About this episode
While editing Episode 406 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast (out now), I was taking copious notes, about all the great garden tips Don Shor and I discussed in an episode that was ostensibly a chat about growing tomatoes this summer (we both like Cupid , despite its propensity to sprawl). In fact, it was the most notes I have ever taken for any episode. Were you taking notes, too, while listening? If so, I hope you weren’t driving. But I’ll make it easier for you: check out the transcript of today’s episode, especially the more accurate transcripts that you’ll find at our website, gardenbasics.net , or at our podcast uploader, Buzzsprout , and discover your own “Aha!” garden moments. TIP #1: START WITH EVENLY MOIST SOIL We have discussed this several times on the podcast. First, with America’s Favorite Retired College Horticulture Professor, Debbie Flower, when talking about reusing old potting soil for container planting, in Episode 172 in the Garden Basics podcast. Debbie stressed the importance of getting the soil thoroughly moistened before planting: Farmer Fred Debbie, it's that time of year or and people are going to go out to get plants, or they're going to get seed. And they may be buying soil. But before they buy soil, they may take a look around their yard and they see all these pots with no plants in them, but they're full of soil. There might be nurseries that might say, "Oh, you don't want to use that. You need to buy our new soil." But that old soil that you have, I guess it really depends what's in it and what it is, and what it needs. Right? And can it be reused? Debbie Flower Yes, I reuse potting soil all the time, I have many instances where I look around and there are pots with dead things in them. As I said to my cousin, I still kill plants, I just know how to do the autopsy. I typically know or have an idea of what killed them as well. I take out the what is left of the plant, there's often a decent root system, I'll bang it around on my potting bench and get off as much of the container media as I can from those roots. And notice I say container media. This is not field soil. I use kitty litter boxes that I bought specifically for the purpose of mixing media. And I dump it in there, mix it up with whatever else I have and reuse it. I very often add a rock component to that reusable media and some new bagged container media. Container media is not soil, it is organic matter. Plus some typically rock components. Peat Moss, coir or compost are usually the organic matter. And then the rock components are perlite, vermiculite, pumice, sand, something like that. And it's often one part of the organic matter to two parts of the sand component. And the reason for that is that over time the organic component breaks down. And as it breaks down, the particles get smaller. And the space between the particles where the air and water hang out in a container gets smaller and the plant starts to suffer. So a plant has died in the container media. It's been in there some period of time and a container, the organic component of that container media has broken down. So the pore spaces, the open spaces between the components of container media have gotten too small, or they've definitely gotten smaller, they may have gotten too small for roots to actively live in there. So I want to fix that. That's one thing I want to fix, is particle size. So I do that by adding some new media from a bag and usually more rock components. Mix them together, get the texture I do very much by feel and I don't have recipes, and then I'll reuse them. I will never reuse media to start seeds in. To start seeds, you want things sterile. You want the pots to be absolutely clean and you want the media to be unused. So I'm not using it for that. But I will move my houseplants up to a bigger size or my seedlings that I started in six packs all the way up to four inch pots, something like that, using this reused media. The other thing that I need to worry about with the media is the salt component. Salt is fertilizer. Fertilizer has to be in the salt form for the plant to be able to take it up. It has to be able to dissolve in water and move to the plants roots and enter the plants roots. And so that's the salt form. And if there's too much of that in there, the pH of the soil will go up, so the soil will be too alkaline. When that happens, then nutrients that are in the soil become unavailable to the plant. The easiest way to do that is just flush the the media with freshwater for several minutes and allow it to come out through the drain holes of the pot. But yes, I absolutely reuse media frequently. Farmer Fred To your last point there. One thing I do is, I get myself a five gallon bucket. And I will take that old container mix and put it in the bucket because usually peat moss is part of that. It is hard to rewet. So I put it in a bucket with no drain holes, I will put that soil mix and then fill the bucket with water and then go do something else. When I come back several hours later, that moisture has basically permeated throughout that entire body of that potting soil. And I then transfer the potting soil to large plastic containers with drain holes and let the whole thing drain. And then I can get in there with my hands and grab the soil and refill whatever pot I was going to do, knowing that it's thoroughly moist. Debbie Flower Yes, potting soil can dry out to beyond rewetting easily. And so you're right. You have to soak it or you can use if you're anxious, you can use warmer water and work with your hands and maybe just a drop, literally just a drop, of dish soap. And you want it to be soap it really would be better to use castile soap or ivory soap, not detergent. But that helps breaks down the surface tension of water and allows it to permeate the particles of the container media more easily. But I always have my soil moist before from top to bottom before I put it in a container. ======================= And that brings us to Episode 227 “Understanding Drip Irrigation ” and garden author Robert Kourik expanding upon the importance of starting with thoroughly moist raised bed soil, especially with a drip irrigation system. You can hear what he had to say specifically about prepping a raised bed with a drip irrigation system in the podcast excerpt at the top of this page. Or, read this abbreviated transcript of that topic: Robert Kourik Basically, if you turn on the drip on a regular basis, and keep the soil moisture consistent, the roots don't go into any shock. Now we're not talking about wet soil. Some people get carried away and turning the system on too long. We're talking about so moist as you can hardly see the color difference, but the water is there, the moisture is there for the roots, they know it's there. Whereas we may not be able to see it as much in a color difference. But the point being, if you maintain a consistent moisture level, for the whole growing season, things never dampened down or stress out from too much water or stress out from too much drought between cycles. So that's where people say, Oh, I'm going to water every Saturday or twice a month or once a month, well that puts you through these cycles where the soil gets dry enough that the roots aren't happy, then you have some run the system longer to get the soil moist again, and then oftentimes it gets too wet and the roots aren't happy because they're not able to get as much air. So the deal about getting greater yields is to turn the system on on a frequent basis. And this is really hard for people digest because they always heard Oh turn it on and off once a month or once a week or water infrequently but deep. Well, most of the roots are in the top six to 12 inches. So that's that's as deep as I worry about. Farmer Fred You do advise though, before you go to this daily watering regimen that you thoroughly soak the garden, especially if it's a raised bed, make sure that the whole area is saturated. And then you can do that daily spurt, if you will. Robert Kourik Yes. And so that means once you know how to base the irrigation on the weather, you adjust the system to come on every day but you just for tiny amounts of water. It's like a lot of systems I'm doing one to three minutes a day to keep things happening. At the most sometimes you only need 15 minutes a day depends on the amount of water you need to apply. But the point being that this way of approaching it, you can get at least on the average 20% increase in yields. There's a woman in India that did chili peppers, and she is 38% less water but she got a 48% increase in the yields. So it can be quite dramatic. ============================ And that brings us to the current Garden Basics podcast episode (406) in which Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery in Davis, CA advises the same, in the first of several great garden success tips mentioned in the episode: Don Shor: So raised planters have special issues that require some consideration, especially as you adopt your irrigation practices for the season. You put in your drip lines and you turn them on, and you just filled it with the fanciest soil you could buy from that rock yard and you're basically growing things in potting soil. So it is going to probably be necessary the first year, the second year that you have raised planters to water daily. That's just, it's frustrating to have to tell people that. When I say daily, I don't mean three minutes, seven minutes. I mean 35 or 40 minutes each day with a drip system that distributes properly. And I believe you discovered, for example, that a four foot wide bed needed more than four lines going down it. Farmer Fred: Yeah, woe to those who have only one or two lines in a four-foot-wide bed, but I basically space my lateral lines eight inches apart, so it's usually five lines in a four-foot-wide bed. Don: But the conversations I'm having with people about irrigation have been frustrating. Oftentimes, I find myself saying, okay, try this. Go home. You know how to bypass your timer, right? Okay, go out to the knob, turn on the drip system, and let it run all afternoon right now. What? All afternoon? That's overwatering. Well, first of all, that's a term we should just stop using because it doesn't have any specific meaning. Second, you need to get the soil back to field capacity. All right, I've jumped into soil science jargon there, but you need to saturate the soil completely, let it drain out, and then go back to the perhaps lighter irrigation pattern you had been doing. They all forget that the first part of drip irrigation is bringing the soil to field capacity. So sometimes when they bring in a sample of a plant that's showing clear drought stress, I'll say, I just want you to soak the heck out of your whole area. Not just the raised planter, soil around it, the shrubs nearby, the beneficial insects will appreciate it. Don Shor: Just give everything, pretend we're having a three inch rainstorm in the middle of June. Then you can go back to relatively light waterings if you have to do that, but you don't, you didn't bank enough moisture at the beginning of the season. It's really what it comes down to. Those of us with open garden beds, we can deep water because soil just goes as deep as we want. So I can go out there and set a drip line and run for two or three hours and give a really good soaking. And I don't have to do that again for three or four days, sometimes even longer, depending on where you're listening, what your soil is like. But raised planters, you do need to give it a very thorough watering and you have to do it more frequently. So that's the first thing right there. That's the negative part. People aren't watering enough. ========================== Tip #2: MODIFY THE RAISED BED SOIL TO RETAIN MORE MOISTURE Farmer Fred: That's why modifying the soil in a raised bed is so important by adding that compost, the worm castings, and the mulch. That mulch does a lot to preserve soil moisture. Don Shor: Yeah. And the other thing I do is I cut plants off, this is just a little trick I learned years ago, rather than pulling them at the end of the season, I'll pull one or two to check the roots. I like to look for nematodes and things like that. But the rest of them get cut off, and I take the top and pile it up. I don't have a formal compost pile, but if I did, it would go into that. Then the roots just disintegrate on site. They break down and make macro pores. They make actual channels that water and nutrients can go down and furthering via. So this is a simple method of building your soil the easy way. Rather than turning it, which we don't think is a great plan, mulch heavily, like you're talking about with leaves and let the roots break down naturally in situ and the plants will benefit in the spring as they explore the newly enriched soil that you created by fall and winter mulch. ======================== TIP #3: HARVEST TOMATOES EARLY WHEN WEATHER THREATENS (too hot or too cold) Don Shor: That gets into another thing, which is harvesting the fruit, to avoid weather problems and avoid injury from various predators, you know, getting out there and picking them just when they're beginning to ripen rather than letting, trying to let them go fully ripe on the vine. Get into October, November, the nights are getting colder. You're probably better off picking some of those and bringing them in and ripening them on the counter. Also, harvest tomatoes when extended heat waves are forecast, even if the tomatoes are not fully colored. We went into detail about that in the Aug. 25, 2023 newsletter edition, “ Tomatoes Not Ripening? Blame the Heat ”. =================== TIP #4 IMPORTANCE OF MID-SUMMER FERTILIZATION OF PEPPERS, EGGPLANTS Don Shor: You can get really good (autumn) yields here from your vegetable garden if you deep water in August and early September. One thing I would add is a little bit of fertilizer, especially on the peppers, eggplant, cucumbers maybe, but especially peppers and eggplant to keep them going can make a big difference. Whatever you prefer to use, liquid fertilizer, fish emulsion, your favorite granular fertilizer that they sell at the local garden center. Those are all fine. You don't generally need to feed your tomatoes to keep them going. I don't really push nitrogen for tomatoes, but for the peppers and eggplant, and I would say the cucumbers, a light feeding mid-August is actually very beneficial to get that late season crop that we've been talking about. Farmer Fred: A very good tip to end on here in mid-summer in 2025. ============================ Finally, a bit of info about that picture at the beginning of the newsletter, the Genuwine tomato, a part of a growing trend of hybridizing two different heirloom varieties, also discussed in Ep. 406: Don Shor: Now some of the companies have been hybridizing heirlooms. We want to confuse the public. Hybridizing heirlooms. Now what do we call them? But there are some that I tried this year. These heirloom marriage varieties. And a good example is one called Genuwine. Well, it's producing a lot of fruit for me. It's got 30 or 40 on it right now. It was one of the later ones I planted, end of March. And they're good size. They're beautiful fruit. And it's a cross between Costoluto Genovese and Brandywine. Don Shor: So the Costoluto Genovese part is fine. That's always done very well for me. It's an Italian heirloom and loves the heat. But Brandywine, no, that's one that I don't recommend at all because they generally, let's say I've been skunked by tomato varieties occasionally where I planted a plant and gotten zero or one or two fruit on a vigorous plant. Brandywine's done that to me every time I plant it. It just does not take the heat. So I was a little skeptical, but I figured I'll give this one a try. It has done very well, and it looks like it's going to be a very good producer this year, 2025, with a relatively mild summer. It's looking like a very good possibility. And it looks like a good slicer. It's got great flavor. And so I have good hopes for the Genuwine, one of the heirloom marriage types. Ball Seed Company seems to be the introducer on these, although I don't know if it's their product line. they're the ones that i got the information from so that looks like a good one. And then there's another one called Marzinera, Well, what is Marzinera? Marzinera is a cross between San Marzano, one of the best-known sauce tomatoes in the world, and another variety that I've never heard of, Cream Sausage is the other one. Farmer Fred: Oh, yeah, I've had that. I've actually planted that, yeah. Don Shor: Okay, and it's a firm, I gather, firm, meaty sauce-type tomato. So far, Marzinera is one of my top producers this season. Smaller fruit, Roma style, San Marzano style. The thing about San Marzano is that it's a skinny fruit. It's kind of hollow. It's got a lot of meat, but not a lot of juice. And so it takes a lot of it to make a sauce, but it's got a legendary reputation. I mean, it's been around forever. It's actually a special variety. You can only label your cans “San Marzano” if you're from a particular part of Italy, that kind of thing. This is a more useful fruit to me. It's got more meat to the fruit and it's got really good flavor. So Marzinera looks very promising in this heirloom marriage product line. Farmer Fred: Going back to the Genuwine tomato, since one of its parents is a Costoluto Genovese, one of the problems I've always had with the Costoluto Genovese is it gets soft on the vine very quickly. You have to go out there and squeeze it every day to figure out if it's ripe or not, and then don't leave it out there, but bring it in. Don Shor: And use it right away. It has to go right in the pot. Yeah. So this one looks firmer than that. It looks like it's got more of that Brandywine parentage in that regard. So I'll definitely give you, in a wrap-up program in the end of the fall or in the beginning of next spring, we'll talk about this one. But it looks real promising. It does not seem to have that quick softening characteristic of Costoluto Genovese, but it has the flavor and it has the rich appearance. In all, we probably discussed close to two dozen different tomato varieties in Episode 406 of the Garden Basics podcast . Check it out if you want something new and delicious for 2026. Of course, your weather - and success - may vary. Who was it that keeps saying “All Gardening is Local”?…oh, yeah. Beyond The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Farmer Fred’s Ride for the Kids! I'm fundraising on behalf of the 2025 Sacramento Century Challenge on Saturday, October 4 to raise money for the Sacramento Children's Home Crisis Nursery, and I could use your support. Here’s the link. The journey of 100 miles along the Sacramento River is to help out the Sacramento Children’s Home Crisis Nursery. I’ve ridden 100 miles in one day plenty of times…when I was younger. But at 74, and with a few health setbacks in 2025, I could use some moral support, and the Sacramento Children’s Home Crisis Nursery can use your pledge money. So, how about it? Maybe pledge 10 cents a mile (that’s $10) along with a hearty, “You go, Fred!” Or a more generous one dollar a mile ($100), to give me the mental endurance for the entire ride, to dodge the pothole-filled levee roads and pedal harder in the ferocious headwinds that makes this ride a real challenge! The Sacramento Children's Home Crisis Nursery is the only program of its kind in Sacramento County and directly prevents child abuse and neglect by supporting families with small children at times of crisis. The nursery allows parents to bring their children ages newborn to five for emergency hourly or overnight care during difficult times, with the goal of keeping families together and reducing the number of children entering foster care. To care for our community's most vulnerable children, we rely on support from community members like you. By donating, you empower us to provide a safe haven for children throughout the Sacramento area, offering respite to parents during times of crisis, and building a strong support system for the future. Your support helps provide a safe place to stay local kids in need. Again, here’s the link to make a donation to the Sacramento Children’s Home Crisis Nursery. Thank you for your support, and say "Hi!" if you see me pedaling like crazy out there on Saturday, October 4th! Fred Hoffman is also a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener in Sacramento County. And he likes to ride his bike(s). Thank you for your paid support! 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