Master Gardening: UK Demonstration and Trial Garden

Hello and welcome to Master Gardening. I'm your host Bud Quok and we're here today at the Master Gardener demonstration and trial garden and we've got a lot of stuff going on and one of them's digging potatoes. Oh my gosh look at that. So stay tuned we're coming right back. Yeah today we're here at the garden and I see you got some help down here. This is Norman Wallace he's the president of the Master Gardeners right now and you're kind of in charge of the garden right? Right now you kind of give the. They ask me to give leadership. Not the president or not. Well I'm actually president of the Master Gardeners but this project I'm just the main guy. The one who does a lot of the work. And I know Nava Knuckles she's not here today but this has been her garden for 10-15 years. I think this has been here for 15 years. She's a tough worker here. Yes she has. Long time. She's done don't tell me how many hours. There's a bed over here of flowers it's beautiful. And this is a demonstration garden and it got started because the University of Kentucky wanted to find out how plants would grow down here in the in the we're in a different time oh not time zone but a different growth zone than anybody else. We're seven compared to six and six b. That's right. As you go up to the states so we can grow a lot of stuff here that they can't so that's why they wanted this demonstration garden here and it's grown and now we have this vegetable plot here. But before we get started with that how did you get into gardening? Is this your first project? As a teenager my dad gave me assignments and I did what I was told. I didn't really have any passion about it particularly. I remember those days. Yeah when I was in my mid-30s the organic gardening thing kind of came along. The old magazine no color print just that's the one black and white. That's the one and I got interested. I was in Maryland. I had shale in the backyard so I paid for a dump truck load of soil brought it in and corralled it with some timbers and grew about 300 square feet of garden and had fun with it. And then I moved to Minnesota and behind my garage extending out into the cities right away for a drainage ditch I grew about 600 square feet in grow beds three three and a half feet wide. I never walked in the grow bed. I had walk space wide enough to walk in. Oh back then that grow beds were just revolutionary back. It was new nobody else was doing it. Right. Or nobody I knew. Now everybody does it. Yeah well yeah I think there's a reason why people are doing it. It works. I didn't have a tiller. I didn't want a tiller. I was working and traveling. I wasn't even at home a lot of the time and the grow bed worked for us. We learned how to do double rowing within a grow bed. If it's three and a half feet wide I could have two rows about 10-12 inches apart. Yeah. And maximizing space so it's fun and then I came here retired back to where I grew up and did conventional gardening with the tiller and the tractor and all that at the home place for three years and I still have about a thousand square feet on my brother's property three and a half miles from the house and I come here. That's not handy. Yeah Carol Ulrich was our president a couple years before I came to be president and she asked me if I'd give leadership to the veggie plot because we hadn't done anything for two or three years. It was just laying dormant and so I for this is my third season and there's about four or five helpers you see some of them back here. They're picking the crick out of that. Yeah they got baskets of food. I see about 50 tomatoes We've done well in providing produce. The last two summers from this 800 plus square feet we have produced over 400 pounds each year. We've given more than 200 pounds to a family service society. I checked yesterday so far this year we've harvested 148 pounds and we've given 83 pounds to the family service society and nine pounds to Martha's Vineyard. Oh my god that's a lot of produce for a little spot like that. I hope people at home are thinking you know you've got a little side yard there you could do the same thing. It can happen. We're going to talk about that more here about the benefits of doing the gardening at home. Even a small pot or even in containers sometimes people that's all they've got is their deck. That's all I've got right now. I've got a big huge thing about this big of herbs. I got to have my herbs. Yeah that works. We haven't done a lot with herbs in this bed but there's an herb bed over in the perennial part and so we do have herbs close by. There's some chives here and we'll work on that a little more. But what we wanted to show here is what somebody could do in their backyard with limited space maybe without a tiller. Do no till. Do grow beds. Do vertical growing where you have limited space so you have trellises. You have tomato cages. Lots of cages. I love cages. Yeah that's the best way I think. And so we've done that with cucumbers and green beans and tomatoes. What we call vertical growing and so that's what people can do at home and they don't have to dig up a whole field to do it. The first year when you have a grow bed maybe a little rough getting it dug up but after that. The hard part. That's right after that it gets easier because you don't walk in it. You don't compact it. Not a lot of weeding. That's right especially if you use mulch. We put newspaper two or three sheets of newspaper down when we plant and then we put two or three inches of straw on top. It inhibits weed growth. I don't see any weeds. And it maximizes water retention. Yeah. It adds humus to the soil as it decays. Yeah. It keeps your shoes and clothes clean and it keeps the veggies clean. You're not supposed to be wallering down on that stuff. Well I get on my knees. My back hurts so I just drop down on my knee. It's okay. I see the ladies picking that. They're not down on it. But you're right. And when it rains you don't get your feet so muddy. You don't get muddy. Yeah. That's right. Well you've got a lot of different techniques and things going on here. I'd like to take a look at each one of them. The green beans especially. That was one. I've done a lot of things in my life regarding. I've never seen a green bean deal like that. So I'm going to copy that. That'll be the first thing I steal your ideas. And people at home will see some things maybe that they can steal from the Master Gardener. Okay. Well let's go down here and take a look at some of these different techniques you're using. Okay. All right. All right. Norman this one's up on stilts. Explain to us what we're doing here. Well it's an elevated bed obviously. And it's one where you don't have to bend your back. If you're handicapped maybe that helps. Reach it from a wheelchair shouldn't you. That's right. And it may be a little high. But it can be reached from a wheelchair. Yes. We've grown lettuce. We've grown turnip greens. Kale. Swiss chard. Those kinds of things here. And in about two weeks mid-August we'll come in and start maybe some kale and some turnip greens. Some fall crops. About half and half. Yeah. And they'll bear until Thanksgiving and possibly even later. And a lot of gardeners miss out on that in the fall. I think the cole crops do better in the fall here than they do in the spring. Well we have a long fall. Yeah. We can we can have turnip greens too. Well I have picked turnip greens at my house on New Year's Eve. And a frost sometimes we don't get until November. That's right. These plants a little frost doesn't hurt them. That's right. Yeah. It has to be a hard freeze. If they grow well as they usually do we'll have greens from here to Thanksgiving at least. Yeah. And the weather is cooler when you're out here harvesting. It's much better than it is today. Yeah. A little warm. A little warm when you sow the seed maybe. Okay behind us here this looks like cucumbers but they're really growing well. I had have sometimes I have trouble getting them to to connect to the fence and get them going. They need some coaxing. Coaxing. Yeah. They don't they don't always climb well. What is that? This is an Armenian cucumber. Very sweet. Tender. Mild. And this one kind of the weather did it in. But it's still good. Oh yeah. It's not shaped well. The cucumbers have passed their peak. They're not as good as they were a week ago. But as you can see they're still bearing. We have Armenians here and in the middle we have market moors which is a good pickler. Okay. For making pickles. And down here we have tender green which is more of a slicing cucumber. What you see here is the vertical lift so that you don't have to spread out all over you in a small space grow up. If you didn't have this fence they'd be taking about about a 10 or 15 foot. Oh yeah. In a backyard you can go six feet put about six to 10 to 12 plants in that row and you can have cucumbers. And this is much more than any four a four person family would ever need. We give some of it to the family service society and there's three or four of us will take one or two. Okay. Yeah. And then what's this next to this? This is uh I know what it is. This is a crop that wants to grow in the place where it's growing. It's a hot weather humidity kind of a crop. It um it's okra and it's Clemson spineless I believe is the right one here. And it just does well in heat. It does well in drought. It does well when it rains. Sometimes it grows tall. This year is not a tall year. It does well in the frying pan with bacon grease. It does well and it does well in lots of other ways too. My wife's learned several ways to fix okra. This is what I'd like to pick them about this size right here. This is really a tender. I usually let it get a little bigger. Some people let them get you know they get six or eight inches long but those are kind of tough for me. I guess for soups and things that's okay. Good for soups and good for cross-cutting uh breading and pan frying too. Oh yeah. You can you can take big okra and and make it taste great. And again this this this amount of this is a lot of okra. The row is 16 feet and there's about uh 25 or 30 plants here. You can see eight or eight or ten fruits right there on that just that one end there right there. Yeah so you that and the flowers are beautiful. Yeah. And these plants are still looking good. I've seen sometimes if you didn't take care of them they get a little a little ratty and the leaves fall off. But you guys are doing a great job. When it got dry in July we did water. We watered three times. We've just used the hose applied the water right at the base. Go down the row a time or two slowly. Come back do it again. Do it again and let the water soak into the ground. That's a good point. I've seen people just spray it on the plants and that's you're just wasting your water. Yeah we don't even try to wet this. We just wet at the base. Try to get it to the roots. Deep into the soil. If you just water a little bit it's worse than watering at all because it makes the roots want to go up shallow. That's right. Grow shallow and then they drought kill them. That's right. Uh we when we do this we've done it three times in about a 10 10 day spread uh through July. And we'll have to do it again this week probably. But we don't have an irrigation system so we just use the hose and we come and. You've got some workers though. Well these helpers are great. Yeah. Sharing. Well it's a team project and uh we we enjoy what we do. Once you get into growing this stuff and see the produce it really uh it's kind of contagious. You sort of catch it and you share it. And gardeners do best when they share anyway. Because I got more of one thing that I need. Say tomatoes and you got okra and I don't. I'll trade. Yeah. We trade. Barter. That's right. And uh I harvested 55 butternut squashes several summers ago. And a friend had too much um too many sweet potatoes. And we went pound for pound. I think 12 13 pounds a piece. You got scientific. He got he got squash. I got got um sweet potatoes. And we're both happy. Yeah. Well let's let's move on down. You got your helpers. That's uh Sharon Dersheimer. A long time member. Well five years, six year member. Oh that's a long time. Association. She and I were in the same class. She's a native of Ballard County. Moving back there. Retired school teacher. And she likes to garden. And your other two. Geneva. Geneva Fisher uh from here in Paducah. And she's really good scout in the garden. She she sees the bugs. She sees the eggs. She tells me what's going on when I can't even see it. You gotta have good eyesight. And I don't have that. She's got good eyes. And and she waters. She knows how to water. She knows how to really make it go in deep. And then you got Bonnie. Bonnie Koblitz. Came here from uh Colorado just a year or so ago. Hey did she bring anything with her? Uh well I don't think so. The medicinal purpose is only. Not that I know of. She's got connections though. She's a good gardener. She was active at Master Gardener in Colorado and transferred here. Oh. And so she's just new this year. And you can exchange ideas. I'm sure they do it differently out there. They get different plants and what have you. Yep. Especially if you get up on the mountains and stuff. It's really a completely different world. What what are these things down here? These devices? Well we have three kinds of squash. On this end we have zucchini. They just picked one that got a little too big. But it's still okay. It's over there in the pile over here. Well if it gets big you can peel it. Take out the seeds and still make zucchini bread. You'll also notice that they're elevated. They're on hills or in a row here. Where we pull dirt up. That's very important in this property because the terrain is totally flat. There's no drainage off. So when it rains. Yeah. For rains it's just going to stay right here. So in order to keep the veggies out of the muck where they can't compete the weeds in the young stages. You pull the dirt up. Pull the dirt up. Make a row five six inches high. A foot, foot and a half wide. And plant on top of that. Another advantage in the spring. That hill warm. The soil warms up quicker. Dries out. Dries out. So you can start planting earlier. That's right. Yeah. It is right. Yes. And then on the other side of the zucchini you've got. This is winter squash. But a whole different animal. That's butternut. You can see one right there. That's the best one. And there's a small one down here. This one's already getting toward maturity. That's a nice fruit. That'll be a two pounder. Winter squash is totally different. It's more like pumpkins than it is summer squash. And the way it works is you harvest it in August or September. You don't have to can it. You don't have to freeze it. You don't pickle it. You don't dehydrate it. You just wipe it off. Put it in the cool spot in your house. And if you know who Roger Swain is with Victory Garden. Oh yeah. Victory Garden. He told me he put his coolest place in his house under his bed. He's a dandy. He's different. Yeah. He's special. So we have harvested from my garden at my brother's place. We've harvested from about 16, 17 plants. We harvested more than two fruits per plant last week. I have 36, 7, 8 butternut squashes. They'll average a pound and a half. So I've got 55, 60 pounds of butternut squash. Have you ever battered and deep fried the blossoms? I have not. Yes. We did try it years ago. My wife did that. That's right. Yeah. You've got all kind of blossoms. They're plenty enough for breakfast anyway. We haven't done it lately. Yeah. They're beautiful blossoms. It's hard to think to do that. It is. You don't want to take away fruit. That's right. The bees get into that and it's fun. I have some photography where I have bees right in the squash blossom. We just had one go in that plant over there. They were going right there. Oh they love okra. You can see them getting in there right now. I think the okra blossom is a really neat trumpet flower. It's beautiful. Yeah. You'd think that hummingbirds would like it but I don't think they do. They don't. You could use that as an ornamental in your front yard. This cage is as tall as I am. That's rebar. It's about five or six feet. Rebar is concrete reinforcement stuff. Somebody else had provided these cages. They're already here. We use those to cage tomatoes. I don't know if I told you but this is cattle wire. Cattle? Just cattle wire. It's used and somebody gave it to us. It's cheap. If you know a farmer that has cattle wire you can get a few feet. That's where my first tomato cages came from and they're pretty short. Yeah that's right. They're only so long. So I had to go to, there's all different kinds of wire. This is rebar but they've got even something that's a little bit more flexible than this that I use but it's not, it's about this tall. They still come out the top but this is about as tall as I've seen them. I think we made these when I was president back in the 2000s. We were a little slow getting to it but because we didn't have heat this year in the greenhouse, I bought a small greenhouse. A plastic with a tubular frame and it's only like so wide and this tall and this deep and I can put eight trays. Greenhouse trays in there. You'd be surprised how many you can get in there. We started the tomatoes here and we decided we'd wanted a variety. So we have a beefsteak here. This is called an egg tomato. You see it has a pink color. It's an egg shape. Not very many tomatoes on that. Yeah it is very productive and really a delicious tomato. They've picked the ripest ones already this morning but that's some more beefsteaks there. There's a copier striped tomato down the row. Rutgers over there and heirloom. That's right and so is beefsteak and then there's another one I don't remember. Now our listeners want to remember that we're in a bad area for funguses. So you want to pick your tomato variety. You want to pick one that's resistant. None of them are completely, we don't ever get diseases but at least resistant and remember that the heirlooms are wonderful but they are really susceptible to diseases so you be careful about those. You don't want to water the plants for sure. You want to water the ground. That's right and the mulch helps also because those funguses come out of the soil up into the bottom leaves and if you've got mulch on there it doesn't. Chances are better. Yeah that's right. Not a hundred percent but the chances are better. This year in this garden and in my other garden the beefsteaks have been very productive. They've been healthy and they've really produced well. And you've got two different kinds of tomatoes. You've got determinate and indeterminate. Determinate will only get so tall and most of their fruits will happen all at once. And then you've got the indeterminate. They'll grow out the top of the cage sooner or later. They just keep on going. That is right. Okay well what's what we got next here? This is different. That's more tomatoes. Yeah we did it differently. You got back to the cattle wire here. Back to the cattle wire. We just tried it to show what you can do. I traveled some in June and when I did I didn't keep the vines tied to the fence. So they kind of get down. But if you've got straw you're okay. If you've got straw you just lay down on the ground. That's right. You don't want them if you don't have straw then they get muddy and dirty and the bugs get into them and stuff. And these are more determinate so they're not going to go too far out anyway. And I have seen two rows of wire and then you can do that too. Which even like can you see these this side over here it's hard to tie up. If you had two rows of wire. Well and some tomatoes are stiffer than others and you can only bend them so far. If you're trying to tie them up you have to be careful. You want to tie them up when they're real small on tender or else they'll break. You're right. Behind you and at the end of the row is a compost bin that one of our members gave to us last month. I've seen these on TV but not exactly like this. Well you can see some pretty good stuff in here. We put fairly good stuff in but that's what it's doing. And it needs a little bit. How does it work? How do you turn it? Well it turns like this. You get your exercise too. Yep there's a handle. That's one thing about gardening. My doctor says that gardening is as good an exercise as running down the road and all that. Yeah and it's how I get most of my exercise. Okay that's good stuff. That's good for next year right? We'll be using it next year for sure if not this fall. And you can put your kitchen waste in there too if you had something like this. I've seen them be even bigger but we have a compost bin over here that believe it or not that's mine. I made that also. That is good. And we haven't used it. No you have to work at that. That's work to use a compost bin. It's not just something that comes easy. It does take effort. Here are some peppers. These first ones are bell peppers. They've just picked some. I think they're over in the box. And you still see there's a nice one right here. They're really dark green and looking well too. Looking good yeah. And then this is jalapeno through here. No not here. Here. No where am I? Jalapeno. You can tell the difference. It's darker green. Jalapeno's here. Okay let's see what kind of man you are. All right. No. I'm not going to do that. And this is a serrano. That's not as hot as I thought. Serrano I think. And they picked some. Did the ladies bring some water? No you won't water. That's a hot pepper. You can tell the difference in the plant. Now what what is what are these? I think it's called a serrano. You can see the big difference in the plant right here in this. It's got a fuzzy look to it. And then there's more butternut squash behind you. Later we planted some more butternut squash. More butternut squash. I love butternut squash. And you the butternut squash soup is a delicacy. We like it as a soup. A lot of people don't like it but if you'd like it it's a it's a really. You can also season it the same way you would season pumpkin and make pumpkin pie out of butternut squash and your people won't know. Won't know the difference. Just use the same spices. It's the same color same texture and there it is. They're easier to grow than pumpkins and I think easier to make. Yeah. Now this one's kind of a solitary plant and it's one. It's a blackberry. It was here when I came to the garden three summers back. And just to see if we could grow it in here. Yeah if we netted it we could keep the birds off pretty good. They get most of the berries. Just for show then. The zinnias are attractants for pollinators. Bees, butterflies, other insects will be here and and that's bringing pollination to the garden. My mother had those in the 40s in her garden. Most of them are perfect and and myself that's my favorite flower to cut and bring in the house because they'll bring them in the house they'll last for a week in the water. Yep. And you can just see that they don't get the recognition I think they deserve. They're beautiful. Yeah. And they're so easy to grow. They're really easy. Yeah probably the easiest to grow in a garden. The next one is a Mexico Torche flower. I don't even know what it is. And then I like to do sunflowers because I call them garden sentinels. These are the Mexican flowers here? Yes. I have never seen those. I haven't either. They're wonderful. Yeah Melissa brought those in. She said let's try this. I said okay. Melissa Thaxton's one of the partners who's not here today. I got to have that in my garden. It's beautiful. Those plants not only the bloom but the plants are just beautiful. And one of my favorites. Yeah. The bees are there always. And these are easy to grow too. Easy. So easy. Now the big tall ones are beautiful but they need support I think a lot of times. They'll fall down especially if you get a lot of wind and rain and it really breaks your heart when you see them fall down so you got to prop them back up. But the bloom sometimes get this big around. They can. And I don't know if you've driving down the highway you look over at the whole field of them. Have you seen? When I lived in Minnesota I saw tens and dozens of acres of hundreds of acres of sunflower seeds in North Dakota. And these are some of my favorite. Are the smaller ones? They're all the different colors. You have a thousand different kinds now. It's one of the other than tomatoes and corn maybe the next most propagated and hybridized plant we have. And if you'll turn your head just a little bit. I'm going to steal this one right here. Well crap I'm not going to now. Here just take my pocket knife. I'll get it later. But the birds are already eating on it. Yeah. And I'll get a. Here I got a pocket knife. You got a pocket knife real quick. The hot weather dry weather makes this. That'll be in my yard next year. That's how easy it is. I can just throw them. I can throw them on the ground and they come up to just perfect. Nobody else gets any right. That's the last one. We have a volunteer onion. Volunteer onion. And this is jade green beans bush. They've already passed. We harvested last week. They look like crap but they've already done their duty. They've been very productive and we'll pull those up within two three days. This is a result of a bean beetle. We don't spray. We don't use organic or we don't use poison sprays. And this year I didn't even use neem oil or pyrethrin. I usually would but I just didn't get to it. But your crop is early. They produced. They did the job. Now these two are really producing. This is a favorite to me. Purple hole peas. They've already picked them this morning. Grow on stems. Well here's one. They grow on stems like this. They turn purple when they're ready to be picked. And that's full of little beans. So they're easy to pick. Here's another. And that's short pods. They grow longer and fuller. You got to shell them. They want to grow here and they're easy to pick. You do have to shell but that's okay. Sit with your spouse or your friend and talk. On the porch. On the porch. With a Budweiser. No. Whatever. Glass of wine. Yeah something. And they're great. Patty, my wife, has frozen a dozen pints and canned that many more. Okay. We're getting short so let's go down here and look at this corn real quickly. Okay. We got eggplant back here. We could have done two shows today, Norman, I guess. This is peaches and cream. Peaches. That's what everybody likes. Peaches and cream. White and yellow kernels together mixed. And it's ready to pick. I see some silks that are dark. They say you need three or four rows. You don't really need three or four rows. But sometimes if you've only got one row you might want to hand pollinate. You can take this and sprinkle it on the silks and stuff. I don't know if you've ever done that or not. I haven't. That's a good idea. In order to get full pollination sometimes. Yeah. Very good. And next to you is eggplants and beans. We've lost Norman. Here I am. This is beautiful. It's a half moon wire but we're out of time today. We'll have to come back and see the rest of the garden and you've got plenty more to see. And thank you for having us today. And thank your worker. Thank all your ladies for helping us. Yeah. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. And harvesting. This is Bud Kwok. I'm your host. Next time, Master Gardening. I'll see you then.