Murray Wood: Who's hot... and who's not
Every Friday, Murray Wood takes a look back at the week's news and decides who's hot... and who's not. This week's list ...
Jill and Rick Van Duyvendyk answer all your gardening questions in Garden Talk on 650 CKOM and 980 CJME every Sunday morning at 9 a.m.
Here are some questions and answers from the April 19 show:
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These questions and answers have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Q: I’ve sprouted potatoes that are several inches long. Can they be planted with the long sprouts, or should they be trimmed back? I’m thinking of planting them in a bucket and gradually filling the bucket with soil as the vegetation grows up.
A: Yes, trim them so they’re not so long. Then, they can go in a bucket and layer the bucket as you go.
Q: Do you need a non-determinate potato to plant in a cage, as you described, or will a regular potato work?
A: You want basically a non-indeterminate, right? (Rather than a determinate.) Which means it keeps growing. … The long sprouts, you just have to be careful and then know, if you do cut them in half of your big, big potato, then you got to make sure you point that up, as well.
Q: I was wondering if you carry sweet potato bulbs?
A: They’re not bulbs. Sweet potatoes, we would actually have to grow from a seed, from a starter plant, so like a bedding plant, if you’re going to do them that way. I tried bringing them in. I can actually bring them in from B.C., already started. We did that a couple (of) years ago. Some people had success. The problem is that they have such a long season that usually we can’t harvest because you’ll be harvesting into October, November, you’d almost have to start them in a grow bag inside the house. … You’d have to be able to dig in the ground to be able to harvest them later on in the season.
Q: Looking for tips to remove a shrub in my new townhome. I cut it back when I moved in last fall.
A: Just dig deep. Depends what type of shrub it is. I mean, some shrubs don’t have very big root system, and others have bigger so depending what type it is, yeah, you can just dig it out. And it also depends if you want to move it somewhere else, or if you’re just digging it out to get rid of it, as well. Because if you’re digging out to get rid out to get rid of it, just try and dig it out. You can pretty much cut the root system all the way around. Once you get rid of the plant, the extra roots that are in there aren’t really going to do anything. But if you’re wanting to save it, then you want to make sure you’re taking a nice, big root system and cutting those roots nice and deep. Soak the ground for a few days, especially if it’s really hard soil and then go in there when it’s not so wet. First thing this spring, the ground will be moist, anyways. And if you’re going to move it, you know, because you want to save it, then you have to move it before the leaves come out on it. So you want to do it in April.
Q: Once again, my garden has moss patches. They happen years I don’t get the garden tilled in the fall. I use a combo of a third of a cup of Dawn dish soap in a liter of water to kill the moss. (It) works really good, but will it affect the pH of the soil and growth of the new plants in the garden?
A:A lot of times we’re not seeing much moss growing in a vegetable garden, because you want those in hot areas. What I would suggest you try doing — and I’m going to do a big patch in my garden that would that this year — is just go, try to go to zero till at all. Also, put some biochar into your garden as well. That’ll help to release the microbes and keep the soil loose so that you won’t have that and then just mulch between the rows of your plants. Over a couple of years, you’ll gain all your biometrics back into the soil, all your funguses and everything else that grow in the soil, which release nutrients to your plants, and then you don’t have to worry about it, because the mulch and that will keep the mosses down. And you actually will have a way better garden in the end. It’s called, just look it up. Just go either no-till or zero-till gardening. And you’ll find out just about how to do that, and you’ll find that it’s easier. You don’t have to rototill your garden every year.
The Dawn dish soap is not really going to affect the pH too much, but it might disturb the microbes that are in your soil. So making sure that you’re adding those microbes back, which H Start would be a great one to put in there, or using an organic fertilizer would be really important.
If you go zero-till, and you don’t till it, it will make it so you don’t wreck the structure of the soil. And it actually will become what’s not rock hard.
Q: Is there anything I have to do to prep that (hard, poor) soil so that I can get started?
A: Taking some of that soil out and adding some good soil in first, unless there’s no soil at all, right? But I mean, most times we have good soil gardens. We’ve had over years, we’ve just kept, you know, rototilling every year and breaking it up and then planting it this year, what you can do is you just take a rake and level it out. And then you also don’t have all these dips and doodles from digging up potatoes last year and everything else. And then you start putting your plant, you put your rows of plants in, and then what you do is, then you start mulching between the rows. And then from then on, every year, you’re just going to move your rows. Just move the mulch over, and you’re not going to till it. And you’ll watch, your soil will be, as you keep adding more mulch every year, your soil underneath will just be beautiful.
Q: What are the charcoals you mentioned?
A: Biochar. It’s actually great, especially if you (have) hard soil, okay? And also soil that’s a little bit alkaline and everything else, it would help to release, to help to change that quite a bit, as well. And if it’s really hard, put some gypsum in first, if you’re really, really hard. Or, I put the cedar bark mulch, I root that into the soil, that will make it so it’s not so hard, as well.
Q: I use a walker, but I want to grow some radishes in deck pots. What type of soil do I use?
A: Basically a it’s a potting mix, but it’s made for vegetables and herbs. It’s called Herb and Vegetable Mix by PRO-MIX. It’s a really good mixture to put into your containers. But the one thing with the radishes that you’ve got to make sure is you’re just not over-fertilizing them, because you’ll start getting hard radishes. And then the other thing, too, is radishes are something that you can seed a couple times a year because the first crop is going to be good, but once it gets hot outside, you’ll want fresh radishes in there, too. Radishes, lettuces, you always put it in 25 per cent at a time, and so every week, put another little bit of seed in for radishes. Do one pot and a couple of weeks later, do another.
Q: Are baby potatoes sold at the grocery store a certain variety, or are they just harvested early?
A: They’re harvested early. They’re graded. When you dig up your potatoes, you ever notice you got small ones? You got big ones? Yeah? So they’re just graded, and then they just sell the smaller ones.
