Successful Gardening Tips for Spring! - #4

In this episode, Eric Rochow, of Garden Fork, is teaching us how to get our gardens ready for the spring. If you're a newbie to gardening, there are some guaranteed tips to help you have a successful garden this spring and summer! Catch Eric on the Garden Fork YouTube channel or at GardenFork.tv. 

Transcript

Serena: [00:00:00] Eric, thank you so much for talking to me today. This is officially Episode 4 of my podcast, my new podcast. 

Eric: [00:00:07] Yay. I'm happy to be here. This is fun. 

Serena: [00:00:10] Yeah. I think I've been on your podcast now for, I think this might be two--two or three times, right?

Eric: [00:00:16] Two. You're an easy guest. I just have to ask you questions. 

Serena: [00:00:19] I know. And normally we're supposed to be talking for  20 minutes and then it ends up turning into 48, 50 minutes. But  you're so much fun to talk to. And I met you--it's probably been, it was April, it was Spring of 2019. I think it was that we met.  Was it April or May. Maybe May. We met up at Troy-Bilt. We've done some work with Troy-Bilt. We're partners with them. And there was this fantastic,  trip that we all had gone on to Cleveland. It was--Eric, it was me, you, and we had probably about three or four other influencers there. 

Eric: [00:00:53] Yeah. Big wheels. 

Serena: [00:00:54] Bloggers, YouTubers. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And we got to--

Eric: [00:00:57] I did not realize Cleveland was so interesting. 

Serena: [00:00:59] I know! I had no idea. They took us on this tour and I'm like, man, I think I could live here in Cleveland. The only thing that I noticed is that there wasn't a lot of shopping. There was a lot of food, a lot of good food and a casino, but I did not see any shopping. And I was like, okay, where are the stores? I think they were on the other side. 

Eric: [00:01:20] It's kind of funny because they got us a trolley tour. I'm like, Oh, Oh geez. A trolley tour, you know. But the guy who did the tour, loved the city, grew up in the city, and it was just this infectious love of the city that you were like, "Okay, I'm sold. I'm moving here." 

Serena: [00:01:36] Oh my gosh.  It was so much fun.  You're right.  He loved his job and I think there's a lot of people that you meet in your life that hate their job. And then you meet those people that they just love their job. To the point of where, if you probably didn't pay them, they'd still show up the next day. That's the vibe that I got from him because he loved his job. He loved Cleveland so much and he knew everything about the city. It was amazing. 

So we had met and I really liked you and  I just liked your vibe. You were just interesting to just be around. You're funny. And it comes through in your channel. So, you know, you've got this YouTube channel. How long have you been doing Garden Fork? 

Eric: [00:02:12] Probably at least 10 years.  I can't remember when I first started, but it's at least 10 years. 

Serena: [00:02:18] Do you have a blog as well, or just a YouTube channel?

Eric: [00:02:20] Well, I have a website. Yeah, a blog for, the podcast and the YouTube channel. And then just stuff that I think is interesting and I post on there, but, um, I used to work in film and television. I used to do commercials and work on some TV shows and movies and things. And I always wanted to have my own cooking show, but not starring me.  I wanted to produce it. 

And we would pitch the cable networks because we had some contacts in the TV world and we made these kind of a couple of different shows like a pilot, a low budget pilot. And they would be like, "Oh, this is brilliant." We were like this, um, but you don't have a name attached to your show.

I'm like, "What do you mean?" "Well, you don't have a famous cook or star or actor. It's just you." 

I'm like, "Yeah, it's just us." And they were like, "Yeah, that won't fly." 

Serena: [00:03:16] You're like, "What, I'm not important?"

 So then I discovered the internet and you could put videos on the internet. And there were a couple of the first cooking shows on the internet that I'm like, okay, I'm sold.

Eric: [00:03:30] And then I realized I should just make the show myself, because I couldn't get anyone to work with me. So, and that's our Garden Fork started 

Serena: [00:03:37] who did you ask? Did you look for people? 

Eric: [00:03:40] Friends of mine, you know, "Come on, come on. Let's do this thing!" Yeah. 

Serena: [00:03:44] I think you do a fantastic job on your channel.

Eric: [00:03:48] Thanks.

Serena: [00:03:49] You really do and  first of all, I know you, now that I've had a chance to spend a few days with you in Cleveland. So I do know you in real life. But just in watching your YouTube channel, I feel like you're a friend. And just the way that you present your content. I mean, sometimes I think one video I watched you were--the video was down on the ground and you're just kind of popping in from the side, "Hey, today, we're going to be like cleaning up these leaves or we're going to be doing this."

And it was just fun.  I'm just hanging out with Eric, for just,  eight minutes or however long your video is.  I definitely think people would enjoy watching you, but, what I'm really interested in is your gardening, because I just started this garden. I guess it's been a couple of years.

I decided that I was going to build these,  garden beds. And it's so funny, Eric, because I didn't even know about companion gardening. I literally just went to the store and bought a bunch of stuff that was already in pots that I could just go home and plant and I just stuck it in there. And I was like, "Yes, I started a garden!" And I had no idea what I was doing.

Before you know it, there was caterpillars everywhere. And  this is a true story. I didn't know that, the little  "pretty white butterflies" coming to visit your garden, you don't want those. And so I was actually trying to get them to the garden! 

Eric: [00:05:03] Yeah. They're called cabbage loppers. Yes, cabbage loopers.

Serena: [00:05:07] And I didn't realize, and so there were so many things that I didn't know. So what I wanted to talk to you about today is what should people know before they start gardening, before they start getting into  trying to put a garden together?  What do they need to do? How do they navigate this?

Eric: [00:05:23] Start small. There you go. Thank you. 

Serena: [00:05:27] Okay, well, that was today's podcast. So, start small with Eric. 

Eric: [00:05:31] I think the biggest problem is, and I still do it, is you get these seed and plant catalogs in January , it's kind of like when you go to Costco and you buy the case of Reese's peanut butter cups, you know, you're in over your head, you know, you bought all these seeds or you bought all these plants.

And at the end of the weekend, you're desperately jamming stuff into the ground. I am not very good at planning, as we all know. Someone who really is about gardening is Erin Shannon from the Impatient Gardener. She has a YouTube channel too.  It's called the Inpatient Gardner and a website.

But I still think I do what I call "chaos gardening," where it's not all going to look proper. Uh, you know, my neighbors might not like what I think are plants and they think our weeds, but, I think you should focus on find something that you were-- like, I was really into coneflowers, echinacea purpurea, purple coneflowers, for awhile.

And so I was starting them from seed and you had the freeze the seed in your freezer and all this. But then I got overwhelmed. So start small and then go bigger. And I would suggest for vegetables starting with a raised bed, rather than trying to rototill your backyard.  I think you can do that if you want to go bigger, but a simple raised bed, that's four foot wide by maybe 10 foot or 12 foot long.

It gives you a structure. And especially if you have bad back or bad knees, it's much easier than crawling on the ground, but it allows you a defined space. And then you can fill that. And you'd be surprised if you have a local botanic garden. They probably have like a outreach education department, or they probably have something on their website about what grows well in your area, or just ask your neighbors.

That can be a dangerous one, because some of those people that grab onto you and won't let go when they start talking. Those are some gardeners I know, but, and then go from there. I would start with plants you buy at your  local garden store, rather than trying to start everything from seed.

Serena: [00:07:37] Yeah.  The first year that I did that when I built the garden beds, I bought a lot of kale and I don't really remember what--oh, kale and tomatoes and the kale actually did pretty well, except for the caterpillars. I didn't realize that it was going to be such a problem, that they were just going to come in abundance and eat everything up.

But once I figured out what was going on, there's natural things that you can spray on here, then the kale started coming back and it was amazing. Even just focusing on that one thing like instead of me trying to grow everything at one time, I really just focused on the kale.

I mean, the tomatoes, I didn't have to do very much for them. I did kind of trim them back. You know, they get--what is it called? Blight. Is it blight or bligth? 

Eric: [00:08:19] Blight. B-L-I-G-H-T. 

Serena: [00:08:22] Okay. So yeah, so I did make sure that I was trying to, keep the blight away with them, but I really just kind of focused on the kale and was out there every week, spraying it with this stuff, it's called BT. 

Eric: [00:08:35] Yeah, it's great. , it's a naturally occurring. It's a microorganism that is dormant, almost like a yogurt starter, and you spray it on your plants and then caterpillars ingest it. And the Caterpillar intestine is the perfect incubator for these microorganisms that then multiply to the point that they make the caterpillar explode.

Serena: [00:08:59] Oh, they do! When I would go out there, I would see  little brown ones. Like they're all shriveled up and I'm like, "Yes, it's doing its job!" But the thing is you have to apply it, reapply it when it rains. I was very diligent about making sure every week or if it rained, I was out there spraying it and, we were able to enjoy the kale, let's put it this way-- I slacked off. I had tomatoes, little small cherry tomatoes, that were laying in the soil because I wasn't out there picking them. 

Eric: [00:09:29] That happens to everybody.

Serena: [00:09:30] I let everything go to waste though. I just got so busy. How do you go about maintaining your garden? I know you're saying start small, but let's say you start small.

You're comfortable with that, but then you start to expand a little.  What is your schedule like to make sure that you're out there every day,  deweeding or whatever, like, how do you manage a garden of  a medium size. Let's say, medium size garden beds?

Eric: [00:09:55] I just use a lot of garden hacks. I actually spend--I don't spend more time there. I spend less. Now it's very efficient time. So the one thing you want to look into for vegetables, a lot of insects will lay their eggs on young vegetable plants. And then it's a month later where you realize, "Uh-oh, what is this?" And then you're spraying it. You're trying to treat an infection instead of preventing the infection  from the get-go.

So there is a product called floating row cover, which is a--it looks like a spun bonded polyester. It looks like a really light bedsheet and you can look through and it will--water can go through it and air can go through it, but it's very light and billowy and you put in your kale. And as soon as the kale sprouts, you lay this over the top of the kale and kale is strong enough that it can push up this lightweight fabric, but it keeps the cabbage looper or other insects from laying their eggs at the base of the young plant.

And we send that cabbage moth over to your neighbor's garden instead. 

Serena: [00:11:07] So the kale will grow through it? 

Eric: [00:11:10] Well, the row cover is so lightweight, that it just pushes--kale's quite robust. It just pushes the fabric up as it grows. 

Serena: [00:11:18] Oh, so it's like under a net?

Right. 

Gotcha. Oh my gosh. I think you just made me the happiest woman in the world.

Eric: [00:11:25] You can buy it in different weights. So, depending on how robust your plants are. 

Serena: [00:11:31] Oh my gosh. You just seriously, you made me so happy because -- I had gone away on a trip  and of course my husband was not tending to it cause he's busy.

And when I came back, Eric, there were so many caterpillars that I pretty much had to just almost trash the entire kale. Like I couldn't even pick them off because there was so many, and it was so disappointing because it was just such a waste of all this amazing kale that, you know, ended up just becoming--

I don't wanna say garbage because I'm sure I probably threw it off to the side, or I don't know what I did with it, but I couldn't eat it. But knowing that I can get that and just have it grow underneath of this thing to just keep them out. Oh my gosh. You just, you made me so happy. Thank you for that tip. 

Eric: [00:12:12] What you have to be careful of is it's like a white blanket, but even though it's reflecting light, it does transmit a lot of sunlight, but it can overheat your plants as well. And kale likes a cold, cold weather, lettuces, mustards, cabbages, all that stuff that we use in our salads, like cooler weather. So you can also burn it up.

But the cabbage looper over the summer at certain points laying its eggs over the middle of the summer, it's growing at the end. It's going to lay its eggs in the leaf litter somewhere for next year. So, you don't have to have the row cover on the whole time and a fairly robust kale plant or whatever can fight off a lot of caterpillars.

And then if you notice some, you can go back to the spraying every week, but you didn't have to spray from the get-go. You actually might have to start spraying in the middle of the summer or something like that. There's another thing that I saw. I've never used it, but I've seen a couple of catalogs where it's a white plastic butterfly on the end of a flexible wire that you stick in the ground and it bounces around in the air.

And I've heard that some moths and butterflies are territorial. And I think this product was for cabbage. I think the same moth goes after the kale. If white, the white butterfly boss come over and they already see these moths over there, they won't go over near that kale and lay the eggs. I could be completely wrong, but I saw that in the catalog and I'm like, it's a very passive way of you not having to do anything, yet keeping the bugs off your plants. 

Serena: [00:13:50] Oh, that's a great tip. I'm going to have to look that up. I'm willing to do anything. Now let me ask you this. So, I've not done anything in my garden. I don't think I even cleared it out when everything died mid-summer. What should I do now? What should we be doing now? There's nothing there now, but just weeds. What do we do next? When do we start? Do we turn the soil? What do we do? 

Eric: [00:14:14] Well, I'm all about what's called a "no-till garden" because basically the worms and other organisms in your soil have built a strata basically in your soil. And they, like worms, essentially have a tunnel up and down in your soil. And if you turn the soil, you've just ruined their house. And what they're doing is they're taking leaf litter from the top, chewing it up and then bringing some of it down into their home, this tunnel basically. And so they're creating this great biosphere, so I never turn the soil.

I just add to the top of the soil. And I'm a big fan of either shredded leaves from the fall or wood chips. And there is a controversy about what chips--you'll have to watch my video about it. But people say that they will deplete your garden of nitrogen, which I say is no, but you'll learn all about it.

And how's this for driving people to my YouTube channel, but basically wood chips that you get from the local guy that drops your trees, he's always looking--he or she--sorry, is always looking for somewhere to dump wood chips. 

Serena: [00:15:32] Oh, that's a great tip. 

Eric: [00:15:33] In our town, the town chips  a lot of trees from the roads and they have a pile. You just drive up there and you can fill up the back of your car with them. So  I would do that, but,  anything you can do to improve the soil without turning it. So, I use a timed- release organic fertilizer, so I will sprinkle some on the top and just leave it there. And with the, either snow melt or spring rains, that we'll drop that down.

The soil will start to absorb that time-release fertilizer. And I also will, I'm kind of guilty of maybe leaving up my tomato cages and stuff like that. And if you still have dead tomato plants, you should throw them out rather than put them in your compost because tomatoes carry a lot of fungal diseases that can transfer to the soil.

And so you want to get those out of your yard and if you put them in your compost, you're going to bring those pathogens back. Maybe that's the wrong word, but organisms and fungal spores back into your garden again. 

Serena: [00:16:41] We get tons of leaves all, all year. I mean, all season long, even after you cleaned them all up.

So I know that I could. Go suck up some leaves out front and shred them all up and put them in there. Okay. So that's what I'll do. Now what are the things that people generally have a good time growing? I mean, I know for myself, tomatoes have been super easy, but are there other things that are pretty easy for beginners to grow without a lot of knowledge, I should say?

Eric: [00:17:10] Oh, I have one more idea. And we'll talk about what's easy to grow.  If you are not averse to it,  especially is in a raised bed is in the fall or in the winter, you can lay down black plastic and you can reuse this plastic, you know, for several years. So I don't feel too bad about it, or I might find some plastic someone's throwing out and it will warm up the soil earlier and it will kill all the weeds.

And then don't you pull it off and all the weeds are Brown. Don't pull the roots out, just cut the dead weeds off at the soil level, because if you pull the weed root out, you're again, disturbing your soil strata.  So you can do the same thing, wood chips too. If you've dumped wood chips on top it'll it'll, it'll squash out most of the weeds and just leave them in.

They'll die out. And then when you're planting seeds, just pull the wood chips aside, if you're doing seeds. If you're doing plants, just pull the wood chips aside, put the plant in and to put the wood chips back. 

So if you're putting the wood chips, you would put the wood chips and then like you could, could you do the wood chips now and then do that plastic?

Yeah. Either one, because that'll, they'll both help heat up. They kind of do the same thing, just a little differently. There they're smothering weeds. They're keeping seeds from being exposed to light. And then if something tries to grow through wood chips are pretty darn heavy  for a little plant to push through and plastic, but just can't push through.

Okay. I love those tips. Let me ask you,  what's next for your channel? Tell everybody why they should come in and see you and subscribe to you, of course. 

They should come watch because,  I decided to be,  a little more inspirational.

I have a, how to channel.  It's basically the imperfect how to is what I call it. You know, it's like, it's all about, "Hey, let's try this and see what happens." And done is better than perfect. 

Serena: [00:18:58] I think why we can, I just say, I think that's why we get along, because that is my channel too. There's no project that goes flawlessly.

Like it just always has something happened. And like I said, we just leave it in there. It's good for people to know what can go wrong. But anyway, back to what you're going-- you're going to inspire. 

Eric: [00:19:15] Well, I just think, you have to like the videos that you're making and sometimes I get too pedantic cause I want to get the point across about, you know, how to use, like, I'm learning more about welding now, you know, but I also want to have a message.

I'm trying to combine a message of, try and be nicer at everybody and give everyone a break. And also do good things in life, kind of pay it forward. You know, karma is boomerang, but also kind of showing people, inspiring them. Instead of saying, I can't do that to say, well, I could at least try and do that.

Serena: [00:19:51] Yes. I think that's important. 

Eric: [00:19:53] Just don't understand why people-- I'm like, my friends can't do-- I'm like you just do this. And they're like, "Well, I'm like you just start!" 

Serena: [00:20:03] I would say that I'm the same way. There's a lot of projects that I've done on my channel in my home that I had no idea. Like the time that I built my bathroom vanity from scratch, I had no idea I'd never built anything.

I really expected that it would fall apart shortly after I installed it. But it's been two and a half years now. And actually, no, I think it's been three years and it, it it's actually held together, but I didn't know that unless I started. And so I like that idea of just giving people that encouragement, that, you know, what, you may not know how to do it, but just at least try, just at least try.

And if you mess up that's okay. Because the next time you do it, you're going to have learned that lesson. And now there's something else that you can learn when you keep going. 

Eric: [00:20:46] Yeah. It's like, you know, just start-- Oh, and to start, start your garden, one of the easiest things to grow are string beans.

Serena: [00:20:54] Really?! 

Eric: [00:20:55] Get the pole bean kind. The bush bean kind  take up too much space. You can have a much more efficient use of space. You make pole beans, build a simple trellis. And you can build them out of string you buy the hardware store.

And my favorite pole bean is called rattlesnake. It's an heirloom one, called rattlesnake. 

Serena: [00:21:14] Rattlesnake. Is this something that you can get at Home Depot or do you have to specially order it from a catalog?

Eric: [00:21:18] I've never seen it in a big box store, but there's a seed company in Maine, it's a seed cooperative. So it's not owned by a big corporation. It's called FedCo, really weird name, but F E D C O Fedco Seeds. And it's like the super hippie people of seeds, but they have amazing heirloom seed varieties.

Um, and one of them is rattlesnake pole beans. The flip side of that is that hybrids are not bad seeds. They actually have a lot of disease resistance bred into them. So, those are not a bad option. Like when you're going to the store and you wanting to buy a tomato plant, I would buy a hybrid with a lot of disease resistance, like a Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes is perfect, you know. 

Serena: [00:22:03] That's good to know. And so all of  these tips are on your channel and I have one other question for you. And you're the one that told me to ask this question because people like to know. What is your favorite book? Are you reading anything right now? 

Eric: [00:22:18] Well, no! 

Serena: [00:22:20] No books?! Well, let me ask you this. Do you--

Eric: [00:22:22] I know, I have a book and I'm reading it, I just  had a little mind freeze there. It's called Own Your Weird.

Serena: [00:22:29] Own Your Weird. I like that. 

Eric: [00:22:31] I think that's the name of it. It's called Be Your Weird, Own Your Weird. There's a guy who started out  not knowing what to do in life. And he has-- this his second book. His first book was self-published and he, when the, when multimedia video content was first starting on the web, he started this thing called I'll wear your t-shirt and he started it, I don't know what date, but the first day he would sell the sponsorship of that day's video for a dollar.

And every day the amount would double and you know, all these websites are desperate for content, so they picked up on it and then, you know, you could buy it for $1, $2, $4, $8, $60, you know, so the math, the numbers got pretty big, pretty weird, pretty, pretty quickly. And then he went on to create some other strange marketing programs, where he changed his last name to the, your corporate slogan for a year. He did that as an online auction, but, um, 

Serena: [00:23:31] Oh, that sounds fun. 

Eric: [00:23:33] I always have, felt a little weird. I've always felt like I wasn't normal. And, I just saw this book and I'm like, okay, I'm going to buy that book. It's called Own Your Weird, it's by Jason Zook.

Serena: [00:23:46] Z O O K Zook.. Okay. I'm going to have to look that up and I will have a link to that in the show notes. And tell everybody where they can find you. 

Eric: [00:23:53] Just type Garden Fork into your search engine, and I show up, I have a podcast called Garden Fork Radio. I have a YouTube channel called Garden Fork, and then I have a website, it's GardenFork.tv.

Serena: [00:24:03] And how often does your podcast-- how often every week is it? Every week? And is it published on a particular day? 

Eric: [00:24:10] Ideally, yes. But life gets in the way. Three or four podcasts a month and three or four videos a month. I've started to be a little nicer to myself and not force myself to get a video out every Friday. If I'm late on it, I'm late on it and that's it. 

Serena: [00:24:29] Well, I feel you. I published yesterday and it had been two weeks since I had published anything. And it's really funny because I went to write an email-- I guess this was last week where I, was just going to send an email because it had been a long time since I'd sent an email.

And it was about some cleaning stuff that I was doing. And I thought, wait a minute, this would be a great blog post. And so I stopped writing the email. I go into my blog and I just start writing this, inspirational post on the struggles that I've had with keeping my house clean. It's been something that I've struggled with for a long time, but I miraculously had been able to do it in my kitchen for the last 17 months.

There was a brand that was coming to visit me and do some video work. You know what it's like when company is coming over, you start freaking out, you look at all the projects that you haven't done. And you know, for me, it was like the kids' hand prints on the walls, everything.

And so I started going crazy cleaning my kitchen. Really the whole house, but the kitchen was just a mess. And I thought if I could just keep this kitchen clean. And so there's a book that I really love. It's called The One Thing and--

Eric: [00:25:40] Oh yes. 

Serena: [00:25:40] Do you know that book? 

Eric: [00:25:41] Yeah. Yeah. I haven't read it yet.

Oh gosh, you have to read it. It's amazing. He basically says whenever you're trying to improve something, ask yourself this focusing question. "What's the one thing that I can do, such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary?" And so I started asking myself that question for the kitchen. What's the one thing that I can do to keep this kitchen clean, such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary. And I figured out that not allowing dishes in the sink to sit was the one thing that I would do. And so, yeah. And so for 17 months, that is the one thing that I've done in my kitchen. And what I learned is that it started with just that one thing. But because I focus on that one thing, keeping the rest of the kitchen clean was, easy.

I didn't have to really think about it because I knew that, okay, well the sink is clean. So of course I don't want this cup sitting on the counter. So, you know, I started putting that away. Well, I don't want this mail here. The sink is clean. So I just started focusing on that one thing.

And it's amazing how, when you focus on one thing and we could even do that with our YouTube channel, with, our gardening, we could say, well, with our gardening, what's the one thing that I can do to have a successful garden. You know, maybe it's every day come out and, you know, de- weed it for 10 minutes or just tend to it for 10 minutes a day.

You know? So I think if we just live our life in that way, where we try to focus on the one thing that matters, it makes everything else easier. It's the one book that's made the biggest difference in my life. And I don't remember how I started talking about that book.

Because we're talking about books, but  definitely read it. Next time I'll talk to you, I'll say, did you read The One Thing? Anyway, it's been so much fun talking to you.

I'm going to definitely be looking at your channel, seeing what else you seem, what else you do. And as the spring is coming, I'm sure I'm going to have some gardening questions for you. If anybody has gardening questions, they can always also, again, find Eric, on his blog, you can go to Garden Fork Radio to listen to his podcast and definitely subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Serena: [00:27:41] All right. Thank you so much guys. And I'll see you next podcast.