Putting Your Garden Beds to Rest (Vegetable Gardening Live Monthly Questions & Answers E-63)

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Welcome to the rusted garden. We are live and welcome to garden grounds, also vegetable gardening Q&A. Today’s light subject is going to be on putting your beds to rest for really the winter. And we’ll see how that goes. Let me just do a quick sound check. Let me know that you can hear me, that you can see me, and we’ll we’ll get started. And of course, this is really for you to really leave me any question that you want. Just put question in front of it. Put it into the chat and I will answer the best I can. Any subject is fine. Any question you have. There is no silly question. Brand new gardeners, you may have a ton of questions. Ask whatever you’d like. All right, let me just get the chat set up real quick. Put your questions out there. All right, so we’re good to go. So, as I was saying, the light subject’s going to be putting your garden beds to rest. And if you have questions, put them out there. Just put question in front. We’ll wait a minute for some people to kind of start rolling in. It seems like people are showing up. The most important thing about putting your beds to sleep in the winter, and I understand some gardeners may garden through the winter, but a lot of our beds we put to sleep. You don’t have to do anything fancy. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. You don’t need specialized products. You can just really use, if you have compost, that’s perfect. If you have the space and you have compost, that’s going to work well. You can also use grass clippings. You can use leaves. um shred them up, cut them up in a mower, put them down. Your garden bottom line doesn’t need organic granular fertilizers, specialty fertilizers. We tend to spend a lot of money on that. It really just needs organic matter. In the winter or late fall, right now, you can just literally I just cut my tomatoes off at the stems. I leave the roots in the ground. These are for my tomato beds. I put down wood ash for my fire pit. You know, just sprinkle it across the top. That’s not going to change the pH. A lot of times that’s a fear that wood ash is really um high in alkalinity and it change it’s going to change your soil. It will if you throw clumps down, but not if you sprinkle it across. If you want to add some fertilizer, you can use alpha alpha pellets. They are 40 lb. you buy them their feed for animals. 40 pound bag and you can go ahead and just sprinkle that heavily across the top of your bed. That’s going to work like an organic granular fertilizer. Cool thing about the alpha alpha, it has a hormone that helps stimulate growth. Not crazily, but it helps. But it can be used as an organic granular fertilizer. And it’s only about $25 for a 40 lb bag. When you go to organic granular fertilizers and you’re buying them in the store, you see all kinds of different stuff, different costs. None of them are better than the other ones. So, try and buy something inexpensive if you want to use the organic granular. So, I use wood ash. I will put down alpha alpha pellets and then I am able to make a lot of compost. So, I use compost or leave cutings and I just put a couple. There’s my dog uh protecting me probably from um an Amazon delivery if you hear the dog barking. And then I just put leaves on top of there and I let them sit. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. Let’s see what questions we have. Uh good morning. I’m going out of the country for a year. Any advice on how to prepare my raised beds before I leave? Any hints on what to do when I return? So, a year is a good time. I mean, it’s a hopefully you’re gonna have a good time, but it’s a good amount of time away from your garden, and I’ve never had this question before. I would probably put a heavy amount of shredded hardwood mulch across the top of your beds. And it’s the shredded, not the bark, not the chunky pieces, but if you can, shredded hardwood. And that will help keep weeds down. Worms do love Here comes my dog. Um, that will help keep weeds down. That will allow microbes and worms to chew down the shredded hardwood. It will help your soil. And then come a year from now, just move it to the side. And if it’s not fully broken down, um, if you’re going to be planting seed, you may want to remove some of the wood. If you’re just doing transplants, you’re going to be able to plant right in there. But I would put a good layer of the shredded hardwood or any kind of mulch that you have and, you know, let it go. The beds are going to be fine. You’re probably going to have tons of weeds. Just weed it and you can plant. Um, Kirsten, who is a new perk member? Anybody who has a circle with a star is a perk member, meaning this format is my public live. I do every second and fourth Thursday at 11:00 a.m. I also have the perk memberships. You just go to my channel, you can find memberships. There’s links in all of my videos. And I do this format five times a month, smaller groups, 20 to 30 people, and it’s perfect for really answering your questions and helping you guys with your gardens. Yeah. So, she was using um alpha alpha pellets and cardboard, and you can do that, too. What you’re doing when you’re putting your beds to rest is you’re just giving the space some fertilizer, hopefully organic matter, grass clippings, leaves, partially decomposed compost, perfect compost, whatever you want, right on the bed. Keeps the bed moist, keeps life active. It’s going to be great come the spring. It looks like you also maybe put cardboard down. I don’t know if you put the cardboard down first, then you alalfa pellets on top. Either way, you can do that. Cardboard can be used as a mulch, too. It will break down, it will go away, and it’s perfect for adding organic matter. What I want to stress with putting your beds to rest is that you don’t need to tweak perfect fertilizers. Like you don’t need to go and buy, let me reach down and grab this. Like bone meal. This is really expensive. And if you’re scattering this across the top of your beds, it’s going to add to it, but it’s it’s really you don’t need this. Any cheap organic granular fertilizer. They’re all basically the same. Chicken manure, blood meal, bone meal, some other stuff. And you lightly scatter it across the bed. cover it with compost or cover it with leaves or cover it with fresh gl Yeah. grass clippings. You have the idea is you’re just putting them to sleep and you’re kind of covering them with a blanket of stuff. Um, Linda, and please make sure you put question in front of your question so I can pick it out. Things start moving pretty quickly here. Just got home. any benefits to adding borax to the soil over over winter? So, I’ve never heard of that. Borax I use to kill ants. I have lots of videos on that. It’s a great way to kill ants. I think borax is like sodium tetra borate, maybe. I I wouldn’t do that because you’re adding in chemicals you don’t need. I’m trying to stretch this to maybe boron is in borax. That’s like a really micronutrient. You you just don’t need to do that. I would not do that. Um I’ve never heard of it. I don’t know what the benefits would be. Um it’s never come up in my radar in 40 years. So I would just skip that question. I had blight in my garden this year for the first time. What should I do to prepare my garden beds to prevent it for next year? Thank you for any advice. That’s a really good question. Nothing. So, and I’m sorry to say it that way. The fungal issues, blight, etc. float in from different areas. They overwinter on host plants outside your garden and when the warmth comes, they do their spore thing. They float around. Now, minimum, you could remove weeds and garden debris around the garden, but that’s sort of a false belief that people think the spores overwinter like on dead leaves and maybe some weeds in the garden. They’re just all over the place and it’s a very common fungal issue. Your best defense is to one, you know, clean up your garden as much as you want. Put the beds to rest. You can’t treat the soil. You can’t fix the soil. That’s not really the issue. The spores, the fungus, diseases are around your garden. The best defense is really making notes of when it showed up on your plants and to spray, start spraying two weeks, even three weeks before that happens. And you want to get onto a consistent spraying routine to protect your plants from fungus, fungi, disease issues, and pests. And maybe the spray routine is every seven days, 14 days, 21 days, whatever. It varies. The key is consistent spraying by the gardener and it really makes a difference. Um, catching the fungal issues early, hitting them with hydrogen peroxide works really well. I have lots of videos on using hydrogen peroxide in the garden. But the bottom line is what I’m saying is you have to have a plan in place to treat the fungus. you’re not going to be able to keep it from coming back to your garden. And the idea is is when you go out into your yard, you dig a new space, there’s no garden there, you set it up, you start growing plants, the diseases and pests show up. It’s not because you’re doing something wrong. It’s not because there’s something in the space. It’s just around. It’s just part of nature. So, the prevention plan and the spraying plan for next year is the key. question. Is this a good time of year to hunt for sales on garden supplies? Oh, absolutely. Um, an eagllet, I know you’re I see you a lot. I always talk about that. So, I’m in Maryland zone 7 about really November, so you’re getting close at Home Depot and Lowe’s around here because we have freezing winters. We don’t garden, you know, 24/7 all year long. The bags of fertilizer and all kinds of stuff go on sale. They go on discount. I bought probably four years ago now like 20 be 20 27 pound bags of Espoma fertilizer that’s normally like 20 $25 for like two to four bucks. I don’t remember how much I paid but it was it was low. So I have plenty of organic granular fertilizer. So, I will sprinkle that down. You know, getting back to the subject, across the ground of my beds because I got it so cheaply. Inexpensive organic granular, sprinkle it across the top of your beds, put the mulches, the leaves, etc. onto your beds. Let your beds go to sleep. We’ll talk a little bit more about that shortly, but you can find um insect sprays, you can find spray bottles, you can find fertilizers, all kinds of different things in areas where you live where you have winters and they’re usually moving out a lot of the garden stuff at the Home Depot near me. They put into Christmas stuff, well, the Halloween Christmas, all kinds of different things. and I just go and I buy up, you know, what’s on sale. I mean, sometimes I get like fish emotion. I’ve gotten bottles of fish emulsion um for like a $149, you know, crazy cheap. Yeah. So, borax has boron. I I there’s no need for that. Boron is really a low it’s I mean it’s a micronutrient. And if you have clay soil or anything like that, that’s great. If you think you have a bor a boron deficiency and it’s harming your plants, maybe put it in there, but you can find boron in different ways. Um, a lot of the water soluble fertilizers, the chemical types, have all the micronutrients in there. Nothing is they’re not going to harm you or your garden. I would just use that water- soluble soak down the area. If you’re concerned about boron, you’re going to have it in there and it’s not going to change how you, you know, organically grow. Oh, let’s see. All right. Morning. Good morning, Gary. Good morning, Jen. Any thoughts on green manurs and chop and drop process over the winter? So green manurs basically the process of growing annual plants usually like peas or clover or something that fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere. The roots pull in nitrogen. The plants grow they have green. The green has nitrogen and minerals and you know fertilizers in there. And then you chop them up. They fall in the ground. They decay into your bed and it’s good stuff. That there’s nothing wrong with that. However, like in my garden, in order to grow the clover, I would have to put the beds to sleep a little bit earlier, give those green manurs time to grow, and then chop them down. And I’m using um like my bed is my garden is full now. So, I don’t really do that because I don’t have the growing period for the green manurs or the right temperatures, you know, thereafter. The other thing that I find is it’s extra work if you’re able to compost. And I have a ton of compost now in my yard. Um, and I understand you may not have the space, but I just use compost. So, the chop and drop and the green manurs. It’s just an extra step that I don’t need to do. It’s great for bigger like farms where you put down the clover and you’ve harvested your main crop and you’ve got growing time and you grow these cover crops and these chop and drop crops and chop them in. But for, you know, a small home garden, it’s just as effective, I think, to bag up clippings with your lawn mower, lawn, leaves. Perfect combo. Leaves fall in the ground, your grass is kind of high. You chop them together, you put them on there. It’s it’s similar stuff. It really, you know, breaks down. Do you have the time for the manure to get to size and then you just chop it down? Urban chicken mama also a long time perk member. Uh, I’ve always pulled the whole plant. How fast do the roots you leave break down? Are they gone by spring? So, for tomato plants, if that’s what you’re talking about, um they’re not gone by spring, but your new plants can grow through them. They’re decaying. They’re breaking down. There’s no need to pull them out. If you’re like, and I use the same tomato bed, so I have, let’s just say in a um two foot by, I don’t know, 4 foot space, I have three plants. The surface roots go all over the place. Um they will decay. They will feed your plants. They break down pretty quickly. You get bigger roots deeper down, they hang out, but they’re creating space and then worms eat them and all that kind of stuff. So, they don’t have to be gone, I guess, is my point. When you just dig a hole, put in your new transplant, water it in, let it grow. The earth will do what it needs to do. Those tomato plants will do well. And it and anyway, when you pull out a tomato plant, you’re leaving a ton behind anyway. So, I just cut them. And again, like I was saying, wood ash, alpha alpha sometimes, compost if I have a lot. If not, I use just gr grass clippings and leaves, beds to rest. Come spring, move stuff to the side, new transplant goes in, and then, you know, if you want to follow me, I’ll talk more about the fertilizing schedules and stuff in the spring. Uh, girl foliage, is there a way to create compost without attracting raccoons? Raccoons will show up no matter what. Compost, if it’s just leaf material and stuff like that, they’re they’re not going to be particularly attracted to that. Um, either are rats and rodents. When you start putting in meat products and stuff, if you’re doing that for some reason, that can attract more things. If you’re in a high pressure area, like in a city where there’s more rats, maybe mice, that could be an issue. Um, you know, I I just find that the compost doesn’t really bring raccoons in. I have them. They show up. I have to trap and release them and all that kind of stuff. Um, but they’re showing up for other reasons. They’re just looking for places to kind of nest and hang out. Um, they love trash cans and all that kind of stuff. If you’re worried about rodents for whatever or raccoons, leaves don’t attract, you know, feeding pests. If you want to, and here’s the thing, like if you throw in a bush of rotting tomatoes, initially might attract something that’s going to come and eat that, but it’s going to rot and decay and be gone. So if you make your compost with leaves, grass clippings, um just leaves and greenery from your garden, that could reduce I mean that would reduce the amount of animals coming in. But it is a bit of work to do that. And I’ve just found I live, you know, in a place that has a lot of wooded areas and I really get few animals coming in to the compost that is. Can you talk about adding rabbit poop to asparagus? Any manurses, chicken manure, goat manure, um rabbit manurses are good for the garden. Different manurs like goats have multiple stomach chambers and by the time they excrete excrete their waste that is almost pure compost ready for your garden and you can use it right away. Other animals you want several months even a year like horses and cow for the man manurses to break down. Rabbits I’m not a 100% sure. I mean, if it were the spring and you were using fresh rabbit manure, I would say let it break down for a good 3 months, six months, and then use it. But if you’re going to put it on your asparagus beds now, I would just scatter it across the beds. Over the next months, in the winter and spring, it’s going to break down and do its thing. It’s going to give to the plants and it’s going to grow. with manurses like be you just want to make sure that it’s composted down. If you’re putting manure down that’s too fresh and it’s not decayed and you’re maybe growing root crops or something you’re eating that contacts it, it may not be the best thing. Um, so you do want it broken down, but usually from October till April that should be fine. question. I use ammonium sulfate on my onions. Will it work as well on garlic and should I add it when planting my garlic next week? So, Linda, will you put up there what you’re using it for? Ammonium sulfate. I would have to look it up. It it would work for garlic. I’m not sure if you you necessarily need it. Let me look real quick. I want to see what ammonium sulfate does for a garden. Ammonium sulfate and the in the garden. All right. I was just wanting to check to see if it was an acidifier. All right. So, ammonium ammonium sulfate I’ve used to lower the pH and make the soil more acidic for my blueberry plants. Let me just fix the chat here. So, when you’re using ammonium sulfate, you are lowering the pH. So, you want to be careful of that. It depends on what’s going on. You’re also adding in some sulfur, which is said to help the flavor of the garlic and the onions. And then you’re adding nitrogen. Nitrogen is going to help it green and grow. I don’t think that it does anything more than add nitrogen and some sulfur. And you have to be careful that you don’t drop the pH because that can affect the way the stuff grows. I mean, it sounds like it worked and you’re not overusing it. And if you’re just doing it to add in nitrogen and sulfur, that’s fine. You can buy like if you have a sulfur is a um second tier macronutrient. You have uh nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, first tier main ones. plants always need that. And then you have sulfur, calcium, and magnesium as a second tier. And then you get to really micro and trace elements. It’s not going to hurt. Bottom line, you have to watch you don’t lower the pH too much. That can impact how your plants absorb material. I’ve not found that adding sulfur changes the intensity of the flavor. I’ve experimented with that before, but you can just buy sulfur for the garden and sprinkle some across if you feel you have a sulfur deficiency in the area and that won’t change the pH. Your compost, water soluble fertilizers, all that will give the nitrogen to the plants. And keep I mean and keep in mind I mean these are like my opinions and my experience. I’m not saying ammonium um sulfate is good or bad. it. I just feel like it’s not necessary. You have other choices. David, great question. And guys, please put question in front of your question or I’ll miss it. If you see me miss your question, put it back out there. We are at 11:24, so I’ll go for another good 15 minutes or so. How do you get rid of nutgrass and raised beds? It’s really terrible. It is really terrible. So, nutgrass, um, switchgrass, any kind of grass that grows roots, um, I don’t know if they’re ryomes or not, but they grow these root systems that spread everywhere and they go by many different names and they’re always underground. So, when you pull the top, the root is still down there. They call it wire grass and you can’t get rid of it. So only way to get rid of it is that you have to dig it all out and you have to remove it all or you have to use chemical sprays which I wouldn’t use in my garden growing area. But on the outside where usually the root systems are when that grass comes up I would get really close and I would actually spray the weed killer on there. I wouldn’t, you know, overdo it. That’s the only way to kill the roots out besides heavily weeding. Now, if it’s in your paths and stuff like that, you can put down cardboard, you can put down mulch, but these roots usually survive and they keep coming back. I don’t recommend this for annual weeds that you can just pull and they’re gone. Um, I will use very like if I have um thistle growing. thistle sends out all these lateral roots and you pick it, it it just generates more. I will take a um chemical weed killer, go to the thistle, put the nozzle right on it, and just do a light squirt that gets to the thistle thistle, gets into the root system, removes it, and it’s a targeted way to use the chemicals. I wouldn’t spray it all over the place. I also don’t spray in my garden beds where I’m growing food, but there’s there’s no really other way to get rid of it. There’s, you know, and you’ll hear like use vinegar, um, use organic means. Vinegar is an acid and you can spray acid weed killers on surfaces of these weeds. They’re annual. It works. It kills the leaves. The plants die. If it’s a weed that has massive root systems, the vinegar just burns the upper growth and then the roots send out growth. So, it’s really hard to control. Do diseased tomato roots with fuserium have to be pulled out completely. Um, it’s always good if you’re nervous about having diseases on your plant to pull the whole plant and get rid of it. Bag it up, send it to the trash if you don’t want to compost it. I’m okay with doing that. The thing is is that you can’t if you have a root disease or whatever in the soil and you try and pull out your tomato plant, you’re only going to rip out a small portion of the roots. So, they’re still in there. So, it’s a good chance that disease comes back. If you have fungal issues on plants where they land on leaves like powdery mildew, um leaf spots, they can all be treated with sprays. If you have a soil illness that’s in your soil, that’s going to be problematic. And the best case for that is to rotate your crops. I don’t I’m not a big proponent for rotating crops in your garden for floating fungal issues and insects because they they find the plants. But if there’s an issue in your soil and it impacts tomato plants, then you’re going to want to move your tomato garden to another place. over time, you know, that issue will will die off and you can go back to it. Question from Karen, also a perk member. If my lawn is sprayed with chemicals, can I still collect the leaves? Um, so nowadays, because I don’t know what people spray on their lawn from the time that you spray a chemical and if it’s to control the weeds, um, some of these are like six month protectors to prevent weeds and stuff like that. I say wait 3 to 6 months before you cut the grass and actually use the grass clippings. If you’re raking the leaves, there’s no worries about that. If you’re using a mower and you’re chopping up grass and leaves, probably not a worry. Depends on the chemical that has been put down. Um, I’m more cautious in the spring when people often put down stuff to kill dandelions, prevent weeds, all kinds of stuff because the weed preventers will prevent germination and issues in your garden. Don’t know if the chemicals are systemic now sometimes and get absorbed into the grass. It just depends on what’s going on. Bottom line is like my garden or my lawn I don’t treat. It’s never been treated in the six years I’ve been here. So, I use it all the time. It’s great stuff. But generally speaking, I would wait a good 90 days before a chemical treatment on your lawn to use the grass there. And if you’re cutting up the grass, same thing with the leaves. If you’re just raking the leaves, I think it’s fine to use. Ammonia is a great source of nitrogen that’s available to the plants quickly. So, and it’s used a lot of a lot for lawns, too. and all these different chemicals. Like I’m not afraid to use people made fertilizers in my garden. I just don’t believe it makes me not organic. Although people would argue with me, but I don’t believe that it harms the plants or me. You don’t want to overuse them because overuse can impact the soil and it’s not really, you know, this is topic for another um garden grounds, you know, garden Q&A. It’s not really the fertilizers you use. It’s organic matter. Your gardens to thrive have to have ample amounts of compost and organic matter. And if you’re doing that, you don’t need any of the fertilizers really. I maybe you always need a water soluble. I like using that at planting and I like using that mid growth. But you can skip all the organic granular fertilizers really if you’re using lots of compost. My broccoli seems to only grow leaves right now. Would you advise to treat with um PNK phosphorus and potassium instead of NPNK nitrogen? I’ve only used fish emulsion. No. So, here’s the thing with um like broccoli and cauliflower. You can’t really speed up the formation of the head of these vegetables that we eat. They come when the temperatures are right and they come when they’re the right age. If you’re constantly feeding your plants fish emulsion, just stop feeding them. They have plenty of nutrients right now and you just want them to get the right temperatures and the right signals to start forming. But PNK is not going to speed up, you know, the formation of the head. You have plenty of that already in your soil. All right, real quick. Getting back to um putting your beds to rest. So you can, you know, put your beds to rest. Some organic granular if you want to spend the money on that. Alpha alpha pellets that I like to use. Wood ash. It’s really the top, you know, four 10 cm to 20 centimeters, 4 to 8 cm where all the surface roots of your plants go. And that’s where they pull in the bulk of their nutrients. And then roots do go deeper. So you’re only prepping really the top of the soil. Worms and microbes will pull the nutrients down. Five months from now when it as it’s been raining and spring is coming. All that good stuff that you’ve let decay and put down is in that top, you know, 4 8 in of the soil. That’s going to really feed your plants. That’s why you’re putting them to rest. You’re getting those nutrients in there by using the organic matter, leaves and grass and, you know, compost and stuff. You get worms crawling through there that airrate the space. They’d leave worm castings that have benefits beyond just, you know, NPNK for your plants. And it’s just it’s a really good practice. It really helps your soil. You don’t have to necessarily turn your soil. Um, if you have new beds, I don’t want to get too far into it, but if you have new beds that are heavy clay, yeah, go ahead and shovel and turn them. You know, that’s not going to wreck things like you hear. You don’t want to pulverize your garden all the time with like a tiller, but flipping the soil is fine if you’re integrating amendments to kind of loosen it up because you have rocky soil or you have clay soil. But letting all those um amendments sit really recharges your beds. If you leave them uncovered, you know, maybe the wind blows them away. Sometimes people like to tarp over them. If you do tarp over them, two things. Make sure you check and everything stays moist. It should. um because the microbes and stuff won’t work that way. Some people like to tarp leaves and grass because it helps break them down. When you tarp something with a plastic tarp that sheds water, you do want to disturb it. You know, I think every two weeks or so, make sure there’s no moles, vos, mice nesting in there because it becomes a nice place for them. If you want to put something down to keep it from blowing away, burlap is great. A little more expensive. or even just dropping your um tomato steaks, your cages, anything that you have that will kind of weigh that space down is perfectly fine. And you just, you know, that’s more so you don’t want the wind to blow your leaves and and everything away. But you do, if you do cover it with plastic, you do want to um make sure it stays moist. Sometimes people like to cover them to keep the weeds out. You can do that if you want. I just put the organic matter down, whatever it is, and I let my B bed sit and they seem to do pretty well. I’ve heard that borax kills weeds. Never tried it though. I have nutgrass also. I’m going to try it, but how do you feel about possibly getting rid of nutrass? So, I was talking about the nutrass earlier, and your only way to really get rid of it is to yank out all the roots. And I will use chemical sprays outside my growing area contacting the nutrass to try and kill it out. So I don’t know about using borax, but you can kill nectar. You can pour vinegar right on it and it will soak into the roots and kill it instead of just contacting the top and you know killing the upper growth. But what you’re doing is you’re greatly acidifying your soil, dropping the pH really low, and it will kill anything really. Nothing wants to grow in like vinegar acid, but then your soil is contaminated. Um, you know, maybe not with chemicals, but it’s so acidic, nothing’s going to grow in there. So, if you do that in your garden bed, you’re going to greatly reduce the pH and increase the acidity. You could add calcium later and fix it, but it just kind of becomes a mess. If you use borax, I don’t know exactly what that does. And that again may be just sitting in the soil impacting future growth. So, you have to be really careful of what you’re putting into the growing area. Just because borax is borax is like a brand name, but I think sodium tetra borate you can mine it. It can be natural, it can be people, it doesn’t matter. It can still impact the growth of your plants. Organic doesn’t mean won’t harm your plants. It’s just a different form. Like, you know, sulfur is organic. You put in too much sulfur, your plants aren’t going to grow. So, just be careful with it. I don’t know enough about boron to really say except caution as it’s a chemical element you’re adding to your bed. Just seeing where we I left off. All right. Looking for questions. So, if I’ve missed your question, please put it out there. I’m going down to the bottom now. Question. Should I gradually overwinter my container herbs by bringing them indoors overnight when the temperatures are below 40 and then bringing them back outside in the morning until there’s hard frost? Well, that’s a big question. So, a couple of things. Chives, thyme, oregano, and sage can stay outside if you bring potted plants that have been growing outside indoors. The warmth of the house is going to really potentially wake up insects and diseases. So, you can get fungus net outbreaks in your house because of the container soil you’re bringing in. Overwintering your plants if they’re going to be coming inside. If that’s what you mean by overwintering and you know protecting them from your colds in your winter, you don’t need to transition them. If you’re going to bring them in, you can just bring them in. Um, but moving them in and out isn’t isn’t really going to impact them. Just be careful. Anytime you bring a container in that’s been growing outside into the house for the winter, usually insects show up. Dorothy, have you cut off your tomato and peppers yet? My peppers are still producing well. However, the weather forecast in Maryland. So, my tomatoes and peppers are still producing. We’re both in Maryland. I’ve not cut them down yet. I’m just going to wait. I We had a frost actually last week and it only covered and cold weather cold temperatures drop. So, only a little bit of the lawn had frost in places. The warm weather crops were all fine. So, I’m just going to leave mine until frost comes and kills the leaves. So triple super phosphate I have used for potatoes before for and I will at times raise the um potassium and phosphorus of my beds where I grow um potatoes but you would it’s just a I think it’s like 60 you know phosphorus or something. It’s just a way to greatly increase phosphorus and it’s used more for gardens that are low in phosphorus and you want to bring it up quickly. It can actually I don’t think that it can technically be organic. It can’t be mined but anyway it doesn’t matter. It would be a personmade people made scientistmade fertilizer. It’s inexpensive. If you’re on a budget and you have to increase the phosphorus, that’s a good way to do it. That’s not going to wreck your garden. You use that to bring it up to a growing um bringing up the phosphorus to that, you know, whatever level you want. You’re good to go. Um and then you can go back to more compost and organic ways and stuff like that, but it’s used in a targeted way. It’s used to raise phosphorus. question. Suggestion for using underripe pro produce peppers and green tomatoes. Green tomatoes I definitely fry. I’ve used green tomatoes to make a green tomato sauce. They’re great. Um peppers I throw into sauces, you know. I don’t know, maybe other people can help you out. But when in doubt, mine goes into a sauce pot. Um, happy gardening. Well, thank you for the seed support. I received my seeds and ordered along with extra pack of dill seeds. Is that an extra seed for ordering and also you have great prices for your seeds. So, one thing for a seed and garden shop and thank you the rustedgarden.com. You can buy seeds from us. Pepper and tomato seeds $1.75 a pack. All other seeds are $1.50. the prices are going to stay that way. Our goal is to get seeds out to people, you know, for a good price. Sometimes my brother, he manages the seed part, um, and it comes out of New York. I’m in in Maryland. Uh, sometimes he just throws an extra seed, so he just decided to throw some extra in. If he notices people have been, um, buying lots of products from us or ordering multiple times, sometimes he throws in several packs of seeds. But thank you for the order. Any tips on how to reduce insects when bringing plants in for winter besides removing the old soil? Um, that’s a good question. We’re at 11:42. I’ll stay on for about another five minutes. And again, this is my um garden question and answer, formerly called Garden Grounds. I do this every second and fourth Thursday at 11:00 a.m. It’s public. Anybody can join. I also have perk memberships where I do this format about five times a month for an hour. Stay on for an hour. The group is smaller, usually 20 or 30 people and we just talk about gardening and I will answer all your garden questions. So, if that’s something you’re interested in, it’s $3.99 a month. You can find perk memberships on my main YouTube page. So, when you’re bringing those plants indoors, you have usually holes on the bottom and you have the surface of the soil. It can be really hard to remove the soil and all that, but you can still end up with insects anyway. Minimum, I recommend putting about an inch, remove soil from the top of the container. Put down about an inch of play end. That seals the top of your container and it’s hard for any larvae or insects or whatever to crawl through that. down at the bottom where you have holes, they can come out through there. So, you want to try and block them in some way. You know, duct tape them, seal it, but you’re sealing the top and the bottom holes, and that can really keep pestish use down to a minimum. Question from Karen, who’s also a perk member. Some skin on some cayenne turn black. Is that likely burned from a cold night? frost is still cold night frost still good or compost. I would compost them. Your your um cayenne and peppers will turn black sometimes when they start drying out and they do and it’s usually from a mold. I don’t think it would hurt you, but um they’re probably good for the compost. Bruce, can I start ginger plants this time of year? I’m in uh California, so it’s warmer there. You could I start my ginger I have plenty of videos on it. Um just look up ginger. I start my ginger in ziplockc bags here in Maryland in January um February and I get them sprouted and going and then I plant them I don’t know in April or something like that in May. You’re probably in good shape because you don’t get frozen ground freezing winters I don’t think. Um, so you could start it this year and then ginger might be a year- round crop for you. Question. Do you notice saving seeds from best plants benefits next season? I noticed one TRG orange habanero creates large flushes just harvested fully. Uh, the orange. So the orange habaneros that we sell it, they take longer. like the super hots sometimes take longer, but they are producing really nicely. They are um they’re not hybrids, so you could just save the seeds and they’re going to look like that year after year. I haven’t noticed particularly there’s a lot of talk that if you grow something and that plant does well, it gets acclimated to your temperatures and soil and therefore the seeds have better characteristics for your area. I haven’t really noticed that being a significant issue. Like if the plant’s doing well and you put in the seed, no matter what where you get the seeds, it’s going to do well again over years and years and years almost for through like Darwinium, you know, natural selection. You could select stronger and stronger plants, but you know, just seeds yeartoear isn’t going to make that much difference. maybe 10 years from now, you know, and you’re growing multiple, say, Cherokee purples, whatever plant seems to be stronger and maybe one of those plants fight off a disease better than the other ones, and you take those seeds, you can kind of make a stronger plant, but it takes a lot of time. My uh email address is the [email protected]. The seed shop is the rustedgarden.com. Um, Urban Chicken Mama perk member also has a good suggestion. You can take mosquito bits depending on the different larvae that may be in your soil and you sprinkle them around the top of your soil. When you water the mosquito bit bacteria goes into the soil won’t hurt your plant, can kill larvae. I would still put the sand over them and you’ll have two things going on. All right, I will get to stay on for three more minutes. If I missed your question, throw it out there real quickly. This is the last uh mentoring Q&A for October. Every second and fourth Thursday, 11:00 a.m. I do this. And again, the perk members are available for 3.99 if you want to join. And maybe just the bottom line is, and I’ve just been talking more and more about this, is you’re going to see all kinds of different fertilizers and treatments to boost growth in these stores and all over the place. You really just need compost. And I know that we can’t all we don’t all have the space or we can’t all do it. But when you can make sure you start composting and get that set up that can take your garden from getting by and being really good to like thriving and being spectacular. You absolutely need the organic matter. When it comes to organic granular fertilizers, um they’re all pretty much the same ingredients. Don’t get fooled by this labeling and all this kind of stuff and just buy whatever fits your budget best. That’s the best way to go about it. All right, I will see you all next