Beyond the Garden Basics

In today’s “Beyond the Garden Basics” newsletter/podcast, we revisit a chat we had three years ago with Linda Chalker-Scott, Washington State University Horticulture Professor, author of several outstanding garden books, and one of the forces behind the Facebook group page, “The Garden Professors”. Here, Linda discusses why loading up the bottom of planting containers with pot shards, gravel, styrofoam or other soil displacing items is not a good idea. It’s not even a bad idea. It’s a terrible idea! She explains why.

Meanwhile, looking out the window….

Tired of the rain yet, California?

At our place, the monthly rainfall has exceeded the normal amount for the first three months of 2023, and March isn’t even over yet! Your garden soil may also be struggling trying to absorb all that rain, resulting in perennially muddy locations. Most plants don’t like wet feet. For your garden areas, especially those yards with heavy clay soil, there are a couple of options.

When we get two dry days in a row, take a walk through the garden on Day Number Three (before it starts raining again). If the ground is still wet or feels squishy, mark that area with a post or grape stake. That way, you’ll remember when we finally get to the return of dry weather exactly where the ground is probably saturated, unsuitable for most in-ground plants to develop healthy roots.

The permanent answer for dealing with too-wet clay soil is to install an in-ground drainage system, provided you can locate the end drain in an area that won’t impact your neighbors’ yard and garden. If it will impact them, consult with a landscape irrigation or drainage specialist who may be able to advise you on how you could place the end of the drain in a sump (a hole in the ground on your property) and then pump the water out to a gutter, if local codes allow that.

Can’t Dig Down? Build Up.

The other solution? If you can’t dig down, build up. Construct raised beds or use large containers filled with an easy-draining, commercial potting mix.

A word of caution if building a raised bed on an existing lawn area: remove the turf below the raised bed area first. Dig out a few inches of the turf area, down to at least the turf root zone. If you leave the grass in place, that layer of turf could impede the drainage of water from the raised bed. The same is true if using weed cloth beneath a raised bed or a layer of gravel or small rock in a large container. That could also slow the rate of water movement, leading to ongoing soggy soil in the raised bed or containers. If building raised beds, first loosen the existing soil in the area with a spading fork after removing the turf. Then, mix in an inch or two of the soil mix for your raised bed with the existing soil in that area to improve drainage. If gophers are a problem in your area, putting down sheets of quarter-inch mesh hardware cloth below and partially up the inside walls of the raised bed can help protect future plants.

A persistent garden myth is that using a coarse material, especially rocks or gravel in the bottom of a container or raised bed, will improve drainage. Linda Chalker-Scott, Horticulture professor at Washington State University, writes about the topic in her excellent books, “The Informed Gardener” and “The Informed Gardener Blooms Again”.

“This is just one of those myths that refuses to die, regardless of solid scientific evidence to the contrary,” explains Chalker-Scott. “Nearly every book or web site on container gardening recommends placing coarse material at the bottom of containers for drainage. The materials most often recommended for this misguided practice are sand, gravel, pebbles, and pot shards.

Nearly 100 years ago, soil scientists demonstrated that water does not move easily from layers of finer textured materials to layers of more coarse texture. Since then, similar studies have produced the same results. Gravitational water will not move from a finely soil texture into a coarser material until the finer soil is saturated. Since the stated goal for using coarse material in the bottoms of containers is to ‘keep soil from getting water-logged,’ it is ironic that adding this material will induce the very state it is intended to prevent. Alleged ‘drainage material’ added to containers will only hinder water movement.” 

For a container planting, all you need are drain holes and a good quality potting mix.

Thank you for also listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

One in every three bites of food you take comes courtesy of a bee. Without their pollination efforts, our diet and our gardens would be, to say the least, boring. In today’s “Beyond the Garden Basics” newsletter/podcast, we talk with Dr. James Nieh, of the School of Biological Sciences at UC San Diego. He and his team have been studying how honeybees communicate with each other, and how their elaborate dance moves are interpreted by the other honeybees in the hive. Basically, if you know where all the good pollen is, shake your booty, and do the Waggle Dance!

Dr. Nieh’s original study can be found in the March 2023 issue of the Journal of Science. A more gardener-friendly version can be read at ModernFarmer.com. Or, listen to the podcast (above) or read the transcript!

TRANSCRIPT - How Honeybees Say, “Come and Get It!”

Farmer Fred  0:00  

Have you heard about the Waggle Dance? No, it's not an obscure Chubby Checker record from the 1960s. Nor is it the follow up to the Soupy Sales song, “Do the Mouse”. The Waggle Dance is something bees do. And it's how they communicate to their hive mates, the other bees, telling them where the good stuff is, where the pollen is, and how to get there. iI’s a very elaborate dance. If you're like me, if you're a gardener, and you spend a lot of time in the garden, sometimes you'll just sit down and watch the bees, and wonder: “How the heck did they find these plants?” What is going on in their communication? We're talking to a gentleman who has studied this for a living. He and fellow scientists have an article published in the Journal of Science, and it's all about the Waggle Dance and how they discovered it. We're talking with Dr. James Nieh. He's the Associate Dean School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He's a professor in the Department of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. And I always like talking to university bee specialists, because they seem to have a fun job. And it sounds like you have a very interesting job. I don't know how you get the bees to slow down long enough to study their dance. 

Dr. James Nieh  1:14  

Thank you, Fred. It's a pleasure to talk to you. We actually don't have them stand still. We watch them as they're in motion. But you're right, it sometimes can be a challenge to move with the bees, as they're dancing. 

Farmer Fred

So let's talk about the whole thrust of your paper. And if people want to read more about it, there's a very good explanation that you wrote for  the March 2023 edition of Modern Farmer magazine and website. It’s called “Unlocking Secrets of the Honeybee Dance Language.” What was your impetus for studying this? 

Dr. James Nieh  1:45  

One of the things we wanted to learn is, why is it that some animals, like human beings, songbirds, and naked mole-rats, why do they have to learn language? We know that other animals, many of them are actually born with the ability to have a perfect animal communication system or animal language without the need for learning. That is what actually motivated us to look at honey bees, because honey bees have a very sophisticated animal language. And we suspect because it is so complicated, that learning might be involved. 

Farmer Fred  2:18  

And we have known for a few decades that bees do communicate by movement, haven't we? 

Dr. James Nieh  2:24  

Yes, that's right. In fact, it was something that Aristotle even suspected thousands of years ago. Although if you look at the translation, there's a little bit of uncertainty if he knew about the Waggle Dance. But some historians of science say that he did. And it really is a Waggle Dance, it is a shake your booty. But what is amazing is the amount of information that is communicated via a bee to the fellow bees about where the pollen is, and how to get there. It's truly remarkable. And it's the most complex example of animal language that communicates something like location that we know of. 

Farmer Fred  3:01  

And also according to your paper, the movement also reveals the quality of a pollen resource. 

Dr. James Nieh  3:06  

That's right. When bees are repeating this figure-eight motion multiple times, the more times they repeat it, the higher the quality of the resource. And there are two motions, there's the waggle phase, if you imagine the bee as a little arrow, she's running forward with her head pointed forward, and her abdomen is waggling. So that's called the waggle run because she's running while waggling. And then there's something called the return phase where she's returning back in a semicircle. And that creates one half of the figure eight. And that return phase is faster, the more excited she is about the food. So it's almost as if she's more eager to come back and do more Waggles. 

Farmer Fred  3:45  

And is this just happening at the hive? Anybody who's sat for a while and watched bees at work, they'll sometimes think, “oh my goodness, I'm going to be stung. Look at that bee as it's going after that pollen. It’s shaking its behind at me, like it's getting its sting, getting ready to come at me.” But they're just communicating. 

Dr. James Nieh  4:07  

They would normally do this only at the nest. And it's true that they can sometimes do it, especially when the nest is crowded, on the outside of the nest. So if you have a standard wood box, kind of on the board standing in front. But typically they're going to be doing it inside the nest, you can see a bee flying around and moving at food sources. But that's not the Waggle Dance. That's something very different. 

Farmer Fred  4:28  

Oh, maybe the are gonna sting me after all. By the way, let's figure out the sex of bees here that do go out foraging. Are they females or males? 

Dr. James Nieh  4:38  

All the bees that are foraging or doing any work at all are females. The males only have one job, and when that job is done, they die. 

Farmer Fred  4:45  

Oh, okay. Sad life but no. The Waggle Dance and the intricacy of their instructions are dependent upon not only being born with some of that knowledge, but also learning tips from others.

Dr. James Nieh  4:49  

That's right, the honeybees in a colony we discovered are actually learning how to dance from older and more experienced honey bees.

Farmer Fred  5:10  

That's great. As long as, I guess, there are older bees around. You've done experiments where you have isolated the bees from the older generation. 

Dr. James Nieh  5:18  

That's right. And it's very interesting. Honeybees have a division of labor, meaning that they do different jobs depending on how old they are. When honeybees first emerged as adults, they start off as nurse bees, you're taking care of the larvae, and also the queen. Then, as they get older into their teenage days, you might say, because they don't live for years, they live for about 35-45 days, they start taking out the trash and building the comb, doing chores around the house. And then finally, when they get older, they start to work as a guard bee. And as a forager. And of course as a forager, then they start to Waggle Dance. So the key is, if you start out with a colony that's created only with day-old bees, they are all the same age, and then they're going to march through this progression of jobs with each other. So they really have no opportunity to observe Waggle dancers because no one in the colony is of Waggle dancing age. 

Farmer Fred

So I would imagine that group wasn't very successful. 

Dr. James Nieh

They actually were able to produce Waggle dances that we could definitely recognize. But in comparison to control colonies that had the same number of bees, but they had bees of all ages, and therefore they could observe and did observe other bees before they first danced. The experimental colonies were the ones that only had young bees, they could never watch older bees dance. And they had three problems in the way they danced. The first is they didn't communicate the direction very well. The second is they over-communicated the distance, meaning that they overshot where they were telling other bees to go. And thirdly, they had dances that didn't have the correctly formed figure eight pattern, those bees that had those difficulties. 

Farmer Fred  7:05  

Did you reintroduce them to an older generation of bees? And did their dance evolve because of that exposure to the older bees? 

Dr. James Nieh  7:14  

Great questions. So we came back 20 days later, when they were full adults, they had now achieved 95% of their full life expectancy. In the case of bees, they don't actually perform poor dances at this age, they're basically at their peak. And what we found is that the bees that weren't dancing very well, they were able to improve how they communicated direction and making properly formed figure eight dances. In those two aspects, they got better. But the thing about overshooting the distance, communicating distances that were too far away, that was something that they never recovered. We also did a preliminary experiment that we didn't report about in this paper. But we actually introduced another group of young bees, and had them be taught, in essence, by these older bees that were raised in the experimental colony. What we found is that these bees that were taught had normal direction and communication, they also did the normal figure eight pattern, but they learned, strangely enough, the incorrect distance encoding. So it seems that communication of distance, and the way it was disrupted, could be passed on from one generation to the next. 

Farmer Fred  8:30  

A very good argument for keeping the old people around awhile. 

Dr. James Nieh  8:33  

Exactly. They do need to learn and teach the young ones. 

Farmer Fred  8:37  

Yes. How do they point out the direction? Does it have to do something with the sun, I would imagine? 

Dr. James Nieh  8:42  

Yes,  I think the the easiest way to think about it is what the dance probably was before it evolved to it's more complicated state. All honeybee species can produce the Waggle Dance. And all of them can do it on a horizontal surface, literally pointing at the direction of the resource. So I think  that's the easiest way to think about it. Imagine that the honey bee, she's a little mapmaker. And what she's doing with her body is she's pointing forward with her head like an arrow. And she is pointing in the direction of the food source. So literally, if the food source is north, she's pointed north, if it's east, she's pointed east. Now, in that Waggle run, she's pointing in the direction, but also the farther away the food sources, the longer the waggle. So for example, if the food source is a mile away, she might be waggling about one second. But if it's two miles away, she might be waggling for about two seconds. So she's kind of showing in this little arrow that she's drawing, the direction and how far away it is. It's amazing. But you had brought up gravity, which is a really interesting point. So what if you can no longer dance, pointing directly at the food source? Honeycombs are vertically oriented? And in this case, they do a transposition and that's kind of a fancy word. But basically, if they're dancing on a vertical surface, and this is normally in the darkness of the nest, if they are dancing with their head, like an arrow pointed straight up, it means fly in the direction of the sun. Now, I don't mean fly into the sun, but I mean flight in the direction the sun, so imagine the sun on the horizon, and you're going to fly towards the sun on the horizon, and that will give you the right direction. Now, what about if the food source is opposite the direction of the sun, it's 180 degrees opposite the sun. Then the dancer will dance with her head, like an arrow pointing straight downwards. When she is inside the hive. Let's say the food source is 45 degrees to the left of the sun, then she dances 45 degrees to the left of the upright position. 

Farmer Fred  10:54  

I would think that bees would start their day when a certain temperature is reached. Or do they start their workday when the sun is out? 

Dr. James Nieh  11:04  

I think both factors are important. They need a certain minimum temperature in order to be able to fly. But typically they have a very strong circadian rhythm, meaning that like us, they're very influenced by the sun. And folks might appreciate now that we just sprung forward with our clocks, that for a little while, it's hard for us to wake up and get going at the right time. And the reason for that is that we have a certain biological rhythm that is responsive to the light. And the same is true of honeybees. 

Farmer Fred  11:32  

I think bees are much like me on my bicycle. I don't like to ride when it's windy. And bees, I would think if it's a windy day, they too wouldn't be waggling very much.

Dr. James Nieh  11:43  

It's true that if they face some problems, I think they can still fly even with a somewhat significant wind. But if it's too windy, they probably wouldn't go out and forage. They just stay inside the nest. 

Farmer Fred  11:54  

Indeed. And that's why it's harder for almond growers in California to have enough good days in a row to get their almond crop pollinated. Do native bees have the same sort of skills, or is this something just reserved for honeybees? 

Dr. James Nieh  12:08  

So the only bees that can communicate the location of food sources are honeybees and stingless bees. Stingless bees are only found in the tropics, they are found in the New World tropics, like Brazil and Central America. And they are found in the Old World tropics and Africa, and Southeast Asia, but they're not found anywhere in the United States. So the only bees we have around here that can actually communicate food location are honeybees. 

Farmer Fred  12:35  

So the purpose of native bees, I guess, is… I don't know. What is the purpose of native bees?

Dr. James Nieh  12:41  

So native bees are really important because they are here as part of our native ecosystem. And they've evolved along with many species of native plants, for example, if you've ever seen a barrel cactus,  these are  beautiful cacti that you find and they often have these beautiful yellow or other colored flowers. There is a cactus bee that specializes in, believe it or not, in pollinating barrel cacti. Honey bees will visit these flowers and can pollinate them. But when researchers have studied this, the native bee that's evolved or co-evolved with this cactus is actually a much  better pollinator when she visits. Many more seeds come out of that one visit than on a single honeybee visit. And that story is recapitulated over and over again, with many different kinds of bees. We will have buffalo gourd and many other kinds of plants where although honeybees can do the job, that native species is actually better. So I'll give you an example. Most folks like avocados. And avocados are a big crop, especially in Southern California. The native pollinator of avocados is a stingless bee, because avocados evolved in areas where there were stingless bees. Honeybees nowadays, of course, are brought in to do the job. But they are actually less efficient at it than the native bee. But unfortunately, we don't have stingless bees in this range. So I think that illustrates some of the importance of native bees for native plants, but also for certain agricultural crops. And I'll just add one final thing: we think about apples, and apples are wonderful. It turns out that native bees are better at pollinating apples than honey bees. 

Farmer Fred  14:30  

I did not know that apples required the attention of native bees. That's very interesting. 

Dr. James Nieh  14:36  

So there is a blue orchard bee that is important for pollinating apples. I think I have that right. But I do know it is a native bee. And you're right. Apples were really not native to North America. They were brought over. You think about the story of Johnny Appleseed. But in fact, even though they are introduced, it's the native bee that turns out to be much better than honey bees. I think that illustrates the importance of these very diverse native bees. 

Farmer Fred  15:06  

Going back to the avocado and the special bee it takes to pollinate the avocado. And maybe I should say not a special bee, but a bee that's better at pollinating. Because avocados have  “A” flowers and “B” flowers, that open up at different times of the day, so basically, they're only available for certain hours of the day, I would think that the stingless bee would have to visit that tree twice in the same day to achieve successful pollination for that avocado tree. 

Dr. James Nieh  15:30  

That's interesting. I actually haven't read the literature specifically on how it pollinates the avocado,  but it's quite possible that it’s like a honeybee going after the nectar or the pollen. That forager will go back to that same tree or that same grove multiple times throughout a day. So even though the flowers are open at different times of day, the bee will be there and be able to collect that pollen and then subsequently pollinate the female flowers.  

Farmer Fred  16:00  

One more thing about the Waggle Dance. And I love this part, too. You point out in Modern Farmer the fact that back at the hive, they have a dance floor. 

Dr. James Nieh  16:07  

That's right, and the dance floor is very different for each colony. Now part of that difference is that parts of it are relatively empty, or may have honey or may have pollen or may have brood. But in a natural colony, the ones that are built in trees, these typically don't have the beautiful flat combs that they have in beehives that humans provide. Because our goal is for beekeepers to have something very uniform that's easy to remove, check and harvest honey from inside. A natural colony, these combs are built. And then they sort of merge together and grow. I think if you've looked around on the internet or actually seen a natural colony, you'll see that they make these beautiful, complicated shapes. And I think that's very interesting, because it means that those shapes might be hard for a bee to Waggle Dance on because they're not perfectly flat. And we suspect that one of the reasons why bees may need to learn to Waggle is that through practice, they can master the dance floor that is in their own colony. 

Farmer Fred  17:09  

Without the benefit of a band, either. I would think your research isn't over. There's a lot more to learn about the relationship between younger bees and older bees, isn't there? 

Dr. James Nieh  17:18  

That's right. We would really like to understand if this distance encoding is transmitted from one generation to the next. And moreover, if it is, as we suspect, is actually adaptive, so each colony lives in a certain habitat, local environment where food is available, and where bees have to go certain distances. We think that each colony might have a dialect that is subtly adapted to those local conditions. Because that would be another reason for bees to need to learn how to Waggle Dance so they could learn from the wisdom of their elders, the bees that have been out there and know where the food is, and know the best way to communicate where that food is.

Farmer Fred  17:59  

 Just another example of the commandment, “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.”

Dr. James Nieh  18:03  

Exactly. Very important.  

Farmer Fred  18:06  

You can read more about what Dr. James Nieh wrote about regarding the Waggle Dance, bees, and pollination by visiting modernfarmer.com and reading Dr. Nieh’s article that he wrote for “The Conversation”, that was reprinted by Modern Farmer. Or, you can go back to the source work that they published in the Journal of Science, the March 2023 edition, entitled, “Social Signal Learning of the Waggle Dance in Honeybees.” Why are we talking about this? Because one out of every three bites of food that you stick in your mouth comes to you, courtesy of a bee. Without bees, we wouldn't have much food. You want to disagree with that?

Dr. James Nieh

I totally agree that bees, honey bees, and native bees are very important. 

Farmer Fred

Dr. James Nieh, with UC San Diego. He is the Associate Dean of the School of Biological Sciences. He is a professor of the Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution. And it's just a fascinating study about how bees communicate, by basically shaking their booty. It's the Waggle Dance. Doctor, I thank you so much for all this good information. 

Dr. James Nieh  19:17  

Thank you. It's been a pleasure and thank you for being interested in the story.

Thank you for also listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike. Except when it’s windy…just like bees.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

In today’s Newsletter podcast, we revisit some advice given to us by America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, on how to get your pepper seeds to germinate more quickly, which can take up to three weeks before you see green leaves popping up above the soil surface. We were talking to the Elk Grove Garden Club last month, a wide-ranging conversation, which included how to tell if those old vegetable or flower seeds you have tucked away in a drawer will germinate or not. You can hear the entire chat in Episode 253 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.

Home gardeners who grow their tomatoes from seed usually get fairly quick results after sowing the seeds indoors. Given the right germinating conditions - a soilless planting mix, good drainage, plenty of light, plenty of warmth - tomato seeds can pop up in 8-10 days.

Pepper seeds are a different story. Why is it some peppers can take weeks to germinate?

"The important thing in getting your (pepper) seeds to germinate is to keep them warm – the soil temperature should be in the 80's", says Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden, a popular seed catalog based in Felton, California. "Germination is very much related to even moisture and warm temperatures. You should see germination within 2 to 3 weeks if it's warm enough. I strongly suggest using bottom heat to achieve the warmth the seeds need – most good nurseries carry good little electric seed starting mats which will keep your seeds at the right temperature to sprout. One online order source is Peaceful Valley Farm Supply."

For those who want to comparison shop, another source for heating mats for your pepper seeds: Amazon.

Another trick that some gardeners employ is soaking the pepper seed for a few hours before sowing to soften the seed coat. The value of that is open to debate.

"I have never heard of soaking pepper seed overnight and have never done it in 20 years of running a trial garden,"  says Shepherd.

On the other hand, Professor Debbie Flower, formerly of the American River College Horticulture Department, sees the benefits of some "immersion therapy" for pepper seeds. "We soaked our pepper seeds in hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes," explains Flower. "That's not enough time to scarify (soften or break the seed coat), or even get them soaked, but enough to kill exterior diseases."

Many sweet pepper varieties will show their initial leaves about two weeks after planting the seeds. But some varieties of peppers take longer to pop up than others. "The hot pepper varieties take longer to germinate, some to three weeks," says Flower.

But if you are experimenting with the really hot pepper varieties, such as the Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper), it could take up to four months, says the Trade Winds Fruit website:

"Chinense species (e.g. Habanero's) generally take longer to germinate than most common peppers. Keep soil warm to very warm (75-90F) for better germination. Do not use acidic soil. Some Chinense peppers, in particular Bhut Jolokia, Naga Morich and related peppers are very slow to germinate, averaging 1-4 months germination time."

By the way, if you are growing the Bhut Jolokia...you're playing with fire. The Ghost Pepper is rated at 850,000 Scoville units of heat. For comparison, the habanero rates 200,000; the Jalapeno is 5,000; the Anaheim equals 1,000. And sweet bell peppers? 0.

Another factor that can determine the rate of germination of pepper seeds: the pH of your seed starting mix. One of the most common ingredients in most seed starting mixes is peat moss, which is highly acidic, with a pH around 4.0. Pepper heads, including the Horticulture students at American River College, have found quicker germination when Coir (coconut fiber) is substituted for peat moss. Coir has a closer-to-neutral pH: around 6.5. The tests at American River College bear this out after trying Coir in their pepper seed soil mix. "We had the best germination of peppers ever!" says Flower.

And don't be in a rush to set them out in their permanent garden home. "Pepper seedlings need to be grown out until they have at least several sets of true leaves, and it is at least 55° at night before you plant them out," explains Renee Shepherd.  "And they will need a little time to get used to being outdoors, as well." In USDA Zone 9, that would be around  mid-May. Be patient. 

After originally talking about this speedy pepper germination technique, other gardeners chimed in with their favorite tricks. One method that was seconded by many: germinate your pepper seeds in between two moist paper towels in a room that is between 70 and 80 degrees. For many, that room might be the kitchen or bathroom. When the "tails" appear after about 6 or 7 days (the tails, by the way, are the emerging roots), gently transplant them into a moist, seed starting mix, preferably one that uses the more neutral coir instead of the lower pH peat moss. Or, make your own. My preferred home mix consists of equal parts coir, perlite and fine compost. The improvements I would make to that germination suggestion? Use coffee filters instead of paper towels. That way, the emerging root doesn't get tangled, as happens when using fibrous paper towels. Pulling out germinated seeds from paper towels may be hazardous to their health.

Also, to insure a warm environment, here's something you could do in just about any indoor room: place the moist coffee filters, containing the pepper seeds, inside a glass baking pan. Place that on top of a germination mat. Cover the baking pan with plastic wrap to keep it warmer. I tried this at home, pepper seeds germinated with six days.

Thank you for also listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

In today’s newsletter podcast, we delve into the world of earthworms and red wrigglers with garden writer Amy Stewart, who authored the 2005 book, “The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms”. We recorded our chat back when the book was released, at her home (then) in Eureka, in northwest California.

But we’re not here on the printed page to praise earthworms (although they are highly deserving of it), but to discuss their close relatives, the red wigglers, an excellent worm for composting. And now for something NOT completely different:

From the Garden Basics e-mail bag, Don writes: “I discovered your podcast last week. Very interesting and cool stuff! I just retired at the end of last year and one of the items on my list of four, ‘To-Do’ items in retirement, is to create and maintain a backyard wildlife refuge with a focus on pollinators. On another note, my wife and I love sweet tea. We brew at least one pot per day, maybe two in the summer. What can we do with all the used tea bags?”

Don, as usual, I’ll get to the answer for your question in a roundabout way. To have a successful garden to attract pollinators, you need successful soil. One of the best soil amendments to add for happy plants are worm castings, also known as worm poop, or, more euphemistically, vermicompost.

According to Alameda County (CA) Master Gardener Judy Matthew: “Worm castings add beneficial bacteria to the compost which when spread around the garden, stimulates plant growth and can help protect plants against some diseases. The worm castings also help the compost-amended soil retain water.” You want more science about worm castings? Here you go.

However, better soil doesn’t come cheap when using bagged worm castings. The price of a one cubic foot bag of worm castings is approaching twenty dollars here in California. You may want to tack on a new “to-do” item for your pollinator garden, Don: vermicomposting. Raising worms, who feast on many kitchen scraps and paper goods will return the favor, giving you a soil amendment teeming with microbial activity, perfect for plant roots to enjoy. One of those kitchen scraps they enjoy just happens to be tea bags.

And don’t worry about the worms if you go on a three-week vacation. Give them some extra food before you leave and re-dampen the bedding. They won’t complain.

Worms do best at temperatures slightly less than room temperature. Putting them in a cool indoor room or basement is an excellent idea. Some enthusiasts keep a worm bin at work, near their desk or in the break room. If you maintain the right balance of food, the bins won’t smell, either.

Here are tips from the Sacramento County (CA) Master Gardeners here and here on starting and maintaining a worm composting bin. Some of those tips include:

• All you need to create worm castings is a worm box, bedding material, red wriggler worms (not earth worms) and food scraps.

• Bins can be purchased or homemade. Use a solid color (not clear) plastic storage box or a sturdy wooden box with a tight-fitting lid to keep out pests and protect your worms. If making your own bin, be sure to drill ¼-inch holes in the bottom to allow for drainage.

• Worms will not escape; they dislike light and will migrate toward the center of the box.

• A commercial vermicomposting system that features stackable bins take up a house-friendly smaller footprint, perhaps 24 by 24 inches.

• Moistened, shredded newspaper or corrugated cardboard, shredded leaves, purchased pine shavings, or coconut fiber (coir) bedding provides worms with a balanced diet as well as a damp, aerated place to live.

• Always keep the bedding as moist as a wrung-out sponge.

• Place the worm bin in the shade or indoors. The best temperature range for thriving worms is between 55° and 75°F.

• Worms love most fruits and vegetables, used tea bags, used coffee grounds and filters. Do not feed them animal products, dairy, onions, or processed foods. Limit citrus peels to less than 20% of the food. You’ll soon figure out what they’ll eat and what they’ll ignore.

•  Chopping the food into small pieces, one inch or less in size, will speed up the composting process.

• To avoid fruit flies and odors, cover the food with at least one inch of bedding.

• Use red wigglers or red worms, NOT earthworms or certain “fishing worms” such as Alabama jumping worms. Red wigglers can be purchased at some better nurseries, worm farms, and fishing supply stores.

• The castings are ready when they are dark and fine in texture. Separate the worms from the castings. Place the worm castings in your garden bed before planting. Work the castings lightly into the soil with a rake. Cover with mulch or compost.

The Sacramento County Master Gardeners have a great vermicomposting display area at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, which is open one day per month to the public. The next Open Garden Day will be on Saturday, March 11, from 9 am to noon.

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

Here is Andi MacDonald’s “More Than Basic Split Pea Soup” vegan recipe. It serves 6-8 people. She explains its origins:

“My Aunt Carol lived on the Central Coast of California. When we visited, my father took us to Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurant in Buellton, where we dined on endless bowls of pea soup. Ten-year-old me thought that this was the height of culinary genius. I went back a few years ago and concluded that the soup was okay, bit it needed more oomph. That’s what this version is: basic comfort, but with a bit more to it.

Directions are for an Instant Pot. To make this on the stovetop, follow the basic directions, but cook it for a couple of hours, stirring frequently to prevent scorching.”

Ingredients:

* 1 lb dried split peas

* 1 Tbs olive oil

* 1 medium onion, diced small

* 2 medium carrots, diced small

* 2 stalks of celery, diced small

* 6 cloves of garlic, minced

* 2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and diced small

* 1 Tbs fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tsp dried)

* 1 Tbs fresh oregano, (or 1 tsp dried)

* 1-2 bay leaves

* 1/2 tsp black pepper

* 8 cups vegetable stock (low sodium preferred)

* 1 Tbs soy sauce

* 1 Tbs liquid smoke

* Salt to taste

Set the Instant Pot to sauté. Cook the onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil until the onions soften. Stir in the garlic and cook for about one minute. Add the thyme, oregano, bay leaves, and pepper. Add the vegetable stock, soy sauce, and liquid smoke. Add the potatoes and the split peas.

Put the lid on the Instant Pot and seal. On manual mode, set the time for 20 minutes. When the timer goes off, let the pot release naturally for 30-40 minutes.

Release the valve, and stir the soup vigorously for a minute or so to break down the split peas. Taste, and add salt if needed.

This soup will thicken as it sits. If made ahead (and refrigerated), you will need to thin it with water or stock before reheating.

For more cooking tips, check out Andy’s Magic Apron on Facebook.

I have questions, I have thoughts:

What is in Wright’s Liquid Smoke? (Answer: not much)

The Bay Laurel

You can grow just about every ingredient in this split pea soup recipe in your home garden. However, one ingredient in the recipe caught my fancy, because it is one of my favorite plants to grow, the bay laurel, also known as Sweet Bay or Grecian Laurel (Laurus nobilis).

If I may quote the American Horticultural Society book, “The Encyclopedia of Garden Plants”:

The Bay Laurel is “an evergreen, broadly conical tree, about 40 feet tall and 30 feet wide. For USDA Zones 8-10. Narrow oval, leathery, glossy, dark green leaves are very aromatic and used in cooking. Small, star-shaped, pale yellow flowers are borne in spring and are followed by globose to ovoid, green, then black fruits.”

The bay tree is frost hardy, but foliage may be scorched by extremely cold weather or strong, cold winds. Needs a sheltered position in sun or semi-shade and fertile, well-drained soil. In tubs, may be grown well as standards, which should be trimmed during the summer. Propagate by semi-ripe cuttings in summer or by seed in autumn.”

My thoughts on this plant: WINNER, WINNER, WINNER! In Northern California, it is easy to care for and not fussy about watering. Prune or don’t prune. It’s up to you. Bay laurel is a great, evergreen privacy screen that isn’t overly messy (because of the weight of the leaves, fallen ones tend to stay nearby the plant). We had a row of these at the old radio ranch in Herald, CA next to a swimming pool, and never had to skim out any bay laurel leaves. And, it was a great privacy screen located 15 feet away from the hot tub. p.s. The official Town Motto for Herald: “Where’s Herald?”.

Because it is a broadleaf evergreen tree, the small birds - finches and wrens especially - love it for perching and nesting. The happy bird chatter from our row of bay laurels in the early evening was a delight. They were probably describing their day to others, hunting for garden pests. Did they pick off leaves of desirable garden plants? Yes. So, you plant enough for everyone to enjoy! Birds are always welcome in my garden.

If you listened to Episode 254 of the Garden Basics podcast (the Feb. 24, 2023 edition), you heard aromatherapist Amy Anthony rave about the bay laurel, as well. The scent, she says, can help you build courage. Sounds like a plant every cold-call salesperson should own.

The bay laurel is slow to grow, especially from cuttings. But once it takes off, it shoots up to 20 feet or more in less than ten years. (“Ten years?!? I don’t want to wait no ten years!”). Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Thanks for Subscribing and Spreading the Word About the Beyond the Basics: The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, I appreciate your support. 

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

Newsletter podcast excerpted from Episode 253 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. Recorded live, at the Elk Grove, CA Garden Club.

Please note that the words below originated as a recent garden column in the Lodi (CA) News-Sentinel. Those of you in Michigan, Minnesota, Maine and other states where there are hardware stores that stock snowblowers year round can quit snickering at our plant panic when temperatures dip into the 20’s. Still, the advice holds true for wherever you live: give freeze-damaged plants a chance to recover.

Our area has had quite the one-two punch of weather events so far in 2023. In January, it was record rains, near hurricane force winds, a tornado, flooding, and falling trees. Then, at the end of January, a hard freeze descended on many areas around us, where temperatures fell to the mid-twenties on January 31. That was followed by two consecutive February mornings with temperatures at or below 32 degrees. It was a triple punch that many of our more tender plants couldn’t take.

How’s your garden looking these days, after all that weather? Your results may vary because all gardening is local. Many plants that we thought could shrug off the cold mornings are not looking good right now. Here, the salvias are dying back. Dependable, late winter blooming nasturtiums look like mush. That popular summer blooming low growing shrub, the lantana, has lost all its leaves.

As gardeners, we like to put in plants that strike our fancy but are better suited to areas of California that get fewer frosts and freezes. We got away with very mild winters for a long stretch here in the Central Valley, encouraging our semi-tropical plant growing fantasies.

And that’s especially true for those who planted tender perennials and shrubs. That list includes avocados and citrus trees. Wise gardeners here may have planted them in areas where they may be getting protection from wind as well as reflected heat from south-facing walls and patios in the early morning hours. And because cold air tends to flow downwards, planting semi-tropical plants in the higher sections of your property may give them a few degrees of protection from a freeze.

Chuck Had a Tough Time Recently

I feel bad for our ten-foot tall brugmansia shrub, also known as Angel’s Trumpet. Brugmansias, especially the variety ‘Charles Grimaldi’, are prized for their large, yellow or pink, aromatic, bell-shaped flowers, spring through fall. And, if the weather cooperates, it will flower through much of the winter, as well. Chuck – as I affectionately refer to Mr. Grimaldi - had thrived here for the last seven years, even blooming in the winter, in the lowest part of the yard (oops). Until now.

So, what should a shivering gardener do, weeks after a hard freeze, when temperatures were at or below freezing for several consecutive hours?

Number one: don’t prune away the dead portions now. If plants in your garden look blackened and wilted now, new growth may emanate from the base of the plant when the weather warms over the next couple of months. Pruning away the dead portions now would expose buds that may still be alive; another frosty morning could wipe out those survivors. Keep the shears in the garage and let the dead portions of the plants protect the understory.

It may take until mid-Spring before you see new growth. Patience is key before you pick up the pruners. In the meantime, tolerate the ugly, and look for new growth, especially near the base of the plant.

Water Can Help Your Plants Get Through a Freeze. But Not Succulents

Number two: If it doesn’t rain, keep your tender plants well-watered, especially container plants. Make sure your garden and potted plants remain moist. Water gives off heat at night, and damp soil can protect plants from freezing, especially avocados and borderline citrus trees, such as lemons and limes. Moist soil retains heat better than dry soil, protecting roots and warming the air surrounding the soil. Too much water in the soil, however, can suffocate the roots of plants.

Succulents, such as cactus, are the exception, however. According to the Arizona-based Desert Botanical Garden, most succulents survive freezing temperatures best if the soil around them is dry. 

Oh, and keep your frost protection gear handy...just in case we get another late winter surprise. Don’t let the latest string of sunny February days fool you. Historically, we can get freezing mornings through early spring.

P.S. Chuck is already showing green growth near the base.

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Thanks for Subscribing and Spreading the Word About the Beyond the Basics: The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, I appreciate your support. 

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

Rose Pruning Time is Here

    Mid to late winter is rose pruning time, wherever you can grow roses. Here in California and in other USDA Zone 9 areas, mid-December through Super Bowl Sunday (usually the second week in February) is ideal. For colder rose-growing climates, late February through the early rounds of the NCAA Basketball Tournament (mid to late March) is pruning time. Former sportswriter and current Master Rosarian Debbie Arrington supplied those dates. Listen to the above podcast for what she has to say about choosing the right equipment, especially clothing, when pruning roses.

Here then, are some "California (and USDA Zone 9) Rules" for pruning hybrid tea, floribundas, grandifloras and miniature roses this winter. Instructions on how to prune climbing roses would exceed my word limit here, But Debbie Arrington has tips for climbers in the podcast, and here’s a link for more info on pruning climbing roses.By the way, ask 100 rosarians how to prune roses, and you may get many varied answers. Hell, rosarians don't agree on much when it comes to roses. Which goes to show you: ROSES ARE THE MOST FORGIVING PLANT IN NATURE.  Give them the basics (sun, water, decent soil), and they can pretty much take whatever you throw at them, and come back blooming. Roses, especially the repeat bloomers, would appreciate a monthly fertilization during the growing season...if you remember.

Rose Pruning Tools:• A pair of hand bypass pruners (I prefer the Felco #2 or Felco #7).• Long Handled loppers (My Corona loppers have lasted for years).• One or two pruning saws (a small hand-held and/or a larger bow-style pruning saw). • For a large rose garden, a rechargeable, battery operated hand-held chain saw is the choice of many rosarians, especially when getting a rose ready for “shovel-pruning”.• Thorn resistant, long sleeved rose pruning gloves.

Pruning Roses for USDA Zone 9:

• Prune out all dead, aged and weak growth.

• Gnarly stems and gnarly thorns indicate "aged".

• Remove any borer-infested branches, as well. A hollow or blackened center of a stem may indicate the presence of borers. Keep cutting until you see a solid, creamy colored interior. That is the sign of a healthy branch.• Make no cuts on hybrid tea rose bushes or grandifloras below your knee, unless you're removing the cane completely.

• Leave as many primary canes as the plant can handle. Many cold climate rosarians might advise you to leave only three canes per hybrid tea rose bush. Here in USDA Zone 9, a vigorously growing hybrid tea or grandiflora rose might have as many as nine healthy canes. Keep most, if not all of  those canes, for even more roses during spring through fall.• Try to make all cuts without extreme angles. Nothing exceeding 45 degree cuts; 90 degree cuts (or as close to that as possible) is fine. This is especially true of thick canes. The low part of a 45 degree cut on these would extend past, ultimately damaging, weakening or killing the eye (new bud) you are trying to cut above. 

• All cuts should be made one-quarter inch above a dormant eye or intersection of two branches.• Do not use glue, tree seal or paint on pruning cuts. A clean cut will heal much more quickly when left alone.• When you are finished, strip all remaining leaves from your roses, then blow or rake all the leaves out of the beds and send them to the dump, not the compost pile. Since all the fungus spores and insect eggs are there from the last growing season, removing these from your yard now reduces next year's problems.

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Thanks for Subscribing and Spreading the Word About the Beyond the Basics: The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, I appreciate your support. 

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

“Where does the water go?”

That’s a question I frequently ask myself while bicycling throughout the region, staring at rain-soaked suburban yards. This is also a question homeowners should ask themselves before, during, and after the rainy season.

One of the best pieces of advice I can offer any new homeowner: before you spend any time and money on landscaping projects or a garden, live with the existing property for a year. This allows you to take monthly pictures of the area where you want a future garden, perennials, shrubs and trees.

When we moved to our new home seven years ago, that’s what we did before we embarked on a totally redesigned landscape. Taking a series of pictures on a regular basis on sunny days, especially at different times of the day (9am, 1pm, 5pm), will remind you how much shade your future plants will be dealing with, and you can plant accordingly.

A plant labeled for “full sun” will need at least six hours (preferably eight hours) of direct sun a day. “Part Sun/Part Shade” plants, 4-6 hours of sun per day. “Shade” should be reserved for those plants that get little direct sun (less than four hours) and preferably dappled sun, such as protection from an overhanging deciduous tree.

However, the more important reason to live with that new yard for a year before embarking on outdoor landscaping projects: figure out where water goes, both after regular irrigation and after rainstorms. In our case, we discovered that few of the yard sprinklers worked fully or accurately, and that a heavy downpour of rain ends up in the garage. And the basement would flood.

As a result, the price of our landscape rehab zoomed upward, to include a complete drip irrigation system for both the front yard and backyard, as well as an underground hard pipe drain system to move roof gutter water away from the house and garage to another part of the yard. You can hear more about how to do that in the podcast above, with landscape designer Michael Glassman.

Home and Garden Pests That Sing in the Rain

The other problem with wet weather: some home and garden pests love it when it’s wet; and others will seek refuge in drier quarters, such as in your home.

The authors of the University of California Ag and Natural Resources publication, “Pests in the Urban Landscape,” offer some “Wet Weather Do’s and Don’ts” to ward off problems:

• Check for snails and slugs. They like it moist and will sing in the rain. Unfortunately, their singing sounds a lot like, “chomp, chomp, chomp.” These garden leaf and flower munchers don’t like it too wet. They may be easily found headed for dry land – sidewalks and driveways – during a deluge. Find them under loose boards, as well. That’s the time for hand-picking or stomping them. Chemical controls for these mollusk family members are ineffective in the rain.

• Remove weeds and unwanted plants. When the ground is wet, pulling them out goes much more quickly. Among the winter weeds spreading here right now are oxalis, nutsedge and groundsel. You may have other cool season weedy invaders in your yard.

• Dump standing water. This wet winter is already favoring a big mosquito season ahead. Deprive breeding mosquitoes of water-nesting sites such as flowerpot saucers, wheelbarrows, buckets, clogged storm drains, and roof gutters.

• Check for ants, cockroaches, and earwigs. These pests may invite themselves into your home when flooding or heavy rains make the outdoors unappealing to them. Seal any cracks or openings in your home. Outdoors, check the perimeter of your home as well as around doors and windows for insect entryways. Weather stripping, door sweeps, and traps placed beneath eave-protected walkways can help keep them outside. Indoors, keep food tightly sealed and the counters clean, especially near electrical outlets that might provide an entryway.

• Remove yard mushrooms. Mild temperatures and wet soil are a combination that mushrooms and other fruiting bodies of fungi love. The good news is they are not harmful to your lawn and garden. The bad news? They can be poisonous to children and pets, when consumed. Rake them up.

• Don’t apply outdoor fertilizer or pesticides now. Both are easily susceptible to being washed off the soil or plants and into our waterways. Wait for several days of dry weather before applying any sprays, dusts, liquids, or granules.

• Avoid pruning plants unless it is to remove broken or damaged branches. Rainfall and open wounds in the winter on plants is a recipe for spreading diseases. Apricots, cherries, and olives should never be pruned during cool, wet, conditions, advises UCANR.

• A common site on sidewalks after a rainstorm are worms, struggling to get out of the wet soil and onto dry land. If you have easy draining soil, you may see their mounds in lawns and gardens as they come up temporarily for air. Those mounds are a great fertilizer: worm castings. Just knock them down with your foot or a rake to feed the soil.

• Tread lightly through the garden during or just after a rainstorm. Avoid walking, driving, or moving heavy equipment across wet soil. This compacts the soil, removing necessary air pockets, which are vital for healthy trees, shrubs, and other plants.

• One other tip: if you have slow draining areas of your yard after a deluge, mark them. Stick a small stake or object on top of those areas to let you know that the area needs drainage help after the rainy season. Avoid planting in consistently wet areas. Consider putting in a drain system to move that water to another part of the yard to make it more habitable for plant life. Or, consider placing a large container or raised bed in that area for a successful garden.

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Thanks for Subscribing and Spreading the Word About the Beyond the Basics: The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred newsletter, I appreciate your support. 

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

In today’s newsletter podcast (above): America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, discusses the pros and cons of bypass and anvil pruners; and the best tool for sharpening pruners.

This time of year, stroll down the tool aisle of any garden center and you'll find a vast array of cutting instruments, all designed with the backyard gardener in mind. Blade heads of short-handled pruners and long-handled loppers usually come in two different styles: bypass and anvil. 

Bypass loppers or pruners have a stainless steel curved blade that uses a scissors action to pass next to, not on top of, the lower surface, sometimes called the hook, designed to catch and hold the branch while the cutting blade comes down.     

        Bypass pruners offer a cleaner cut, as the blade slices all the way through the stem. 

The cutting blade of anvil-style pruners comes down onto the center of a soft metal or hard plastic lower surface, called the anvil or table. Anvil pruners tend to crush the soft tissue of the stem, stopping the flow of nutrients, prolonging the healing time for the cut surface.         Despite the bypass pruner's benefits, garden centers still offer a nearly equal number of anvil-style pruners and loppers, a never-ending source of confusion for the gardener hunting for cutting tools. 

We asked local garden experts their pruning preference: bypass or anvil?

         The late Sacramento County Farm Advisor, Chuck Ingels, preferred bypass pruners. "I never use anvil pruners because you often can't cut close enough to the branch collar without leaving somewhat of a stub," said Ingels. "When they begin to wear, they often don't cut all the way through. Also, they crush the bark, which bypass pruners can do also, but you can turn the shears so the blade is closer to the collar and make a clean cut."

         "I don't use and usually do not recommend anvil pruners," says Luanne Leineke, formerly the Community Shade Coordinator for the Sacramento Tree Foundation. "I tend to see too many wounded branches, particularly when the bark is soft. I suggest using bypass pruners for up to three quarters of an inch-thick branches, loppers for up to one inch thickness and a hand saw for anything larger."

         Pete Strasser is a former plant pathologist with a former Sacramento nursery, Capital Nursery. Pete has only one use for anvil pruners. "Anvils are for deadheading annuals, and that's about it."

         Loren Oki, Landscape Horticulture Specialist with UC Cooperative Extension in Davis, also has limited use for anvils: "I was taught that bypass pruners were used on live material, whereas the anvil types were better for dead wood. The bypass type cuts cleaner through the softer material without causing much damage."

         Steve Zien, owner of the Citrus Heights-based organic landscape consulting business, Living Resources, leaves no doubt to his preference: "I would never use anvil pruners! Never ever, unless something needed to be pruned right then and there, and it was the only tool I had beside my teeth."Bottom line: Bypass pruners are much more versatile than anvil pruners. Every gardener should own a pair of bypass pruners. But a word of warning: don't force cut a branch with bypass pruners that were not meant to cut a larger branch. Using too much force to work the blade through the wood could damage the entire unit. If those bypass pruners are advertised as cutting through one-inch branches, don't exceed that limit. Move up to a larger cutting tool for those bigger branches, such as bypass loppers, a small branch saw (my favorite), a bow saw, or when you finally realize that "Life is too short to put up with a problem plant", a good quality chain saw.Perhaps have a pair of small bypass snippers for the cut flower garden. And larger anvil ratchet loppers for removing dead wood.

 Finally, whatever you purchase, buy quality. Look for pruning tools that have replaceable parts (blades, springs,etc) that can easily be disassembled for cleaning, sharpening, oiling, and maintenance.

The 3-Cut Pruning Method for Large Branches

Illustration provided by Texas A&M Forest Service

Thank you for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe

The recent bout of colder, wetter weather means ants have begun their march towards the warmth and comfort of your house, greenhouse or outbuildings. In today’s newsletter podcast, America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, lists many ways to control ant populations, both indoors and outdoors, including her home recipe for lethal outdoor ant bait:

1 part boric acid (1 teaspoon, e.g.) - available at most garden centers

9 or 10 parts sugar (9 or 10 teaspoons sugar)

Add enough water to make a slurry.

Put slurry in a small container, tuna can size.

Add 2 or 3 cotton balls and rotate them until they are completely covered in the slurry.

Put a lid on the container.  Lid must have holes big enough for ants to crawl through (about 1/8”).

Bury in soil so lid is at soil level.

Leave it alone.  You won't see dead ants.  They visit, take the bait back to the colony, and kill the entire colony.

Commercial boric-acid ant baits are available, as well, for placing near outdoor plants where you see ants climbing up and down, herding aphids or gathering nectar.

A word of praise for ants.

Ants are a beneficial part of any successful garden. According to “Ants Are Ecologically Beneficial”, a publication of Iowa State University:

“It is hard to imagine any other insect or animal that has a more important and positive impact on the terrestrial environment that sustains us. Ants are among the leading predators of other insects, helping to keep pest populations low. Ants move approximately the same amount of soil as earthworms, loosening the soil in the process and increasing air and water movement into the ground. They keep the ecosystem clean of dead insect carcasses and aid in the destruction and decomposition of plant and animal matter. By carrying bits of plants and animal remains into their nests, the soil is fertilized, and nutrients recycled through the world’s ecosystems. They carry seeds and help plants disperse into new areas.”

However, as any gardener will swear, there are a couple of double-edged swords in that statement. Ant tunnels beneath the surface of a garden bed could move water too quickly to lower levels, making it unavailable to plant roots, especially in sandier soils. The solution for that: mix in compost on a regular basis. And those plant seeds that ants can disperse into new areas? There might be weed seeds in that mix. Yet another reason to own a long-handled hoe.

It’s when ants start invading your house that homeowners need to act.

Homeowners might reach for the spray can to douse those little scavengers. Many of those spray pesticides are only effective with direct contact on the ants. In addition, the stronger sprays, with residual action to thwart the next wave of ants, are potentially harmful to you, your children, and your pets.

Here are some more modern, family-friendly indoor ant control methods from the University of California Ag and Natural Resources’ “Home, Garden, Turf, and Landscape Pests” publication, “Ants”:

• Find where the ants are entering the house, then caulk any cracks and crevices both indoors and out.

• Wipe up ant trails with soapy water when you see them.

• Store food that is attractive to ants in closed containers.

• Ant-proof kitchen garbage pails with sticky barriers like petroleum jelly.

• Clean up grease and spills, pet food, and other possible food sources for ants.

• Place pet food dishes in a moat of water with a drop of dishwashing liquid. The soap will keep the ants from floating.

• If you decide to use a pesticide, choose prepackaged or refillable bait stations instead of sprays. Place them near ant trails and nest openings. Ant bait stations take time to work. It can take five to 10 days before you start seeing fewer ants. In the meantime, keep washing away the ant trails.

In my experience, weak liquid boric acid combined with water in specially designed, refillable ant bait stations have proven effective, if given time. Boric acid powders and outdoor refillable ant bait stations are also available for outdoor ant control, especially if they have taken up residence in a long-neglected mulch pile of chipped/shredded tree parts. You’ll discover them in your first shovel full when you finally get around to using that mulch. Put down the shovel and pick up the powdered boric acid. Sprinkle it on the mulch pile and turn it into the middle of the pile. The ants will find it. But give them a couple of weeks before you return to that mulching task.

Around the outer foundation of the house, the UC Integrated Pest Management team reports that several refillable bait stations are recommended, including the Ant Café, Antopia, Ant-No-More, and KM AntPro.

A slow, but effective way to control Argentine ant populations is with a diluted, liquid boric acid product in a reusable ant bait station. Place the station outdoors near foundations where you see ants on the march.

Thank you, also, for listening to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast! It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Please share it with your garden friends.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from some of the underlined links in the newsletter. This is how I am trying to keep this a free newsletter. And as long as you buy whatever you want from Amazon using any of those links to get into the Amazon site, I get a few pennies. Thank you.

Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gardenbasics.substack.com/subscribe