Hi everyone, this is Britney Hunter.
Horticulturist and extension assistant
professor for Utah State University.
This Webinar is dedicated to gardening 101
You need a few basic supplies to grow your
own back yard vegetable garden.
You need six or more hours of sun, soil,
seeds or plants, and water.
Some other tools that will help you have
a successful garden are fertilizer, adding
compost to the soil, using mulch, having
some gardening tools, tomato cages, and
one of my favorite tools is my harvest
basket. So I can load it up with
vegetables and carry them inside to
start cooking.
There are a ton of great varieties to try
in the garden.
You'll find varieties that are well
acclimated to Utah at the nursery and
in seed catalogs.
Hybrid varieties are varieties that are
cross pollinated in a controlled
environment and often have disease
resistance or have been breed specifically
for a higher yield, flavor, or size.
Open pollinated varieties are pollinated
without any human intervention, just by
bees and other insects and are
adventitious because you can save the seed
and grow the same plants year to year.
Heirloom varieties are open pollinated and
are given the name heirloom because
their traditional in some way or have
been around longer than fifty years.
A common question I get is what's the
best tomato variety.
I have a lot of favorites, but I'm going
to share with you some tomato taste
test results from a taste testing we had
with master gardeners.
You can see that Sunsugar received the
most votes by far. It's a cherry sized
tomato that's yellow and it's super sweet.
Some other varieties that people enjoyed
were Better Boy, Rutgers, Cherokee Purple,
and Jet Star.
I've been fascinated by the variety of
shapes and sizes and colors of sweet
peppers.
Here's a picture of two varieties that
I would recommend trying.
The four varieties that are listed here
are all sweet pepper varieties.
Carmen is a long slender, red sweet pepper
and Escamillo is a yellow sweet pepper.
Some other varieties I like to grow in
my own garden are Scarlet Runner Beans,
they're a pull bean, you can eat the beans
fresh or for cooking and they also have
these beautiful red flowers.
Sugar Baby Watermelon is another one
of my favorites, it's a delicious
watermelon but what I like about it is
it's a small size which means it matures
a little bit more quickly and it also
stores well in the refrigerator if you
can't eat it all at once.
Purple potatoes are another one of my
favorites to grow. I love the color
and they taste really good.
And Lemon Gem marigolds are another
one of my favorites, you can see a picture
there on the bottom.
They grow into a small little bush of
yellow or orange flowers and they do
have a lemony scent. They also attract
beneficial pollinators and other
beneficial insects.
If you have a variety that's worked well
in your garden we'd like to hear from you
and you can go onto this website
extension.usu.edu/vegetablereview
and submit your own review and we will
take those reviews and publish them
in our recommendation fact sheet.
You can download the fact sheet of
recommended vegetable varieties for
northern Utah on this website.
When it comes to plants bigger is not
always better.
You want to find a plant while you're
shopping in the nursery that is healthy
and if you pull it out of the container
you can see that it's well rooted but
that it's not root bound.
If by chance when you go to plant your
plant you see a lot of circling roots
it's okay to gently break up those roots
and crack it a little bit. That will help
the roots get pointed outward and get
established.
If you want to grow a variety that's not
available at a plant nursery you might
want to start your own seeds at home.
For more information on that reference
our fact sheet called "Grow Your Own
Transplants At Home."
When you plant outside into your garden
make sure that the soil level of your
plant is about the same in the pot as
it is outside. You don't want to bury it
too deep.
The exception to that would be tomatoes.
Burying tomatoes deep when you bury the
stems, they'll actually grow new roots
out of the stem.
But for most other plants you want to keep
the soil level the same.
For seeds, most seeds we want to
place very shallow right below the soil
surface. The rule of thumb is three times
the width of the seed.
The trick is to get good soil to seed or
soil to root contact.
So that when you start to water the soil
it keeps the new roots moist so
they can get established and grow quickly.
We put most vegetables in two groups,
cool season vegetables and warm season
vegetables.
Cool season vegetables can tolerate some
frost but only a few will tolerate very
cold temperatures below twenty degrees.
Some examples of cool season vegetables
are broccoli, lettuce, peas, radishes,
carrots, beets, pak choi, and onion.
Warm season vegetables are sensitive to
frost.
Below freezing and they can't live if the
temperatures are below freezing.
Some examples of warm season vegetables
are tomatoes, peppers, watermelons,
zucchini, cucumber, basil, and beans.
Because warm season vegetables are
sensitive to freezing temperatures they
can only grow in what we call our frost
free period.
Which along the Wasatch Front extends from
the beginning of May to the beginning of
October.
You can see the frost free period
highlighted in orange on this calendar.
You can also notice that our cool season
vegetables can start to be planted earlier
in March and can extend growth into
November.
This chart shows when you can start
seeding or planting different vegetables
along the Wasatch Front.
This table can be found online at
garden.usu.edu in our gardeners
almanac.
For each vegetable there is a days to
maturity or days to harvest number
given on the back of your seed packet or
on the plant tag.
For this black beauty eggplant it says
we can harvest it in eighty days.
You can use that to figure out how long
it will take to harvest and also make
sure you have enough time in the growing
season to get your plant to mature.
That eighty days given on the plant
tag is fairly accurate however plants can
only grow fast when the temperatures are
right.
So in general the days to harvest is a
little bit longer than you see on
the plant tag, just because some days
during the growing season are cool and
you can see on the graph on the right that
if the temperatures are too cool the plant
can't grow as fast.
You can use this days to harvest or days
to maturity to compare different varieties
to find one that's earlier maturing than
the other.
When it comes to soil, not all soils are
created equal.
Here's some pictures that are gardener
sent me of an experiment that she did with
different soil mixes in her raised
bed garden.
On the left, the raised bed was filled
with Mel's Mix, Mel's Mix is recommended
in the square foot gardening book.
It's a third vermiculite, a third peat
moss, and a third compost.
In the center, she omitted vermiculite so
the bed is half peat moss and half compost
And on the right she mixed 30% compost,
20% peat moss and 50% of her alkaline
sandy soil from her yard.
You can notice that the plants on the
right are a lot bigger than the plants in
the other boxes.
The reason for that is that soil which is
comprised of sand, silt, and clay is
better at holding water and nutrients than
peat moss and other soil media that's
common in raised garden mixes and potting
soil for containers.
Compost is a great way to improve not only
your raised garden soil but the soil
already in your garden.
When you add compost or organic matter,
it will break up clay soil to make it
drain better and will help sandy soils
retain water and be more fertile.
Organic matter or compost is anything that
was previously living, such as, grass
clippings, leaves, composted yard waste,
or manure.
We recommend adding about two inches
per year.
So that means pilling about two inches
thick on the soil surface and then working
it in with a shovel or a tiller.
While you don't need fertilizer to grow
a plant and get it to produce vegetables
when you add fertilizer you'll find that
your plants get bigger and put on a lot
more fruit.
On your fertilizer bag you'll see three
numbers. Those three numbers represent
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium.
Nitrogen is primarily responsible for
making the plant put on lots of leaves.
Phosphorus is great for fruiting and
flowering. And Potassium promotes
roots and strength.
Nitrogen is the most water soluble of the
nutrients, which means that it doesn't
stick around for very long so we have to
replace it every year.
So when should we fertilize?
It's good to fertilize a little bit right
as you're planting and then because
Nitrogen is so water soluble you can side
dress or add a little bit more fertilizer
one to two more times leading up to
fruiting.
Refer to our USU fact sheets and the
fertilizer bag label for specific guides.
To side dress fertilizer simply apply it
to the side of your row of plants as you
see on the image on the right.
You can also get liquid fertilizer that
you can mix up in a watering can and
simply water in.
For most vegetable gardens you need to
water about every three to seven days
depending on the soil type.
Sandy soils drain more quickly so you
might need to water a little
more frequently.
Clay soils hold on to water really well
and it's easy to over water.
Also if you're using a mulch like the
picture on the bottom left,
I've added a thick layer of leaves
to my garden here, which keeps the water
in the soil so I don't have to water as
frequently.
You can see where I've cleared the leaves
away that the soil is very wet underneath.
The saying goes with weeds, weed early and
weed often.
Controlling weeds when they are very small
is easy by pulling them out or using a
simple weeding tool.
Once weeds get big they're harder to
remove.
The picture on the bottom left, shows
a large garden where pre- emergent
herbicides are used.
You can use pre-emergent herbicides that
are either a granule that you spread out
or a spray.
After your vegetable plants are
established you can apply that
pre-emergent herbicide and it will stop
any weed seedlings from germinating.
You can also stop weeds from growing
in the first place by using a thick layer
of mulch.
You can see on the right a thick layer of
straw in our path way that keeps weeds
down.
For more help on weeds find our common
weeds of the yard and garden guide book
which can help you identify weeds and
teach you how to control them.
If you find some bugs are bugging
your garden, here's a few tips.
The middle picture on the bottom shows
a big pile of aphids on the underside of
a leaf. Aphids are a common pest in the
vegetable garden but are not too hard to
control.
What you can do is simply wash aphids off
with a heavy jet of water. This gets them
off the leaf and more spread out so that
the predatory insects in the environment
can catch up with them.
Lady bugs and lady bug larvae as seen on
the picture there eat aphids and so
they'll catch up with them and take care
of them.
You can also reduce pests in the garden by
controlling weeds around your garden to
remove the habitat of those pests.
Also when you diversify your planting and
plant flowering plants, you'll attract
beneficial insects and predatory insects
into your garden.
Another trick I use is to use row cover
during the early season.
Which you can see on the picture on the
right.
A row cover cloth is specifically designed
to lay over the top of seedlings and
vegetable plants to protect them from
cold temperatures and it can also serve
as a pest barrier.
To keep slugs and beetles and other
pests out.
When you use this your plants are allowed
to get a little bit big under there and
then when you remove it when the
temperatures get a little bit warmer,
than your plant is a little bit larger
and can withstand some feeding from pests.
For more tips on how to control pests
in the garden go to utahpests.usu.edu
Here's an example of more fact sheets that
we have online that show you how to grow
different vegetables in the garden and
control pests.
We also have gardening books and several
gardening apps for your smart phone
that can help you identify weeds and
quickly pull up resources on growing
vegetables at home.
I would also encourage all of you to
visit our eatable demonstration garden
in Kaysville at the USU Botanical Center.
We have vegetables, berries, tree fruit,
and grapes all growing there and you can
stop by and learn about different
varieties and you can also do some
taste testing.
Thank you for your attention today, I hope
I've shared some good tips with you and
I wish you a great gardening season.