In The Garden

[00:00:20] Keith: good morning with black Friday, right around the corner we were trying to come up with ideas for our family just to create new traditions. And move away from commercialism. And it seems right now there's a backlog of products coming in and a shortage of this and that. 

[00:00:51] And when you stop and think about it, it's like half that stuff we really don't.  

[00:00:54] Joe: Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. If all that stuff doesn't make it for Christmas. What's going  

[00:00:59] Keith: to happen, who's even going to want it. Exactly. I'm like, I'm really not going to buy a lot of gifts for people. 

[00:01:06] I'm going to do things for people I'm going to cook for them, or I'm going to plant a tree for him. Do an amaryllis bulb or something like that. Something that's, that's a little bit longer lasting and that one's more of a  

[00:01:17] Joe: memory. I like I have a woodshop in. Last year. I didn't get to do it much this year or two years ago, I built everybody in the family's gifts and it was a blast. 

[00:01:26] Keith: Exactly. , it means a whole lot more save any  

[00:01:29] Joe: money. No, you don't get  

[00:01:31] Keith: to save any money. You're not necessarily going to save any money, you go out and you buy a bunch of presents and a bunch of gifts or a bunch of toys for a kid. . You know what I mean? 

[00:01:39] They use them for what they, the kids going to find their favorite toy out of 25, and that's what they're going to play with. And the rest of them end up at Goodwill or pass down to other family members or neighbors or whatever. But if you plant a tree for a kid and you involve the kid in planting a tree, you've taught him something, you've spent time with the kid. 

[00:01:56], it's, there's just a whole lot more value there in my opinion. And that, my parents, planted a tree when I was born. Every time we went back by the house, it was, that tree was still growing in front of the house and it was always a topic of conversation. 

[00:02:07] So it was always a connection to that house. And it was a connection to what my parents had done for me when I was.  

[00:02:13] Joe: That's pretty common or I think it used to be people would plant a tree when they move into a house, so they could kind  

[00:02:18] Keith: of right. Track, watch it grow. Yeah. And, plant in a like a one-foot Japanese maple when your baby's born and seeing it grow to 12, 15 feet, as your child grows and it's something that's long-lived and it's, it's a great  

[00:02:32] Joe: memory and the kids probably that's my tree when they're out. 

[00:02:34] Keith: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's. A friend of ours had, they've got four boys and they, they planted a tree for each one of the boys. They would argue over which one, their parents, they thought that parents liked this one more than the other one because the tree was better.  

[00:02:50] Joe: It was a better tree. 

[00:02:57] Exactly.  

[00:02:57] Keith: But there was much discussion over why they got that tree. So that was that's one thing you can do planting a tree or baking cookies with kids or that kind of thing, starting any kind of a tradition, but black Friday is always boggled my mind. 

[00:03:13] I've never participated in. It just seems like a rush to buy something that would have been discounted or this it's going out a date or that's last year's product. And it's not really necessarily a discount as it's marked down because it's last year's product.  

[00:03:29] Joe: I wonder if so it has less appeal to me now than it used to. 

[00:03:32] And I was younger because it was a family tradition. So what you're saying is we'd go out on good Friday and shop, and then Amazon came around, and then the family moved to. And I don't go good Friday shopping yet.  

[00:03:42] Keith: Yeah. I've literally never done it. And so it's a, it's interesting to me, but I, every year I'm like, maybe I should, maybe there's something I'm missing, but I don't think so. To me, I think it's almost like this year. To fix the supply chain and to revamp your viewpoint go out and buy something locally, shop at a local place, or go to a farmer's market or a small independent store and just skip the black Friday spending put that money in, invest that money or invested in the community and buy local. 

[00:04:10] My family, over Thanksgiving, we always my mom was in the florist business and so she always, we always make Rees and it's my uncles and aunts and cousins and we're all just clipping stuff out of the yard. And we make Christmas reads and it's just a creative thing to do. 

[00:04:26] And everybody's hands-on and it's. But any kind of crafting project or, something you can do with family and be able to, just to enjoy life and make memories more than buying more crap that it's going to end up in the dump.  

[00:04:40] Joe: Yeah. I like the idea of them having an experience. 

[00:04:43] It might seem like it's less cause it's not around as much, but at the same time they might be the things that your family members end up treasuring  

[00:04:49] Keith: the most. Something, take pictures while you're doing these projects or having an event. Our host to the hive is a way that I think a lot of people do gifting. 

[00:04:57] They'll a husband or a wife will buy host to the hive. For a spouse or a family member. But it's, it's a way that you're giving back to the environment. , you can participate in beekeeping and involve your kids in the whole nature of it. 

[00:05:09] And it's hands-on learning. You can get out and you can get into a hive and see the bees. Lauren all about bees and not have to own a high of yourself so that, doing something like that something that's pretty hands-on and, but the host diet program,  

[00:05:23] Joe: you  
 

[00:05:24] Keith: also get honey. Exactly. And there's a lot of host of hives out there. They range in price from $400 to about $2,000. And the interesting thing about our host to the hive is it's the cheapest. But we also instead of some of the hosts, the hives will be 1200, $1,400. And if you get honey in your hive, you get. 

[00:05:46] If you don't. And what we do is we average the honey out. We'll harvest the honey and everybody ends up with 10 jars of honey. You end up with 10 pounds of honey, which is more than most people would use in a year. So it gives you honey, that you could gift as well. 

[00:05:59] But it's a sure way of getting honey if you're a beekeeper there are years that you don't necessarily harvest honey. So we work really hard to make sure that the bees are, moved around and in areas that there are nectar flows and stuff like that. So it's a pretty successful way, to keep bees and actually make sure that you're getting honey every year. 

[00:06:19] And it's good local honey. So it's, it makes a difference i...

Keith: [00:00:00] Hey, it's Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. I wanted to talk to everybody about the seasonal look of plants and the misconception that plants are gonna look the same all the time. I think when people look at a magazine, they see a hydrangea for some reason or another, and they think that hydrangea is gonna look.

The picture year-round and then they get the hydrangea planted, they come out and they look at it and they realize it doesn't have blooms this time of year and they plant it and they wait for it to go into bloom. And it goes into bloom and it's an absolute, amazing show of color, especially the second, third, fourth year and every year thereafter.

But then we get into our summer heat and Everybody starts worrying that, their plants and dying and but [00:01:00] I get the feeling that everybody thinks that plants are supposed to, they're like, it's like it's plastic.

And like they're supposed to look perfect all the time. And there's a certain amount of acceptable spots on the leaves and brown tips. And by the time we get to July and August, that people are flooding the garden center and they want a solution, and the brown spots, they're, some of them are or water spots where the leaves have been burned.

Some of them, are light fungus issues. Brown tips that are just, it's been too wet or too dry. And you can't control the, you can't control the rain or the drought scenario we're in. 

Joe: And if you miss it a couple of episodes back yet, Steven on, and he was talking about how you guys recommend people bring in clippings or pictures and you can help diagnose absolutely 

Keith: and we want to do that. What I wanted to talk about today was just, not, you want to worry about a plant if you really think it's in decline, if it's losing stems or if it's, and there's always things you can do to improve the plant, but somebody will come in with hydrangea and it's got brown [00:02:00] tips and it's got black spots on it and the blooms are drying up and is it okay?

And it's perfectly okay. It's just what you're supposed to see. By late August or early September, October. I'm totally disappointed in the plant, and it's, there are four seasons for every plant, and when we have in North Carolina, we have four perfect seasons. The spring that plant's going to be coming off of winter sticks, and you're going to see these buds open up and they're beautiful green leaves which.

Produce beautiful, blue, pink, puffy flowers, most of the summer. And then as this flower starts to spend and we run into the hotter part of the summer, the leaves start to kinda crumble and they're not looking at their perfect stage. And that's when people come in and they're in a panic But I've felt like people needed to take a step back and think about what a plant is supposed to look like.

And, early on I had a customer come in and, we'd sold them a red maple and a. [00:03:00] Young couple, and this is 20 years ago, but they, they said, we bought this red maple from you and it's done great all summer and it was beautiful, dark green. And now all of a sudden it's turning red and it's, it's an educational process.

And so you have to say the red maple part is that it turns red in the fall, so just educating people that, plants are going to change through the season and kind of, but and not, the red maple part that's the peak of the maple.

That's as good as it gets, the next question would be all the leaves are falling off of it. And it's not a, it's a deciduous tree, it's not evergreen. But just to lower your expectation. Of what a plant can do for you? All in the fall.

All year long, in the wintertime, some of the most like a high drank back to the hydrangea is an amazing plant, but it sticks in the winter time, there's nothing but sticks, so kinda know that's coming and plan for it, so you put some evergreen plants in front of that and then put those behind. So when these sticks are coming up from behind the evergreen plant, all plants are different hydrangeas bloom off of old wood. [00:04:00] So you even them up and you take that, it's going to be the buds that come off of the old wood that is going to create the bloom. So if you cut your hydrangeas to the ground, you're not going to have blooms the following year.

It really depends on the plant and that's where coming in and getting advice, make sense. And when people come in, you want to. If it's a hydrangea and it's got spots all over it, if it's got a spot here or there's really nothing to do, the leaves are going to fall off and you can clean the leaves up and that'll rectify the situation for next year.

If it's out of control then maybe it adds a little bit of a fungicide something like triple action. That's going to it's natural and it doesn't affect the bees. But the biggest thing is, it's rectified the insect or disease problem and then fertilize at the appropriate times, and fall is a great time to fertilize.

A lot of people, do most of their gardening in the spring, it's just kinda natural. Everybody wants to be out there doing it. But if you do fall fertilization, you're fixing that plant for next year. Basically, you're giving it the food and the nutrients and everything.

It needs to really be as good as it's going to be next year. And that's, that was [00:05:00] the next piece of this scenario. People want a solution to their problems. They've got black spots on their plant and you sell them triple action. And triple action is going to do a nice job of not allowing the black spots to spread, but it's not going to remove the black spots or the lines in your eyes, it's not going to make them go.

So it's people come back in a month later and they're like, it's not getting any better. And then you have to say, it's not going to get any better until spring. When the new leaves come out, so it's, that seasonal expectation of what you can do and what you can't do.

And when something's got when the leaves are eaten up or they're eaten up by an insect or they've got a disease on them and you spray them, you're removing that disease and you're slowing down the damage that's done on the leaves, but you're not going to fix those. And you have to wait for that next season.

Every plant loses foliage at some point during the. So you got to wait for that plant to push out new foliage and fertilize it. And, so it's going to be as [00:06:00] happy and healthy as it can next year. And then be ahead of it next year. If a plant gets in the same insect problem every year, it's planning ahead and making sure that we get that under control azaleas are classic for a late.

The lacewing do all their damage in May and June and 90% of the customers come in and come in wanting to do something in September and October because they've gotten back out in the cool weather and they're looking at it and they're like, oh my God sounds eating up my, and nothing's going to get fixed until the new foliage comes out next year and you're actually applying a systemic and that in the spring, To prevent the lacewing from eating the leaves in the, in the early spring, it's a, you 

Joe: want to help people avoid, you don't want to hit that plan out and put a new plant, right?

Exactly. You want more plants, but your money on more plants, but 

Keith: that one's going to come back. It's going to come back. It's going to do well. And a lot of times with our, with warranty scenarios, people are like, the plant looks terrible. I want a new one. And, that's the worst thing in the world to do is getting into a cycle of replacing a plant because the customer thinks it [00:07:00] looks terrible.

Joe: Yeah, insects are bold or those situations could be recreated 

Keith: exactly the same spot. So you got to treat those. Yep. Yeah. And you've g...

Keith: [00:00:00] Hey guys, today, we're going to talk about thinking outside the box. And when I say thinking outside the box, getting outside of the box more like it max bean or house a box, be in our house, it's get up off the couch and get outside. It's a great way to relieve stress and in the time of COVID or flu or anything else breathing fresh air just in general.

Good for you. And at the 

Joe: time of this recording, it's fall. Finally. 

Keith: Exactly. Getting out when it's when the temperatures are right Time to put the pumpkin on everything. Exactly. The pumpkin in your coffee, pumpkin, you can rub it on your body. Every everywhere you look, it's pumpkin-flavored something.

Pumpkins just fear fall. I think they are scared for sure. Yeah. So getting outside in the fall, [00:01:00] getting outside in the spring just creating a space an outdoor room, basically. I think is important someplace where you can get out, and you can really enjoy life. And do you know, light gardening sometimes?

Being outside doesn't have to be yard work and hard work. Sitting in a chair, pulling a few weeds, having a cup of coffee, sitting down in the evening, having a cocktail. 

Joe: You mentioned in an earlier podcast the Japanese saying of bathing yourself in green. And there's something to like just a peaceful state of mind for when I go sit outside, and I can see all the plants in the backyard, and everything's green everywhere.

It is just a lot more peaceful. 

Keith: it is for sure. And it doesn't take a lot of time to get those rewards. A small stroll through the backyard or sit outside for a few minutes. This time of year, we'll get our fire pit going.

And I'm burning pine and sometimes just twigs and sticks and pine cones that are out in the yard. So sometimes it's not an Oak hardwood-based fire. So sometimes it, it's a fire that burned for 15 minutes, you sit there and have a cocktail or have a cup of coffee or something and It's really [00:02:00] relaxing to have 

Joe: a couple of guys over.

And I like to call it, offer up burnt offerings as a friend of mine used to say a little bonfire in front of your mouth. Exactly. Then a 

Keith: campfire. Yeah. And if you're going to be smoky, you might as well have a cigar. Yeah. Yup. Absolutely. Sometimes creating that space, and when you think about it from a room perspective, it doesn't have to be. It could be your straight up the full backyard, a couple of chairs in front of a fire pit.

All you need. But sometimes creating a room-based feeling. You've got this space. It's totally private screen plannings on one side so that you're not seeing that neighbor add an offense or an, or a trellis and some vines. So that you actually create a small intimate space that you can invite people into, or you can go out and have a little sanity from your wife, from your kids or your neighbors and your job, what are some 

Joe: good growing vines that make sense that won't take over your entire yard?

Keith: Kudzu, no katsu now that's the one that does take over the neighborhood, 

Joe: [00:03:00] my entire backyard. And it's climbing in my trees. And I had some guys over, and we were smoking cigars, and one of them was the head of the. Neighborhood HOA. And he was like. You should really trim those. Those are going to kill your trees.

So now my trees are covered in a vine that is dead leaves in the middle of like perfectly everything else is 

Keith: green and terrible. Yeah. So there's all the calamitous are nice. They bloom in the spring and summertime. It's a nice small vine. There's an evergreen Clematis. That's more medium to large.

It's got a nice tropical evergreen folly. It's one of my favorites. And then it blooms in the spring. It's got one-inch white flour. That's fragrant. And usually, when somebody has one, and it blooms, we'll sell one to their neighbors because the fragrance is so nice. And it wafts over into the neighbor's yard.

It's that large of a plant. Do you need to 

keep 

Joe: them a certain distance from your house because they will climb your house? 

Keith: Certain vines have will actually attach themselves to the house, IVs cross vines, another one cross, the vine is perfect, but it will [00:04:00] attach itself to the house and the building.

Some people like 

Joe: that, look, it's 

Keith: bad for us. I don't think it is anymore. It depends on the type of side, and you wouldn't want to put it on Mason, night's siding or something like that, the brick with brick or some of that stuff, it's okay. On a wood fence, it's going to be okay.

It's probably going to. I don't think it's going to shorten the life of the fence. But once you go with that, look, you're probably going to have to stick with that look kind of thing. It's hard to power wash the tentacles that are going to hold on. And the air routes that are gonna pull to hold onto them, to the fence.

But people with pergolas, 

Joe: is there any vine that people like, though? Yes. 

Keith: So grapes are great on pergolas because they hang down from the pergola, and you can pick them. They're messy. They can be messy. Yeah. The evergreen Clematis is a great one. I've got an evergreen Clematis that comes up about 10 feet and goes over about 10 feet.

So it's a pretty large vine. It'll cover a garage. If you did a little small pergola over a garage, it'd come up over a garage, and a half and [00:05:00] go all the way over and all the way down the other side, one buys. You don't need one on each side. Yeah. Typically I would recommend one on either side if there's that option, but it will go all the way over and hang down on the other side.

So it's a decent size. 

Joe: vine. Oh, there's something like really coolest sounded about going outside on your pergola and just eating grapes, though. Yeah, 

Keith: Yeah, absolutely. And the whole edible landscape thing is nice. Blueberries are one of those things you could use as a privacy hedge.

But they create a border. They give you good fall color. And then they produce tons of fruit. I've got a friend that's got 20 blueberries, and she probably picks 30 pounds, 40 pounds of blueberries a year. It's absolutely ridiculous amount. What do you 

Joe: recommend here in our area for, by way of hanging plants, 

Keith: hanging plants?

Mixed hanging baskets are always good. When you get three or four different plants and if one of them fails for too dry or too hot, the other three maybe, finding that that's what they're looking for. So when you have one that doesn't do as well, and you've got three or four in there, the hanging basket kind of keeps on growing up.

[00:06:00] You're constructing your 

Joe: outdoor room. You got maybe a trellis with some vine. You got some other plants. a couple of walls. How do we get 

Keith: So the, we've got screened plants, things like our providers or tea, olives a plan that's gonna get, eight to 12 feet tall.

You could trim it as a tight hedge or let it grow out more leafy. They create your walls. You've got a trellis, you've got a screen planting along one side, and it doesn't have to wrap all the way around. It's not as you don't want to create a box and block yourself in, but create that wall where you're getting some privacy, maybe even from your house, where you can slip away from your teenage kids for an hour.

Yeah, block a neighbor out that's gotten. It was too noisy or too nosy. The step of walls, we've got a product. It's a ground cover product called step a bull. There are probably 12 or 12 or 15 plans. That you can use as a ground cover. You're, you either have a stone ...

Keith: [00:00:00] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. These days, everybody that comes to the garden centers has deer or rabbit problems, and a lot of times, these problems'll follow a cycle. The rabbits get really out of control, and they're eating all the plants. The Hawk population only increases, or the Fox population will increase.

And then there'll be very few rabbits.. right. 

Joe: now, in my neighborhood, the rabbits are winning. 

Keith: Yeah, absolutely. It's like some scary movie or something. There are rabbits everywhere. 

Joe: Yeah, I'll pull into my driveway at night, and the light will shine, and it will be three or four rabbits scatter like cockroaches. 

Keith: I've got a little beagle that loves to chase rabbits, squirrels and. The rabbit poop on the front sidewalk, I think, is just they're just messing with him, really. He's asleep, he's locked up, in the house, and they're out there eating all our plants.[00:01:00] 

Our neighborhood 

Joe: definitely does have a set of Hawks. There are two or three that in one of them is pretty. And I got a tiny dog, and yesterday the big Hawk landed on the railing to go downstairs where my dogs go outside, off the back deck. Wow. We sit in there. Like I saw that little dog, 

Keith: I wouldn't think right now a dog would even be of any interest. There are so many rabbits out.

But, they're they, when people come into the garden center, and they've planted these plants, and they've lost all these plants, do you know the neighborhood rabbit? And there's 

Joe: certain plants that rabbits really they're probably the expensive ones. Yeah. 

Keith: It's always they're going to start with their favorite plant, and they work they'll work their way down, so it's you'll find these plants that, they're rabbit resistant, or they're not rabbits aren't supposed to like them. And once all the rest of the plants are gone, they're going to eat that one too. Yeah. You're trying to get people good advice. And eventually, the advice runs out.

Joe: No, really like certain vegetables, but if it's served and it's the 

Keith: only food exactly. I want something green, and all there is 

Joe: spinach. 

Keith: a piece of bacon in it.

You put bacon [00:02:00] on anything, and it tastes good. Deer are another thing. The population of deer and the more houses that go in, the more the deer gets squeezed. There are all kinds of things you can do to deter deer and deter rabbits. Repellents are one of them. They, you're spraying the plant down.

You need to do it consistently. Every time we get torrential downpours or a week's worth of rain, you need to go out and reapply. And you also need to reapply when the plants are coming out of the ground in the spring. They're the size of a baseball when they get to the size of a beach ball. If you haven't resprayed it, the repellent has been diluted basically by the size of the growth of the plant.

So you need to add more, more repellent. The other thing you can do is you can do fencing, and you can do it. A fishing line is a good deterrent for deer. You can run fishing lines just around trees in your yard. And when they're walking along, you can put flagging tape on it when they stop for the flag and tape, they see the fishing line, and then they won't pass through that.

They don't like the deterrent. Being tangled up in fishing lines. Yeah. It's a good way of doing it [00:03:00] inexpensively and then 

Joe: nothing worse than walking through a spider web. 

Keith: Exactly. And especially this time of year in the fall, October timeframe, there are spiderwebs everywhere. It seems like they're saving up a meal for the winter, we carry several repellents, but I must garden as a repellent that we carry that it's made in chapel hill. It's a local, small company. It's all organic. It's a product that I absolutely love. I love the owner. I love keeping things local and spending money. It's been, I must 

Joe: like I M U 

Keith: S T I must garden.

It's been widely tested. There are lots of things. People always have solutions for everything that you can a bar soap mothball, all these other things. The thing with mothballs is, they're poisonous. My parents used to use mothballs on hostas to keep rabbits away. They turn around, and I've got a mouthful of mothballs, so I get my stomach pumped when I'm two or three years old. So the quick, cheap approach isn't necessarily the best.

No, but they do work. 

Joe: [00:04:00] hostas all over the place. Like it was just too much. And I'm not a giant fan of the plants. I would have paid rabbits to eat those hostas, but they wouldn't touch them. 

Keith: That's the way it works. Now, the other thing is, when the population is right, they're not coming into your yard like the deer literally walked down my side. They don't do a lot of damage because I've got so many plants that they'll nibble here and nibble there.

And when the population gets to a point. A new neighborhood comes in as those deer get squeezed into another, an older neighborhood out of the woods that's happening all over our area. It's happening all over our area. We've been recommending bow hunters actually because we're removing some of the population, and we don't have wolves in our area.

Joe: I think I saw an email from the game department about that. 

Keith: Yeah. So it's we've got a list of bowhunters that we can recommend to people and, you find a nice, safe place on an acre or bigger. A five or 10-acre area in a town or around town is ideal. You find it you find a good bow hunter, and they [00:05:00] remove three or four deer.

You're affecting the population over time. And it kind of, it's almost a, must it without removing some deer you've got here that are going hungry. Now, they're they're crossing the road more often, then you're removing deer by a car accident is the 

Joe: solution the same.

Keith: I don't know what the solution is for rabbits beagles, a good solution for rabbits. I've gotten ours trained where they walk in a circle because we've got one of those dog fences. It's a beacon in the house, and it sends us, sends a signal out a certain distance. And when the signals running out, that's when the dog gets zapped.

So the dogs know their circle. They never get zapped that rabbits, know, the dogs are. So they come out of the woods, and they make this circle all the way around our yard until at nighttime. And then they come right into the circle. And now the dogs are inside you. Now the animals get pretty darn smart trapping rabbits, I guess maybe and, have a heart trap and moving them to a different location.

And, or a beagle, a beagle, a good scenario, some little yappy dog. [00:06:00] Fencing, there's all kinds of deer fencing, fencing. Your entire yard is an option. But it's, it's a little bit more expensive option and 

Joe: it wasn't traditional fences. Rabbits are going to go right under like vinyl fans. 

Keith: like a vegetable garden, you'd need a metal fence. And the deer fence that you can use is a fairly inexpensive plastic fence that you can't see in the distance. So it's not doesn't really break your vision into the woods.

Joe: I see many people who have done it before tried to put chicken wire and the gaps under their fence to keep out the right. If you 

Keith: can, if you can, create a barrier down low that will help with rabbits, for sure. But then you get a couple of rabbits in the fence.

Yeah. Yeah. I finished 

Joe: it. And then I was like. Finally, I was sitting out on the deck the weekend. That's where I got the. And al...

 [00:00:20] Keith:  
 

[00:00:33] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. I've got Steven Petrilliac here who works with Garden Supply CO as well. He manages our nursery. Today, we want to bring people up to speed on the art and the science of landscape design. The importance of getting good advice before you start to spend money and make sure that the money that you're spending is investing money in your property and not just throwing it down the drain. 

[00:00:59] picking the right plant for the right location. There's so much science behind plants. There are plants that need to be in the shade, but need to be wet. There are plants that need to be in the shade. that need to be dry. There are full sun plants. 

[00:01:13] There are plants. That'll cover both of those ranges, but if you go in and you invest in 10 or 12 plants for a screen planning and you put a full sun plant in the shade, in the end, you've basically got nothing. And then just, getting good sound advice, working with a professional somebody that you know, is going to back up what they're, if they're installing it or if they're making recommendations that they're going to guarantee those plants and follow through. 

[00:01:36] I had a customer the other day that actually did the consult with us and ran into somebody in the neighborhood, decided they were going get a second quote from them, got the second quote. And it was the exact same price as what we were had quoted, but the guy was there and we've done multiple projects for him. 

[00:01:54] And they're a really good customer, he just decided to pull the trigger. He liked the guys, he seemed nice. The guy came in and put in a few plants. He spent a couple of thousand dollars and the plant dies when he called them back for the warranty, he didn't warranty it. 

[00:02:09] They don't warranty plants, it's we sell bees and because bees are flying insects, we don't warranty them, plants are main business and we feel like that, know, if you get the right person, the right plan and you get it in the right spot, that we can warranty it. 

[00:02:23] And we do warranty, all of our trees and shrubs for a year. He came back to us and he was, very discouraged. He couldn't understand why this got in warranty, his plants. And I explained to him that, they're living beings. , it is easy to lose them. 

[00:02:36] If it's not part of their business model, then they may not be able to afford to warranty, or they just may not want to warranty, but, picking the right person to do the job and then getting the right advice. I think  

[00:02:49] Steven: there's a lot of factors that come into play when determining the right plant for the right spot. 

[00:02:53] Like you said, if you're going for a screening plant and you're not well informed on how large the thing is actually going to get. There are some screening plants where you just want to have a drug, that's going to get 10 to 12 feet tall. So you wouldn't need something like larger growing arborvitae and that is a lot where people have come in and chosen something or a spot because they liked the color or they liked the texture. 

[00:03:14] And it performs well where it is, but it gets to a point that has just completely outgrown its space. And then you've got to start back at square, one again.  

[00:03:21] Keith: When you're talking about, a screen or a privacy hedge picking the right spacing is another thing. 

[00:03:26] It's 10 feet works as good as seven. But it's going to be three or four years longer. Three feet, the plants they're going to crowd each other out and the root zones are going to compete. You can take a Burford Holly or a needlepoint, Holly, and you can put them three to four feet on center and the plan will thrive in that environment. 

[00:03:44] You take something large, like arborvitae and you cram them together and they're going to age out twice as fast as they would. You've spent twice the amount of money going in, and it's going to last half the time, even though it's a perfect plant, maybe for the location. all of these factors and it's so inexpensive to have a landscape designer come out when you start factoring in, it's going to be a fraction of the cost of the whole project, it's always bothersome me when you pull up into a neighborhood, And somebody's piecemealed it. They put a plant here and a plant there, my yard tends to be that because I'm a plant person and I collect plants and I want one of these and one of those, a lot of times a new plant will come out and I'll plant three of them in the yard so that I can test them out. 

[00:04:24] And I can actually give people definitive answers about that plant, but when somebody is doing design work, we're not recommending putting in a hundred different types of plants. We want to do it more like you paint a house, you pick a couple of colors or  

[00:04:36] a piece of stone and a piece of Hardy board, and then this color, and then a trim color, you want it fairly simple so that it's big and it's bold and it's impactful.  

[00:04:45] Steven: And that's where I think going back to the spacing is important. Not only of course, with screening or head rows, any bed that you're planning. 

[00:04:52] I always stress to the customer over planning as an issue. You might want all this color, you might want all these different things. But before long it's easy to get overwhelmed and overcrowded in the garden. And next thing you're leading yourself to failure. So I always tell people, get all your bones in and that gives them the opportunity to come back seasonally and, find new things that they can add to the garden. 

[00:05:12] And of course, yeah, we can go ahead and do a full-blown design. That's. Turnkey done. You don't have to add to it cause you got plenty of customers that just want to come in and they want their yard redone. And that's great, but doing it little pieces at a time and having somebody give you the right advice on the spacing so that you don't end up, killing yourself, trying to maintain it,  

[00:05:30] Keith: and as far as the cost goes it's, it's a fraction  

[00:05:33] if you do a $3,000 landscape install, it's less than $300 to do an on-site consult at your house. So it's 10% of the cost, but it's everything. As far as the outcome of the project you wouldn't build a building without having an engineer or architect look at it. It's the same kind of scenario. 

[00:05:51] You're throwing money away when you don't have a good plan. You look at it, if it's a six or $10,000 job, it's you're down to three or 4% of the cost of the whole project and it's a project that's going to work, landscaping's never a hundred percent even if we're putting in, say like a hedgerow, We get one plant that's too close to a large tree and either gets too much shade or it gets too much root competition and it doesn't do as well as the others, but getting the right plant in the right place, we can usually make adjustments to that plant. 

[00:06:20] More water, more fertilizer a little more light and we can have that plant come back around, but there's nothing a hundred percent about it. It's not as cut and dry as painting a house. And that's why it's even more important. To really get that advice. When Steven was talking about spacing, one of the things that you're, when you're talking about costs, he's talking people...

[00:00:20] Keith: And I brought in Steven Petrilliac who manages our nursery and we were talking about all the number of things that people are bringing in this summer leaves and brown spots on them and insect problems and plants that have been overwatered and underwatered. So we thought we would talk about that today and give people options as far as what they can do. 

[00:00:55] One of the things that we always recommend doing is taking pictures, bringing in samples. We can usually diagnose a problem. And then make recommendations as far as how to rectify that. What kind of things have you been seeing in the nursery, Steven? 

[00:01:07] This time of year, we're seeing a lot of fungus and disease bacteria. Viruses can be another issue. There's a lot of stressors right now, we go through one of the driest Springs on record to now, I think 10 or 11 inches above what the average is, which can really get plants stressed out and confused. 

[00:01:24] So a lot of the pictures people are bringing in yellowing leaves, spots on leaves dropping off trees. And I think a lot of the causes are. Related to the weather conditions under fertilizing or over-fertilizing is another issue that can lead to those problems. 

[00:01:39] We always recommend either bringing in cuttings or sending us pictures or bringing in pictures. We can properly diagnose the issue give them the right treatment and go from there.  

[00:01:49] Keith: One of the things that, we've talked about a number of times is watering issues over-watering, and under watering and how, it sounds like we're clueless when people ask, if, we think it was overwatered or underwater, and it's the same kind of. Look over water, the plant doesn't have oxygen and takes up water. 

[00:02:04] So it does have a drought. You're sitting there looking at a plant and it's sometimes it's, it's just it questions and just be able to figure out. Exactly the issue is, but right now over-watering is always one of those things. It's a little harder to rectify because it's more of a planning issue, a height that the plant, elevating the plant in the ground. 

[00:02:22] Sometimes it's raising that plant up or diverting water from around that plant. With heavy clay, it's almost like having a bowl and you get that plan in there and it's hard to have that water to drain off.  

[00:02:33] Steven: And I think a big factor too, is, a lot of times customers can come in with issues and they feel like they might need to be defensive. 

[00:02:41] The biggest thing for me is for them to be completely honest about whatever the issue is. So if we ask, how often you're watering, tell us the truth right off the bat. We want the customer to be successful with everything. Whether it's a plant that they got from us or they didn't get from us. 

[00:02:56] So a lot of times they'll try to find a way to tell you that they're watering it the way that they think you want them to water it. So they'll tell you they've watered it, two or three times a week. And then, the next thing is well, how long are you watering it for, do you go out there and spray it with a sprinkler for a few minutes, or especially newly planted plants need to be deeply watered less often as opposed to constantly watering for short amounts of time, I feel like that's  

[00:03:21] Joe: when I go to the dentist and he's have you been flossing? 

[00:03:23] I'm like, you see my mouth? Why do we gotta play this game, man?  

[00:03:29] Keith: And you're like, yeah, I floss every day, twice a day. I floss in the morning. I philosophy lunch. We do get a lot of that. And it's, I think people want to do the right thing and they want to feel like they did the right thing, they don't want to be part of the failure in the process, but, educating people to water correctly or to plant correctly is what we're there for. And then when something's not working out, if they can bring in pictures and bring in cuttings, we've got like a huge staff of people. And if you're not in our neighborhood or right in our area, go into I think sometimes go into a Home Depot or Lowe's, those guys don't necessarily know horticulture. 

[00:04:06] They don't understand the science behind the plants and so going to a local garden center. In our area, a garden hut, a Logan's a Homewood for the garden state, one of the local garden centers, that's got people that are really knowledgeable about plants and, it takes quite a few years to be able to look at a plant in the landscape Or look at a picture or look at a leaf and really be able to diagnose, and typically, a lot of times it's not definitively, it's 90%. 

[00:04:33] This is, it's an over-watering scenario. 

[00:04:35] Joe: So you mentioned earlier, you get a lot of fungi because there's been so much rain lately. How do you treat that? What's the treatment look like?  

[00:04:41] Keith: for So there's, it's given the plan a little bit more light sometimes it's true. 

[00:04:46] It's treating it preventatively with a fungicide. That's another thing that I see people come in and they'll say and this kind of bridges to the whole pollinator scenario. A lot of the pollinator problems are chemicals and pollutants and things that are going on in the environment. 

[00:05:00] But people will come in and they'll show you a picture of a bottle. And they're like this work and, homeowners don't understand the difference between an insecticide and fungicide. It's something to spray on a plant and, and, or a, an insecticide that's made for something that you're gonna use in your home or an insecticide that you're going to use on your plant. 

[00:05:17] Can I spray this on the plant? No, absolutely not. It's for spiders, in your house. And then, just understanding the difference between a fungicide and insecticide in or a systemic. There's foliar systemic, so you can spray on the plant and it goes into the leaves and then there's systemics 

[00:05:30] You can put on the ground that the plant takes up and protects the plant from the inside out. But fungicides is what you would put on this time of year for fungal related issues on the leaves or in the  

[00:05:40] Steven: roots. It's funny you say that thing about showing us a picture of a bottle. So if it's not an existing customer that we've already had in the store they're used to going to ACE hardware or Lowe's or Home Depot. 

[00:05:51] So many of the new customers that we have that come in and they're like I bought this and then I went back and I bought this and they got these two or three different products that they've gotten from Lowe's that they did or did not have any guidance on. And that's where I'm like, okay, going forward, just come here first. 

[00:06:06] Being in ahead of the game, not everybody walks around their yard every day, checking out every plant. But the worst thing you can do is just wait till the last minute and then try to play catch up.. Especially things that you've planted recently, keep an eye on, if it starts to turn color or you start to notice anything about it catching it before it's too far gone is the best thing you can do. 

[00:06:25] Keith: . And on that note there's a lot of insect and disease problems that a lot of times somebody will come in with a pow...

Keith: [00:00:20] So we were talking about last week, the importance of shopping local. I think it's extremely important. It was a good conversation. We finished up last week about creating community it's a mental game-changer, it's a social experience when you know that the person that you've dealt with last week you feel comfortable with them.

[00:00:54] They're a friend of yours. One thing that always blows my mind and always makes me feel really good is when I see people that haven't seen their friends run into each other in our garden center oh my God, I haven't seen you in a year. And then they stand there and I'll, I'll jokingly say, Is it in place just to catch up, however, we're supposed to be buying plants or whatever, it really, that's the best compliment in the world when two like-minded people or two people that go to church together, two people that, they went to school together, run into each other in our in, at garden supply company.

[00:01:28]Or if I go out and I'm at Logan's trading. And I run into one of my customers. And it's funny because I'll be at Logan's trading and run into a customer and they're like I don't shop here that often. And I'm like, oh, I do. They're embarrassed almost that they're not shopping at  The Garden Supply Company.

[00:01:43] And I'm like, oh my God, it's a phenomenal place. It's where I go when I need a break from Garden supply company. And I want a garden I'll run down to Logan's and wander around and have the same experience that my customers have when they come to us. And then I'll eat lunch at the cafe. It's a really relaxing, real-life small business experience.

[00:02:06]I talked about in the last episode, stopping in the Garden Hut. I got down there and I had tomatoes. I was in between fresh tomatoes and tomatoes are like a religion to me. I can't wait for that first homegrown garden, fresh tomato, or a farmer's market tomato.

[00:02:22]And I stopped in the Garden Hut and Nelsa grows all these crazy tomatoes and she grows them in her parking lot. She's got a farm, she grows them on. So people come to her for fresh tomatoes and the spring and in the summertime.  I picked up a couple of tomatoes and, that whole experience of just being there and being in a local business and picking up something that's fresh.

[00:02:42] And it's I know where it was grown and I know Nelsa didn't spray toxic chemicals on it.  That feeling is amazing. And then supporting your friends and businesses. Is a key. We had talked about the local spending with respect to the fact that when you spend locally at all stays, the bulk of it stays in the community.

[00:03:00]Very few of our checks go out of state. And a lot of them are as close as possible.  The nursery industry as a whole it's mind-boggling. You can go to another local garden center and ask them how they do something. How do you market, or how do you do this?

[00:03:14]And they're totally sharing with information. Our industries It's an anomaly. It just it's like family. We get to a trade show and you're getting back together with all your friends and people you've known for years. And wholesale growers that we deal with I've been dealing with for 25 years.

[00:03:29]The same people Landis halls, Carol plant center. He owns the farm several farms and he delivers. The plants on his truck himself, on a regular basis. And every time I see him, it's like seeing an old friend. We started growing plants and when I asked him, how do you do this?

[00:03:45] Or how do you do that? he's forthcoming with that information and just shares how I can compete for, growing plants that he's selling to me, but we're still trying to buy as many plants as we can from him, because it's important to us, to maintain those relationships and

[00:04:01]these people are friends. That is your community. The people that you call when you need something and boom, they're there, they can deliver it. Yeah. Yeah. I think 

[00:04:08] Joe: [00:04:08] you hear so much focus on community as if it's something that's more difficult than it is.

[00:04:13]If only we could build community, we live in one.,

[00:04:16] Keith: [00:04:16] yeah, it's not hard to do,  but if you walk into a large box store, you can make a connection there and you can build community. It's probably not likely that the community's going to stay there for you, but when you're dealing with a smaller business, the owners there. I've got Chip Ford that has worked for me on an ongoing basis. He pretty much manages me. He's been there 24 years. I've been there 25, Steven that's been there for, 15 years.

[00:04:42] Katie, runs the whole thing for me. She's been there almost 20 years.  We've built a community within our business people will ask me, like how long do you think you're going to work?

[00:04:51] Or when do you think you're going to retire? And I'm like I don't know that I'll ever retire completely because in the springtime when my customers are coming in. I'm getting excited because it's getting busier and sales or sales are moving along. The biggest thing is, I get to see my Fairweather friends.

[00:05:06]None of my friends come out in the wintertime. It's the wildest thing, so I really truly have fair-weather friends April pops up and all my friends go out to see me, they want advice. We catch up on what they've been doing or what they're, what's happening with their family or their kids. I get to watch customers come in whose kids

[00:05:22]we're riding, when we had pony rides, they'll bring a picture of them on a pony and they're applying for a job and they're 20 years old or they're 16 years old. And the community of high school kids that we've had over the years, we've taken kids from absolutely useless with no work experience whatsoever to some really good aerospace engineers.

[00:05:43]I'm not saying I taught them anything about aerospace engineering, but I taught them how to work and gave him work ethic,  that's a wholly separate piece of it. All these young people that kinda, that kind of move through and that, that grow up in our local community when somebody spends money at our store,  the average is about $27.

[00:06:01] That, that leaves the community. When you spend money at a large box store $57 leaves the community. You're talking about a drastic difference in as far as jobs go  52% of the jobs in America are small local businesses, which is kinda mind-blowing.

[00:06:19] When you think about how many box stores are out there. So that's the value scenario. There's 

[00:06:24] Joe: [00:06:24] local owned businesses are not the ones that are doing the bare minimum when it comes to paying their employees are just barely hitting minimum 

[00:06:31] Keith: [00:06:31] wage. Exactly. They're paying better wages, but they also employ a lot more people, 

[00:06:35] Joe: [00:06:35] crazy stat you were just talking about.

[00:06:37] So if you spend money locally on you spend a hundred dollars at a locally-owned place, $32 is going to leave the community, but 68 is going to stay. But if you spend it at a non locally owned, Plays $43 is going to stay in the community and $57 is 

[00:06:53] Keith: [00:06:53] going to leave. Exactly. We've got 60 to 75 employees, that in that range.

[00:06:58] And when we pay them,  they're turning around and spend...

Keith: [00:00:20] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. Today,  we were going to talk a little bit about buying local and all the benefits of buying local. People always talk about the financial benefits or the environmental benefits, to me, one of the most important benefits is the relationship that you have, to be able to walk into a podcast facility that's

[00:00:55]owned by a local individual and that makes a difference in the community. Seeing somebody that, on a regular basis and most of the business that I do, I try to do that way. And it's not based on, financial benefit but it just feels good.

[00:01:08] It's a smaller scenario. The service is always higher. Yeah, service is something that Over the last few years I think is, has just about been eliminated for most businesses. 

[00:01:19] Joe: [00:01:19] It seems like if you're cutting corners, it doesn't seem to be the logical one to cut, but it feels like from the chain stores, it is one of the things on the list that seems to go down in quality for sure.

[00:01:29] And it could just be that it's harder to manage. I'm sure they're not purposely neglecting it, but 

[00:01:33] Keith: [00:01:33] still I don't know. It's years ago somebody told me there's a there are three things on a triangle. There's price, there's quality, and their service any great business can probably provide two of those pretty well.

[00:01:45]You have to pick two, you got to pick two, you either have to reduce the quality. The reduce the service or reduce or increase the price. So there's a balance there, and sometimes you pay a little bit more with our business in particular. The thing that I find about service is that the service is what creates the value,  it's a science-based business and it's heavy and science and design.

[00:02:07]I've got to have be pretty creative, I've got to be able to put together textures and colors and different things like that. And then I got to have the science to know that, that something's going to grow in wet or dry or sun or shade. I'm providing that customer with all that information for them to be successful.

[00:02:21]That just creates a ton of value. I expect the same thing out of bond brothers. When I go down to bond brothers, I've been to a lot of local breweries where the beer isn't really necessarily that great. They're trying their best, but they haven't perfected it.

[00:02:35]When I walk in there, the atmosphere is amazing. I see people that I know that are local in the community. And I know that, that it's individually owned and, and so partner and, It wouldn't have the same 

[00:02:46] Joe: [00:02:46] vibe if you were going down to the Miller Lite brewery.

[00:02:49] Keith: [00:02:49] Yeah. And so you're, people that are from the community, the guys at bond brothers are all plant people. We do a lot of partnering with them.  We just partnered with them on a living wall and their new location on Chatham street.  I know they like plants, they know I like beer. It's a good partnership.

[00:03:04] Joe: [00:03:04] It creates character in your neighborhood, as well as like you were saying, everybody like the rising tide floats all boats. If absoluteness for everybody, when you've got local business owners that are interested in what each other are doing and find ways to work together.

[00:03:16] Keith: [00:03:16]  Sure. Flower, cupboards small company that I've done business with for 25 years. John, when I go in there, he's going to have the best flowers that you can source, they're not aged out. They weren't cheap. They're going to be a little bit more expensive.

[00:03:31]But they last three times as long as anything else that I buy. It's a better value, he knows his trade. I grew up in a florist and. My mom had a florist. And to me, it going into a small florist means something me, but the quality and the value that, that I get out of John's flowers are pretty amazing.

[00:03:46]Joe: [00:03:46] When I go to a small business where they're passionate about what they do and you're dealing sometimes with the owner or somebody that the owner is training to be passionate about something that they're passionate about. You feel like you matter more? Absolutely.  They really want to help you solve your problem.

[00:04:02] That's the, sometimes when you're in a larger maybe box store type of scenario, they're trying to, yeah. They're trying to either just get done with their job. And they don't really care if you solve your problem because they're not really incentivized to or passionate about helping you 

[00:04:18] Keith: [00:04:18] solve your problem.

[00:04:18] When you talk about the box stores, I'll watch Lowe's, which is a local company. 

[00:04:22] Joe: [00:04:22] Lowe's the home improvement, not the food store. 

[00:04:25] Keith: [00:04:25] Yep. It Lowe's home improvements. So local store, so yeah. They're a local North Carolina big box store.

[00:04:30]I've watched them over the years. Perfect. The garden industry, which is pretty interesting. They've slimmed it down, dumbed it down and they do a really good job with a mixed pot or hanging basket, a throwaway plant. They charge more for it than you actually would think it's, but it's nice.

[00:04:45] It's in a, it's in a shiny pot. And they figured out a little niche that works for them. But when it comes to selecting plants if you went in there and ask somebody for advice on a plant, you're probably going to fail. They just, they weren't able to do that.

[00:04:57] They were never able to do that. And so they figured out a different scenario that works for them. But you're not going to get the advice. You're not going to get that enthusiastic person that knows plants. And that really wants to point you in the right direction.

[00:05:09]We partner with a couple of garden centers that are in the area garden hut, Nelsa's in Fuquay. When you, when I walk into Nelsa's place, I can always find something that I like and I own a garden center. Last year I was in there and they had fresh homegrown tomatoes and I left with tomatoes in a plant that I didn't have.

[00:05:28]But you can expect that kind of thing. Logan's trading is another one, downtown Raleigh very similar to our business. But totally different in a lot of ways, and a lot of our customers shop all three of those places. Yeah. And 

[00:05:39] Joe: [00:05:39] even when investing in garden supplies from what might be your competition, at least you feel like your money is going into the local economy.

[00:05:47] Absolutely. Whereas when you're going to a box store, it's not helping your city. 

[00:05:51] Keith: [00:05:51] No, not at all. 

[00:05:52] Joe: [00:05:52] So it's and they pay some employees and that's great for. Local 

[00:05:56] Keith: [00:05:56] stuff, but right. So when a target comes to an area they won't come until basically, our tax base pays for their building.

[00:06:03]They won't put a building up until it's free. So they get enough tax, incentives to get that started that their building is paid for. And we sure as heck didn't get that, we've paid ou...

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:15] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. We've had a lot of questions recently about square foot gardening. This time of year is people,  have tons of interest in vegetable gardens, and a square foot garden is an older concept. It works very effectively. It gives people a grid pattern and an outline for how many plants they can put in a space.

It's more intense gardening. You're gardening with excellent soil and really good soil blends. And then, high nitrogen high Fertility. And then you're getting as much yield as you can out of each square foot. Square foot gardening, there are all kinds of recipes for soil.

My biggest thing is to add three or four different types of soil so that you're. I'll usually start with a soil conditioner as a base. It drains well, and it continues to decompose. It's got the right nutrient mix. And, but the drainage is the key.

And then I'll go with a peat-based some based product, an espoma organic potting soil, or a Coast of Maine raised bed mix. But all of those have the right nutrients and the right mix for planting straight into. And then I always add vermiculite. Vermiculite is. It's like Micah. That's been blown out.

And so Micah, they basically heat it, and it's got the perfect consistency for growing seeds in.  I'll use that to top dress, some of these things when you're going to plant lettuce seed and that kind of stuff, but the square foot gardening there are good guidelines online.

As far as what you can put in a square foot. But like on an arugula plan, you're putting four of them in a square foot. So you've got four arugula plants and four arugulas. We'll keep people in arugula if you're not using it straight in a salad for, full time, year-round, almost it's a plant that will almost get Woody, and it'll grow for a year or two, and then you pull it out and replace it, but you can use it throughout the summertime.

A lot of the cool-season vegetables, we'll try to bolt and create flowers. And so you want to, you basically want to harvest it often enough, so it's not bolting. Cause when it, if it bolts and produces flowers and seed, it'll eventually just die out. Because of the nature of the plan, it's a biennial or an annual most of the greens some of them. You can see if you're seeding lettuce, you could see it across the whole square foot.

Basil, you can put two to four plants in a square foot. Beets and broccoli or Brussel sprouts cabbage. Some of those bigger things are one per square foot. They're really gonna, they're going to grow out, and they're going to push outside that square foot if they get really big.

And you can always cut some of the leaves off the edges to create more space for other things. The other piece of a square foot garden is a cool season, and vegetables start to end. You can pull out that section and go ahead and pop something back in. If it was getting springtime, Yeah, April May start getting hot this time of year.

Your lettuce starts to fail. You harvest the rest of it and eat that lettuce. Then you go in with peppers in that same space. So it's a nice thing because one foot by one foot, you can turn the garden over in the spring. And then the same in the fall, as the pepper as you harvest those last few peppers.

August to September timeframe, you want to be putting a lot of the broccoli and the cabbage and stuff in, and that's a good time of year to start dropping that kind of stuff back in. You pull your peppers out, and you put your broccoli and cauliflower and that kind of stuff back in the bed.

If, as far as fertilization goes, No, you can add fertilizer to a square foot garden at any point in time when I'm turning it over. I'm usually adding like an organic plant tone—Biotene to the soil and then every year. So you want to do a soil test, and then you can add the right nutrients to adjust that out.

The libraries in North Carolina have a soil test.  And the garden centers usually have soil tests, and then you send it to the extension service. NC State will do the test for you for free.

Or you can drop it off. It's on borough road and behind the fairgrounds in Raleigh, but getting a soil test is a great idea. And then we've gotten soil kits at the store that you can pick up there a little faster than the state does it at their own pace, just as the state does.

They get as many of them, they get piles of them in at one time, and then they have to work through that whole process.  It'll basically tell you where your nitrogen is and how much nitrogen per thousand square feet to add.

And people will bring them into the garden center, and we'll go through them and make recommendations. If you're using organic fertilizer, organic fertilizers are slower to make a difference in the soil. A lot of times, organic fertilizers have to be broken down by microbes.

In nature, and have to have moisture and whatnot where a chemical fertilizer. And when you're talking about veggies, how always like to remind people that a chemical fertilizer, not a chemical, it's a chemical chemically produced to get the nitrogen level up to where you really need it.

So I'm never worried about putting a chemically produced fertilizer in my veggie garden. I would rather have good strong tomatoes and have actually had something that works out and produces tomatoes than wait for that fertilizer to kick in. And sometimes it requires pounds and pounds. It's different. It's put a bag of fertilizer on, or put a truckload of fertilizer on, to get the nitrogen to where you need it.

With organics, I always use organics in a garden because. You can build that soil slowly but surely. You can get the nitrogen where it needs to be and get away from using as many chemical fertilizers because they are readily available. Some of them are quick release.

Some of them are slow release. And then when they're gone where the organic fertilizers continue to. add fertilizer to the soil as they break down 

Joe Woolworth: [00:06:19] good resource that you would suggest to people for recommendations or even like a grid, layouts, gardening. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:06:25] Yeah.

There are all kinds of stuff online. There's a square foot garden book that you could take out and take a look at. One of the keys is to plant is based on the sun. And the timing of the vegetables, so if you've got tomato plants, you're going to put them, you're going to put them in the very back of the garden.

If the sun's at your back, you want everything in front of those to be able to get some sun. If you have something like lettuce and try to grow it into the summertime or later in the spring, you could do it behind the tomatoes and actually use tomatoes as a screen.

 Or planning the rows where the sun's going to go down the row. So if you've got, if you've got a lot of tall stuff and you don't want, and you don't want them to layer the garden down towards the sun, then you can plant them, plant the rows the other direction and have the sun sung actually make it down the row.

But that's a little more difficult and requires a little more space. Usually 

Joe Woolworth: [00:07:15] in North Carolina, Cary, specifically, which is where we are in the garden supply company, is very proud of our giant trees. Is there a better, is it good to have your square foot garden in direct sunlight or. It was a bunch of tall trees.

Does that make a big difference? ...

Keith Ramsey: [00:00:15] Hey, Keith Ramsey here with In The Garden. I wanted to talk to everybody about cocktails and mocktails today. I came to this subject basically because I'm not too fond of the taste of water or the lack of water taste. we drank a lot of water in the garden center when I'm working or gardening.

And I I'm bored to death with drinking water. So I started modeling basically simple syrups out of blackberries or out of we had Georgia kisses this winter.  I would muddle or squeeze the orange and then add fresh local honey to it.

And I found myself drinking a lot more water, so it was a healthy thing. Okay. If you don't know 

Joe Woolworth: [00:01:10] what muddling is, it's basically like a wooden stick that looks like something that you would tenderize meat with at the end

Keith Ramsey: [00:01:16] You just kind of smash up the fruit, break it up. Exactly.

And if you don't have that, it's squeezing it.  Mash it with the end of a knife. It could be as crude as you want it to be, but and then that bleeds over to cocktails, which is also a very important part of gardening, in my opinion.

And a nice, slow walk through the garden, or out working in the yard for half an hour after work when you're unwinding and There are lots of different things in the garden that you can use in mocktails and cocktails. And there are some fruit plants, blackberries, and raspberries. Both thrive in North Carolina.

So when they're in season, using them fresh is an amazing thing. You've got an abundance of them. As they pile up, you're freezing them and storing them for the wintertime. So again, you can bring them back out. You can do slushy drinks with them, put them in the blender or just, muddle a Blackberry Blackberry Bazell.

Basil is a fragrance that everybody loves, that it's a flavor that everybody seems to be really popular right now. And then there's Bazell sprays, which I'm not really sure if I want a rim spray that smells like myself, but it's a very current fragrance.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:17] I've never heard of that flavor combo. Blackberries and basil, to me, it's like a great seventies funk band. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:23] Exactly.

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:36] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the stage: Blackberries and Basil... Do you put basil in a cocktail? Do you just put the leaf in? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:02:38] You can model it, or you can just put the leaf in for a slight, for more of a fragrance in the drink, and then a slight additional  flavor, so if you muddle 

Joe Woolworth: [00:02:45] it, it's more strong, and if you don't, it's pretty exactly like LaCroix Basil
, have you, the koi water? Yeah. There's a great joke about LaCroix water. It's like the flavor of LaCroix routers. Like somebody standing two rooms away and yells at the flavor.

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:01] that's exactly it. You can make a simple syrup out of all of that stuff. You can use it in your ice water, in the big cup that you carry with you during the day it makes the water a lot more enjoyable in my opinion. And then mixing it with vodkas or rums. That's a great combination, iced or doing blackberries, as more of a blender drink, figs is another one.

 Is a little bit on the odd flavor, not as common, but But figs make a great thing to muddle and put in a drink now, like just the whole 

Joe Woolworth: [00:03:27] thing, you muddle it up. Yup, 

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:28] yup. Or blend it. And it's a great flavor to add to something. Blueberries are another one in all of these blackberries; raspberries, figs, blueberries are all things that you can grow in North Carolina.

They grow like a weed. Once you get them established and they're all organic, they're not. It's not anything you have to spray.  That makes it a big plus. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:03:47] What's your go-to recipe right now? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:03:49] This time of year, when I'm busy as can be, it's probably water with either blackberries or  Georgia kisses.

  I actually made marmalade out of Georgia kisses and honey, and then I'll use a teaspoon of that in my water. So I've got that LaCroix kind of flavor. I've got a little bit of sugar or honey. And then I've got that orange marmalade; I love oranges, but 

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:11] yeah, it's great.

Cause none of it's processed. It's not like simple syrup or anything like that. It's exactly all organic. Yup. Like whole food acceptable type of exactly. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:19] Yeah. And you're doing it, and you're doing it, adding the liquor. Exactly. And they go perfectly—three Gluck's of vodka. There are a dozen herbs 20 herbs that you can use in the same kind of scenario like lemon thyme; lemon thyme's got a great fragrance, great flavor, and then name.

These are great band names. Yeah, they are great band names.

The fragrance of lemongrass and the And flavor of lemongrass is amazing. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:04:47] Lemongrass, I'm unfamiliar with it. I've seen it like in one of those health food places where you can take a lemongrass shot with your smoothie. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:04:54] . It's a really strong lemon flavor, and it's where a lot of the lemon fragrant oils come from. It's an annual grass you planted in your herb garden each spring, and it grows like a weed. Like grass doesn't, then you're harvesting. As you have a need for it, and then it dies in the fall, and you have to replace it in the spring.

people will dry it and use it as a dried Ingredient; pineapple Sage is another one that I'm super, super good in a drink or water. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:05:20] I, since I sent a garden supply company line of beverage addition coming, it

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:24] might. I think it would be better, actually, if we just had a bartender stand in there.

Joe Woolworth (2): [00:05:29] Yeah, they were like, you can get a, you can sit down and have a beer out Harris Teeter like you need a place to sample the delicious garden, herbs, and fruits, right? 

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:37] We've got Bon Brothers keg at the store so that customers can enjoy a beer. In the late afternoon, when they're walking around shopping for plants.

So maybe the same thing, we just bring in a local bartender that day and have them mixed drinks with herbs and various things, and the kids will love 

Joe Woolworth: [00:05:52] it. They get out of the mocktails. And exactly you take your fancy waters and give them fun names. 

Keith Ramsey: [00:05:56] Yeah. So Stevia is a thing that I always love to hand them with kids; it's. Yeah, it's a sugar substitute.

It's an herb, then. And it's, again, it's an annual, it's something you play in the early spring, but Stevie is a great thing. I like your taste in leaf, and it's that sugar flavor. 

Joe Woolworth: [00:06:10] So you could use it Stevia to make l...