Unlocking Fall Gardening

0:00:06 Elizabeth McCarthy: Welcome to the very first episode of Digging in. I’m Elizabeth McCarthy, Tarrant County Master gardener, your host and fellow soil enthusiast. Today’s episode is about cool crops and hot dirt. We’re talking about something that can be a little confusing for North Texas gardeners, fall vegetable gardening. Because here’s the thing. When most people hear fall garden, they picture crisp mornings, sweaters, maybe even a pumpkin or two.

0:00:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: But here in North Texas, we know better. Sometimes planting your fall garden means standing outside in shorts and sweating and trying to convince the broccoli transplant that cooler weather is actually coming. But if you get the timing just right, fall can be one of the very best vegetable growing seasons we have. Today we’ll talk about what to plant, when to plant it, what can stay from your summer garden and what needs to go.

0:00:57 Elizabeth McCarthy: How to get those cool season vegetables started when North Texas may still feel anything but cool. Soon I’ll be joined by my good friend and fellow Tarrant county master gardener, Rick Heim, who also happens to be a serious vegetable nerd. He’s funny and he’s real, and there’s a pretty good chance he has soil under his nails right this very minute. When it comes to growing vegetables in North Texas, Rick really knows his stuff, and I’m excited for you to know him as well.

0:01:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: So grab your mug, iced coffee totally counts this time of year. And let’s dig in. Okay, friends, so what’s growing on in North Texas this week? Well, it may say September on the calendar, but here in North Texas, the vegetable garden doesn’t always get the memo. We’re in that funny in between season when the summer garden and the fall garden can be growing side by side. So before you clear everything out for fall, take a look at what’s still earning its keep healthy peppers and eggplants.

0:01:56 Elizabeth McCarthy: Keep them. They can continue producing well into the fall. Tomatoes that survive the summer and are putting on new growth and blooms, give them a chance. Cooler temperatures can sometimes give them a second wind and hopefully another crop before our first freeze. But those crispy cucumbers, the squash vine that’s been fighting bugs since June? Really, anything disease declining or taking up valuable garden space without producing, gardeners, it’s time you watered it. You worried about it, you may have even talked to it.

0:02:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: But fall vegetables need somewhere to live. As you remove those spent summer plants, clean up the beds, remove diseased plant material, replenish the soil if needed, and start making room for the cool season crops that will carry us through fall. And remember, you don’t have to Turn the whole garden over at once. September in North Texas is a transition, not a clean sweep. Keep what’s healthy and productive, lose what isn’t, and make room for what comes next.

0:02:51 Elizabeth McCarthy: And that’s what’s growing on. Okay, friends, I’m really excited to introduce you to my favorite vegetable nerd, my sweet friend and mentor, Rick Heim. He is also a Tarrant county master gardener. And we are about to talk vegetables. Hey, friend. Hey.

0:03:11 Rick Heim: Good morning.

0:03:11 Elizabeth McCarthy: Good morning. How are you today?

0:03:13 Rick Heim: Awesome. So good to be with you, especially on this first episode.

0:03:17 Elizabeth McCarthy: First one out of the gate. I think it’s going to be fun times.

0:03:22 Rick Heim: Looking forward to it.

0:03:23 Elizabeth McCarthy: Looking forward to it. What’s the story on fall vegetable gardening? Why in the world would somebody. Because, you know, it’s still a little warm, Rick. So why would somebody sit around and think in this heat, oh, let’s plant broccoli. Talk to me about that.

0:03:41 Rick Heim: Well, you know, we have a lot of challenges with gardening in North Texas, but we also have a couple of unique opportunities. We have two growing seasons, and while the fall is short, we can grow some food and harvest some food and double our production for the year. So we just have to make some adjustments in our approach to gardening. So we might have to put up some shade covering, let’s say in August or September when we plant, and maybe we just don’t take it down from when we put it up in June or July and we just leave it up and, you know, so pull the

0:04:27 Elizabeth McCarthy: pepper plants and just leave the shade cover. That’s a good idea.

0:04:29 Rick Heim: Yeah. And we might have to add some frost cloth in November if that freeze comes early. But two years ago, the freeze came in December.

0:04:41 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right. Two years ago, I was eating fresh tomatoes on Thanksgiving Day out of my garden. It was crazy.

0:04:46 Rick Heim: At a community garden I work at, we were harvesting tomatoes at Christmas time two years ago. Really just amazing. So you never know. It’s a roll of the dice to a degree in North Texas, spring and fall, but it’s worth. It’s worth planting in the fall for sure.

0:05:04 Elizabeth McCarthy: Well, awesome. So what got you first interested in vegetable gardening? Think back to the first time it sort of connected with you. That food came out of the ground and we’re going to grow it. Was that someone in your family? Did you have like a history of somebody lived on a farm or your mom grew on the patio or anything like that?

0:05:22 Rick Heim: Yeah, I started on a farm. Not a lot of acreage. Maybe 8 to 10 acres we had, but we also always cultivated 1 to 2 acres. We didn’t have a lot of money. We needed those vegetables to feed our family of eight.

0:05:36 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, goodness.

0:05:37 Rick Heim: My mom canned all that stuff.

0:05:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: I didn’t know you had seven siblings. Oh, that’s awesome.

0:05:42 Rick Heim: Yeah. How many do you have?

0:05:44 Elizabeth McCarthy: 3, but. But I also have seven children, so I’m with you. I’m tracking.

0:05:49 Rick Heim: Yeah. So look, my hands were in the dirt as early as age 5. We, you know, we. We cultivated, we weeded, we harvested.

0:06:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: Did you grow year round?

0:06:02 Rick Heim: No.

0:06:02 Elizabeth McCarthy: No.

0:06:03 Rick Heim: You have one season. I grew up in western New York with one season, but my mom can food that carried us through the wintertime.

0:06:10 Elizabeth McCarthy: So you grew a lot of food in the one season?

0:06:12 Rick Heim: Yeah. So that’s when the seed was planted, if you will. Sure. And you know, that seed sometimes doesn’t germinate for a while.

0:06:20 Elizabeth McCarthy: That’s true.

0:06:21 Rick Heim: In my case it didn’t. And I got back into vegetable gardening about 20 years ago here in Texas and ripped out my landscape and went 100% into vegetable gardening.

0:06:35 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, wow, that’s awesome.

0:06:37 Rick Heim: How about yourself? I.

0:06:39 Elizabeth McCarthy: That’s a great question. My grandparents were. Lived on a farm and were farmers. Was really my great grandparents. But my grandmother and my mom never really did a whole lot of gardening until my mom became a master gardener as well. But that was in retirement, so that was later in life. I was homeschooled my kids and we. It was about. My son was in the fifth grade and my daughter was in the third grade. And we decided to have a class on homeschool horticulture and agriculture. And I hired these amazing young, totally granola fun people, Katie and Charlie.

0:07:17 Elizabeth McCarthy: And they came. They had a company like Folklore Farms, and they would come to your house and they would teach you how to grow your own food. And we literally pulled up the flower bed behind the pool with the pergola so we could grow things up it. And we. I mended the soil and there came the food. And ever since, we’ve grown our own food and it’s been really amazing. And I live in a gated high rules HOA community, so we. We kind of put it behind the pool, you know, so no one really sees it, but it grows. It grows quite a bit. And I. And we love it. We absolutely love it. And both of my children are.

0:07:51 Elizabeth McCarthy: Have gotten through college with agriculture degrees. It was just. It clearly changed the way they looked at the world. It was really awesome.

0:07:58 Rick Heim: Planted those seeds.

0:07:58 Elizabeth McCarthy: Planted those seeds. So what. What do you think the biggest misconception people have if they. If they don’t have a vegetable Vegetable garden now. But I hear a lot of people say to me, I’ve always wanted one, or I’m going to do that, or I wish I had one. And I try to say, you know, it’s really not as hard as it feels in the beginning. There’s a lot of ways to do it. But what do you think the basic, the biggest misconception is that people have about the hurdle of starting to vegetable garden?

0:08:27 Rick Heim: I think you mentioned it. It is that it is complex and it’s difficult, and it’s not really when you break it down into the building blocks of a garden, but people look at it like they’re building a house or some other complex project. But gardening is a little simpler when you break it down into the basic building blocks.

0:08:54 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right.

0:08:54 Rick Heim: I need soil, I need water, I need sun. It’s not that complicated.

0:09:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: It’s not as complicated as people want to believe. So, okay, so when you. Have you decided that you have been saving money for years now, that you’ve been growing your own vegetables and you no longer buy produce at the grocery store, ever, and now you save all this money, how has that worked out? Is that.

0:09:18 Rick Heim: Not a chance?

0:09:19 Elizabeth McCarthy: Not a chance. I was about to say. I hope he says no, because I’m gonna have to disagree. I haven’t saved any money yet.

0:09:25 Rick Heim: I have one of our master gardening interns that talks about her $82 tomato. Oh, not tomato.

0:09:34 Elizabeth McCarthy: You did the math.

0:09:35 Rick Heim: Tomato.

0:09:35 Donna Smith: Oh, no.

0:09:36 Rick Heim: So, no, you can’t look at an ROI completely from a dollar and cents standpoint when it comes to vegetable gardening.

0:09:47 Elizabeth McCarthy: However, when there’s a recall of lettuce, you get to continue to eat salad.

0:09:52 Rick Heim: Yes. My wife and I eat salad almost every single day. And we grow lettuce about eight months. We have lettuce eight months out of the year.

0:10:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure. With the exclusion, which is also interesting, of probably July and August, that would

0:10:07 Rick Heim: be the time that we don’t have any lettuce.

0:10:08 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right. It’s funny, people say, oh, did you grow this lettuce? And it’s the middle of August. And I will have to say, no. Lettuce is a winter. Really is a winter, fall, and winter crop. And they really. I didn’t know that. A lot of people don’t know that. Just like citrus. A lot of people don’t realize citrus is a winter crop as well.

0:10:25 Rick Heim: But here’s a point I would like to make when it comes to the ROI on growing vegetables. I look at it this way. If I go out to my backyard and I pull five or Six carrots in May. Those five or six carrots didn’t have to come from the Rio Grande Valley or Central California. And so they never have to be transported on a truck. I am saving and helping the environment for that too.

0:10:57 Elizabeth McCarthy: So it’s also not maybe a month old from picking. Maybe a month. I mean, from the time they pick a carrot to the time it gets to the grocery store and sits until you come and buy it.

0:11:06 Rick Heim: You know, I had carrots last night and they had no taste to them.

0:11:09 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes, that’s an old carrot.

0:11:11 Rick Heim: Yeah.

0:11:12 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yeah. Well, so it’s not necessarily for the money you’ll save. Certainly. I believe it’s healthier, I think. I mean, obviously there’s differences in organic and non organic gardening, but either way, anything out of a garden in your yard is, is healthier for you than anything you’re buying.

0:11:27 Rick Heim: And tastes so much better.

0:11:28 Elizabeth McCarthy: Well, it tastes real. It tastes like it’s supposed to taste. What do you think?

0:11:33 Rick Heim: A key?

0:11:34 Elizabeth McCarthy: Some of the keys to a successful

0:11:35 Rick Heim: start of a garden are, well, location first. So we’ve. Most vegetables require eight hours of sunlight for, you know, to reach the potential growth.

0:11:48 Donna Smith: Right.

0:11:49 Elizabeth McCarthy: And when you say sunlight, you mean direct.

0:11:51 Rick Heim: Direct sunlight.

0:11:52 Elizabeth McCarthy: Direct sunlight.

0:11:53 Rick Heim: Some like greens, collards, spinach, lettuce, they can, they can grow well with six hours of sunlight. So the first thing you’ve got to realize, if you’re going to rotate crops as you should, you have to be thinking about eight hours of sunlight.

0:12:12 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:12:13 Rick Heim: You should also be thinking about how close a water source is to that garden that you’re going to plant. You should also be thinking about wind. How much wind? And do I have protection from wind because that can damage plants as they grow taller.

0:12:29 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure.

0:12:30 Rick Heim: And also the slope of the property, it’s gonna be harder to augment and maintain garden on slope property. So, you know, flattest area that you can get.

0:12:43 Elizabeth McCarthy: Certainly. And not at the bottom of the hill.

0:12:45 Rick Heim: Exactly.

0:12:45 Elizabeth McCarthy: Cause it will flood. Okay. So some of those are some great points to start. You know, most of the time people, when I talk to people about vegetable gardening, obviously you and I both are avid gardeners and my biggest emphasis is always the soil. I have soil that I love and I’m sort of partial to in terms of buying and filling a garden. But it’s interesting and I have successfully grown vegetables for a long time and I met you about a year ago and we started planting the square foot garden at the demonstration gardens that the master gardeners have.

0:13:20 Elizabeth McCarthy: And when you taught me about Mel’s Mix. And then some things that you do to add to it. I thought, well, I mean, you know, it’s soil. That’s fine. This seems like a lot of energy and effort, but let’s do it. Let’s go. And we did it. And I was astonished at how fast the seeds germinated, how fast the food was growing. We had a ton of food in less than four weeks. It was shocking to me. So I appreciate you teaching me that, and I tell everyone that now moving forward.

0:13:53 Rick Heim: Well, our soil in North Texas is a challenge. Most of us have heavy clay, alkaline soils, and that is not where vegetables would prefer to grow.

0:14:05 Donna Smith: Right.

0:14:06 Rick Heim: So we have to make augmentation enhancements to the soil. If we’re going to grow in ground, you know, you’ve got to ask. You’ve got to add expanded shale and compost to the soil. Otherwise, these clay soils hold water so much, and that’s just not good for the root system of the plant. So we’ve got to make those enhancements to the soil.

0:14:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure. And expanded shale is pretty regularly available. You obviously would just read and pay attention to how much per square foot that you’re putting out. But what exactly does it do? What’s the point of expanded shale?

0:14:44 Rick Heim: It allows for roots to have space to grow. It doesn’t break down at all. It’s inert. It just allows for holes within that clay soil that wants to compact, close up, and not allow room for air, water, or roots.

0:15:04 Elizabeth McCarthy: So when you till or stir it up and add it, do you find that it really does make a difference in clay soil?

0:15:12 Rick Heim: Absolutely does. We just built a berm out at our demonstration garden a few months ago, and we enhanced the soil with compost and expanded shale, and the plants grew at twice the expected rate in that soil.

0:15:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: I wondered what you did, because it was incredible.

0:15:34 Rick Heim: Yeah, we added a few other things that, you know, juice vitamins and minerals, juice it up a little bit, like dried molasses and good organic fertilizer and azomite. Those things juice it up a little bit and give the plants a boost.

0:15:51 Elizabeth McCarthy: So one of the things that I get really confused about, I want to talk a little bit about products that you buy at the store that are to say they’re going to make it grow faster and amazing and this, that and the other, and they’re kind of expensive. And so those. I haven’t necessarily found those products to be something that amazes me with how much better the plants are growing, But I do find when I did the little research, a little bit of research and Learned.

0:16:22 Elizabeth McCarthy: And there really are only a few that add and they add amazing things and people haven’t heard of them. As an example is like an azomite or something that they don’t know what that is and they’ve never heard of it. And it, it’s kind of only really available at more of a specialty garden store, but it makes a huge, huge difference. So what’s your thoughts on how people can maybe steer away from what might feel really easy because it’s in just every.

0:16:52 Elizabeth McCarthy: All the stores you’re in and really go for what’s going to be most effective?

0:17:03 Rick Heim: Yeah, there’s a plethora of products out there. It’s hard to wade through them. I would personally choose to go on the natural organic side. The difference between a chemical fertilizer or an amendment and an organic one is that the chemical feeds the plant, the organic one feeds the soil. So you are feeding the resource that you’re going to be using over time and time again. Instead of feeding a resource that is typically one and done right, build that soil and the vegetables will continue to add organic material and nutrients to the, to the soil.

0:17:49 Rick Heim: And over time that soil will be just become richer and richer certainly.

0:17:54 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay, let’s get into seeds. One of the things that a lot of people ask are there things that you just never grow from seed straight into the ground because you either will buy the plants already or you’ll buy a plug or maybe you’ll seed start it. I know you’re a big seed starter in your house. I’m very jealous. I wish I had that entire setup. I’d like you to sell it to me, please. There’s my plug. But what are some thoughts on.

0:18:20 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay, I’ve found the soil, I’ve done the mix, I’ve got my space. I’m going to put food in there. What, what’s your thoughts? Give us a handful of. Hey, you know what? Buy these seeds, put them in the ground, water them. These are really successful. And then let’s talk a little bit about the things you would certainly put in the ground as an already established plant, whether you started it or whether you bought it.

0:18:43 Rick Heim: Sure. I’m frugal, so I would always prefer to grow from seed.

0:18:50 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:18:52 Rick Heim: We’re in fall right now and it’s impossible for us to grow from seed. Something like a pepper or a tomato.

0:19:04 Elizabeth McCarthy: The reason you can’t plant a seed, for instance. Well, you can, but the reason you wouldn’t want to plant a tomato from seed in the fall in Texas is because you don’t have long enough time with the weather for it to actually give you tomatoes. Is this the reason?

0:19:17 Donna Smith: Right.

0:19:18 Rick Heim: So you’ve got to think about the short growing season that, that we have. So we’re going to plant broccoli and Brussels and cauliflower and cabbage and tomatoes and peppers. If we want to go that route from transplant from a plant, from seeds, it’s a great time to plant lettuce, spinach, kale, collards, radishes, carrots, all those things from seeds. Beets as well.

0:19:45 Donna Smith: I love beets.

0:19:46 Rick Heim: Yeah, beets are great in the fall. So, yeah, if you’re growing from seed inside a greenhouse or inside a grow room in your house, as I have, I’d be starting those seeds in August and I’m going to plant those transplants in September.

0:20:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure. But now really is the time that you could find lots and lots of vegetable plants at the store as well. So it’s easy. So one of the things I always like to remind people when they’re planting root vegetables is that the roots need to go deeper than you probably think they do. A lot of times people ask me, how do you grow carrots? I don’t understand. My carrots are always stunted and funny looking or they never really grow.

0:20:27 Elizabeth McCarthy: And when I say it’s really important that your soil is really pliable and easy for like at least 12 inches, because that’s how they grow. It takes more space than you think. Then it’s always like, oh, I only really tilled about four inches. And I said, well, you’re going to get four inch carrots every time. Because the moment a carrot hits really much of any resistance, it’s done. So what kinds of sunlight do you feel like?

0:20:57 Elizabeth McCarthy: They as well need eight hours of sun. All the seeds you plant.

0:21:00 Rick Heim: Absolutely do.

0:21:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: Basically all the food you grow.

0:21:03 Rick Heim: Yes. And they need to be. Seeds planted in the ground need to be kept moist until they germinate. So that is a mistake maybe first time gardeners might make. Once that plant has germinated and it’s popped through the ground, the water requirements are backed off. But while that’s still in the ground, seeds need to be moist for germination.

0:21:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: Let’s just get down to it. The packet tells the truth. Read the seed packet.

0:21:30 Rick Heim: Absolutely. Read the packet.

0:21:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: Read the packet. People say, oh, I don’t know, is that true? And they are actually, they spend a great deal of time and research and money making the seed as easy as possible to grow. So read the packet. If it says you need to soak the seeds overnight before you plant them. That’s going to. Might be the key to success. Or not. And plant them. If it says one inch. Like, talk a little bit about the variations of what happens when people decide to plant seeds.

0:21:57 Rick Heim: Sure. One point I’d like to make about this is that we’re in fall, have the short growing season. We want to look for vegetables that have shorter maturity dates. And it’s right on the front of the seed packet. So there are some bush beans that will mature at 45 days, and others will be 65 days. We’re going to be looking for the ones that are 45 days in this short period. And every other seed is similar to that.

0:22:31 Rick Heim: The other thing is when we’re planting beets, carrots, all the greens we talked about earlier, you can harvest those when you’re thinning them. Those are just great in salads, when you’re thinning, don’t pull them out. And those greens, you can harvest them. A lot of lettuce and collard greens and pak choi bok choy, you can harvest those at 25, 30 days. They’re going to be. They’re going to be early in their lifespan, but they’re tender and they’re perfect in salads.

0:23:05 Elizabeth McCarthy: We could just call them microgreens.

0:23:06 Rick Heim: Absolutely.

0:23:07 Elizabeth McCarthy: Because that’s exactly what they are. So let’s talk a little bit about thinning, because I’m the one that doesn’t like to thin, because I want all of the carrots. And I also learned from you about pelleted seeds, which are easier to plant because sort of has a coating on it, so it’s not quite so tiny. But I mean, I’m just gonna sprinkle the seeds. The whole. Have the ruler and it’s two inches apart. And I mean, I know that you’ve got that vase, Rick, and you’re like, liz, you gotta be more specific than this.

0:23:36 Elizabeth McCarthy: But I just kind of sprinkle. And then when they all start popping up, I like to. I don’t like to thin them because I, you know, I do eat them when I thin them. That’s a great idea. But I really want all the carrots to grow.

0:23:48 Rick Heim: Well, read that seed packet.

0:23:52 Elizabeth McCarthy: He’s always gonna get me on the floor.

0:23:54 Rick Heim: I realize that because you better not. You better not sprinkle, Rick the vegetable nerd seeds or radish seeds or pea seeds, because some have a depth of 1/2 inch. Some have a depth for of 1 inch. Some, like lettuce, you could sprinkle on the top of the soil and it’ll. And as long as you keep it moist, it’ll germinate. But yeah, follow the, Follow the directions on the directions. But also, what fun are you. You know, you mentioned, you mentioned pelleted seeds.

0:24:28 Rick Heim: Carrots, carrot seeds are very small. Lettuce seeds are very small. Kale seeds are very small. If you get a carrot, that is a carrot seed that’s pelleted, you can take your finger and just poke holes in your soil every 2 inches and drop the pelleted seed in there. And if you buy the right seeds, you might have 90 to 95% germination and you don’t have to mess with thinning at all. So it’s a great consideration on carrots.

0:25:03 Rick Heim: Lettuce, basil is another really tiny seed. Use pelleted seeds. The point with pelleted seeds, so that’s a little bit different than other seeds, is that they have to be used within one year. They have a clay coating on them. It’ll break down and it will not be usable after a year. Other seeds can be. Can last as long as five, six years. We sometimes throw our seeds away way too early. There’s resources out there that will tell you the longevity of seeds.

0:25:38 Rick Heim: And you will see, you will see timeframes from typically one year up to five or six years that you can hold those seeds. Just keep them in a cool, dry place. And don’t buy seeds from any place that displays them outside. They need to be inside in a cool, dry place.

0:26:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: Talk a little bit about the right seeds. I know that you can buy, literally could buy seeds everywhere. You can buy seeds at a dime store. They’re all over the place. What do you mean when you say if you buy the right seats?

0:26:16 Rick Heim: Well, from reputable companies that have solid reputations. Okay, you’re going to go to a restaurant. You might look at the reviews.

0:26:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure.

0:26:26 Rick Heim: I know I do. And my wife won’t go to one without reading the reviews.

0:26:30 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:26:30 Rick Heim: So I would read the reviews on the companies.

0:26:33 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay, that’s a good idea.

0:26:34 Rick Heim: There are a number of good companies out there. Unfortunately, there’s not too many that are in Texas. And the reason is we just don’t have this extended growing season that the Midwest and the. And the north might have. And they harvest a lot more seeds because of that. We just don’t have those companies in Texas. So don’t be afraid of buying seeds from a company that’s in Missouri. I buy seeds from a company that’s up in New England, and they’re the best Best seeds that I have.

0:27:07 Rick Heim: So just look for the reputation. But also we want to look for the varieties of vegetables that are going to grow well in North Texas. And we can get that from the Texas A&M AgriLife extension. Remember that name? Phenomenal resources there. But if you go to that site, you can click on the area of Texas that you’re in and find the best vegetables for that particular area. Because the vegetables for Fort Worth, Dallas, all of North Texas are going to be different than the ones around the Houston area.

0:27:44 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure. That is an excellent resource. They have long lists with specific varieties that grow better. I’ve had much greater success specifically with the tomatoes that I grow. In terms of which ones? Just, they just do better, they last longer, and they are a very reputable source for, for research based information. So that’s a great idea. There are lots of them online. There’s lots of stores around. I love the tip that you need to be sure you’re buying seeds that are stored indoors.

0:28:14 Elizabeth McCarthy: I hadn’t really thought through that, but that’s very, very true. That’s a really good plan. Thanks.

0:28:20 Rick Heim: Nothing lasts in hundred plus temperatures.

0:28:23 Donna Smith: Right?

0:28:23 Elizabeth McCarthy: We hardly last in 100 plus temperatures.

0:28:25 Donna Smith: Really.

0:28:26 Elizabeth McCarthy: So what vegetables do you think give the greatest return on investments in the fall? What do you. Without a doubt, hands down, every fall in North Texas, you are putting in

0:28:35 Rick Heim: the ground blank, all the greens.

0:28:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay. Yes. You do love every single green that’s known to man. Yes. I’ve eaten things I’ve never heard of that you’ve grown.

0:28:44 Donna Smith: Yeah.

0:28:44 Rick Heim: And most of them will make it through a frost. So not a hard freeze, but they’ll make it through a frost. So they. You. You’ve got a longer time to enjoy them. You can, you can eat them, as you call them, as microgreens. You can enjoy them after 30 days. You can be enjoying them after 90 days. And you know, kale is almost a perennial now.

0:29:07 Elizabeth McCarthy: I noticed that they put it now in landscapes. Yes, it’s everywhere. Yeah.

0:29:12 Rick Heim: So if you take care of a kale plant, you’ll have that. You could nurture it through an entire year. If we don’t have an event like Snowmageddon, let’s say.

0:29:21 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes. Nothing lived through that.

0:29:23 Rick Heim: Hey, my onions and potatoes live through Snowmageddon.

0:29:27 Elizabeth McCarthy: No way.

0:29:28 Rick Heim: Absolutely did. Absolutely did.

0:29:30 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:29:31 Rick Heim: So those greens are a great return. You mentioned beets. The interesting thing about beets, for me, my fall harvest is better than my spring harvest. To me, it’s because the seed, the beet seed would prefer to germinate at a higher temperature, but the plant would prefer a cooler temperature. So it germinates in September when the soil is warm. And come early November, hopefully we’ll cool down a little bit and that plant is going to be matured and you’re going to have wonderful beets.

0:30:07 Elizabeth McCarthy: Fantastic. So. And there’s all kinds of varieties of beets too. It’s not just one. Like, not the pickled ones that your grandma ate. You just get the golden beets are amazing. You roast them in the oven. They are the best. So, okay, so this fall you’re gonna be planting beets and carrots. I’m assuming I will all of the greens. And then what? Probably. What’s the first plant you’re gonna put in the ground?

0:30:28 Elizabeth McCarthy: Like it’s the first, like the moment it is no longer oppressively hot outside. What’s your first plant?

0:30:34 Rick Heim: I’m gonna be planting broccoli.

0:30:35 Elizabeth McCarthy: Broccoli. And is that because it takes longer

0:30:39 Rick Heim: and I’m gonna plant it from a transplant.

0:30:41 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:30:41 Rick Heim: It’s gonna be long and my family eats it.

0:30:45 Elizabeth McCarthy: That’s such a great point. When we started learning to grow vegetables, we were growing all kinds of things that I had never heard of, literally. And while that was really fun to eat funky new things, it isn’t necessarily what my family wanted on the day to day. Right. So the kinds of beans we were growing, and I don’t like those beans or whatever, honestly, my kids, when they started growing their own food, they ate everything that came out of the ground because they were the ones that put the seeds in. And that’s pretty effective. But if you don’t like cauliflower, it would be best not to plant it. It’s not really worth it.

0:31:20 Rick Heim: Yeah. I’m one of the best turnip farmers there is.

0:31:23 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:31:23 Rick Heim: That I know. And they’re really easy. They grow phenomenal. But I don’t like to eat them and neither does my wife.

0:31:34 Elizabeth McCarthy: So what do you do with them again?

0:31:36 Rick Heim: Well, I turned them into compost, but.

0:31:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh. Oh. It’s nutrient rich compost.

0:31:40 Rick Heim: Ok, here’s what’s important.

0:31:43 Donna Smith: All right.

0:31:43 Rick Heim: We absolutely love Asian turnips and they grow well here. They’re smaller than our typical southern turnip, if you will. And we’ve discovered that those are awesome. They’re a little bit sweeter and there’s multiple ways that they can be prepared. And we like all those ways. So I wouldn’t have learned that if we didn’t experiment. And I think experimentation, frankly, is one of the really cool things about vegetable gardening is It.

0:32:12 Elizabeth McCarthy: I agree. Yes.

0:32:14 Rick Heim: You just start new stuff and, you know, I did chickpeas.

0:32:17 Elizabeth McCarthy: See what happens?

0:32:17 Rick Heim: I did chickpeas last year.

0:32:19 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, did they work?

0:32:20 Rick Heim: They worked. Yes. I actually had chickpeas. Crazy, huh?

0:32:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: Enough for an actual serving or.

0:32:25 Rick Heim: And I eat them. Yeah. Oh, okay.

0:32:27 Elizabeth McCarthy: All right.

0:32:27 Rick Heim: We had some servings.

0:32:28 Elizabeth McCarthy: We played around in the demonstration garden last year with all kinds of interesting things. Dragon tail radishes. I learned a lot about that. I had never heard of those.

0:32:37 Rick Heim: The black tomatoes that you planted.

0:32:39 Donna Smith: Those black.

0:32:40 Rick Heim: They went over great with everybody.

0:32:42 Elizabeth McCarthy: I was, man. I would just stand there, literally in the garden this summer, cut them up, put salt on them, and pass them out to the volunteers. And we all just ate tomatoes at 9 o’clock in the morning. It was so good.

0:32:52 Rick Heim: And how about those long beans? So Liz and I were really struggling with what can we plant in the heat of July. And we found a little research. We found these long beans, and they grow like pole beans.

0:33:07 Elizabeth McCarthy: They do.

0:33:07 Rick Heim: But the beans are how long?

0:33:09 Elizabeth McCarthy: 18 inches? Anywhere from 12 to 18 inches. It’s really cool. Strangely, the seed packets in America. Well, in Texas, let’s just say that they call them asparagus beans. I don’t really know why they call them that. They don’t taste like asparagus and they don’t really look like asparagus. But maybe it helps people understand that they’re long. I don’t know. But when you get them from seed companies online, it’s always either a Asian long bean or something of that nature. There’s purple ones, there’s green ones. And no, they don’t stay purple after you cook them. They do turn green, but the purple’s fun to watch grow.

0:33:41 Elizabeth McCarthy: But they get really long. My grandkids love them. They think they’re the coolest things ever.

0:33:46 Rick Heim: Well, a lot of gardeners around our demo garden had not seen anything like that. You remember all the requests we had for seeds?

0:33:55 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes.

0:33:55 Rick Heim: So we let some mature a little longer, and we were passing out seeds for folks.

0:34:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: It was really cool. Yeah, it was really cool. I’ve really enjoyed this fall planting. This summer, when we planted the sweet potato starts. So we ordered. I ordered them online and they just kind of come as tiny little plants, one inch square, maybe. And we planted those in our raised bed boxes, and we are using them right now as living mulch. And it is so beautiful and so neat. Our okra has grown to 5 or 6ft tall, but all along the soil are all the leaves and the greens from the sweet potatoes. And it’s just been a wonderful use of living mulch. I love living mulch.

0:34:36 Rick Heim: You know, the Native Americans figured that out a long time ago.

0:34:39 Elizabeth McCarthy: That’s not surprising.

0:34:40 Rick Heim: It was their three sisters planting. They planted corn, they planted pole beans, which vined up the corn. And then they planted squash, which kept the soil moist and cool and moist. Yeah, yeah.

0:34:57 Elizabeth McCarthy: Have you ever done that?

0:34:59 Rick Heim: I have not done that. I’ve seen it at the botanical garden. Three sisters garden. It just makes sense.

0:35:05 Elizabeth McCarthy: Sure it does. You know, the beans and imagine the space saving.

0:35:09 Rick Heim: Yeah. The beans fix nitrogen in the soil, the squash provides shade and the corn provides structure. Amazing.

0:35:18 Elizabeth McCarthy: Started three really cool.

0:35:19 Rick Heim: Started 3,000 years ago in Mexico, that. That type of planting and moved its way up north.

0:35:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: I have never tried to grow corn. I don’t. I struggle to think that corn is really prolific in Texas. North Texas, it’s more field corn, you

0:35:34 Rick Heim: know, so it’s for animals if you want to have a really good sweet corn.

0:35:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: So you could feed the deer that my son would like to go hunting for.

0:35:41 Rick Heim: I wouldn’t get it from Texas.

0:35:42 Elizabeth McCarthy: Wouldn’t eat it.

0:35:43 Donna Smith: Right.

0:35:44 Elizabeth McCarthy: So let’s talk a little bit about growing your own food. What kind of satisfaction do you get from growing your own food? Why do you find that? How does that sort of enhance your life?

0:36:00 Rick Heim: Well, first, it just tastes so much better and there’s no replacement for that. You just can’t find it other than at a farmer’s market. So there is that. That just enhances our enjoyment of food. Goes better with a nice glass of wine, too. The other things that really come to mind are watching my grandchildren just enjoy the process. You know, to see a seed go in the ground, a seed that might have been in something that they ate go in the ground and a 4 foot zucchini plant comes out of that.

0:36:42 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right.

0:36:45 Rick Heim: That is just priceless. It’s priceless, frankly. So that would be another thing. And just really, you’re out in nature. Right?

0:36:53 Elizabeth McCarthy: Get outside for sure.

0:36:54 Rick Heim: Makes you get outside in nature. Now, today we need to get out at the break of dawn.

0:37:00 Donna Smith: Right.

0:37:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: It might still be a little dark.

0:37:02 Rick Heim: Get it done. But you know, once we get past this period of time, it’s going to make us be out there and there’s just something that refreshes and warms the soul.

0:37:15 Elizabeth McCarthy: I agree with that. I totally agree with that. I love part of creation for sure. I love teaching my grandkids about how to grow, just how to grow your own food and why you would do that and why it just tastes better and they Have a great time with that. So it’s definitely a great excuse to get a little exercise. It really is exercise. People like to say gardening’s not exercise.

0:37:36 Rick Heim: 300 calories an hour. If you’re gardening, I’m saying, let’s do it. Not bad.

0:37:41 Elizabeth McCarthy: That’s a pretty good cookie right there.

0:37:43 Rick Heim: I know. And you’re out with nature.

0:37:45 Elizabeth McCarthy: Exactly, exactly.

0:37:47 Rick Heim: Good friends.

0:37:48 Elizabeth McCarthy: True, true. Okay, now we’re going to talk about water.

0:37:52 Rick Heim: Okay. There is none right now.

0:37:54 Elizabeth McCarthy: I know we are struggling currently in that situation, which is pretty common this time of year. Let’s talk a little bit about one of the things that I learned in master gardening when I started. I did not know this is essentially most. The most common problem of plants dying in North Texas is because they’re over watered. And now when I say that, everybody I know looks at me like, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I do not over water my plants.

0:38:26 Elizabeth McCarthy: I know from experience with vegetable gardening that it’s more important for the roots to go as deep as possible. And I don’t want the roots to go sideways, and I want them to go down deep. And I have always watered them the way my grandmother waters them, which, you know, is the best part, is very deep, but not as often. My grandmother always said we shouldn’t water every day. That’s not how it works. Partly, I think that was for conservation at the time. But also in my experience with growing food, watering deeply and less often is working better.

0:39:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: How do we help sort of spread the word on what that looks like, that even though it’s really hot here most of the time, you really don’t need to water everything every day.

0:39:14 Rick Heim: There’s a website called watersawesome.com it is managed by a Tarrant Region water district. And if you go to that site, it will give you watering information for your landscape. As long as you register your address, it will literally tell you how much water you should put on your landscape. Based on what happened in the prior. Prior week. I would use a reputable resource like that to figure out whether or not I should be watering. But your point that your grandmother made was spot on.

0:39:51 Rick Heim: We want to water our vegetables less often and deeply. So we don’t want those shallow roots. We want those roots to dig down deep. There will be more water down there in the summertime than there will be up on the surface because it’s just evaporation. A little bit. A little bit of science there. But you’re right that most people, we wreck more plants by overwatering we shouldn’t water a tomato plant every day or any really any other vegetable.

0:40:25 Rick Heim: We should be watering. You know, when we get into the heat of the summer like this, it might be. If you’ve got stuff alive in your garden, it might be two to three times a week now. But that’s the only time that it should be two to three times a week. You know, normally it would be one to two times a week that you

0:40:45 Elizabeth McCarthy: would want as we come into fall, as long as, obviously, you’re getting some rain. We haven’t had rain in 40 days as of right now. It’s really kind of been still. It doesn’t feel like fall yet. But we’re going to get there. I believe that. Let’s talk a little bit about what you specifically mean by deeply. So is there. I know this sounds nitpicky, and I don’t mean that, but people will. They just stand there and hold it. I mean, you see people in their yard just standing there holding a hose. Is there maybe you do eight seconds, or maybe you do five seconds, or you just sort of stand there and hold it. I mean, and obviously it seems obvious to a lot of people, but it’s not actually an obvious thing. So talk a little bit more.

0:41:24 Rick Heim: We have a tool for that.

0:41:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:41:26 Rick Heim: So we can. There’s a moisture meter that you can utilize to tell whether you’re really getting the water where it needs to go.

0:41:37 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:41:37 Rick Heim: Now, you need to know a little bit about the plant because, you know, the top of the soil might look wet when you’ve watered it. But if that water isn’t getting to where the roots are, it’s useless. It’s probably going to evaporate. Right. So moisture meter has a stem that’s about 7 inches long. What you want to do is get that. Take that moisture meter, stick it in the ground to where you believe the roots are, especially the small roots that are going to be taking up the water.

0:42:10 Rick Heim: And at that point, you look at that meter, and if it says dry, you have not watered enough. And if you’re going to water once a week, you probably want to get that meter up to where it says the beginning part of wet. So the meter says dry. Moist. Wet plants would prefer to live in the moist area. But if you’re going to go once a week, you probably want to take that level up to wet on the low end of wet, and then it’s going to back off and get into that moist for the rest of it.

0:42:43 Elizabeth McCarthy: And you don’t have to leave A moisture meter in the ground all the time. You just buy one. They’re not very expensive. I mean, I see them everywhere. And you just put it in. How close to the plant do you put it into the ground?

0:42:54 Rick Heim: Just a couple of inches from the. Now if it’s a radish, you’re gonna go almost right next to it because that root system is going straight down from a, you know, a plant that’s really. The bulb is 1 inch, 1 inch

0:43:08 Elizabeth McCarthy: in diameter, but pretty close is what you’re saying. You don’t want to put it in the middle of the bed. No, because we don’t care how much water is in the middle of the bed. We care. Right. So let’s talk a little bit on the water scale about hoses, sprinklers, drip. What’s your thought?

0:43:24 Rick Heim: Sure. For all of them. First thing is we don’t want to be watering really after 10 o’ clock in the morning when we get in the summertime. So let’s start there because we have evaporation with every system after we get past that point. So try to water before 10 o’ clock then. No, the best system is definitely drip irrigation. Drip irrigation, it gets the water right where it’s needed on that soil near the roots of the plant.

0:43:56 Rick Heim: And the loss of water through evaporation is 70% less than any other way that you can water.

0:44:03 Elizabeth McCarthy: That is really significant.

0:44:05 Rick Heim: Yeah. So you start with that. Now, that’s not cheap.

0:44:09 Elizabeth McCarthy: I mean, if you don’t have a. If you don’t have a landscaping fertilizing system at all, then it would not be cheap. But if you do have one, you can re. You can sort of change out some of the heads to turn them into.

0:44:21 Rick Heim: And if you do it yourself, it’s not going to be that expensive.

0:44:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right.

0:44:24 Rick Heim: But if you hire somebody to do that, it’s going to be expensive.

0:44:27 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right.

0:44:30 Rick Heim: So that’s. That’s number one.

0:44:32 Elizabeth McCarthy: What about soaker hoses?

0:44:34 Rick Heim: Soaker hoses are good as well. That’s just a lot of work.

0:44:37 Elizabeth McCarthy: It is a lot of work because you have to move them all the time and kind of gauge.

0:44:42 Rick Heim: So the next best way, frankly, is hose end, you know, and you get that water right where you need it, which, you know, you want to avoid getting water on the leaves of plants. They don’t absorb through the leaves. And getting water on the leaves of plants can lead to fungal diseases and a lot of other problems that you have. So you want to get that water down to the roots. So spray irrigation is absolutely the Worst, because that is going to out of those choices, it’s going to get water all over the leaves, and it’s very inefficient.

0:45:18 Rick Heim: Water is evaporating before it ever hits the ground. So those three ways would be what I would be looking for. And a point I want to make here also is look. If you haven’t gotten into rainwater harvesting, you really should look at it.

0:45:34 Elizabeth McCarthy: You really should look at it. It’s coming as a podcast, so you

0:45:38 Rick Heim: can learn about it here. Awesome. Awesome.

0:45:40 Elizabeth McCarthy: But it certainly makes an enormous difference.

0:45:42 Rick Heim: Can I talk about a big benefit of rainwater?

0:45:44 Elizabeth McCarthy: You can. Please do.

0:45:45 Rick Heim: Sure. So our soils, our clay soils here are typically high in alkalinity. So on a pH scale, 7 is neutral. Our soils will test here, 7, 6 to some as high as the low eights. Now, if you’re one of the lucky people that are in, these bands of soil that we have through the metroplex are kind of sandy and less alkaline. Consider yourself lucky. You’ve got other issues. But most of us have this issue. Here’s a little secret for you. If you test the water, the city water for Fort Worth, it’s going to come out at a high alkaline level, too.

0:46:29 Rick Heim: Seven, eight to eight is what I’ve seen on those tests. Rainwater is neutral. Seven. And here’s why that’s important. Most vegetables would prefer to be a little bit less than neutral to neutral. So somewhere in the range of 6.5 to 7 would be where most vegetables would prefer to be. There’s some exceptions. There’s exceptions to that. Asparagus and potatoes, they prefer a little bit more alkaline environment.

0:47:01 Rick Heim: But if we keep putting our city water onto a soil that’s alkaline already, we’re just increasing the alkalinity of that soil. If we use rainwater, we’re using a neutral source for that nutrient.

0:47:16 Elizabeth McCarthy: Fantastic. It’s also really fancy because it’s free.

0:47:20 Rick Heim: Exactly.

0:47:21 Elizabeth McCarthy: And it’s not necessarily free to capture it, but it is free. And we get a great deal of rain over the course of a year in North Texas. And so it’s an excellent, excellent resource. So let’s talk just a shade about the soil. We do have lots and lots of questions. Donna’s gonna come on later and talk a little bit about soil testing. Do you soil test your vegetable garden every single year?

0:47:52 Rick Heim: I don’t. Every two or three years, I will test it, and I feel pretty comfortable with what is going into my garden. Remember I said organic fertilizers feed the Soil. I choose to use only organic fertilizer, so I know that I’m feeding that soil every year. And by the way, there’s a saying, and I love it. It’s a good one. You should remember this one. Bad gardeners grow weeds. Good gardeners grow plants.

0:48:22 Rick Heim: Great gardeners grow the soil.

0:48:26 Elizabeth McCarthy: I love that. Yeah, that’s so you, Rick.

0:48:30 Donna Smith: I love that.

0:48:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: So we are going to put a link in the show. Notes on where to go to read about soil testing and how to do that. Texas A and M. AgriLife does it. It’s very inexpensive. It’s maybe $12 there. Link to the form you can fill out and directions on how to do it. It is a really great way to know, especially if you’re starting where you’re wanting to put the vegetables, things and so on. Like, at my house, when we very first started, we had a flower bed right behind the pergola, behind the pool, and it just was kind of out of the way and nobody would really see it. And so we. I pulled everything sort of out of it and sort of scraped all the mulch off and tilled the soil and did a test. And it told me exactly what I needed to put in it to successfully grow vegetables, I think.

0:49:16 Elizabeth McCarthy: I mean, for many years. I am definitely the one who thought, oh, I’ll just put. Just dig a hole right there and just stick this in there and it’ll be great. It’s never great. And it doesn’t. It doesn’t really work that way, in my opinion. So am I right? You’re looking at me like, oh, you’re right. I mean, I know everybody’s, you know, they’re listening and they’re like, I’m gonna go right now. I’m so excited to grow.

0:49:36 Elizabeth McCarthy: And I really, really want you to consider checking your soil, get it tested, figure out what’s in it, what’s not in it. If your soil is really, really high in one thing and really, really low in the other, you can’t just buy a regular general fertilizer because then you’re going to be adding more of what it already has too much of and not enough of what it needs. And so I know it seems a little vegetable nerdy, but I’m answering, no, not at all.

0:50:01 Rick Heim: Not at all. Can I share with you?

0:50:02 Elizabeth McCarthy: But you’re the ultimate vegetable nerd, so of course it doesn’t sound that way to you, but some people are like, I don’t want to wait 10 days to get my soil test, but I want to go today. But it’s important. I promise you’ll be glad you did when the vegetables begin growing.

0:50:13 Rick Heim: Can I share with you a dirty little secret?

0:50:15 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, my gosh, yes. Oh.

0:50:18 Rick Heim: So reputable dealers in soil, Retail dealers in soil around North Texas, and there’s several of them. That soil is typically infertile. Infertile. And how do I know that? I’ve tested it. And these are from. These soil tests are from reputable companies. But here’s the thing. If you buy a mixed soil, that is soil mixed with compost, you don’t know how much compost is in that mixed soil. They don’t put up a percentage. And the organic material is coming from the compost.

0:50:59 Rick Heim: The other thing is, look at where you’re going to buy that soil from. That soil is sitting out in the sun in the weather, right. And it’s getting beaten down. It’s almost like it’s being solarized and killing microorganisms in that soil. So if you just take soil from a retail outlet and put it into your raised bed or a container and plant something into that, you’re going to be. You’re going to be disappointed.

0:51:30 Elizabeth McCarthy: Very likely.

0:51:31 Rick Heim: And you might even reach a point where you say, heck, I’m not going to garden. This is impossible.

0:51:36 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right.

0:51:37 Rick Heim: But if you fortify that soil with nutrients, you’re going to have. You’re going to have positive results and they’re going to get better over time. As you have plants in that soil,

0:51:50 Elizabeth McCarthy: what would you say are the maybe top two things that if you were going to buy soil, even if it says compost on the front of the bag at a retail establishment, what would you immediately add?

0:52:06 Rick Heim: Well, let me back up just a little bit, if you don’t mind. So when I started vegetable gardening, I would take a mix of two part soil to one part compost. And the compost has the organic material and nutrients that we really want to build that soil. I am now, today, I’m one to one. So if I’m building a new bed, it’s one part soil to one part compost. To that I’m going to add azomite, which is a source of trace minerals.

0:52:35 Rick Heim: Every plant needs 16 different elements to grow, so we’re getting some trace minerals there. I add dried molasses because it’s a source of sugars and microorganisms along with humans love sugar and plants love sugars, too. So that really jump starts a micro microorganism activity. And then I add a really good organic fertilizer.

0:53:01 Elizabeth McCarthy: Okay.

0:53:02 Rick Heim: And I will typically use a fertilizer that has more nitrogen than phosphorus and potassium, because in our. In our soils, in the soils we’re going to buy, those phosphorus and potassium are usually at an acceptable level. It’s nitrogen that’s low. So go higher on the nitrogen.

0:53:21 Elizabeth McCarthy: Great. That’s a great tip. Well, I certainly think we’ve covered quite a bit in the last bit of time about how to sort of start and what are some things to know. I know that you’re intending to come back and see us for episode three. Just talking a little bit more about. Okay, now you’ve. You’ve got the soil ready. You’ve put in some plants, it’s cooled off. Some good things are moving and happening. And now what? You’re going to make me talk about thinning the carrots because I put too many seeds in the ground. But we’re going to come back and talk a little bit more in depth later in the season. But I really, really appreciate your time and your energy and your goofy laughter and your vegetable nerd self coming and helping us get an idea of where’s the right place to start when it comes to growing vegetables in the fall.

0:54:05 Rick Heim: My pleasure.

0:54:06 Elizabeth McCarthy: Thank you so much, Rick. Okay, friends, it’s time now to talk about what’s bugging you. My sweet friend Donna Smith from the Tarrant County Master Gardener association is in charge currently of the help desk, where different people can call in, really, anyone, you as well, can call in and ask questions. And so we’ve asked her to bring us some of the top questions that are asked. And so I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Donna.

0:54:34 Elizabeth McCarthy: Hi, Liz.

0:54:35 Rick Heim: Hi there.

0:54:35 Elizabeth McCarthy: I am happy to be here.

0:54:37 Donna Smith: This is gonna be fun.

0:54:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: Tell me, how did you get roped into answering all the hard questions on the help desk?

0:54:42 Donna Smith: Oh, I, you know, first of all, I feel like it’s very important. It’s part of our mission because our mission as master gardeners is to educate the public. Certainly. And how better this wonderful podcast, but also the help desk, because you can call at any time, because you can leave a message and we will call you back. And sometimes you’ll actually get a live person when you call.

0:55:04 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes.

0:55:04 Donna Smith: So I think the help desk fund is really important. We didn’t have a lead, and I just felt like I needed. I don’t know, it was a calling. I just felt like I needed to do it.

0:55:16 Elizabeth McCarthy: People are calling you up as you were called.

0:55:18 Donna Smith: I did it.

0:55:20 Elizabeth McCarthy: Thank you. Thank you for your willingness to do so. So one of the things this is Our first time to do a what’s bugging you? Segment. So one of the things that you were saying that gets asked about about all the time is soil testing. So we talked a little bit about that today with Rick. He’s kind of walked us through some soil testing needs and why for vegetables. But talk to us a little bit

0:55:40 Rick Heim: about

0:55:43 Elizabeth McCarthy: why would you even want to sample your soil? Like, what’s the point of that? Some people maybe have never even heard that that’s an option. So tell us a little bit about why you would do that.

0:55:52 Donna Smith: Well, I’ll do a personal story first, because I live here in Tarrant County. I have very clay soil. And we, as part of our intern class, had to send in a soil sample so that we would know what it was like to get your report back. Oh, well, I was astounded when I got my report back because it told me what kind of fertilizer I needed to use based on what my soil, what the components in my soil were. And I just did the basic test, which I don’t know if Rick talked about it. It’s only $12.

0:56:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: $12, right.

0:56:25 Donna Smith: $12. And you just get the basics. But they also give you this fertilizer recommendation. And I’m going to say that was extremely important because I didn’t have a problem with my soil per se.

0:56:36 Elizabeth McCarthy: You were just doing it because you had to.

0:56:38 Donna Smith: I do it because I had to. And I was like, wow, I never, ever need to add phosphorus to my soil. I got plenty. And so when you look at your fertilizer and stop me if Rick went through this, but, you know, you have those numbers, those confusing.

0:56:53 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes.

0:56:54 Donna Smith: Okay, well, the first one is nitrogen, the second one is phosphorus, and the last one is potassium. So that middle number for me needs to be zero. Oh, okay. Because I don’t want any phosphorus in my fertilizer. So I thought that was really, really beneficial to know for $12.

0:57:13 Elizabeth McCarthy: Well, sure.

0:57:14 Donna Smith: And of course, if you think you have problems with your soil, you can get more detailed testing. Right. But did Rick go into how to do your test?

0:57:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: Not really.

0:57:25 Donna Smith: Okay, let’s talk about that for a second. Because a lot of people think they have to come to us and get, like, a special container.

0:57:33 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes, I wondered that as well.

0:57:35 Donna Smith: Yeah. No, no, no, you don’t have to do that. We have them. If you go to the Home and Garden show, for instance, we’ll have them. But you can use a Ziploc bag. You go to the soiltestingamu. Edu. It has the form you fill Out. And I actually brought one.

0:57:53 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, okay.

0:57:54 Donna Smith: It looks a little scary, but if you just kind of. Well, you know, it’s like eating an elephant. Just one bite at a time.

0:58:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: One bite at a time.

0:58:01 Donna Smith: Take it a time.

0:58:02 Elizabeth McCarthy: Exactly right.

0:58:02 Donna Smith: Go through it.

0:58:03 Elizabeth McCarthy: And really, it’s not hard. I mean, no, I remember doing it as well. And you just, really just pick the first one. Unless you find something more detailed you want, it’s. It’s not difficult because it will give

0:58:13 Donna Smith: you your ph also on that basic test. So for basic homeowners, that’s really all you need. And you can pay for it online. You don’t have to send in a check.

0:58:24 Elizabeth McCarthy: Oh, that’s nice.

0:58:25 Donna Smith: So you pay for it online and you do your soil sample. You put your little form in with your sample, and you send it away.

0:58:31 Elizabeth McCarthy: One thing I remember from being an intern, we didn’t have to send one off, but I remember someone coming and teaching us all about how to package it up and everything. And all they really said was just double bag it.

0:58:43 Donna Smith: Yeah. And you want it to be dry.

0:58:44 Elizabeth McCarthy: Well, sure.

0:58:45 Donna Smith: But it tells you on the website,

0:58:46 Elizabeth McCarthy: it tells you all of that.

0:58:47 Donna Smith: It gives you detailed information. But this is the number one question we get on the help desk pretty much every time I work it or anybody works it, that question is in there.

0:58:59 Elizabeth McCarthy: Interesting.

0:59:00 Donna Smith: So we’re getting the word out that you need to test your soil. So that’s a great thing.

0:59:04 Elizabeth McCarthy: It’s interesting. One of the things I remember as well is you would need to be sure you took soil from multiple places. You wouldn’t just take it from one spot. And then I guess I vaguely remember they sell these strange little handle things that it’s a handle and it looks like a little straw underneath it, and you just like force it down into your ground, and then you kind of twist it, and when you pull it up, it gives you what they’re calling like a plug of dirt. That’s correct. So it kind of goes deep enough.

0:59:29 Elizabeth McCarthy: Is that what you would recommend to get it or just take out a shovel or how does that.

0:59:32 Donna Smith: Well, okay. I’m kind of a lazy gardener, and if I don’t have to go buy something to do this, I’m not going to. So you can certainly take a shovel and just dig down. Make sure you get down 3 or 4 inches to take your sample, and you’ll be fine. And just make sure it’s dry.

0:59:51 Elizabeth McCarthy: And do you take it from more than one place as well? I did. You did?

0:59:55 Donna Smith: I did. And you can also send in several Samples. Let’s say you have a vegetable garden.

1:00:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: Yes, I was about to ask.

1:00:01 Donna Smith: And then you have your, your lawn.

1:00:03 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right. And then just your regular flowers.

1:00:05 Donna Smith: Yeah. So that soil may be different in different places. So you can always do more than one sample. You do have to have a sheet for each sample, a new form.

1:00:14 Elizabeth McCarthy: Right. And that’s all online as well?

1:00:15 Donna Smith: Yes, they’re very detailed about what to do online. So if you just go to the soiltesting tamu Edu you will get all the info.

1:00:25 Elizabeth McCarthy: Fantastic. Well, I highly recommend it. I did that actually for one of my pastures. I was really curious what was going on in a couple of places and it told me all of the things I needed to know and I was really quite impressed with it. And there’s like a phone number you can call if you didn’t understand it. That’s true. And the people in the lab are quite kind and so I just, I highly recommend it as well. And I really appreciate you coming and helping us get the word out on soil sampling.

1:00:50 Donna Smith: Well, and let me. I want to do a quick plug for the help desk because that’s what I’m in charge of and I want you to call. We really do. So the phone number is 817-884-1944. That is the actual phone number. Sometimes you will get a live person. If not you can leave a message. You can also send us an email and it’s very easy. It’s helpdeskarrantmg. You can send it straight there. You can send us pictures. We recommend please sending pictures.

1:01:25 Donna Smith: If you do email, please include your phone number because there are times when we need to call you back and ask questions because we maybe it’s a little vague. We need to do some follow up questions with you. You can also go to our website@tarrantmg.org and there is a little form, a little button that says Ask a master gardener. And you can also submit your questions that way. So please take advantage of it. It’s free.

1:01:53 Elizabeth McCarthy: I remember multiple times in my working at the help desk, which I actually really love to do that many times people will ask a very common question maybe, but there’s not enough information really for us to answer it. So do, I’m just reminding, do please say where you live, like what area you live in in Tarrant county. And if it’s for instance a tree that has a problem, like tell us what kind of tree, how old is the tree, how you know, things like that really help. So all of the information that you have about your question exactly. Go ahead and send it in. If you have pictures, that’s wonderful.

1:02:26 Elizabeth McCarthy: And that way we can do a little bit more homework before we call you back.

1:02:30 Donna Smith: That’s right. Yes. Because we do try to give research based answers and so the more information we have, the better research we can do.

1:02:38 Elizabeth McCarthy: Absolutely. Well, I do know that the help desk is a treasure to a lot of people and you do great work responding to all the questions. There’s a million questions and some of them are a little wacky, but some of them are just really what everybody’s trying to understand. So thank you so much for spending your time and your energy doing that. It’s really important work and we appreciate you.

1:02:58 Donna Smith: Thank you, Liz. I’m happy to be here.

1:03:00 Elizabeth McCarthy: All right, we’ll see you next time on what’s Bugging youg? Well, friends, that brings us to the final seed for today. A huge thank you to my friend Rick Heim for joining me and sharing his knowledge about growing cool season vegetables here in North Texas. Try not to let that North Texas heat fool you, friends. Some of the best vegetable gardening of the year is still ahead of us. Rick, you’ve given us plenty to think about and hopefully plenty to plant.

1:03:29 Elizabeth McCarthy: We love your vegetable nerd heart for growing. Thank you to Donna Smith for stopping by what’s bugging you? Sharing some great info on how to soil test around your yard. And to our producer Steve Cosio for keeping all of us on track and making digging in happen behind the scenes. Next time on Digging in. We’re turning our attention from the vegetable garden to the flower bed with perennial power planting for the long haul.

1:03:53 Elizabeth McCarthy: I’ll be joined by my dear friend and mentor, Cheryl Whited, better known to me as Mama Sis. And trust me, you’re going to want to hear what she has to say about building a garden that will come back year after year. Take what you learned today, give it a try in your own garden. And remember, there’s always something new to learn when you’re willing to get your hands dirty. Thanks for spending a little time in the garden with me today.

1:04:15 Elizabeth McCarthy: Until we meet again, it’s your turn to dig in.