Just Grow Something | Evidence-Based Home Gardening

Latest Episodes:

Focal Point Friday: Follow-up to Sunflowers, Compost and Manure Mar 03, 2023

Show notes

On this week's Focal Point Friday episode, I'm following up with questions and comments I got about some recent episodes about phytoremediation, commercial compost, and using manure in the garden safely.

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Ep. 137 - Growing Celery Feb 28, 2023

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Celery is a cool-season crop that can be a bit finicky about its growing conditions. If carrots are divas, then consider celery Goldilocks: not too hot, not too cold, but just right! On today’s episode I give you the lowdown on growing your own celery at home and this includes those of you who live in warmer climates. The main consideration for celery is it takes a really long time to grow from seed and it can be a water hog if you want those big plump stalks. Some varieties need to be trenched and mounded in order to get those pale stalks like you’re used to seeing the grocery store, and they don’t tolerate a heavy frost. And even though they don’t like the heat, too much time spent below a certain temperature can actually cause them to bolt. But, if you know how to mitigate all those things, the flavor of homegrown celery can be so much more intense than what you get in the store. Let's dig in!

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Resources:

Umbellifer or apiaceae? - Richard Jackson Garden (richardjacksonsgarden.co.uk)

Apium graveolens (Smallage, Wild Celery) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Celery / Apium graveolens Herbal Medicine, Health Benefits, Side Effects (medicalhealthguide.com)

Everything you didn’t even know you wanted to know about celery - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)

Cel-Ray - Wikipedia

Explore Cornell - Home Gardening - Vegetable Growing Guides - Growing Guide

Celery | College of Agricultural Sciences (oregonstate.edu)

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Focal Point Friday: Manure in the Garden Feb 24, 2023

Show notes

What manures are "safe" to use in the garden and which ones need to be composted? The question came from a listener and the answer may surprise you.

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Resources:

Animal-Manure-in-the-Garden.pdf (wsu.edu)

Bunny honey: Using rabbit manure as a fertilizer - MSU Extension

Colorado Master Gardener Training (colostate.edu)

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Ep. 136 - Filling New Raised Beds Feb 21, 2023

Show notes

Purchasing compost and potting soil can be expensive and new garden beds can take a lot of soil to fill them. Plus, we’ve talked before that commercial compost often needs a little help getting the microbes up and moving again in order to make it biologically active and not just an inert material that’s not helping our plants at all. So, filling a raised bed with nothing but trucked in compost and bags of potting mix just isn’t the way to go. If you’ve gotten behind on building your beds or you’re just now deciding you need to create some, especially if you’re creating a garden for the first time, it’s important to know what to fill those beds with.

Today we’ll talk about different techniques we can use to fill those raised beds properly so that the growing medium is not only biologically active, which is helping the plants get the nutrients they need, but also doesn’t break the bank.

Ep. 80 - Creating and Managing a Compost Pile

Ep. 81 - Talking Compost with Stan "The Compost Man"Slaughter

Ep. 82 - Compost Systems for Home Gardeners

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Resources:

Effect of high compost temperature on enzymatic activity and species diversity of culturable bacteria in cattle manure compost - ScienceDirect

Microbiological parameters as indicators of compost maturity | Journal of Applied Microbiology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)

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Focal Point Friday: More About Intercropping Feb 17, 2023

Show notes

For this week’s Focal Point Friday, I answer a question asked by a student in my Plan Like a Pro garden planning course last week. She wanted some clarification on what I mean when I’m talking about intercropping. “Does that mean I plant another crop in between the rows of the other or does it mean the second crop is spaced in the same row as the other crop.”

Companion Planting Chart

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Ep. 135 - Growing Potatoes Feb 14, 2023

Show notes

Potatoes are a staple in many areas of the world, and they can be grown just about anywhere. Your yield definitely improves if you follow a few techniques, but there are so many options: from big long in-ground rows, to raised planters, old bathtubs or wash basins, buckets, grow bags, even pots on your patio. So, even if you don’t have hundreds of row feet of space to grow potatoes for your entire family for a year, most everybody has space to maybe do some fingerling potatoes or some small boiling potatoes for at least a few meals.

Of course, there’s a great sense of satisfaction dumping the dirt out of a pot or digging into the soil and pulling up a potato plant and seeing all those potatoes hanging from the root system. And the flavor and texture of new potatoes are just fantastic and really can't be found in the grocery.

Ready to grow some spuds? Let’s dig in!

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Resources:

Hijmans, RJ; Spooner, DM (2001). "Geographic distribution of wild potato species". American Journal of Botany. 88 (11): 2101–12. doi:10.2307/3558435. JSTOR 3558435. PMID 21669641.

University of Wisconsin-Madison, Finding rewrites the evolutionary history of the origin of potatoes (2005)

Potato Production and Consumption

Solanum tuberosum (Irish Potato, Irish Potatoes, Pomme de Terre, Potato, Potatoes, White Potato, White Potatoes) | North Carolina Extension Gardener Plant Toolbox (ncsu.edu)

Potato: Nutrition facts, recipes, benefits, side effects, and more (msn.com)

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast | Syngenta (greencastonline.com)

Growing potatoes in home gardens | UMN Extension

ORGANIC POTATO GROWING GUIDE (woodprairie.com)

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Focal Point Friday: Are Sunflowers Good or Bad for the Garden? Feb 10, 2023

Show notes

Jennifer in the Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook group said, “I've seen, several places now, an argument about whether sunflowers are toxic to other plants around them or whether they are soil cleaners. Can you give us the low-down?”

This was a great question and one that was asked again just a few days later in our Kansas City Area gardening group, as well. The quick answer is everything you've heard about sunflowers is true!

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Resources:

Allelopathic Plants. 7. Sunflower

Sunflower Power! (landhealthinstitute.org)

Potential of Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) for Phytoremediation of Soils Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Behaviour of Helianthus annuus L.: an ethogram for sunflower, and the effect of potential competitors on soil nutrient patch use

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Ep. 134 - Soil Texture and Composition: How it affects water and nutrients in the garden and how to know what type you have Feb 07, 2023

Show notes

Different types of soil have different water holding capacities and nutrient availability. Much of this is based on the percentage of three soil particles in the soil composition: sand, silt, and clay. Knowing what the texture of our soil is helps us to know what how water and nutrients move through our soil and the best amendments for our particular soil type and the plants we want to grow.

Today we’ll talk about how to test our soil composition and texture by using the jar method or the ribbon method, and what the results mean for you and your garden. Let’s dig in!

Get your soil texture download

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RESOURCES

Soil Water Holding Characteristics - Center for Landscape & Urban Horticulture (ucanr.edu)

Soils & Plant Nutrients | NC State Extension Publications (ncsu.edu)

Soil Texture Analysis “The Jar Test” | Home & Garden Information Center (clemson.edu)

Testing Soil Texture by Hand – The Soil Ribbon Test – GrowIt BuildIT

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Focal Point Friday: Proper Lighting for Seedlings Feb 03, 2023

Show notes

Welcome back, my gardening friends, to another Focal Point Friday episode, this time covering proper lighting for your indoor seedlings. It's not as complicated as you may think!

These quickie episodes are either an important highlight from a previous episode or a quick focus on a current event in the food and agriculture world that I think we should be talking about.

Think of these episodes as a way to tickle your brain with one or two ideas to ponder while you’re planning or planting or digging in the garden this weekend. Without further ado, let’s get down and dirty. Enjoy!

Reference episode: Ep. 77 - Five Tips to Successful Seed Starting

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Ep. 133 - Growing Onions Jan 31, 2023

Show notes

Most beginning gardeners struggle with growing full-sized bulb onions for a number of reasons: they don't understand there are different onions for different growing situations and that the nutritional needs for onions at different stages of growth are different from other root vegetables. I struggled with all of this plus not growing the correct type of onion for long-term storage. In this first crop-specific episode of season three, we’re jumping into everything onion, including background information, cultivation both in-ground and in containers, pests and diseases, harvest and storage. Let's dig in!

Free Download: Onion Growing Fact Sheet

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Resources:

(PDF) Traditional and modern uses of onion bulb (Allium cepa L.): A systematic review (researchgate.net)

Onion History - National Onion Association (onions-usa.org)

Nutrition Information for Raw Vegetables | FDA

Explore Cornell - Home Gardening - Vegetable Growing Guides - Growing Guide