually a perfect time to grow vegetables. The reason why is that number one, the vegetables require no special care. Autumn conditions many time can be more favorable than summer conditions. A lot of the insect pests that plagued your garden in the summer, they’ve been through their life cycle. They’re all done. Um there’s more adequate rain. Um you have fewer weeds, as I said, fewer destructive insects. Also, fall grown vegetables generally tend to be more productive and have a higher canning and freezing quality. A lot of the vegetables that you harvest in the summer tend to be soft, not really suitable for canning or freezing. But the ones that you harvest in the fall have a higher sugar content. They’re firmer, much more suited for canning. If you get a little bit of a light frost, say in October, November, it’s going to kill your tomatoes, your peppers, your beans. On the other hand, your kale, your parsnip, your mustard not only will survive the light frost, but will actually taste better because these plants have a secret. They have sugar in their um in their tissues. So when the frost occurs, instead of the water in their tissues freezing and creating sharp ice crystals that pierce the cell walls, the sugar in their tissues acts like an antifreeze and lowers the freezing temperature or prevents it from freezing. Um, some vegetables like leaks, salsify, parsnips, you can mulch these and leave them in the ground and harvest them during the winter and early spring. If you have root crops like parsnip or leak in the ground, you can leave them in the ground. And in February, if you get a sudden hankering for parsnip leak soup, instead of putting on your coat, trudging over to the grocery store, hoping they have them, and then getting them, and coming back, all you got to do is go out to your backyard, dig up what you need. Just be careful what you say to people. Just say, “I’m going out back to get some vegetables.” Don’t say, “I’m going into the garden to take a leak. Fair warning, the jokes only get worse. Um, onion top sets from winter onions can be planted for fall use. Those that you don’t use, you can leave them in the garden and they can be green onions in the spring. Just as a caution, these green onions tend to be very pungent. So, uh, don’t eat a whole fork full of them because your mouth will spring on fire like Johnny Storm the Human Torch and you won’t even have to yell flame on. If you’re a comic book geek, you know what I’m talking about. So, what can you grow in a fall garden? Those are just some examples of some of the things. Kale, as I mentioned, will overwinter even in colder climates. Turnups are very quick maturing, productive, very easy to grow. Uh, rudabagga, if you want to grow those, those are best started early in the summer to make sure that you get a good fall crop. Uh, cauliflower. Cauliflower can be tricky to grow any time of the year because if anything interrupts its growing cycle, it will produce a small head. And if it’s the white cauliflower, you want to take the time to fold the leaves over to bleach them to make sure that they’re nice and white. Mustard can also be hot. If you grow, if you’re going to use mustard, make sure to harvest it when it’s young and tender. Don’t try to use the mature leaves. Those are very hot as well. Mache can be grown right into the winter months. Um, escarole is a bitter leafy vegetable. You can cook that or use it as a salad green. Endive is similar to escarole, but it has frillier leaves. Uh Brussels sprouts like uh rudabagga should be started early in the summer or planted as a transplant. Leaks as I mentioned can withstand winter freezes. Other greens are perfect to grow in the fall. Arugula, miners lettuce, etc. all make good fall crops. All right, so now that we know what you can grow in a fall garden, let’s talk about planting it. When do you want to plant? This over here is the latest and greatest version of the USDA hardiness zone map. This thing working. What this is, this divides the country into several different regions based on the average annual low temperature. What this means for you as a gardener is you want to be sure that whatever you’re growing is survivable in your zone. Here in the Chicago area, we are in zone 6A. We used to be in zone 5, but thanks to climate change, things have shifted a bit, which means that zone 6A, the average annual low is – 10 to minus5. Now, where people get in trouble, let’s say you take a trip down to Florida, you find a particular vegetable or flower that you just fall in love with and you have to have. You take it home, you plant it in your garden, you get a cool day, and it dies. And you wonder, “What did I do wrong?” Well, what you did wrong is you took something that’s only survivable at a low temperature of 65° or so, and you took it where the average annual low gets to be minus 10. I don’t know about you, but if you took me from a place where the average annual low is no lower than 65 and you put me over the average annual low is minus 10, I’d wither and die, too. So, again, grow what’s survivable in your zone. Now, if you buy from a local nursery, this shouldn’t be an issue because a local nursery is only going to sell what survives and they wouldn’t be in business if they didn’t. Um, if you buy from a catalog or somebody gives you some seeds, you know, read the label or read the description in the catalog. It will usually tell you zone, say 5 to 10, and you’ll know it can be survivable in your zone. If it’s anything outside of that, you want to think twice before you plant it. In trying to figure out when you can put it in the ground, this can be another guide for you. This is the average annual occurrence of the first frost in this in the in different areas here in the Chicago area. The average annual first frost date is around November 1st. Keep in mind that’s an average. It could be a couple one or two weeks sooner or one or two weeks later. So again, you can use this if the seed packet or the transplant says put in your garden or start your seeds so many weeks before the first frost date. All you do is count back that many weeks and that’s roughly about when you want to plant it. Vegetable crops can be divided into cool and warm season crops. And the cool season crops are what you want to strive to plant in the fall. Cool season crops, as you can see here, they can withstand a light frost, which is important when you’re talking about trying to grow things in the fall. The root system is a little bit shallower. And best of all, the edible portion can withstand a chilling injury. So, if you get uh 32° and you get that light frost, that won’t hurt the edible part. Contrast that to a warm season crop where you get a little bit of a light frost like on a tomato plant. That will be the end of it. you’re done once that happens. Um, same with the edible portion. You get a temperature of 32 degrees, that will kill it. The tomato will no longer be edible. You might as well just pitch it. All right, let’s talk about getting the site ready. And a lot of this can be applicable to both your spring and your fall garden. Where do you want to locate it? You want to locate your garden where you’re going to get the most amount of sun. This will be on the south side of your garden or the south side of your house rather. Now, if you can’t plant on the south side, the next best places will be the west or the east. Don’t try to grow on the north side, it’s too shady. This is especially critical in the fall because as you get shorter and shorter days, you’re getting less and less sunlight. So, you want to plant it where you’re going to capture as much sunlight as possible. as kind of a further division as to what to grow when. You can use this as a guide. So you’ll know, for example, if you want to start kale for a fall crop, you know that you want to plant that around midsummer. Something like uh spinach, you want to plant in late summer. Rudabagger, you want to plant around June if you want to start that for a fall crop. So again, this gives you an idea of when to start these so that you can have a fall harvest. Let’s talk briefly about tools. In general, when it comes to your tools, it’s better to buy good quality tools that are going to last you several years rather than try to cheap out with something that’s not going to last as long. Sure, you can get a bargain, buy something cheaply, but chances are that in a few months or a year or so, it’s going to fall apart on you. Then you just have to spend more money to get something else. So, it’s better to spend a little bit more money, get something of good quality that’s going to last. Now, if you have a small garden, all you really need is a hoe, a rake, a shovel or a spade, a triel, stake string, and a watering device. If you have a bigger garden, you know, rather than trying to do all that by hand, you might want to invest in something with a little bit of electric power to it or so, so you can save yourself uh some time and some energy and your back. Uh it’s a good idea to clean your tools after every use. You know, I know it can be a pain, but after you’re done with your hoe or your shovel or your spade or whatever, wash them off, dry them, if necessary, let them dry in the sun and hang them up. You’ll keep them from rusting that way. Also, if you apply a light film of oil to your shovels, your hose, or your tels, this will also help protect them against rust. Also, the soil won’t stick to them as much. And at the end of the season, you want to sharpen your tools and repair them as needed. If you have power tools that have engines and other things, this is the time to winterize them. Take them into your local dealer now and get them fixed up for the spring. Because if you wait until the spring, guess what? That’s when everybody is doing it. So, you’re going to have a little bit more of a wait time. All right, let’s talk about the planting next. And let’s start with the basic unit of planting, the seed. Now, when it comes to seeds, seeds are classified in three ways. Kind, cultivar, and strain. kind. Not too much to think about there. It’s a carrot seed. It’s a rudabagga seed. It’s a turnip turnip seed or a parsnip seed. Cultivar. This is where things get interesting. I’m using carrots as an example. If you’re blessed with hard, blocky, somewhat clay-like soil, if you try to grow a long rooted carrot, you’re going to wind up with roots that are forked and misshapen. They won’t be nice and smooth and straight. So if you have hard blocky soil, you want to grow a shorter rooted variety like the Thumbelina here. The Thumbelina looks like a small orange ball, but it doesn’t have to penetrate so much into the soil. So you get a much neater looking uh carrot that way. Now, if you’re blessed with nice loose, light soil, you can grow a longer rooted variety. But instead of growing the same old boring orange carrot, why not try something a little different like a purple carrot like the purple dragon over here? This will definitely you serve that at your next dinner party, I guarantee you will be the talk of your guests. In fact, I always encourage everybody to, you know, if it’s a tomato, think outside the red. For a carrot, think outside the orange. There are so many different cultivars, varieties of vegetables that have different colors. You can add some color to your vegetable garden. Vegetable gardens do not have to be purely utilitarian. They can have some aesthetic value as well. So try a purple carrot. Try red ruben basil, something like that. Add some beauty and color to your garden, whether it’s spring or fall. Now, one thing I don’t have on here is strain. strain is actually a variety of a cultivar and a good example, not so much a fall crop, is the Dickinson Field Pumpkin. The uh the Dickinson is the cultivar of the pumpkin. And a strain of the Dickinson Field pumpkin is the Libby Select. The Libby Select is grown specifically for the Libby Corporation to get all those nice canned pumpkins that you use to make your pumpkin pie or whatever. You can buy seeds for a Dickinson Field pumpkin. You cannot buy seeds for a Libby Select. that’s proprietary to Libby. The only way you can get Libby Select is if you were to work for Libby and steal some of the seeds. I’m not advocating that. And if you say I did, I will invoke the Sergeant Schultz defense. I know nothing. I see nothing. And I hear nothing. Those of you over 50, please explain that to the younger crowd. Ah. Now, if you look at a seed packet, you’ll see some good information here that will help you in your planting. So, as you see, we’ve got on this particular one, we’ve got the kind. It’s a blue potted snow pee or we’ve got the kind that it’s a snow pee. We have the cultivar or variety. It’s the blue potted. And there’s also information about when it’s packed for. Seeds do have a shelf life. You know, they do not last forever. eventually they lo lose viability. And if you’ve got some old seeds and you’re not sure if they’re viable or not, one way to test for them is to take maybe 10 seeds, put them in a wet paper towel, fold them up, put them in a plastic bag, and leave them for about a week or so. Then open them up. If you see them start to sprout, let’s say that you have 10 seeds and nine of them are sprouting, that’s a 90% germination rate. Those seeds are still good. If on the other hand only one or two were sprouting, that’s about a 10 to 20% germination rate. The seeds are old. Throw them away by fresh seed. Here’s another example. Uh this is uh kale and here’s a variety. We usually think of kale as green. Once again, this is a kale only it’s red. So once again, adding a little color to your vegetable garden. uh packaging and sell by date. As you can see here, there’s instructions when to start it, how long it takes to germinate, how far apart to plant it. You’ve probably seen the pesticide commercials where they say read and follow label directions. Guess what? That also holds true for a seed packet. Don’t just throw them willy-nilly in the ground and hope uh and pray that something happens. Follow directions. You’ll get better results that way. So, what do you need to successfully grow seeds? You need four elements if you’re direct seeding the ground. You need good air circulation, you need moisture, obviously, you need heat, and you need light. And light is especially critical as you get into shorter and shorter days. As I mentioned earlier, the plants are going to have less light to go by. So, that’s why you want to make sure you plant where you’re going to get the most sunlight. Now, direct seeding in the ground can sometimes be tricky. You know, you get a good heavy autumn rain, it can wash it away, something can eat it. So, if you want to have the most success with seeds, some of the best ways to do it is to grow them indoors as a transplant. And let’s talk a little bit about that. Transplanting is nothing more than shifting something from one type of soil or culture medium to another. In the case of indoor growth, it’s simply transplanting from a starter mix and a seed starter outside into the ground. Now, if you want to get have success from starting indoors, there’s a few things that you’re going to need. You’re going to need a good growing medium, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit. Make sure that you have adequate heat and moisture. If it’s too cold in your house, you’re you’re not giving them enough water, they won’t grow properly. You want to make sure to give them lots of light so that you they can grow strong and stocky instead of thin and leggy. And we’ll talk about that in just a bit. Now, I mentioned an adjustment or hardening period. I personally have never done that. Hardening is nothing more than exposing your indoor grown transplants to outside conditions gradually, a little at a time. This plays more often in the spring than in the fall, but I personally have never done it. I use season extending devices. Now, when you talk about what to start your seeds in, this is a variety of different things that you can grow them in. Transplant flats, the good old clay or plastic pot. Pete pots are great because instead of having to separate them from the pot, you simply put the whole thing in the ground. Just one caution with a Pete pot. Make sure that you sink the top of it below the soil level cuz if you leave a little bit sticking up, the sun is going to hit it and wick moisture away. The good old Jify 7 or Jiffy 9 pellet are great. They’re simply a flat disc. You soak it in water, it expands, you put the seed in there, and when you’re ready to plant, you put the whole thing in there. This is my preferred method for starting seeds. This is from the Gardener Supply Company. It’s called the Grow E seed starter. It works through capillary action. You can see you have your seed tray here. Underneath the seed tray, which you can’t see, is some capillary matting which sets on top of a peg stand which sits inside this little water reservoir here which is filled with water. The capillary matting absorbs the water and waters the seeds from the bottom and waters it nice and evenly. So instead of having to water from the top every couple of days, you simply fill this reservoir with water and it waters it slowly over time. So you only have to water you only have to fill the reservoir maybe once a week instead of every day or so. And believe it or not, people tend to overwater rather than underwater. When it comes to growing media, I talked about that earlier. You want to buy a commercial starting mix. Don’t try to take handfuls of soil from your garden and start your seeds in that. Garden soil tends to be hard, blocky, filled with weeds, insects, and diseases. You’re basically starting your transplants off at a disadvantage. Good growing media, how can you tell if it’s good? Um, good growing media is sterile. It’s uniformly fine. It’s well arrated and has good drainage. And most of your growing media is made up of some combination of these. Just as a caution, don’t try to start your seeds solely in one of these. Don’t try to start your seeds pure vermiculite or pure sand. I guarantee you, you will get zip. And I speak from experience because I had a client of mine that tried to do just that and she was not happy with the results. Now, if you want to make up your own starter mix, if you’re feeling ambitious, here’s a couple of few ways you can do it. You can make equal parts soil, sand, and pete. Equal parts of Pete, perlite, and soil. Or do two parts soil, one part sand, and one part Pete. The soil will provide the nutrients. The other things will provide water retention and arration. Here’s some examples of a good commercial um some good commercial seed starters. I personally like to use the germinating mix from the Gardener Supply Company of Burlington, Vermont. Full disclosure, I do not work for Gardener Supply. They are not paying me to promote their products. I am speaking as a satisfied customer, but you can find them on the web at gardener.com. They have a wealth of um products that are designed to make your gardening a little bit more efficient. Also critical in starting your seeds indoors are light, moisture, and temperature. At some point when your seeds when your seedlings have developed their first true leaves, the first leaves you see coming out are what are known as the kodalonary leaves. These have the stored food that keep the plants growing. When you start to see little leaves that look like what they’re supposed to, when you see little leaves that look like, say, a kale seed or a mustard uh plant, then you can add a little bit of fertilizer. You want to use a good water soluble fertilizer because young seedlings do not yet have the ability to break down nutrients in the soil for their own use. So, please, please do not try to fertilize your seedlings with Scott’s Turf Builder. that’s going to get you zip. So, you want a good water soluble fertilizer. Now, if you’re concerned about the cold temperatures affecting your developing seeds, you can use what is known as a cold frame. The cold frame is nothing more than a mini greenhouse, which acts just like a regular greenhouse does. Light gets through, warms the inside, and the heat is trapped. And even if it’s cold outside, it’s warm inside. Now, if you get some extremely warm days, you can lift the lid to vent out that cold frame and allow some of that heat to escape so you don’t burn out your fall grown plants. And in the winter time, if you want to add supplemental heat to your cold frame, then it becomes a hot bed. And some people will do that. They’ll provide a heat source so that you can basically grow things all throughout the winter. Now, not everything that you grow is going to be grown from seed. Some things are almost impossible, if not completely difficult, to grow from seed. And I use as an example asparagus. If you try to grow asparagus from seed, it will take you 5 years to get a viable crop. On the other hand, if you grow it from the plant part, which is what vegetative propagation is, it will only take you three years. Vegetative propagation is simply nothing more than asexual propagation. So you do not have fertilization. Pollen striking a stamman causing the pollen tube to fertilize the ovaries inside the um the olesules inside the ovary fusing to create a viable seed. It’s almost like a clone. You’re taking part of the plant and you’re growing it in from there. And the parts are crowns, tubers, roots, and bulbs. Why do it this way? Well, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes it will take you too long to grow something from seed. Also, if you have some good genetic traits, you want to propagate those. So, growing from the plant parts will assure that that happens. Fertilization, regular fertilization can sometimes be a crapshoot. There’s no guarantee you’ll get the same genetics year after year. Many of the plant parts, the tubers, the bulbs, the roots, etc. can withstand cold temperatures. This is why some things you grow from bulbs like uh amorillas, Christmas cactus, irises, you can they can survive the winter underground where some things like seeds cannot. Disadvantages is sometimes they tend to lose vigor if you plant the same genetics year after year. This is what happened with the Irish potato famine. They kept growing potatoes from the same kind of tubers, the same genetics, and when the early blight hit, it basically killed everything in one wide swath. Which is why the Irish had to immigrate to this country cuz they were basically starving. So, what are some examples of growing things vegetatively? Well, again, if you want to grow asparagus, you’ll want to grow it from the crown, which is the part of the plant between the stem and the root. Same with rhubarb. Potatoes are grown from a tuber. Tubers are like are are nutrient-packed things that contain the different shoots that uh surrounded by the nutrients. When you grow them, you want to grow the whole potato or just slice off enough to make sure you have plenty of nutrients around the eye. By the way, if you’re growing potatoes, don’t try to do it from a store-bought potato. Number one, they’re treated with an anti- sprouting agent. So, even though that looks like they’re starting to sprout, you will not get a viable plant. Also, store-bought potatoes may harbor disease, which can infect your garden. Uh, Jerusalem artichokes, you don’t want to grow those. And ask me later, I’ll tell you why. Uh, horseradish is grown from the root. Garlic, shallots, and onions are grown from bulbs. I’ve had more success growing garlic from fall grown bulbs rather than the spring. If I grow it from a bulb, you basically separate out the the cloves. You plant the cloves, leave them over the winter, and then in the spring, they’ll sprout. All right? Now, when I talk about vegetative growth, I’m talking about the growth of the actual veative vegetation part of the plant, whether it’s from seed or from plant parts. Vegetative growth is important because this is where all the photosynthesis takes place. You want to start, you want to make sure that you’re having rapid vegetative growth because this will help the plants out compete the weeds and better withstand any infestations of insects or disease. Again, large rapidly growing plants can get more sunlight. The more sunlight that they get, the more they can photosynthesize. The more they can photosynthesize, the more productive they will be. Um, and the more leaves that you’ll get, the more of the edible plant part that you’ll get. Now, also, this is critical for fall vegetables because generally fall vegetables are grown for their leafy parts. Rarely are you growing fall vegetables for their fruits. That’s more of a summer thing. But this is still important for summer grown crops because the more leaves you have, the more fruit that it will be able to produce. Plants will always put reproductive growth over vegetative growth. Which means that a small plant that has a flower on it is going to try to put what little nutrients it has in those leaves into that one flower because plants want to perpetuate their species. So if you want to make sure that you’re getting plenty of leafy parts or fruit, you want to make sure that the plant gets as tall as possible before you let it keep its flowers to produce fruit. All right, let’s talk about what we grow these things in. The soil. Yeah, this is the typical composition of soil in a typical garden. It’s mostly made out of uh it’s about 45% minerals. It’s got an even mix of air and water and a little bit of organic matter. The kind of soil that you want to grow that you’re striving for is what’s known as a mineral soil. There are soils that are extremely high in organic matter that really aren’t suitable for growing in for growing a vegetable garden. You’ve got muk soils which are about 20 to 65% organic matter. You’ve got pete soils which have over 65% organic matter. The only thing that grows in a pete soil are your carnivorous plants. Your Venus fly traps, your sundos, your pitcher plants. They have to get their nitrogen from the insects they capture and eat. That’s why they were evolved that way because they are not getting anything from the soil. A mineral soil is what you want to strive for. Mineral soils are little less than 20% organic matter. These are a mixture of sand, silt, and clay. When it comes to mineral soils, there are three types. You’ve got sandy soil, clay soil, and lom soil. Clay soil is great for retaining water. Problem with clay soils that it retains that water a little bit too readily. It’s very hard to grow anything in clay because the water is filling up all the available pore spaces and it’s essentially suffocating the roots. Sandy soil, on the other hand, drains very well, but it doesn’t hold water very well. The only thing that grows well in a sandy soil are your succulents, cacti, aloe vera, things like that because they have evolved to store water in their plant parts. This is what you want to strive for. LOM soil. LOM soil is a roughly less than 20% clay, about 30 to 50% silt, and about 30 to 50% sand. This is what you want to strive for. This is great for most vegetables. When it comes to preparing your soil, your vegetables will do best if your soil is as deep as possible. Now, if your soil isn’t very deep, you can deepen it by turning it over and adding some organic matter to separate out to put stuff between the mineral particles. You can turn over your soil either in the spring or the fall. There are advantages to turning over soil in the fall. Um, you get more rapid decomposition of organic matter if you turn over your soil in the fall. You have greater absorption of moisture. It allows you to work your soil and plant earlier in the spring because your soil is nice and loose and light already to go. If you’re working in organic matter like compost, Pete, uh, lime, things like that, you now have three months of winter for all that stuff to decompose and release nutrients to your soil. So, come the spring, your soil is loose, light, nutrient-rich, and all ready to go. You do not want to work your garden soil when it’s wet because it will compact that way. If you’re not sure if your soil is workable, what you can do is you can stick your finger in the soil. If it comes back moist, say up to the first knuckle, the soil is too wet. You want to let it dry out a bit. Also, if you find your soil is sticking to your shovel or your spade or your spading fork, it’s too wet to be working it. All right, let’s talk about water. The reason why we water plants is that water plays some very important roles in growing plants. It uh you can see it dissolves the nutrients in the soil so the plants can the roots can suck them up. Um many biological uh biochemical processes need water to occur. Keeps the plants from getting overheated and uh it also helps transport food and nutrients. Where can you get water? Well, obviously rain is one way in the winter or the early spring. Snowfall. This is important in places like Utah where they don’t get a whole lot of rain. Uh underneath the surface, uh underground water are also sources of water. In general, plants need one inch of so inch of water per week in order to be successful. And in the fall, the uh this is is not so critical because you’re getting more rain in the fall. So, you can rely on the rainfall a little bit more. Um it’s generally better to water plants deeply and infrequently as opposed to shallowly and frequently because if you’re watering deeply, you train the roots to dig down deep to where the water is collecting. So, if you have for a week or so on vacation or on a business trip, you come back uh after your week or so of vacation or business and your plants may be stressed, but they’ll probably still be alive because they’ve been able to access water below the surface. On the other hand, if you’re watering watering shallowly, all your roots are at the surface. So, if you get a drought or so when that during the week or so you’re on vacation, you’ll come back probably to dead plants, which can be quite heartbreaking. I can see the look on your face there. So, how can you water? Well, good old sprinkle or trickle irrigation. Um, sprinkling, the problem with that is you get the leaves wet. And it’s usually better to water at the roots because if you have the leaves wet, especially as the temperatures get lower, as the fall progresses, you now have cold, wet leaves, which are prime conditions for fungi to develop. If you can swing it, if you can set up an irrigation system, if you got a lot of raised beds or something, this can save you some watering. You can hook set up your irrigation system, put the main feeder hose to your hose that connects to your spigot. When you want to water, all you’ve got to do is turn on the spigot. The irrigation system will water your plants at the roots and keep the uh leaves dry. You can even further make your watering tasks more efficient by hooking in a water timer. It will turn it on for you and turn it off, but you still have to get your hands dirty. Air Air circulation is very important. Now, you’ve often heard that plants will take in carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. This is true, but oxygen is also needed by the plants for the roots. This is why plants that are overwatered or flooded, they die because the water is seeping into all the pore spaces and it’s covering the roots and it’s basically suffocating or drowning the roots. Light of course is very important and this becomes very critical as fall days become shorter and shorter. Now if you’re starting your seeds indoors, sorry to tell you this, but your sunny window is never going to be sunny enough. The reason is because the glass from the window absorbs about 90% of the foot candle power of the sun. So you’re only getting about 10% of the sun’s rays. If you’re starting indoors, you really need a good grow light. Now, there are all different kinds you can buy. You can start with the typical shop fluorescent light. Those are the cheapest way to go. Just make sure that you mount it on some kind of a racking system so you can move it up and down. You want that light as close as possible to the seeds when they’re first developing so they’ll grow strong and stocky. If seeds don’t get enough light, they grow tall and thin and leggy. They try to reach out for that light. When you transplant them outdoors, you get a day or two of adverse weather conditions. that will be the end of them. Now, having said that, fluorescent lighting is becoming harder and harder to come by because it’s considered environmentally unfriendly. So, you may want to look into something like a good LED light. Those can be a little more expensive, but there are bulbs available for them. Not so much for fluorescent lights anymore. All right, let’s talk a little bit about the nutrients needed for your plants. Now, in your handout is a little table there showing the nutrients that plants need to grow, their deficiency symptoms and their toxicity symptoms, and what they do for the plant. Use that as a guide. If you find that your plants aren’t doing so well, before you assume that it’s an insect or a disease, check that little table I’ve given you. It might be a nutrient deficiency. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, you don’t have to supply. Those come from the air and the ground. Plants get their hydrogen from the water. Carbon is from the soil. Oxygen is from the air also from the water. Nitrogen. Nitrogen is a critical nutrient for plant develop. Nitrogen is responsible for stem, leaf, and root development. Now plants, now nitrogen is the single largest element in the air we breathe. But plants cannot take atmospheric nitrogen and use it for their own use. They need it in the form of either Oops. Ah, there we go. They need it either as the nitrate the nitrate ion or the ammonium ion. That’s the only way plants can use nitrogen. Now, nitrogen is essential, but you don’t want to overfeed it because if you’re trying to grow something with a fruit, you’re going to get if you if you overfeed a nitrogen fertilizer, you’re going to get lots and lots of nice green leaves, but very little in the way of fruit. Or if you’re growing a potato or something like that, very little in the way of a tuber. In order to get your fruit, you need phosphorus. Now before I go on to phosphorus, I’ll mention that one way to save not have to provide so much nitrogen fertilizer is to grow a legume in the garden. Interspace things like peas or beans or alalfa in with your fall crops because legumes can do what most plants cannot do. They form a symbiotic relationship with certain soil bacteria. The soil bacteria can take atmospheric nitrogen, convert it into one of these forms and provide the nitrogen the plants needs. The American Indians knew this. They grew what was known as the three sisters, corn, beans, and squash. The beans would provide the nitrogen to their plant so they didn’t have to worry about fertilizing. The corn would act as a support for the beans to grow on and the squash plants would shade the soil so that it would spare moisture and they wouldn’t have to worry about watering. The squash also kept the raccoons away from the beans and the corn because when the raccoons tried to walk across these spiny vines of the squash, they would hurt their delicate little paws. You see these little bumps on the roots of a legume? If you were to cross-section one of these bumps and put it under a microscope, you’d see the bacteria. If you’ve never grown legumes before, you might have to provide them with a little bit of help. These are inoculums which contain these nitrogen fixing bacteria which can get your soil started to be able to grow those legumes. Phosphorus is the nutrient that’s responsible for flower and fruit development. So if you’re not getting enough flowers or fruit, you may need to add some supplemental phosphorus either in the form of black rock phosphate or super super triple phosphate fertilizer or something like that. Potassium also known as muriative pot ash or pot ash. This is associated with the movement of water, nutrients and carbohydrates in plant tissue. Um, there are other nutrients. I’m not going to go through each and every one in the interest of time. You have those in your handouts. One thing to that’s also important when it comes to your soil is the pH. If you remember your basic high school chemistry, pH stands for potential hydrogen. measures the acidity or the alkalinity of the substance on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 14 where zero is extremely acidic something like battery acid or all the way up to 14 which is something like household lie or bleach. Water is pH about seven which is considered neutral. Many plants, your garden vegetables in general do best at a pH of about six and a half to seven, slightly acidic to neutral. So, what this means for you is when you’re testing your soil to make sure that it’s got the right amount of nutrients and everything, you also want to check for pH. If your soil is too acidic or too alkaline, your plants will not grow. Now, pH can be very difficult to change because remember, pH is on a logarithmic scale. to go from something like say a pH of of say 8 to 7 is only a t-fold decrease but to go from something like an 8 to a six is a 100fold decrease. So you really it’s generally hard to change pH over a short period of time. It may take you a year or so to get the pH right. And if your soil is buffered, lots of luck because that buffering will absorb whatever it is you’re trying to put into the soil to change the pH and make that and resist those pH changes. Little more detail. Here are some examples of some of your fall crops and the optimum pH for them. One thing to keep in mind is you want to be sure to grow like with like. So, don’t try to grow something that has a more acidic pH with something that requires a more alkaline pH because nobody will be happy. A good example, if you try to grow blueberries, don’t grow them in the same soil as your garden vegetables because blueberries like a really acid soil, something like PH5. So, if you try to grow it with your garden vegetables, ain’t nobody going to be happy because it’s either going to be too alkaline for the blueberries or too acidic for the garden vegetables. Let’s talk a little bit about fertilizer. Fertilizer is nothing more than a substance that you add to the soil in order to improve the fertility. Fertilizers are two kinds. They are either organic or inorganic. Organic fertilizers are directly derived from naturally occurring plant materials. inorganic are derived from something other than plant materials often synthesized in the laboratory. If you’ve ever wondered what the three numbers on a bag of fertilizer stand for, I’m going to enlighten you. The first number represents nitrogen in the form of atmospheric nitrogen. The second number represents phosphorus in the form of phosphorus penttoxide. The third potassium in the form of mur of pod ash. Now, what this means for you as a gardener is if you have a bag of fertilizer, let’s say you were using this stuff and the directions said to mix it at 10 lbs per 100 square ft. If you put 10 lb 100 square ft, that means your plants are getting something like 222 lbs of atmospheric nitrogen. For phosphorus, it would mean that they your plants would be getting something like 0.3 lbs of phosphorus penttoxide. If you wanted to know how much actual phosphorus your plants were getting, you would have to figure out how much phosphorus is in phosphorus penttoxide. I don’t know about you, but that’s way too much math for me. Now, this can becomes critical because if you’re growing your your plants in a raised bed or in a pot or in a planter and let’s say that again that you were going to mix this stuff at 10 pound per 100 square feet. A planter is definitely more than a less shorter than 100 square feet. So when you wind up doing the math, you may only be putting in something like a teaspoon full of this stuff in your planter. Your average person will think, well, that’s not enough. I got to put in more. You wind up burning out your plants. This is why I’m not in favor of concentrated inorganic fertilizers like these because they can be so easily overfed and burn out your plants. Things like Miracle Grow can be poison to your soil. You use these kinds of things often enough and you turn your garden soil into a drug addict because in order to keep your soil fertiliz fertile, you have to keep adding this stuff. Meanwhile, this kind of stuff kills the web of life in your soil. Kills the earthworms, the bacteria, the nematodes, leaving your soil sterile. So again, you have to keep adding this stuff if you want fertile soil. This stuff eventually leeches out into our groundwater, polluting it, causing algae bloom and killing the fish and other wildlife in the in the water. On the other hand, organic or slowrelease fertilizers are broken down by the soil web of life over time and it slowly releases the nutrients and feeds the plants over time. You may have heard the expression feed the soil and let the soil feed your plants. That’s what organic fertilizers are for. Now, here are some examples of some natural deposits which can be used as fertilizers. Keep in mind, these are not complete fertilizers. These provide only a single nutrient. So, limestone is great if your soil needs calcium. Sulfur is great if you need to lower the pH of your soil. Keep in mind though that limestone while adding calcium will also raise the pH making your soil too uh alkaline. Sulfur, elemental sulfur on the other hand is great if you have a sulfur deficiency in your soil, which is rare, but it will also make your soil too acidic. Also, if you’re using elemental sulfur, be careful not to use it on anything, any of your fall vegetables that you want to can because any sulfur residue left on vegetables you want to canite with the oxygen in the canning jars and the heat of the canning process, creating sulfur dioxide, causing your canning jars to explode. So, if you don’t want to turn your kitchen into the jet propulsion laboratory, go easy on the sulfur. Other things, rock phosphate is a great source of phosphorus if your soil is deficient in that. Granite meal and green sand are great sources of potassium. Sodium nitrate can be both an organic form of uh fertilizer because it provides both the sodium and the nitrogen. On the other hand, it can also be synthesized in the lab. So, it can also be thought of as a chemical fertilizer. These are some organic fertilizers that you can use. Bone meal and blood meal are great sources of nitrogen that you can use for your soil. If you try to use things like cotton seed meal or soybean meal, that’s going to cost you more money because you’re competing with livestock and poultry producers. They’re using that in their animal feeds. Compost is nothing more than decomposed organic matter. I could talk a whole other hour on composting. We don’t have that kind of time. Batg guano is simply a fancy word for bat poop. Anybody here ever seen the movie Dr. Strange Love or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? There was a character in there by the name of Colonel Bat Guano. My parents saw that movie in the theater and my dad and one other gentleman were the only ones who laughed. Nobody got the joke. Kelt meal comes from the sea. It’s a great source of nitrogen. Just be aware that because it comes from the sea, it tends to have a lot of salt in it and that’s not good for your soil. Sewage sludge, I have one word to say, don’t. Sewage sludge, while it contains nitrogen, phosphor, potassium, phosphorus, potassium, and all that good stuff, may also contain toxic heavy metals, lead, mercury, cadmium, things like that. and your plants will pick those up just as easily as they will nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Years ago, there was a product in the market called New Earth, which was a sewage sludge-based fertilizer. One of my neighbors used it. It came out in the news that stuff was just chalk full of cadmium. That was the end of his vegetable garden. Now, today there’s a product called Morganite, which is a sewage sludgebased fertilizer. I recommend using that for your flower garden. Don’t use it on your vegetable garden. Compost I mentioned earlier is nothing more than decomposed organic matter. These are some things you can put in a compost pile. These are things you do not want to put in a compost pile. I call special attention to walnut waste. Walnuts are a tricky kind of tree because walnuts secrete a hormone called juglone which suppresses the growth of all non-native plants around it. So, if you put walnut waste in your compost pile and put that in your vegetable garden, you’re putting that hormone into the soil in your vegetable garden and your plants will not grow. All right, a little bit about control of weeds, pests, disease, and animals in the time we have left. What is a weed? A weed is nothing more than a plant out of place. So, if a rose were to spring up in the middle of your vegetable garden, by definition, that rose would be a weed. Now, it’s hard to think of a rose as a weed. So, a better definition is anything that’s unsightly like crab grass or creeping charlie in your lawn. Anything that causes disease like ragweed or poison ivy or just grows where it’s unwanted. Weeds will compete with your vegetables for water, nutrients, and light. They can also harbor diseases that can harm your vegetable crops. How do you control weeds? Well, I show herbicides up here, but I don’t recommend them because herbicides are non-specific. They’ll kill anything green. And if you’re not careful, if you spray them and you get a good wind, it will blow that herbicide on the plants that you want, like your vegetables, or worse yet, blow on your prize roses or even worse, your nextdoor neighbors prize roses. This is not how we develop good neighborly relations. Good old handpicking and hoing is the best way to get rid of them. Or even better, mulch. Mulch will block out the light from the weeds and suppress their growth and reduce your weeding chores considerably. Insect pests. These are some typical insect pests that can plague your garden. The good news is that in the fall there are fewer insects that plague your vegetable garden, so they’re not as much of an issue as they are in the spring and summer. Best ways to control insects. Good old things, crop rotation. Don’t plant the same crops in the same spot year after year. Um, physical barriers. If you’re if you have a problem with cutworms, cutworms are a nasty little worm that comes out at night and shears off your plants right at the soil line. So, it looks like somebody came into your garden with a scissors and cut your plants down at the right at the soil line. You if you put something like a cardboard toilet paper roll around the stem of that plant, that puts a physical barrier between the stem and the cutworm, and the cutworm can’t get its greedy little jaws around it. Um, avoid solid plantings of one vegetable because if one plant gets the disease or the insect, it’s easy to get to the other one. If you put something in between them, you know, allow some space, it’s not as easy for that disease or insect to transfer from one plant to another. Birds and animals, animals are not always our friends. Some animals can be we should welcome into our garden. We should welcome toads, snakes, and birds and other animals because these eat many of the insect pests that plague our vegetable gardens. And yes, bats, too. Bats are voracious eaters of mosquitoes. Snakes are eaters of insects as well as things like mice and vos. Yeah, I know you’re looking at me like I’m nuts, but these are natural ways to control some of the garden marauders that can plague our vegetable gardens. Now, some animals, however, are not our friends. And let’s talk about some of these. Now, I don’t think we have around here we have to worry too much about bears. Bears can cause extensive damage to vegetable crops, and they can also be rather destructive, too. I won’t talk too much about these. If you live in a rural area or in a forested area, you know, in the west or in the mountains, then they may may be more of a problem. Birds. Birds will eat some of our seeds. And if you’re growing corn or things like that, they’ll eat those. They can be controlled by hanging reflectors or fluttering objects around the garden. It’s only partially effective. Bird netting, aluminum fly screens can also control them. Deer Deer are highly destructive because they’ll not only eat your garden vegetables, they’ll stomp all over the stems, making hash out of them. The only way to stop deer is a good, strong, high fence they can’t jump over. Dogs and cats. An untrained dog can maul your plants or dig up your freshly planted bulbs, roots, whatever. Cats will love to use your garden as their litter box. Dogs as well. The best control is a fence. Golfers. Golfers make elaborate tunnels about 6 to 18 in underground. You can keep them out of your garden again with a fence made of 1-in galvanized wire sunk 2 feet into the ground. Gophers can be tricky because they’ll often follow in your footsteps. So, while you’re planting your seeds, they’ll be following along behind you, eating what you’ve just planted. One way to stop them is to rake cover your tracks so that they can’t follow. Mice and vos very similar appearance. They’re both brown and furry. Mice tend to be smaller, have bigger ears. They’re more of an indoor nuisance, whereas vos or field mice can be an outdoor nuisance. Best way to control them, clean up the plant debris that could invite uh ne they can use for nesting sites. You can repel vos with a castor oil spray and predator urine. You can grow your flower bulbs inside bulb cages or surround them with oyster shell calcium. It’s basically ground up oyster shells. If a vole tries to dig through them, it would like be like you trying to dig through ground glass. Moles. Moles will make mounds of dirt from their tunnels. They will tend to eat tomato roots, also the roots of any of your other crops, and their tunnels will disrupt the rooting systems. One way to control them is to insert child’s pin wheels into their holes. The vibrations will scare them away. There are castor oil preparations you can buy to put in their their burrows. Best way to control them, get rid of the grubs in your lawn because that’s what they’re after. If there’s no grubs, they’ll go a they’ll go elsewhere. Put the grubs on your neighbor’s lawn. You didn’t hear me say that. Apossums. Apossums normally eat the grubs and roadkill and other things. They’ll also go after some of your garden vegetables. Um to discourage them. If you feed any outdoor cats after you feed them, bring the bowls indoors. Um if you have any garbage cans or whatever, keep them highly well litted so that they can’t get in. If you have any food sources, keep them in a shed. Um, the best deterrent is a good fence. Rabbits. Rabbits will eat your vegetable and flower seedlings. You can stop them with a 2-ft high fence made of 1 and 1/2 in thick galvanized wire. The bottom of the fence should be sunk 6 in below the ground to keep the rabbits from tunneling under. dried blood, uh, predator urine will sprinkle around the edges will also keep them away. Raccoons, if you’re trying to harvest a fall crop of sweet corn, raccoons love sweet corn, and they know just the right time to go after it, which is when it’s ready to be harvested. Uh, cover the ears with paper bags or better yet, cover the ears with socks and use rebar wire to lash those ears to the stalks. That will keep them from both biting into them and carrying them away. It’s elaborate, but sometimes you got to do what you got to do. Also, planting gourds, winter squash among them, when they try to crawl over them, it will hurt their little feet. Squirrels. Squirrels are a particular nemesis because those little buggers are smart and they can climb. They’ll eat grain seeds and bulbs. And because they can climb, they’re difficult to stop. You can control them with things like predator urine, capsation solutions, vinegar soaked rags. One thing that was suggested to me by a nursery man at Chalet Nursery, this is recent. Uh you can use squirrel repellent. Buy squirrel repellent solution. Spray your plants with that. But put bowls of water in your garden because according to what this gentleman told me, squirrels are biting into your tomatoes and other fruing crops to get the moisture. If you provide water for them, they’ll drink the water and leave your fruing crops alone. That’s what he told me. I’ve just learned this, so ask me in another 6 months how well it works. Now, if all else fails, one method you can try is bribery. Set up a squirrel corn feeder away from your garden and keep it well filled with squirrel corn. The squirrel is filling up on the squirrel corn. It’ll be too full to go after your garden vegetables. It’s kind of like paying protection to the mafia. But if nothing else works, give that a try. Woodchucks or groundhogs. They’re found mostly in the Northeast and Midwest. Their burrows can reach deep into the ground, can disrupt your root system. They’ll eat clover, alalfa, peas, beans, your coal crops like your Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, mustard, etc. And they’ll eat your lettuce. A good fence will keep them out, getting rid of brush piles and all that things they can’t hide in or nest in. And if all else fails, them’s good eating. And probably one of the best biggest garden pests of all is look in a mirror. Here’s the secret. How to grow a lousy garden. Use the soil as it is. Fertilizer. Compost. Who needs it? Add things to the soil that shouldn’t be added. I had a friend of a friend who insisted on using dog and cat waste as manure in his vegetable garden. I know, ick. And it also brings disease. Um, if you want to be a successful gardener, you got to do a little bit of research before you put anything in the ground. Otherwise, you might get something that spreads like the Dickens, like mint or something that grows too tall or is too prolific. Uh, don’t give much thought to where you situate the garden. Hey, on the north side of the house, no problem. Who needs sunlight? And if you never water or never weed and use lots of pesticide, yeah, you’ll you’ll have a lousy garden. But that is Oh, before we finish up, just a little bit about fall preparation for a spring garden. Um, as I mentioned, fall’s an excellent time to get your garden ready for next spring. Vegetable plants depend on the soil which they grow in. um you want to replenish those nutrients year after year because eventually if you keep growing in the same soil without any additions of fertilizer or other things, the soil is going to be depleted. So you can add nutrients to the soil and dig it in in the fall. Now how I prepare my garden for the spring is first of all I remove all the splent plant debris. You can chop it to pieces and save it for your compost pile. However, if it’s diseased, don’t put it in your compost pile cuz you’ll be transferring those diseases to your garden. If you’re using plastic mulch, remove it. Straw, hay, or compost or anything else, just push it to one side. Add a couple of inches of compost working into the soil. Then you can move that straw or hay or whatever back onto it. These are again some reasons for turning over your soil in the fall. Again, any power tools, you want to winterize those now and avoid the rush in the springtime. Things with an edge like hose should be sharpened now so they’ll be ready for the spring. If you have hoses or other things, check them now for cracks or anything like that. A lot of uh stores in the fall have fall clearance sales. You can buy the new stuff then and be ready for the spring. And that is fall vegetable gardening in a nutshell. Before I take questions, here’s all my contact information. If you don’t get your questions answered tonight or if you think of questions later, you’re welcome to call me. You are welcome to check out my website for upcoming programs that I’m doing. You can email me. You can like me on Facebook. Uh check me out on Google. Read my blog. You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram or link up with me on LinkedIn. Lastly, I have for sale this nifty little book that I wrote called Gardening with Confidence. It’s a little pocket guide you can keep with you. It’s basically talks about everything I’ve talked about here and some other things. For a mere $5, you can take me you can take the book home. I cost a little more than that, but I’ll have them up here if you want to buy some. I have a mailing list if you want to get on that. Just simply put your name and your email address. And I have a newsletter that I put out monthly with a lot of gardening tips. And uh lastly, I have this other book which is not really about gardening. If you ever in the midpoint of your life decided that you wanted to chuck your corporate career and become an entrepreneur, this is a book full of stories of people who’ve done just that. Um, there’s lots of good inspirational stories there, including my own, which is why I promote the book. This book is available on Amazon. And other than that, uh, that’s all. I’m I will take questions now. Mark, thank you so much. If anyone in our inerson audience has a question, make sure again to throw your hand up. I see one there. I’m make my way to you. As I do, Mark, for an online patron, uh, what type of oil do you put on your tools? Oil on the tools generally, um, any kind of mineral oil is good. Something like the 3in-1 oil you can buy at a at a hardware store or something like that. That’s perfectly good. any kind of mineral or anything that you would normally use to lubricate tools is perfect for your uh for your garden tools. Is there some place local that will test your soil for you so you know what you need to add to it or how do you go about doing that? Is there some place local where you can test your soil? There are there are labs available. Unfortunately, I do not have those with me, but if you go to the website of the University of Illinois Master Gardeners, they have some of that information there. A laboratory will generally test for the major things, moisture, pH, phosphorus, both total and available, nitrogen, potassium. If you wanted to test for any other things, you’ll probably pay a little bit more. That was a long-winded answer, but did I answer your question? It did. Thank you. Are there any other questions? All right. Yeah. One second. Yeah. What herbs would you recommend planting in fall? What herbs for the fall? Uh rosemary is a good herb to plant in the fall because you can also grow it indoors. Mint still works in the fall. You if you grow mint in a pot, you can bring it indoors. Keep in mind that mint goes through a resting period where it will seem to die off, but it’ll eventually spring back. Um let’s see. I mentioned uh may um basil does well indoors. You can grow a lot of these things if you have pots and a watering system and a good source of light to grow light. There’s there’s a something known as an arrow aerial garden which contains all the different pockets and a light source that you can grow things in. It’s great for growing herbs. It comes in different sizes. I’ve personally not used one, so I can’t vouch for them, but it’s a great way to grow herbs in a compact space. Um, I’m trying to think what else. Uh, my mom had an ario garden, um, and lent it to me, and I was overrun with dill, and I can’t remember the other thing, but it works. So, dill is another thing that you can grow indoors. Other questions? All right. Well, it looks like we’re all good here. All right. Before if if there are no more questions before we go, I will leave you with this. When the gardener comes around and he’s digging, the gardener is the one who grows it all. If you’ll only look and see, I think you will agree. The gardener is the one who grows it all. The gardener is the one. The gardener is the one grows tomatoes through the fall. And they’re tasty and they’re sweet and you know they can’t be beat. The gardener is the one who grows it all. The gardener is the one. The gardener is the one grows zucchini through the fall. And he’s happy just to share with his friends and neighbors there. Cuz his family simply cannot use it all. Yes, the guarder is the one who grows it all. Very good. Well, thank you all very much. I hope I gave everybody some good, useful information. I encourage everyone to go home and plant that fall garden. And we hope to see you.