Extension Agent Jodi Richmond talks to us about vegetable gardening for beginners.
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All right well welcome everybody um today’s topic is vegetable gardening for beginners so I hope everybody’s getting a little excited it’s time to start getting those seed cataloges out and start planting our garden as we learned a couple weeks ago so today I’m just going to talk to you about vegetable
Gardening for beginners uh is a topic that a lot of us really get excited about obviously it’s a really big topic um so we’re not going to be able to dive very deep into it today I mainly just wanted to kind of Orient you to the
Topic a little bit and let you know about some of the resources that WB extension has my name is jod Richman I’m the extension agent in Mercer County and I’m also the coordinator for the vegetable gardening and beginner gardening series all right so the first thing that
I wanted to throw out there for those of you that may not know um we do have a lot of fact sheets available for gardeners across the state um this is the landing page for the gardening series so if you go on there we’ve dropped the those into the chat um this
Is just the gardening 101 page and you can see that there’s a lot of fact sheets available if you scroll down through there we also have some fact sheets they are topic specific and these are called our gardening guides and those deal with a specific type of
Vegetable or produce that you want to grow and they will contain not only growing like the production information the pesticide information the the um common types of diseases and uh and bugs and things that you might want to deal with with that production um but they also contain nutrition information so
These are generally Garden guides that we have developed to go right along with the um grow this series so those are also available and again we put those links in the chat all right so decided you want to have a garden so some things that you might want to consider is your specific
Site and we talked a little bit about this earlier is how you plan out that site um things that you may want to consider is your actual access to water this is the first thing that always comes up when people tell me they want to do some raised beds or a school or
Community garden wants to go in I always ask them is do you have access to water and people are always like well I can carry water well I can tell you right now you don’t want to be carrying water when it gets um in that heat of Summer
And it’s dry and August is out there um so you want to make sure you have easy access to water one of the things that can do if you don’t necessarily have great access to water is to use something like a rain barrel um so the Min gardeners are really interested in
Doing some of those types of projects another thing that’s really important is your sunlight that’s available um both the duration of sunlight and the intensity of sunlight most vegetable crops need at least about 10 hours of daylight a day in order to to mature and ripen properly there are a few crops
That will do okay in a in a shadier situation and those are going to be some of our cool weather crops we’ll talk a little bit more about that here in a little bit um but if you want to grow a cool weather crop more up through the summer something like um broccoli
Cauliflower peas something like that if you’re going to grow that through the summer then it really needs to be in a shadier area so it doesn’t get too hot anybody that’s ever grown broccoli knows that if you let it get too hot in the summer um it will bold um so those are
Some of the things that you want to consider your planting zone we’re going to talk a little bit more about that here in a minute your planting zone determines what kind of crop you can grow and when that growing season is the type of crop I just mentioned that
Whether it’s a warm season crop or a cool season crop um that’s going to be one of those things that’s really important because it’s going to tell you when you want to plant that particular crop and also your planting zone is going to delegate when that Frost and
Freeze is going to most likely occur for the last time in your area we’ll talk a little B more about that in just a minute but the one thing you really want to consider is what do you like to grow um if you participated in state topic a
Few weeks ago about planting your garden you know that’s probably the most important thing is what do you even want to grow you shouldn’t be planting things that you don’t want to eat sometimes people will say well I plant tomatoes because my grandma planted Tomatoes everybody plants Tomatoes but if you
Don’t like tomatoes then don’t plant any Tomatoes then we’re going to talk a little bit about different types of gardens um most people when they think of a garden they think of a traditional inground Garden there lots of other opportunities it could be raised bed it could be containers it could be vertical
So we’re going to talk a lot about different types of things one thing I want to mention is when we talk about sight selection um slope this one at the bottom this picture here doesn’t have a whole lot of slope but there is a little
Slope there so one thing that we do is if you have a slope you want to to plant across the slope instead of up and down and the reason why we do that is because if you plant up and down the slope then when the rain comes it will wash out
Your crops and it will lead to erosion so that’s just one way to kind of address the area that you have all right I always want to throw this out there um every year we do an extension Garden calendar I hope some of you guys have one of those um if you
Have not gotten your extension Garden calendar check with your local extension office um some counties still have some left other Counties have run out but every year we do have this Garden calendar available and the garden calendar tells you different dates to do things throughout the year and it’s
Tailored for West Virginia so for this week some things that it says it’s a really good time to do right now is to apply dormant oil to your fruit trees you can go ahead and prune all your trees and shrubs we do want to do that in the dormant season before things
Start budding out um you can also propagate things like grapes and blueberries from your hardwood cuting okay so if you don’t have a calendar uh right there in the slide is the link but you can also just search for WV extension Garden calendar if you want to
Print off your own or you can check at your local extension office and they may have have a few left all right I threw this out just a few minutes ago about the planting zone some of you may be familiar if you look at your uh Seed Catalog you may see
What’s called the USDA Hardy Zone and that gives you a map of the United States and it gives you different zones so West Virginia is normally in about zone six parts of it may be in five and parts of it maybe in seven but what we
Do at WBU is we have divided that out into three different zones um for West Virginia and your zones tell you the last frostfree date um and that’s really important because you don’t want to plant warm seeds and crops things like tomatoes and peppers you don’t want to plant that before your
Last frost free datee okay because if you do the frost could kill your plants um if you happen to get a load of frost or we’re expecting a frost you can do something like cover up those plants to try to save them um but we really don’t
Want to have to be doing that for a really long time so normally we advise you to not plant those plants outside until after your frost-free datee okay so we have we have divided the state up into three zones um a b and c and of course a has the latest frost-free date
So it has the shortest growing season which is 145 days that you have 145 days of a really warm growing season that you can actually grow those warm crops in okay and C would have the longest growing season okay the other part that’s that’s important to remember down
Here is the first killing Frost all right we want to have all those crops harvested before the first killing Frost there are a few exceptions to this there are some cool season crops that can take a little bit of of frost all right so when we talk about
Containers if you’re going to do a container garden a lot of people like container gardens all right let’s put something in the chat anybody put something in the chat if they can see something wrong with any of these containers does anybody see anything to the side here
Anyone I think that the this is Gloria I’m thinking that the um the flower box is too small for it’s going to become root bound and it I’m not even sure if there’s drainage okay excellent so and I’m seeing a few things in the chat too so
You guys are get coming up with some great answers okay so Gloria mentioned that this flower box here has way too many plants in it okay flower boxes are great things um it’s a great container to plant in and it also makes it visually appealing um a way to decorate
The outside of your house but you always want to plant for the mature size of the plant okay we get these little tiny plants and then we think we really have to fill that out but when those plants mature there’s not enough root space and they’re overc competing here so you
There’s way too many plants here all right somebody else mentioned about the Tomato cups they’re way too small those cups are way too small right so somebody has started those seeds in those cups but they’ve let the plants get just way too big right and we see this one all
The time um it’s okay to do that but you need to transplant that or put them if it’s if it’s too early to put them outside then you need to transplant them into a bigger cup okay let’s see what other people com commented overcrowded hard surfaces Sol cup too small okay so
You guys came up with some great things a couple things that you might have noticed on this one up top um this is actually a tropical plant now if this is planted in West Virginia um you’re going to have to bring that in for the winter
Okay can you carry this big old plant inside maybe maybe not I know I could um so that’s one of the things you want to think about when you’re doing container plantings if you have to move that back and forth this big old pot is very heavy
And this plant is huge okay this one right here somebody mentioned overcrowding um one of the things that’s really important for vegetables is you need proper air movement um so this one probably needs to be staked out a little bit and you need to have those cucumbers moved down
Um the other thing that’s really important is you need water drainage um so that’s another thing that that could be an issue okay all right vertical Gardens vertical Gardens are great option um particularly if you don’t have a lot of space you can do a vertical garden if your Mobility
Limited um or if you have other issues they can be a great way to get those plants up off the ground and it can also be great for those plants that need to climb okay so it’s a perfect height for picking so these are just a few examples
This one down here is a pallet and if you do a search for pallet Gardens you can get so many great ideas about different ways to Garden on pallets this one over here um is is great because it’s just strings it doesn’t take a lot of expense something down here like a
Fence does take a little bit more money but if you just do strings um beans peas all those things can climb up strings just fine this one right here is just a a cherry tomato plant that’s hanging down instead of up the one with the squash and gourds is kind of neat you
Can’t really tell from the picture but it’s an arch and you can actually walk under it and pick those things so it’s kind of decorative and it works at the same time all right so here’s some more just kind of container uh and and other options in a few weeks Alexandra Smith
Is going to talk about um non-traditional gardening Alex did our fact sheet on straw Bell gardening which is the one that you can kind of see there in the middle but there are lots of different ideas um there’s going to be another one on an extended gardening
Or um extending your Harvest uh so we do little hoop houses or raise covered raid raised beds a lot so there’s some of information about that this one down here with the squares is called square foot gardening if you’re not familiar with that one you would use each square
And it tells you how many plants you can put in one square square foot so for a lot of our plants uh things like cabbage cauliflower tomatoes peppers you could of course only put one in there um but for things like uh cucumbers or radishes or something like that you can put more
Than one in there okay so that’s just another option A lot of you maybe have um some different kinds of raised beds something like this sometimes people use troughs or something like that this one’s kind of great because it’s a little taller so if if you do have a
Little bit of Mobility limitation or you just want that up off the ground a little bit higher that’s a good option one of the greatest things about raised beds is because that soil is raised off the ground a little bit um you can actually plant a little bit later or a
Little bit earlier I’m sorry in the season and extend that Harvest a little later you can extend it even more by putting the Hoops on top of it like this the one on the top left corner um and you can actually grow things a lot earlier by doing it that way the one
Where you see some holding it up and you have the roots that’s a hydroponic bed um and that’s where the plants are actually growing on water um and those those setups can be really expensive and really extensive or they can be really simple it can just be a bed where
There’s styrofoam trays floating and the U plants are are floating in the styrofoam on top of water so that that’s a couple different non-traditional options all right so this one is just a rais band handout that we have um and it just shows you how to
Build your own res bed as one option sorry about that we did drop this in the chat if this is something you’re interested in and it’s just using 22 Lumber and PVC pipe that you can get at Lowe’s this a 4×8 bed right now cost you
About $120 to do it this way and um 4×4 bed is about half that cost okay so this is just an easy setup if you’re interested in doing something like that we put that together a few years ago it was half that cost um but you know the
The price of lumber has is much higher now than it used to be okay soils and fertility uh if you participated two weeks ago um you could have participated in our soil testing class we do encourage everybody to get their soil tested annually to find out
What is what is in your soil and what you need to supplement um in a couple more weeks we’re going to have bronze Sparks is going to talk about soil fertility and using fertilizers um so of course we do recommend that you do have that soil
Tested so you know and then we can tell you what you need to add most vegetables like a pH of around six to seven which is pretty neutral if you need to increase your pH um then you can add lime if you need to decrease your pH and
Then you can add some type of sulfur compound in West Virginia most um soils typically need lme um they normally have a more acidic pH than you want um some exceptions are going to be plants like tomatoes and blueberries like a little more aesthetic um and there’s of course
Tons of different fertilizer choices out there I have just a couple really common options here a lot of times home guarders like to use something uh like Miracle Grow and that’s perfectly fine I just wanted to mention that like this particular Miracle Grow here is a 12-4
D8 um and what that is is the NPK would be 12-4 d8 um compare that to a 10-10-10 um what those numbers mean is it’s the percentage of nitrogen the percentage of phosphorus and the percentage of potassium ium okay so basically what I’m saying here is this
Is only 4 pounds and this is only and this right here is 40 pounds and they’re the same price um and the nutrients in there is fairly similar except for this is only four pounds and This is 40 pounds um so Brian will explain that a
Lot more later um but that’s what we try to tell home gardeners it’s not that Miracle growing products like that are bad it’s just that you’re really paying for the convenience because you’re getting less than a tenth of the nutrients in this one than you are in
This one okay and and Brian will walk you through some of those calculations um in his session okay the one thing that Miracle Grow does proide is it also provides some of those other micronutrients that you may or may not need depending on your soil test all right so when we talk about
Choosing our varieties um WBU does do every year we do variety trials and what a variety trial is is we will work with different Growers across the state to grow say 10 different varieties of beans and they will grow them out and then they will tell us you know they will
Kind of rank them like this was the best Bean for Taste and this was the best Bean for yield this one grew the most amount of beans and this one was the had the least strings and when we canned it this one is the one that tasted the best
Okay so we do that for lots of different crops and then they actually Pro actually print a variety trial handout um that’s available for gardeners across the state all right so that’s one of the things that you can look to um one thing that is really important is that cool
Season versus warm season and again cool season crops are those those crops that you can plant a little earlier in the year because they can take a little bit of a frost and that’s going to be things like um broccoli and cauliflower and peas all of those can can survive those cooler
Temperatures things that are warm season are going to be a lot of those crops that we really think about growing in Garden more often those are going to be like tomatoes and beans and peppers and squash those are things that don’t really survive and frost very
Well okay depending on your type of crop that’s going to give you your planting date and for a lot of people that’s going to be you don’t want to plant until after that last frost date okay now your harvest date is going to be important because it’s going to be
Determined by the variety that you pick um so different types of tomatoes are going to have different Harvest dates because it takes different types of tomatoes longer to mature and and how you will know about those two dates it’s going to be on the seed pack we’ll show
You one of those here in just a minute the other thing that’s important is when you’re actually planting them how deep do you plant the seeds okay and a rule of thumb is two to three times the width of the seed so those little tiny seeds you just barely poke
In the ground whereas something bigger like a squash seed or something like that you’re going to poke it further in the ground and this chart that that’s on there that is in the vegetable garden for beginner um fact sheet okay so here we have just a typical um seed packet and some things
That you’re going to notice is the planting depth that’s what I just told you about seed spacing of course the seed spacing is going to depend on what you’re actually growing things like tomatoes need to be much further apart um than something like peas spacing between rows again that’s going to be
The same thing you just need air air spacing between the two plants um proper spacing between plants is very important because it allows for air movement and that will help cut down on diseases days to germination that’s just how long is it going to take that seed
To sprout and days to maturity is how long it’s going to take that um fruit the fruit on the plant to actually mature to the point that you can eat it all right seeds versus transplants um you’re going to have a program here in a couple weeks um actually talking about
Seeds and then another one actually talking about transplants um so we are going to learn more about each one of these but of course as most of you know seeds are much lower cost generally than transplants um but it does take it longer to harvest if you plant a seed
Versus if you plant the actual plant another great thing about seeds is you can store those seeds over for another year you just need to store them at at a lower temperature and without moisture okay so normally we recommend that you do that in the refrigerator you will
However often have to go back and thin those seeds we we sew them a little thicker and then we go back and and thin them out and that on the on the uh tomato packet right here it says space after thinning okay so that tells you how much space the the mature plants
Need a germination test um if you have older seed and you’re not sure if it’s going to be really viable or not then you can actually do a germination test which is where you dampen the seeds on a a damp paper towel and you lay out a set
Number of seeds and then you give them time to sprout and you count the number that Sprout and that tells you um what your germination percentage is all right transplants uh these are how we buy a lot of our plants which kind of helps accelerate that Harvest
And it also creates a more uniform yield because you’re taking away that germination Factor you’re getting rid of all those seeds that don’t Sprout um it does decrease the labor from thinning so you don’t have to go back and thin those plants um and it also decreases the time between the crop
S so something we don’t really talk a lot in this presentation is about succession planting but succession planting is when you plant a cool season crop then you plant a warm season crop and then you plant another cool season crop so you can actually get kind of
Three Harvest out of your garden or your raised bed okay hardening off is when you um raise your own uh seedlings and before you plant them in the garden you need to let them slowly get used to the cooler weather because you’ve had them inside and they’ve had this really nice warm
Environment since they’ve been that little seed and if you take them outside and you plant them in the garden and all of a sudden they have fairly cold nights it can shock those plants um and it can be detrimental to the growth so you need to slowly acclimate them to those cooler
Temperatures for a week or so and that will help them um have a a better survival rate all right so Disease Control we talk about something called appm which is integrative Pest Management and we talk about that for both diseases and for insect prevention
And what that is is we don’t just go out there and spray something we try to look at what all of our control options are um and things like cultural controls are things um that you can manage the garden a little better better and that might be
Things like you choose the right seeds to start with there are some seeds that are resistant to certain diseases and you’ll see that over here on this um chart here it it tells you common um varieties for tomatoes and it tells you some diseases that they could be
Resistant to so if you choose a variety say that is resistant to blight or vertic Wilt um and you’re just not going to have as much chance of having that disease and that will help you a lot further than just going out there and trying to spray something you also can
Do some things like crop rotation we try not to plant the same crop in the same area of ground over and over because that continues to perpetuate a disease also as I mentioned a little earlier you want proper plant spacing so the air can move through there and it will help to
Present diseases things like watering the plants on time anything you can do to increase the overall health of a plant plant um will help it be more healthy to fight off diseases to start with um think about you when you’re healthy and you’re feeling well you’re
Going to be more likely to be able to fight off a disease than if you’re just really tired and run down then you’re going to be more susceptible to things like that the other thing that I mention here is trellising um if it is a climbing variety having that on a
Trellis again makes it spaced out a little bit better for that air movement so it can be very helpful now I do want to say that it’s not that we’re against um spraying pesticides or anything like that there are times when pesticides could be the very appropriate control um
So there is a time and a place for that um unless that is not what you choose to do that’s your decision as the gardener um but some things like just purchasing healthy plants and seeds to start with um don’t ever bring a plant home that’s already diseased or is already infested
Um with some type of insect don’t bring that home uh because then it can contaminate the rest of your plants also making sure you sterilize all of your equipment and that can also be things like your boots and your shoes when you’re going through the garden if you’re around something um if you’re
Trimming something that has a disease make sure you sterilize that before you um move on to the next plants another thing is proper identification making sure you know what disease you have or what insects you have and if you don’t know you can bring that to your extension office um and we your
Extension agent can either diagnose that right there or they can send that off to one of our Specialists uh we will have a program at a later date that talks about different diseases that are really common in the garden so that’s going to be an option um later as
Well and this one is talking about insect control and all those things that I talked about IPM also apply for insects um prevention is the best method is to try to prevent those things from happening uh we also have something called a damaged threshold um it’s what
Level of damage is tolerable um because these are natural insects sometimes they’re just going to be out there but at the same time you want to try to consider controlling that before it gets to the point um that it’s a a massive problem uh the other thing with insects
That you need to think about is insects can sometimes look very different during their different stages of life right okay so if you think about something like a moth over here well it goes through those different stages before it gets to that moth so you want to learn
What it looks like in all of those stages so that you can identify that and again if you can’t uh identify it yourself you can always bring in somebody that can help you look at that another thing that’s important for insect control is weed management one of
The things that you can do is keep your weeds down so there’s less of those things available um another thing that is a good idea for insect control is sometimes you can bring in um some of the herbs if you’re interested in herb gardening um some of those herbs insects
Don’t like um so some of those really strong smelly herbs you can kind of interplant with some of these vegetables and it can kind of naturally keep some of the insect populations down um then there’s things like physical control versus chemical control uh many of you probably already do this you go around
And you pick off the cucumber beetles or or you pick off a all those worms like an army worm or something like that before it ever gets to the point that it that it’s a really big problem all right so that’s basically our presentation today I did do just a
Little slide here showing you some of the programs that we will be having coming up soon um do we have anything anybody have questions or do we have any anything in the chat that we need to address okay so actually a question I’m sorry um it’s
A lot easier for me to talk than types so because I have Vision issues um okay I had just um just a couple quick questions um is there a difference between or are you going to cover it in a different session is there a difference between Planting onions from
Seed and planting the slips I heard something because I’m trying to grow big onions and somebody I went across YouTube some Gardener said you have to plant by seed to get that bul real big for the first year because the second year onion um does is more for focused on like reproducing
Itself okay so onions are banial which means they that takes two years to grow that um crop um I I do not know if if there’s a difference by planting it one I don’t know if it actually affects the size the eventual size um it will of
Course delay you one year um by going through that extra life cycle normally we plant that little bulb and then you get the onion that year because you’re like you’re cutting out that first year by planting the little bulb um but I don’t know if you’re wanting the biggest
Onion I don’t think it would affect that um because we grow onions and they get really big we have nice sweet onions it’s more a factor of allowing enough space between the onions and having enough nutrients um okay so I don’t think doing that extra step helps you
Grow them bigger um but I can find out from our our extension specialist great one more question what is am I too late to start celery celery let me check okay celery needs to be started indoors and it takes 10 to 12 weeks so I don’t think so oh I think you’re okay
I’m devastated okay thank you okay let’s see what do we have have all right Bonnie says she has patio Citrus and she has to move them indoors and she does not recommend it um Betsy mentions that many pallets are treated so you need to be careful
Um there is another thing a lot of times people talk about using treated lumber uh for raised beds you no longer have to worry about using treated lumber for raids beds um because that it used to be that they were treated with Arsenic and they’re not treated anymore they’re
Pressure treated um and the chemicals shes in that process are not um no are not toxic um we have a question on how much to water a raised bed um I I can’t answer that because it’s more you know it’s an environmental issue isue um it depends on your temperature and those
Type of things I’d say the same thing as like when you have container plants it’s more a factor of you know check it and see if it if the texture needs water um someone else asked a question about the soil uh they miss that class
Okay for one thing if you miss a class and you ever want to go back and watch it they are available secondly um if you need to have your soil tested um we can put that back in the chat key can you add that to the chat yes test lab yes
Okay you can always send them off to the so test lab that is an absolutely free service in West Virginia the only thing that you have to pay for is the postage to mail it in um okay somebody says they use fence panels to build raised beds it’s a good affordable
Option um the survey by the way key put the survey in there the follow-up survey and the code word is growing Jody I see a question about eggshells so if you are using eggshells in your garden do you need to do anything other than just crush them and
Sprinkle them to get the calcium no and another good thing about eggshells is people use eggshells for a couple different reasons um eggshells is are is a calcium additive but I wouldn’t count on them really adding very much calcium to the soil because um it takes
A long time for that to to degrade however the other thing that eggshells are really good for um and I don’t know if I had this in the slide let me go back um is is actually like a physical control method for things like um slugs
Um because it creates a rough barrier um some insects soft bodied insects like slugs do not like to cross it um so eggshells work for that as well and I noticed we’ve been getting a lot of questions about the um the map that you shared earlier with the zones
Some people were asking their zones and if you could share it again is there a um is it online somewhere by chance or uh it’s in your garden calendar if you have it or the link that I posted that has the garden calendar has it um the planting zones okay um and
Someone says something about 7A yes for the USDA hardiness map we are most commonly most of the state is in six there are some areas where we have as low as as high as seven and as low as five um and that’s the other thing that’s a little frustrating about that
Map is depending on where you look that map up there is some variation in it um and a lot of times Garden calendars will Pro will print that map not Garden calendar I’m sorry seed cataloges will have that map um because it’s a map of the whole United States and there’ll be
Different colored bands um so that’s why we do one for West Virginia because it cons it kind of considers elevation um and some of those other factors as well I saw another question about raised beds does that um change problems with insects um or is it
The same as if you have like inground beds um in general it’s about the same the one thing that’s really good about raised beds however um is like the Hoops you can use those Hoops to put Nets on um and that’s one of the really good things about like moth insects
Um you can cover those beds during the time um when those mths are flying in laying eggs um you can cover that with a a uh like a light cloth um during those times and you can prevent some of those beetles um some of those flying insects
The one thing you do not want to cover them during though is things like squash and those that need to be pollinated um you don’t want them col covered when the flowers are on um because they need to be pollinated but you can cover them with that light cloth um when it’s
Not during the pollination season um and they and they can still get sunlight or you can uh cover and uncover them during the heavier infestation periods and that will prevent a lot of insect penetration um someone mentions use aluminum foil um to prevent squash bugs um that is
Another remedy that that people mention all the time um some other things they actually use like um you can buy like a copper tape uh that you can put down for insects like slugs is another one um a lot of times metallic things a lot of insects don’t like they’re very resistant to
That um just talking about additives um people ask um about epson salts a lot that that is a magnesium additive uh is there anything else any other questions beer bowls work for Slugs yeah um that’s another common remedy for Slugs um a lot of times they’ll climb in there I guess slugs are
Alcoholic but do um beer is another very common remedy for Slugs spearmint um and cinamon around plants um yeah a lot of those you know people know about marold but a lot of those smelly um herbs like you know citronella and the Citrus smelly ones um
Mint can be interplanted uh I think we have some uh programs coming up related to uh companion planting and um herb gardening as well all right please take the survey if nobody has anything else um somebody mentioned hand pollinating things like zucchini yes um um of course zucchini and squash
And melons and all those things do need to be pollinated but they’re also very easy to to hand pollinate with with a brush or something like that so if you need to keep them covered that is an option as well um that that’s another thing we get
Asked about a lot of times if you have like bumpy cucumbers that are misshapen and not the right um not the right size and shape that’s generally a pollination issue um so that’s why I said don’t leave them covered but yes you can hand pollinate them if that’s a situation you need to
Do okay someone asks is Charleston in zone B some of the other lookup sites say we’re 7A yeah that is dependent on like our map uses a and C um but the the national map uses numbers uh and occasionally letters um so our map doesn’t necessarily correlate um it’s
Not like these are all six A and C um our map is separate from theirs you have anything else potatoes when can you plant them um our um traditional thing is that you shouldn’t plant them until after the last frost date um but you know that’s the thing about the
Frost aate it’s kind of always tricky you don’t really know if that’s the last frost a or not um but we recommend you don’t plant them till after the last frost date and that would be dependent on which zone you were in okay somebody asked about a couple
Pesti es um one of the one of the best pesticides that we recommend quite often um which is approved for organic use is BT basilis thris um and the reason for that um is it’s a bacterium and it you put that on the plants and it only kills
Insects that are actively feeding on that plant um and that means that it’s safe for honey bees um and and anything that’s not actually feeding on the plant tissue um so it’s it’s good for like the squash bugs like you mentioned um or those beetles or anything that’s
Actually killing plant tissue um so and it’s available in lots of different trade names Captain Jax is one of the trade names but um BT is one of the things that you’ll see in a lot of extension fact sheets and we do have um there’s a program that relates to Organic pesticides
On organic Insight control is going to be April 25th um for any of you that are interested in particularly organic um and then March 25th is going to be common insects in the garden both of those will be by Carlos cada who is our entomologist and if anyone missed the
Survey link and um have you haven’t had a chance to fill that out feel free to message us on Facebook or Instagram or however you found us and I’ll be glad to send it to you there I think somebody mentioned maybe yeah aphids um another thing that works
Fairly good if you just have a small area is actually just soapy water um that’s one of the common recommendations for Aid I mean we can give you chemical controls as well that’s you’re interested in but oh somebody asked is there a better time to test your soil um we normally recommend
The best time to test your soil is in the fall um the reason for that is because if you’re going to add lime it takes three to five months to be effective in your soil um and if your pH is not in the right zone or the right
Range then your fertilizer is not as effective um so we normally that’s the ideal time is to do it in the fall that way if your pH is out of range you have enough time to get your pH fixed before you would be planting and adding fertilizer however you can soil test it
Anytime um any time is better than not at all um so if you’re going to be planting this year then go ahead and send it in now so you know what’s in there um most people are not that far out of the range that you would need to
Worry about it really that much um the one thing we do see with home gardeners a lot is a lot of times we get so tests back that say that your nutrient levels are actually too high um and that’s because a lot of times home gardeners continue to add um
Fertilizer uh and and so some sometimes your nutrient levels are too high um so that’s actually very common but so follow is the best time but anytime is better than not at all and the lab is down to about two weeks or so right now
Uh to get your results back they will be emailed to you and a copy will go to your local county office as well um so they’re pretty quick the one caveat to that is as we get closer and more people are sending in Ser samples uh it could
Take a little longer but they’re it used to take like six weeks so they’re getting faster uh someone says that they heard that they flowers that you could use to deter certain pests um yeah the most common one people usually know about is Golds but um really any of those really
Scented strong flowers can be used and there there are lots of herbs um and we’ll talk more about that in the herb gardening one um but there are lots of herbs that have those strong smells that plants just don’t that that insects just don’t really like um the ones you don’t
Want to use is some of those really tender herbs um like basil those really leafy tender ones they tend to really like um so you can tend to lean more towards the ones like um sage and citronella um some of those stronger smelling herbs are generally better for
That all right last call for questions well thank you so much Jody you did a fantastic job and if anyone else has um you know like I said if you didn’t have a chance to fill out that survey um just reach out to us on Facebook or Instagram and we’ll get it
To you um and be sure to tune in next week um and continue to earn points for your county this way so thank you all