(3PM Start) Fall Crops to Plant Part 1 (Vegetable Gardening Live Monthly Questions & Answers E-64)

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So, I had to reboot this event. I will wait a few minutes to see if people do sign in. And I apologize, the system did crash here. Hey, Strawberry. Hey, everybody who’s signing back in. I did have to restart. This is a new link getting everything going again. I apologize. And, you know, we’ll just pick it up from the beginning for people signing in. So, I live in a house that’s from 1867, and sometimes when it gets windy and stormy, everything gets messed up. So, I apologize for that. I am going to uh pin a message that is a link to my blog and that is an article on fall gardening and some of the plants you can plant. Now, that should, you know, give you something to read. This way you don’t have to take a lot of notes. So today we are talking about fall gardening general crops to plant. First part of the video was on the other link. So let me just start over real quick. Bring everybody up to speed. So first thing is August is a great time to plant your fall garden. You’ve got the warmest soil. Your seeds are going to germinate more quickly. they’re going to grow more quickly with the longer day day uh longer amounts of daylight. As September approaches, you get less amounts of daylight. So, this four weeks really from like August 15th to se to September 15th, you can get a lot of growth from your cool weather crops more so now because you have longer days, more daylight than from like September 15th to October 15th. They’re going to just grow better. You definitely want to get your peas in now. All your cool weather crops can take a frost. Their free, their leaves can freeze. They can do just fine. However, peas, the pods themselves can’t freeze. So, you have a frost. A frost is something that is on the surface of the ground, affects the leaves of your plants, and then it warms up and the plants are fine. A freeze freezes the ground about an inch deep, half an inch deep, 1.25 centimeters, 2 and a half centimeters deep. That deep freeze often kills some of your cool weather crops. The peas don’t really like the pods themselves don’t like frost or any kind of freeze. So, you have to plant these now so they get to a good size and they’re really producing before a heavy frost rolls in. And that’s a prolonged frost. So, definitely get your peas in now. Again, the ground is nice and warm. Your warm weather or your cool weather crops are going to germinate quickly. Now, the soil temperature can get up to 100° um Fahrenheit pretty easy with the sun. 37 37.8 cm or uh Celsius. Um really warm. Sometimes the warm soil inhibits germination of the cool weather crops or the germinating seeds just get really hot. It dries, they die off. So maybe put some shade cloth down if you’re in a hot area. I’m in Maryland zone 7. That gives you a kind of anchor point. I’m planting all of my peas. Really should have had them in last week or so. Um, but I’m putting them all in now. Um, as I said before, I’ve been away for two weeks. I am a grandfather for the first time, Austin. He’s doing well, healthy, growing, and my garden has been really neglected. Like, I’m going to do a video tomorrow. I haven’t actually done any videos, just um, two live videos in the last two weeks. So, I took off really for the first time in the summer doing YouTube content. But anyway, I’ll be doing a tour of my garden. It’s pretty much wrecked, but I’m going to be moving into fall gardening. Um, you know, it’s been a great two weeks. So, the garden’s messed up, but Austin is doing extremely well. All right, if you have questions, put question down. I apologize for the error or the screw up and I had to restart everything and reboot. So, hopefully we get some people on here. If you have a question related to gardening, please just type question and I will answer. Let me see what we have going on here. And for those of you signing on, I did restart. Something happened with everything on the YouTube YouTube end or something. I don’t know. But we’re live again. Question. Is it always best to chop the leaf stem off with a ochre spear when you cut it off? Let me just think about it for a second. Is it always best to chop the leaf stem off with the ochre spear when you cut it off? I don’t I don’t think so. I mean, I think I’ve done both. I don’t pay too much mind to it. Sometimes I’m trimming them very close. Sometimes I just break them off. Um I don’t think it matters, you know, either way. Question. If I plant carrots now, can I leave them till spring? I heard they get sweeter or best time to do that. Carrots is another crop that I wanted to talk about today. Carrots are great to get in now. Carrots are bianials. So, it it’s sort of a trick question. If you put your seeds in now and they get to a good size, like maybe they’re this big, come next year, even though they’re tiny, they think they’re secondyear plants. And sometimes they don’t develop a great carrot. they just go right to growing a flower stock because they want to seed. So, it really depends on when you start them. I like to just start carrots now, August, let them grow through the fall, and just harvest them. And then maybe later November, again I’m in Maryland zone 7, maybe November, December, I put seeds in and they just sprout a little bit and they don’t think they’re a secondyear growth next um spring. So they develop carrots. However, I found it really works best to just plant for this year. come early next year, um maybe the beginning of March, late February, when I can work the soil, I will just put the carrot seeds in. When it warms to the right temperatures, they’ll take off, they’ll grow, and I get carrots. Uh the answer, are they sweeter? No. Having them over winter doesn’t make them sweeter. It’s just the cool weather. So, growing into the cool weather of fall, they’re going to be sweet. If you’re harvesting them before it gets really warm in the spring, they’re still going to be sweet. looking for questions. Uh Wickshshire, we are doing a soil test. Pete Moss, far soil, leaf mold, sandy clay lom, and near pure clay 16 cups. If you choose a seed, only one to test, what would you suggest? um something that grows quickly and I probably so if you go with a bean with that’s usually what people test with however they fix their own nitrogen if it’s just a soil test probably you know like a bush bean if you’re concerned that the bean fixing its own nitrogen will impact your testing of the soil um I probably would go with like a cucumber something like Can I grow lettuce now in zone six? If your temperatures are staying well above 85 right now, you can plant it. Um, well, let me rephrase it. I always get confused. So, 7 A is where I’m at. higher numbers is warmer, right? So 6A is a little bit colder. So yes, the cooler weather, you can definitely plant your cool weather crop lettuce now. Um it should be fine. If you were in a warmer zone, and I was going to say if the temperatures are staying above the upper 80s, 90s, you know, it might be a little bit warm, but you could use the shade cloth, but definitely you can plant the the cool weather crops. So, right now, my screen is flashing. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s really windy out there, and I’m having issues As long as you guys can see me and hear me, I’ll stay on. But there’s a lot of weird stuff happening with the internet here. So, you can plant the lettuce now. They definitely like the um cooler temperatures. Now, the reason you know, well, one, the screen is so messed up here, you won’t believe what’s going on. So, I hope you guys can see me. Um, experiment. Put in some lettuce seeds now. Put in some radish seeds now. And those are usually faster growers. Radishes grow really quickly. And just see how they do because it’s really hard to figure out when your frost rolls in. Like our light frost comes in maybe late October, beginning of November, maybe light medium frosts through the middle of November, maybe something heavy towards the end, and then the freezes roll in December. It’s really hard to find like the exact date that your cool weather crops aren’t going to do well. So, you sort of have to experiment. The crops to get in now definitely peas, carrots, beets, um your broccoli, your cauliflower, your Brussels, and your cabbage. These are crops that just take a little bit longer to grow. Cabbage is really solid. It can go further into um the season even with a harder freeze. So, with the peas, like I was saying, the pods themselves don’t like that medium frost. The if the pods freeze, they get messed up. Broccoli heads don’t like to get frozen. They can take a frost, but they don’t like to be frozen. Cauliflower heads can take a light frost, too. Don’t like to be frozen. If your freezes and your cold temperatures where things are really, you know, getting to zero Celsius, 32 Fahrenheit, couple degrees below that, that can damage the heads of the cab, the heads of the broccoli and the cauliflower. So, you have to get the timing down right. So, those are the crops you do want to get in now. They tend to take longer. Brussels sprouts, the little Brussels uh sprout doesn’t seem to be affected that much from the cold, but you do want to experiment. your leafy greens, spinach, arugula, um lettuce, they can go in a little bit later. You know, all your cool weather crops, if your soil is really warm, 100° Fahrenheit, 37.8° C, you don’t have to take the temperature of the soil. But if your days are, you know, up there and the sun is beating down, the soil temperature raises, you know, well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 37.8 C easily. So, you have to really water these regularly, maybe use some shade cloth, but you’re going to get a great benefit from planting a lot of your cool crops now in August, and then when the temperatures cool in September, they’re going to be nice, you know, and you can direct seed these. You don’t have to do transplants. When do you usually plant fava beans? Do they survive winter in year zone seven or is it best to wait until early spring? I would plant them now. Um I have trouble with them. They won’t survive our winter. They we do have a prolonged cold period. You just have to get the timing down right. And I would put them in now. I’ve tried growing them in the spring into the early spring, late winter, and they just don’t seem to to form well here. So, I would I would experiment. Question zone 8A, temperatures in the 90s. Do I remove 40% shade cloth to start fall gardening? Also, I do I need to fertilize raised beds for fall planting? Good questions. And I would not remove the 40% shade cloth. Now, let that shade cloth kind of be present for a little bit. It helps cool the soil, helps them grow. Enough light will get in there. If you’re worried about the light getting to them and maybe um you know they’re getting a little bit tall and leggy, remove it. But a little bit of shade cloth and 40% shade cloth means that you create 40% shade. 60% light gets through. That’s perfect. That’s going to cool the soil. Your seeds are going to germinate because it’s warm. They’re going to grow really well. I would leave it. fertilizing, you don’t usually have to do a whole lot because you’ve prepped the beds fairly well over, you know, the summer. If you’re worried about the bed prep, you could always, if you have compost, always use that. Put down like an inch of compost, mix it into the top four inches of the soil, top 10 centimeters. Great. If you don’t have compost and you’re worried, any organic granular fertilizer with NPNK represented just sprinkled across again mixed into that top 4 in 10 cm. Or you can just plant the seeds, water them in at planting with a water soluble fertilizer, any one you want to use, and then maybe at midrowth you water it again with the water soluble. You don’t have to do all of that, but they don’t need a whole lot. Um, so you can use either of those techniques. That’s going to be plenty of nutrients. You know, there’s a lot in the garden beds. You’d be surprised. We tend to overfertilize and overprepare our beds. I picked up 25 cent basil, rosemary, and sage starts at a garden center. I’m wondering if I can plant them in my five tier or the pockets too shallow. No, you can definitely plant um well, you definitely can plant basil. Basil you can fill all the pockets and they’re annual comes and goes. Rosemary and sage are perennials. They could possibly survive. I would just put one rosemary or two per tier. One on opposite side. Same with the sage. I wouldn’t put more than two sage or rosemaries per tier. You know, my dark lime tree leaves are turning white. It’s in the ground. I’m in Vegas. What can I do for this? I don’t know. That is not my specialty. So, I don’t want to guess. If the leaves are turning white of any plant, sometimes if they’re not used to high heat and high sun, sun can bleach the leaves. Sometimes it’s due to small insects on the underside like mites. You can check them for any kind of like webbing or anything looking like that. But I don’t really have an answer for you. Sorry. Question. in pots. Do I need to pull all plants completely out in order to start new plants? Collards. Um, you don’t. You You I mean, if the collards in the kale are growing well, you can trim them and they usually take off again in the fall. You don’t want to have a new mature collard in an a older collard in the same pot. They’re going to just take up lots of water and lots of nutrients. So, when I was talking about fertilizer earlier, I was talking about um the earth beds. In containers, usually the nutrients are really pulled out of there. So, you do want to kind of refresh your container mix with compost and organic granular or both. Get that mixed into there. And you want to use a water soluble more regularly than you might do in your earth beds. You could do what you’re saying, like if you want to put in some collarded seeds or kale seeds, get them sprouted and going and then the other one’s finishing out. Don’t rip the current one out. You’re going to disturb the roots of the new plant. Just cut it down to the base or something like that. But you could do that if you wanted to. Checking for more questions. If I missed your question again, please repost it. I’m going to stay on a little bit longer because I had to relink this video. Um, yeah, I had to relink and restart this video today because the first one failed. Taking a look here. So many questions go through, it’s hard for me to keep track of everything. Stephen in anybody you see with a circle and a star are perk members. Um, so perk memberships, you can join my YouTube channel. 3.99 a month. I do this format five times a month and some other things. It is, you know, $3.99 a month and it’s really focused on mentoring and I answer all your questions. Um, the group is great. Anybody who has a circle in the start is a perk member. This is my public Q&A that I do every second and fourth Thursday at 11:00 a.m. But I do have the perk memberships and you just in the bottom of the video you’ll see a join link. You can just join question. The white spots and the black spots on my tomatoes, is that from the heat and humidity in Texas? It’s possible. So, when you have a tomato plant and you have an active fungus, the fungus is usually leaving a brown spot and then around that brown spot is a yellow ring. That yellow ring means the fungus is active. Sometimes you see white spots and black spots on tomato leaves and it doesn’t do anything to the plant. I sort of would have to see a picture. If you’re concerned and it’s, you know, spreading up the plant, certainly use an antifungal like baking soda spray, something mild, and go ahead and spray it. If the spots are like from a spray, maybe the sun hit the water spots or whatever spray you used damaged and created white spots, that could be from that. But they have black and white spots at the same time if I understand correctly. I’ve not seen that before. I’ve seen them separately, you know. I would just keep an eye on it and maybe use an antifungal. You can always send me a picture if you want. Um, which is also something I do for perk members. And um, my, you know, my email address is not a secret. It’s the [email protected], but send me a picture. I’ll look at it. question. Tips on how and when to plant garlic for a spring harvest. So, I’m in Maryland zone 7. I plant my hard neck garlic uh usually late October to late November. My garlic does great. You know, that’s when I usually do it. You’re not really doing much. You know, you’re prepping the growing area for your garlic. You could put in some compost, some organic granular, mix it 4 inches deep, 10 centimeters deep, and then you just press the garlic in. I have tons of videos on it if you want to check those out. But you want to kind of plant it when the temperatures are dropping to that freeze. Your garlic that you plant in the fall, it’s going to send up green growth. It’s going to get beat up. Don’t worry about it. But you really just want the garlic bulb or the garlic clove to be planted. Let it root out. Let it establish a little green growth up top and then you just let it sit. Come next spring, a well-rooted clove is just going to send up the greenery. Any old greenery that’s beat up from the winter, it’s going to be fine. Water it with the water soluble in the spring and you’re going to have great garlic. All right, buzzing through real quick. Question. I normally top my ingground bed with compost and then leaf mold. Is it better to do it late fall or the spring? Let me read it again. I normally top my ingground bed with compost and leaf mold. Is it better to do it in the late fall or the spring? So, if you have really quality compost and leaf mold, meaning it’s broken down fully. Spring is great. You know, just let it set where it is, set it up in the spring. If it’s not quite done breaking down and you need more time, I recommend the fall. then it gets that couple of extra months, maybe up to five months of sitting in the bed and breaks down a little bit more. It really in the long run doesn’t matter. The nutrients don’t get sucked away or go away. So, you could do whatever is most convenient really for you, I think. Do you spray for mosquitoes or wear a mosquito vest? I am one of those lucky people that is bothered very little, knock on wood, by mosquitoes. Where other people might get 15 or 20 bites, I might get one. So, I’m lucky. In the morning after these crazy rains, I go into my garden. Mosquitoes are everywhere. I will get, you know, five bites or something like that. And that’s probably too much information, but they itch for, you know, 10 minutes and then they go away. So, they don’t really bother me. So, to answer your question, I do not spray and I do not um wear a vest. I do make sure that I don’t have standing water on my property, be it a shovel flipped over, a bucket, um a seed container, because they can multiply. Um my wife gets bit really easily. Most people do. So, I really make sure that I don’t have standing water around the property. um to the best of my ability. Thank you, Ren. And if you do a super chat donation, so to speak, I will answer that right away. Hi, Gary. I love your channel. I also live in Maryland. When is a good time to take down my shade cloth? Thanks. So, we were just talking about that. So, your shade and right now, like I was away for two weeks um seeing Austin, which again, it’s wonderful. My garden got beat up. It got hot again. Things dried out. It would have benefited the shade having the shade cloth up. I think when the temperatures are starting to get into the lower 80s and 70s, you can remove the shade cloth. You could probably take it down now. No worries. We were really protecting it against that 95 degree 100 degree Fahrenheit, you know, days that we were getting 37.8 Celsius. Really hot. Um, so to be clear, you could take your shade cloth down now for the warm crops. However, I was saying if you want to start a fall garden in your direct seeding, sometimes the lower temperatures don’t impact the warm crops, but the seeds that we’re trying to germinate for the fall garden are impacted from the warmer weather, but that’s not as hot as damaging the warm crops. I know it’s a little bit confusing. So, you can leave your shade cloth up maybe over a bed where you’re putting in um some of your cool weather crops and that does help them. And I would just do that really till September 1. You know, give them about two weeks of protection. The other trick that’s interesting is because we have so much going on in the gardens, um we don’t want to put like cool weather crop seeds all over the place and then have to track them down and water them. If you just have a bed or a space, you can put in a bunch of lettuce, a bunch of collards, a bunch of broccoli, whatever, grow them in there as transplants actually in the soil, a little bit of shade cloth over there. Water them every other day. Keep them well watered, maintain them, and when they get to about this size, get your, you know, hand shovel, your TR, dig down really deep, and just pop it out. space them out so that you can get in there and you can pop your transplant out and then move them to other parts of your garden. And that’s a technique to really kind of concentrate your energy and resources to one area. You have the shade cloth still on there. You grow your transplants in the earth and then you just pop them throughout the rest of the garden when you need to. You can certainly grow transplants in containers. Um just be careful they don’t bake in the sun. Um, you know, and if you are growing transplants indoors, not maybe in a greenhouse or something, you really have to acclimate them to the outdoors because they have to get used to the warm temperatures and the sun. And you’re going to need a good seven days of getting an indoor fall crop used to the outdoor temperature and sun. Thank you, Ren. Let’s see. Just picking up where I left off. Trying to. Anyway, if I missed your question, please throw it out there. We are at 3:37, so I’ll go for a good other 20 20 minutes here. Um, yeah. Yeah. And Steve says it’s only on the tomatoes. I have found these black spots on the leaves and they’ve never done anything to the leaf. They don’t come every year. You know, you can kind of monitor it and watch how late question. How late how late in the can I I plant potatoes in New Jersey? So, I think you’re asking what’s the latest you can plant tomatoes or potatoes. So, potatoes we typically plant in March. We plant in spring. I plant mine again in June and then sometimes I can get a third crop in. I usually put those in towards the end of July. The issue in New Jersey is I think if you put potatoes in now, the greenery is going to come up, but your frost is going to come really sometime in October and the upper growth of potatoes gets killed off by frost. So, you may not have enough time. I like to do mine somewhere in mid July. Gives me August, September to August to September, 60 days, and then another sometimes 20 30 days into October. That’s usually enough to get another round of potatoes. You can give it a try. I wouldn’t overdo it if you can protect the green growth. Certainly give it a try now, but you’re getting to the point where it might be tough for that when and I have plenty of planting uh potato videos. Um I just did some this summer, so you can check those out and that will keep you on track. Um I’m growing pumpkins in root pouches due to limited space. Have you tried this? One’s in 35 gallons, the other’s in 10 gallons. They’ll be growing up a trellis. So, I have not tried it before, but I’ve grown cucumbers in root pouches or fabric pots. A 10gon container is not very big for a pumpkin. And it’s not that you can’t do it. It’s that plant. Pumpkins need tons of water. So that plant when it’s large and growing upward is going to be sucking the water out of there that you might have to water in 10 gallons twice a day. Um you’re going to have to feed them probably every 10 to 14 days with a light water soluble to make sure the nutrients stay in there. It’s just not a lot of growing space for nutrients and water. The 35gallon bag is better and you can probably you’re going to have to still water that probably when it’s large and producing maybe once a day. Um, but that’s going to be better. So, the 10 gallon bag will be trouble. The 35gallon bag should be fine. And when you’re talking about a 35gallon bag, I’m really thinking only one plant in there. Um, the thing with containers is it’s not so much you can’t grow in small containers. It’s that it’s really hard for us to keep the water in the container when it’s small because these massive plants with big root systems just suck the nutrients and water out of there really really quick. Karen, who’s also a perk member, is it okay to plant tomatoes the same location every year? I do. There is, you know, always a thought that if you get a pest or disease where your tomato is, move it to another place. That’s great on a larger scale farm where you can move things from one side to the other side. Most crop crop rotation is due for nutrient issues on, you know, farmsiz property. In a home garden, you know, home homestead, you’re always adding composted materials to the soil anyway. So there’s usually not a nutrition issue. So there’s no need to move them. If you have a disease that comes to your plants, that disease usually finds the plants no matter where you move them. You know, if it’s a fungus, floating spores, insects, moving them isn’t going to do a whole lot. If you have some sort of root disease that comes and impacts your tomatoes or your plants, if it’s some sort of nematode or root knot or something that really attacks the roots of a specific plant, I would move them. But if it’s any kind of disease or insect above the ground that’s all maintained by sprays and insect dusts and, you know, taking care of them with prevention only. Again, just to clarify, if it’s something that’s impacting the roots and these things stay in your soil, I would move the plants to a new location and let them die out there because they usually don’t. They like one specific plant if you have some sort of, you know, rooting issue or something like that. That is very rare though. That doesn’t happen very often. Um, Eli, I saw your question, but make sure you put question in front of it. Can you grow some vegetables indoors with the grow light? You can grow anything indoors with a really powerful grow light. They’re really expensive. With just lights for seed starting, you know, just the fluorescent shop lights. I’ve grown radish radishes, lettuce, spinach, arugula, and tiny Tim tomatoes, and they seem to work. All right, I if I missed your question, please put it out there. So, when we’re talking about the fall garden, we are transitioning from warm crops to the cool crops. the warmth of the soil, the longer days right now, more daylight really does help your fall garden, your cool crops get off to a great start and grow. And that period from now really like August 15th to September 15th because of the longer days and the warmth, you’re going to get a lot of growth out of your plants more than if you plant September 15th to October 15th because the days shrink, less daylight, and the temperatures go down. So, the plants don’t grow as fast. So, you’re really using the bonus of August to get your plants off to a great start. Right now, again, I’m in Maryland zone 7. The plants that I recommend getting into the ground are peas because the pea pods don’t like a frost or a freeze. Cauliflower and broccoli because the crown of broccoli and cauliflower can’t take they can take a light frost, but they can’t take a freeze. They get rubbery and messed up and they take longer to grow. If you’re growing Brussels sprouts, although they are pretty resistant to freezes, get them in early because they just take a long time, you know, and then if it doesn’t if the Brussels sprout doesn’t start sprouting and you’re getting prolonged freezes below 30 to2 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 Celsius, it can impact the plant. Um, and then your longer day cabbages that might take 80, 90 days or the bigger cabbages, I try and get them in now. You can certainly put in your kale, your collards, your Swiss chard. They do well with the warmth. Um, and then I would get in your carrots and your beets. If your temperatures are cooling down pretty well, you can put in really any cool weather crop you want. I don’t really put in my lettucees until the end of August. Um, radishes either. I do experiment. I put some in now. But when you have the warmth of August, sometimes your arugula will bolt. Your pock choy or your Chinese cabbages bolt. They that means they put out a flower head because they feel the warmth of the soil. The roots feel the warmth and they just go to flowering. So some of the crops I don’t really plant, you know, until later August when things cool down. I also don’t plant and in the next um I forgot what we’re doing today. in the next Garden Grounds. Um, what’s the date of that? Let me see if I got there. On August 28th, 11:00 am Thursday. So, I do garden grounds, but what I’m doing today, the Q&A every second and third Thursday at 11:00 a.m., although we started at 3 p.m. today because I was away. I just got back. So, on August 28th, 11:00 a.m. Thursday, we’re going to be talking about the second part of fall gardening. And that’s where I’m going to be talking about just about the leafy greens, radishes, crops that really like the cool weather. Um, everything goes into my garden. What I’ll be talking about then is succession planting. Like I we’ll put in some radishes now. I don’t want to put in 100 radishes, 200 radish seeds now or, you know, 25 heads of Roma or seeds of Roma because when they all mature, I’m not going to be able to eat 25 heads of Roma at once or I’m not going to really enjoy 200 radishes at once. So through the fall, you want to do a succession planting. 25 radishes, 10 heads of lettuce. after they germinate two or three weeks later, you know, 25 more radishes, five or 10 more heads of lettuce, you know, and you get the idea. And you plant in waves so that you’re harvesting mature crops over a longer period rather than having to eat 25 heads of lettuce at once or having 200 radishes. All right. So, I did have to restart this video um or this live broadcast. So, I’m gonna stay on really to four o’clock to kind of make up. Usually, this these last to about quarter of, but to make up for any uh great inconvenience I caused you guys. Let me see what questions we have. I CC companies from Wickshshire. I see seed companies still sell weak variety of plant things that get sick easy when there is uh numerous cultivars that are much more resistant. Some varieties need retirement thoughts. So what I’m going with is that you have more experience than a lot of people. So a lot of the seeds that are sold are sold to us for pretty packaging. Heirlooms are great, but they’re not all the best. um in in the sense that they just don’t do well in her zone or they produce a great tasting tomato but you only get six of them and a disease has knocked them out. So when you’re buying seeds, you’re looking for plants that do really well in your area and you may not know that right away. So, I’ve grown, I don’t know, hundreds, maybe thousand different varieties of tomato plants, and I’ve kind of whittleled mine down to like the 15 or 20 that do really well. I’m going to shrink that down even more next year because I’m actually going to be changing up my whole garden. I’m going to redesign it, going to make it um a little bit more raised, thinking I’m 58, doing pretty good. Um, but when I’m 68, I might not want to have this bed set up. So, I’m planning for when I’m older, and I’m also planning now, again, Austin is wonderful. I love being a grandfather, that if I’m going to go away for two weeks in the summer, or I’m going to be doing something with grandkids, I need a a watering system set up and I’m going to redesign my bed so that I can set up a watering system. Anyway, in doing that, I am looking for like your question, what seeds, what plant varieties do really well in my conditions and in my garden? And I think a lot of seed companies, to answer your question, they just throw all kinds of stuff at you with these cool names and they don’t really care that this plant is not going to do well in your zone. And you only learn that with experience. And that’s not just the the seed companies. It’s when you go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and you buy a certain plant and they’re, you know, started wrong. you have like a hundred things of radishes in a little container for $15 at Home Depot. That’s never going to grow. You have certain varieties that just don’t do well anyway. You have to kind of learn, you know, what works best. Hybrids, just to add to that, a hybrid is you and me taking pollen from one plant and putting it, you know, to another plant and you make a cross and it’s perfectly natural. It’s what bees do. It’s just hybridization and you create a new cultivar a lot of time and that’s done with passion from these you know plantreeders. They create a plant that’s much more resistant and strong. The reason I mention that is because it’s not a GMO. Okay? Genetically modified organism is something that is created by science that can’t happen in nature. But anytime you see a hybrid, it is something that’s done by people with a passion to create a better plan. and they’re usually more disease resistant. Um maybe a bush variety, different things. But you do have to kind of, you know, um test out different seeds in your garden. Also adding to that, I mean, it’s a very interesting question is you don’t need all these different varieties like the standard um of course I forgot the name. Black beauty zucchini does really well. You know, your standard eggplant, the one that you see all the time, does really well. I think that might also be called black beauty. It’s just the classic looking eggplant. So, a lot of the classics that have been grown for the last 50, 75 years do really well, and that’s all you really need. But it’s also enjoyable to try different heirlooms and things like that. When I grow heirloom tomatoes, a lot of times I get cracking. The fruits are a little bit deformed. The leaves, like the brandy wines, get diseased much more quickly than the other plants, but the fruit does taste better. So, it’s always, you know, kind of give and take on on what you’re planting. Silverhaired. I’m in Western PA. I’m growing 10 different varieties. I have one park swapper improved with many flowers, but so far zero tomatoes and and zero tomatoes have formed. Could it be a genetic problem? I’ve grown a Whopper. I actually might have it in my garden now. I can’t remember. And it’s doing fine. Is it a genetic problem? No. Um, and meaning that plant or the whopper doesn’t have issue. It should be forming. It’s just kind of nature. Sometimes depending on when you planted, excuse me, when you planted, how hot the temperatures came, got, it can impact how the tomato forms. Like you can get a lot of flowers, but it got so hot the first round of flowers didn’t form tomatoes. And it’s the plant doing that on purpose because it wants a set condition of soil temperatures, air temperatures, and that they should form um soon. I know the frost comes sooner in Pennsylvania, so hopefully you have time. Like we were just saying before, it could be the park’s Whopper. And maybe genetically in a sense that it takes that plant longer to form tomatoes. Yes, that would be true. Genetic as if it was a problem. No, but genetic wise, some plants might take longer to form and it may not just be the best for your zone. That’s a better way to answer your question. Excuse me, sir. talking too much. I’m starting to cough. Um, so let me just clarify. So, genetically, a tomato plant, you plant it, it grows, it does its thing. That’s the genetics of the plant. You may have a plant variety that takes a long time to start forming a tomato and growing, and it may not fit your zone, or maybe you planted it too late, so you have to plant it sooner. could be true for the parks whopper. When I read your question, I was looking more is it a genetic problem that it’s just flowering and nothing’s forming. No, it’s not a unique problem just for that plant for this year. But, you know, maybe it’s related to how the the plant grows. However, this year has been really tough in our area for tomatoes with the high heat, prolonged heat, crazy rains. A lot of plants aren’t doing well. Where are we at? All right, about five more minutes. Um Karen, who is also a perk member. So this is my public here comes my dog. This is my public Q&A. Um, every second and third Thursday or every second and fourth Thursday of the month, 11:00 a.m. I do this Q&A public perk memberships. Any of my videos, you can find the join button. I do this five times a month, plus some other things for $3.99. And it’s a great group. So, anybody you see with a circle and a star um are perk members. And this is a format we typically do five times a month. How tall are the raised beds you’re going to put in? So, the first raised beds, I’m going to make mine out of wood. I like that look. I do really like the metal raised beds. Um, they’re probably just going to be they’re going to be 12 in. I don’t think I’m going to go to 24 in. Um, I’m still deciding. I might be doing different rows. I’m still in the design process, but the wood beds, the wood raised beds are probably going to be 3 feet wide, 12 in tall, and they might be 6 8 10 ft long. It really doesn’t matter. I’ve also found over time, you know, I’ve done a lot of 4×6, 4 feet by six feet raised beds, four feet by 8t raised beds, and they’re great. You know, you can’t reach all the way in. You have to go around the bed. With a three-foot raised bed, easy there, Willow. With a um three foot wide raised bed, I can tend from any side. And it’s also going to give me a little bit more room in the garden based on how I set it up. But wood beds 12 in. Um we’ll see, you know, how it goes. Speaking of GMO, I’m going to save seeds for my Norfolk purple tomato this year. This year, have you had luck growing them out from saved seeds? Um, I didn’t grow them like I tested that GMO. I think you’re talking about the solid purple tomato all the way through. It’s crossed with um a snapdragon and it’s been like a 20-year project of the woman, I forgot her name. And in that like I’m okay with growing that. It just didn’t taste great. It was really cool looking. So, I didn’t grow it again. Now, the plant did drop a lot of tomatoes and they regrrew, but I pulled them. So, I don’t know if they’re true to form. One of the things that you’re sort of asking is when you have an heirloom tomato, you grow it, you um pick the tomato, you save the seeds, you plant the seeds, the next year you get the exact same plant. Those seeds are a stable cultivar. You meaning save the seeds, plant the seeds, same plant. When you save seeds from a hybrid, it has to go through so many generations to be a stable cultivar. So if I do if I grow a hybrid, maybe in this case the GMO, I’m not sure how the seeds work in there. You say you save the seeds, you put them in the ground, you don’t get the same plant. You get like characteristics of the mother plant or the father plant, but because it’s not a stable cultivar, your hybrid seeds don’t always reflect a true to form tomato. The GMO, I I think that you should actually get the same plant, but I’m not sure. All right, we are at 3:58. Let me just go over a couple of things real quick. On August 28th, Thursday, 11:00 a.m. is the next garden grounds. Again, I do this every 2 and 4 Thursday, 4 pm. And on the 28th, we’ll be talking about part two of the fall gardening. this, you know, today’s subject was really on what to get in the ground now, your earlier crops to plant for the fall garden. Um, so that’ll be on 8:28 at 11:00 a.m. If you do like this format, I do have perk memberships. Find the join button in any of my videos. 3.99 a month and I do this format um five times a month and it’s a smaller group. Sometimes it’s like, you know, 15 to 35 people on at once. Everybody really helps each other out. you can find people in your zone. The people there are very smart um have a lot to add, a lot of experience and then I do the format just like this where I will answer your questions and we do also do a light subject usually topical of what I’m exactly I’m doing in the garden at that time. All right, we’ll take one or two more questions. Um Sandra, I saw your question and now it’s gone. Um, you did mention cucumber being stunted, I think. So, with the high heat, uneven watering, cucumber plants get really beat up and the cucumbers don’t pollinate well and they can look really deformed and look beat up depending on, you know, what’s going on in nature. If you’re in Maryland, you actually have time that you can plant cucumber plants and zucchini plants. Now, again, some of the warm weather crops because they grow so quickly with the warmth, they germinate quickly, they accelerate. If your frost isn’t really coming to later October or November, you can get in another wave of cucumbers, um, squash plants or summer squash plants, you can’t. So, that’s what I saw. So, the cuces get two inches, they get pointy and stop growing. You can’t do anything to fix that. That’s really from the uh temperatures. Here’s my dog who wants to say hello. Come here. This is Willow. It’s usually the temperatures and the plant probably looks beat up. You You can’t fix that. So, what fixes it is either new plants and then new conditions come, things cool down, plant, new plant does better, or you just stick with even watering, maybe give them a light feeding, trim back the the dead um leaves and stuff like that. The plant, if it survives, will send out new shoots, and the new cucumbers will be doing really good. This is Willow. She’s a Bernadoodle. Very smart dog. She has not met um Boston yet, but she’ll meet the grandchild probably in a couple of months. All right, any other questions? I’ll take one more if we have it and then I’m going to wrap up. All right, she wants to eat actually. All right, you sit down there and thanks for sticking with me. So, just if you come to this regularly, I’m in a My house is from 1867. Um, one electric one, yeah, one electric wire going in. We get storms here. It gets really windy. Sometimes the internet goes out. So, if I’m ever in the middle of a live event, it goes out. If I can’t get it back up and going, um, look for a new live link. And that’s, you know, all I can do. And that’s what happened today earlier. for some people. All right, I don’t think we have any more questions, so I will see you guys next time. Good luck in your gardens. And the next Garden Grounds public Q&A is August 28th at 11:00 a.m. Thanks.