While editing Episode 406 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast (out now), I was taking copious notes, about all the great garden tips Don Shor and I discussed in an episode that was ostensibly a chat about growing tomatoes this summer (we both like Cupid, despite its propensity to sprawl). In fact, it was the most notes I have ever taken for any episode. Were you taking notes, too, while listening? If so, I hope you weren’t driving.

But I’ll make it easier for you: check out the transcript of today’s episode, especially the more accurate transcripts that you’ll find at our website, gardenbasics.net, or at our podcast uploader, Buzzsprout, and discover your own “Aha!” garden moments.

TIP #1: START WITH EVENLY MOIST SOIL

We have discussed this several times on the podcast. First, with America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, when talking about reusing old potting soil for container planting, in Episode 172 in the Garden Basics podcast. Debbie stressed the importance of getting the soil thoroughly moistened before planting:

Farmer Fred

Debbie, it's that time of year or and people are going to go out to get plants, or they're going to get seed. And they may be buying soil. But before they buy soil, they may take a look around their yard and they see all these pots with no plants in them, but they're full of soil. There might be nurseries that might say, "Oh, you don't want to use that. You need to buy our new soil." But that old soil that you have, I guess it really depends what's in it and what it is, and what it needs. Right? And can it be reused?

Debbie Flower

Yes, I reuse potting soil all the time, I have many instances where I look around and there are pots with dead things in them. As I said to my cousin, I still kill plants, I just know how to do the autopsy. I typically know or have an idea of what killed them as well. I take out the what is left of the plant, there's often a decent root system, I'll bang it around on my potting bench and get off as much of the container media as I can from those roots. And notice I say container media. This is not field soil. I use kitty litter boxes that I bought specifically for the purpose of mixing media. And I dump it in there, mix it up with whatever else I have and reuse it. I very often add a rock component to that reusable media and some new bagged container media. Container media is not soil, it is organic matter. Plus some typically rock components. Peat Moss, coir or compost are usually the organic matter. And then the rock components are perlite, vermiculite, pumice, sand, something like that.

And it's often one part of the organic matter to two parts of the sand component. And the reason for that is that over time the organic component breaks down. And as it breaks down, the particles get smaller. And the space between the particles where the air and water hang out in a container gets smaller and the plant starts to suffer. So a plant has died in the container media. It's been in there some period of time and a container, the organic component of that container media has broken down. So the pore spaces, the open spaces between the components of container media have gotten too small, or they've definitely gotten smaller, they may have gotten too small for roots to actively live in there. So I want to fix that. That's one thing I want to fix, is particle size. So I do that by adding some new media from a bag and usually more rock components. Mix them together, get the texture I do very much by feel and I don't have recipes, and then I'll reuse them. I will never reuse media to start seeds in. To start seeds, you want things sterile. You want the pots to be absolutely clean and you want the media to be unused. So I'm not using it for that. But I will move my houseplants up to a bigger size or my seedlings that I started in six packs all the way up to four inch pots, something like that, using this reused media. The other thing that I need to worry about with the media is the salt component. Salt is fertilizer. Fertilizer has to be in the salt form for the plant to be able to take it up. It has to be able to dissolve in water and move to the plants roots and enter the plants roots. And so that's the salt form. And if there's too much of that in there, the pH of the soil will go up, so the soil will be too alkaline. When that happens, then nutrients that are in the soil become unavailable to the plant. The easiest way to do that is just flush the the media with freshwater for several minutes and allow it to come out through the drain holes of the pot. But yes, I absolutely reuse media frequently.

Farmer Fred

To your last point there. One thing I do is, I get myself a five gallon bucket. And I will take that old container mix and put it in the bucket because usually peat moss is part of that. It is hard to rewet. So I put it in a bucket with no drain holes, I will put that soil mix and then fill the bucket with water and then go do something else. When I come back several hours later, that moisture has basically permeated throughout that entire body of that potting soil. And I then transfer the potting soil to large plastic containers with drain holes and let the whole thing drain. And then I can get in there with my hands and grab the soil and refill whatever pot I was going to do, knowing that it's thoroughly moist.

Debbie Flower

Yes, potting soil can dry out to beyond rewetting easily. And so you're right. You have to soak it or you can use if you're anxious, you can use warmer water and work with your hands and maybe just a drop, literally just a drop, of dish soap. And you want it to be soap it really would be better to use castile soap or ivory soap, not detergent. But that helps breaks down the surface tension of water and allows it to permeate the particles of the container media more easily. But I always have my soil moist before from top to bottom before I put it in a container.

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And that brings us to Episode 227 “Understanding Drip Irrigation” and garden author Robert Kourik expanding upon the importance of starting with thoroughly moist raised bed soil, especially with a drip irrigation system. You can hear what he had to say specifically about prepping a raised bed with a drip irrigation system in the podcast excerpt at the top of this page. Or, read this abbreviated transcript of that topic:

Robert Kourik

Basically, if you turn on the drip on a regular basis, and keep the soil moisture consistent, the roots don't go into any shock. Now we're not talking about wet soil. Some people get carried away and turning the system on too long. We're talking about so moist as you can hardly see the color difference, but the water is there, the moisture is there for the roots, they know it's there. Whereas we may not be able to see it as much in a color difference. But the point being, if you maintain a consistent moisture level, for the whole growing season, things never dampened down or stress out from too much water or stress out from too much drought between cycles. So that's where people say, Oh, I'm going to water every Saturday or twice a month or once a month, well that puts you through these cycles where the soil gets dry enough that the roots aren't happy, then you have some run the system longer to get the soil moist again, and then oftentimes it gets too wet and the roots aren't happy because they're not able to get as much air. So the deal about getting greater yields is to turn the system on on a frequent basis. And this is really hard for people digest because they always heard Oh turn it on and off once a month or once a week or water infrequently but deep. Well, most of the roots are in the top six to 12 inches. So that's that's as deep as I worry about.

Farmer Fred

You do advise though, before you go to this daily watering regimen that you thoroughly soak the garden, especially if it's a raised bed, make sure that the whole area is saturated. And then you can do that daily spurt, if you will.

Robert Kourik

Yes. And so that means once you know how to base the irrigation on the weather, you adjust the system to come on every day but you just for tiny amounts of water. It's like a lot of systems I'm doing one to three minutes a day to keep things happening. At the most sometimes you only need 15 minutes a day depends on the amount of water you need to apply. But the point being that this way of approaching it, you can get at least on the average 20% increase in yields. There's a woman in India that did chili peppers, and she is 38% less water but she got a 48% increase in the yields. So it can be quite dramatic.

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And that brings us to the current Garden Basics podcast episode (406) in which Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, CA advises the same, in the first of several great garden success tips mentioned in the episode:

Don Shor:

So raised planters have special issues that require some consideration, especially a