Jay White, owner and publisher of Texas Gardener Magazine, shares planting tips and talks about his upcoming speech at the Master Gardeners Noon Meeting.
all right East Texas so excited for our next guest I’m a big fan of gardening so it’s going to be fun to talk to Jay White who’s the owner and publisher of Texas Gardener magazine Jay so excited to talk to you how are you I’m great Amanda how are you I’m doing well okay so you have a big event coming up at the Angelina County extension office which we’ll get to that but I think it would be great for you just to introduce yourself to the community tell them who you are and then maybe we’ll tell them a little bit about the magazine as well awesome so like saying my name is Jay White my wife Sally and I own Texas Garder magazine we’re very proud of it a lot of people may not be aware of this but we’ve been around for 43 years and so um we’re working on the last issue of our 43rd year and we’re about to go into our 44th year so um the Magazine’s been here a while and I think the reason that our magazine has lasted is because we have the best working horticulturalist in the state that write for us and so many of them are from East Texas I’m not kidding we have great great writers from East Texas many of y’all have heard from Greg Grant you’ve heard of Dr David Cree you know Keith Hanson and so all of those people write for us and I think that’s why people keep buying us is because they can trust us to give them factual Horticultural information year after year right and um and as we all know in East Texas and in Texas it’s pretty hard to keep our plants alive in the summer so if you’re putting out a helpful information that’s why they keep coming back cuz we need all the help we can get so yeah I can tell you one thing that Sally and I are really passionate about is we’re passionate about water conservation and as we’ve seen over the last few years these incredible hot dry Summers that we have that’s becoming much more important in our Gardens is learning how to make our soil more water Thrifty how to capture rain water and use it um because we’re getting more Texans than we’re getting new Lakes right exactly so I noticed on um your social media page and what is that social media page can we share that with everybody so I’m on Instagram and Facebook both of them are at Texas Gardener magazine okay so Texas Gardener magazine Instagram page always has these monthly tips so we’re kicking off June today it’s June 1st so can you just start it off by sharing some of your June tips well first of all we have weekly tips oh wow so we yeah we put out every Wednesday we put out uh you know an actionable tip and then we try to do tips scattered throughout the week as well and so as we go into June right now this is a a cool time in the garden a lot of the things that we’re growing it’s harvest time and then as harvest time comes up you have to kind of think about what are you going to replace them with you know a good example are green beans green beans are about played out now they’re getting hot they’re getting buggy and so you want to consider you know what to put in that bed now so whenever you pull out one of these spent what I call early spring vegetable crops you always want to work an inch to 3 in of compost into your soil and then you want to put heat hearty plants out and so some of the best for the vegetable garden which is what we’re going to be talking about with the Angelina Master Gardeners right now are southern peas love Southern Peas I love purple Halls plain old blackeyed Crowder Peas zipper peas zipper cream peas they love the Heat and they have African genetics so they come from a place where it’s hot and dry and that’s why they do so well for us here in Texas and always a great choice to transition into the summer garden yep thanks for sharing those tips and so if someone who doesn’t receive the magazine what else can they expect to what other information can they expect to gain besides these helpful tips well like say we try to stay relevant I know not everybody’s a serious Gardener and so we will have um articles that Focus you know specifically on certain plants plant families vegetables vegetable families things like that but we also try to do things that are kind of current interest and um like one thing that um Dr David cre always does he likes to talk about you know what are the best trees for Texas especially Trees in East Texas he does a lot of research over there in nacadas and he will tell you like what are the best ornamental trees for your area you know what are the best large longterm tree Investments what do you look for when you buy them so we’re not just vegetable or flower information we also do current interest stories as well that’s good to know and so you have a big event coming up at at the Angelina County extension office and so could you give the community an idea of what they can expect to hear from you at that event so love going love going and visiting with those folks we’ve been there before great great group of people and they have a noon speaking SE uh series and so that’s what we’re going to be doing on June 18th we’re going to have um I’ll call it a vegetable seminar and this is where I’m going to talk specifically about you know the best heat loving vegetables for Texas and we’ll cover you know some of the things that people know about okra and and Southern peas and all but we’re also going to talk about some things that you might not know like New Zealand spinach or um Malibar spinach so that sounds uh really fun I like learning about new vegetables and plants that I’ve never heard of and I’ve not heard of those last two that you just mentioned so are you in your garden right now can you show the community any of your garden I am I am in my garden um let’s see how we can do this and keep it stable can I yep you can turn it around can I flip the camera yes okay all right um oh here we go it’s always fun to see a a master’s Garden Live Well that’s beautiful so I’m in you know I I am a gardener I I will I will admit I am a serious Gardener and I have more gardens than I have time right now I’m in what we call our foot garden and the football Garden is a large oval-shaped lawn that is surrounded by a bunch of perennials and one thing that I love about my Gardens is that almost every plant that I have in my Gardens I got from somebody else we call those passal plants and so if we were to walk around the garden and I was to bore everybody um to tears I would show them each and every plant and tell them the story and the person that gave it to them cuz I really do love these pass alongs yeah and I I think that because you can think of that person too um while that plant is growing that’s a good idea so you just take cut a piece from someone else and then transplant it in your garden you know there’s several different ways to do it I’ll tell you one thing that I truly love are garden bulbs they’re kind of the easiest because you know they’re kind of like an onion you can dig down in the ground you pull out the big healthy bulb take them home and put those bulbs in your garden and many of these bulbs will grow for Generations I mean my wife and I grow a day ly that we got from her grandmother and we’re not sure how long it’s been alive but it’s been in her family for 75 to 100 years and so we’re we’re pretty proud of that plant and we also have some Bonas that we took cuting of and rooted and put those out and that came from the other grandmother on the other side of the family and we know that those have been around for 50 to 75 years so like you say great memories always makes you think of the the gardener that shared them with you y that that is um great that’s a long time that those plants have been around and I have some really fond memories from my childhood with my grandparents I grew up in a rural uh community and that was the activity that my grandparents did on the weekend they gardened they cut their grass that was my grandfather’s favorite thing to do actually is just cut his grass on a Saturday morning and then just sit out there under the tree and admire his work and so I loved sitting out there with him and um as I’ve you know gotten older I’ve taken that with me and it seems like gardening for me has just been almost like a therapeutic and it’s just a way to process your thoughts and you know just sometimes there’s happy tears sometimes there’s sad tears in your garden but um the garden is just like a I have a heartfelt connection uh with my garden and planting and so what is it um that you love about it Jay well there are so many things that I love about gardening but it is definitely therapeutic um I’m retired from MD Anderson Cancer Center I I retired from there after 22 years and then we bought the magazine and I think it’s just fascinating that MD Anderson which is the Premier Cancer Institute really in the nation they understand the value of plants and gardening and so they made a point to put in rose gardens that their patients could go to while they were recovering and in the patient recovery area all of the pictures that line the Halls were pictures of Nature and plants and trees and all of that because science is proven just being outside just being exposed at nature is good for not only your mental health but your physical health and so like you say if you’re having a bad day there’s some evidence that just putting your hand in the soil releases serotonin and so I like to tell people if you got problems go out to the garden and you’ll work them out right yep I I agree with that so Jay is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you want to share about the upcoming event on June 18th no I know that it’s open to the public they always have such a great turnout there come out and see us I like I say we’ll be there we’ll have the magazine we’ll have some products if you’re interested in them and if you want to subscribe I mean be sure to head over to our website at texasgarden docomo anyway just come see us if you’re new to gardening get out there get your hands dirty give it a try and plant happiness right yeah oh I like that plant happiness all right you heard at East Texas if you want some tips on how to plant happiness please go to the Angelina County Extension Office on June 18th to hear Jay share advice on planting vegetables and a whole lot more Jay thank you so much for your time today thank you thank you all right East Texas that was Jay White owner and publisher of Texas Gardener magazine and he’s going to be speaking at the Master Gardener noon meeting on June 18th at the Angelina County extension office if you want more information on events that they host Angelina County extension office has way more events than just the gardening event but the Master Gardeners you can go to angelina. AGR and that’s a g r i l f.org slm gardeners