Successful Fall Gardening Tips! - #29

In this episode, Eric Rochow, from Garden Fork, is teaching us how to get our gardens ready for the Fall. If you're a newbie to gardening, there are some guaranteed tips to help you have a successful garden this fall. He's also share the proper way to prepare and plant a garden bed.  Catch Eric on the Garden Fork YouTube channel. 

Got a question or feedback? Email me: serena@thriftdiving.com. Remember to follow me on Instagram @ThriftDiving to stay connected!

Projects Mentioned

• BEFORE & AFTER: Shady Side Yard Makeover 
• I Planted a Blueberry Garden

Products Mentioned

• Row covers (for keeping plants protected from insects)
• BT (a natural caterpillar and worm killer)
• Fedco carrot seeds
• Geotextile fabric (for blocking weeds)
• Spade shovel

Podcasts Mentioned

• Successful Gardening Tips for Spring! - #4

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Serena: Eric, it is so good to have you back. I know we were speaking, probably back in the spring. And we were talking about some gardening tips and I wanted to tell you, you know what, those row covers that you recommended for kale and things like that. I took your advice. I never used row covers. I ordered them. I probably didn't put them on properly, but I just literally covered all the kale.

I'm not seeing the caterpillar activity, but I'm seeing the holes. It has salvaged my kale. Usually at this time of the year by August, it's just all caterpillars and there's nothing to eat, but we're actually able to go out there, pull the row covers off and eat.

So I wanted to tell you, thank you for that tip because I actually used your tip. 

[00:00:43] Eric: They're hard to find in the store. Like if you go into the agricultural store, they'll look at you like you're from outer space.

[00:00:49] Serena: Really? 

But like market gardeners use them, but you can buy them online. And they come in different weights.

[00:00:57] Eric: A really thick one is it's just, the fibers are spun thicker, but you need a light one. Just be careful. You have to take care of it, like in the fall, just roll it up on a cardboard tube. And then store it somewhere. Cause the fall winds will beat it up and break it. But if you store it nice, it will last a bunch of years.

[00:01:15] Serena: Can you wash, it because I've noticed when like the leaves and just other debris has dirtied it up. Can you wash it out first? 

[00:01:24] Eric: You could lay it on the ground and just hit it with the hose. And then just let it air dry and then, roll it up and put it away.

[00:01:31] Serena: Yeah. I just wanted to follow up with you on that, because like I said, normally at this time all the kale is gone. Like there's nothing to eat. And when I go out there now and I'm snipping away leaves, I'm still seeing things grow. We have tons of kale, so I was like, I got to tell Eric, thank you for that tip.

[00:01:46] Eric: You can actually use the row cover to extend the kale season into, to the point where it's snowing. 

[00:01:51] Serena: Really? 

[00:01:52] Eric: Yeah. I mean, I mean, you can just let the row cover lay on the leaves. If they're really sturdy plants or you can get these little metal, it looks like coat hanger, wire, and it's an arc.

And so you can build a little tunnel and then you could just tuck it with some stones or brick around and that'll extend the kale season. Kale will grow in the it's, it doesn't die, but it will stop growing in the snow. But then the, actually the kale sweetens up even more as it gets colder. So it's kind of a multi-use piece of fabric.

[00:02:20] Serena: That is amazing. Yeah. And that's what I was going to ask you because when I put the row cover on, I literally just threw it on there and they were just little babies and then put some garden stakes around it, so it didn't blow away. But that's the question. I didn't know whether I should just leave it on there or if I should do those little arches and sort of make that tunnel.

[00:02:40] Eric: If they're not like falling over from the row cover, I wouldn't, I mean, if it, if you get a big snow, the row cover with the snow on top could crush the kale, but it just depends on how much time you want to spend. You can even just go get sticks in the yard and, you know, make a, make a little frame, you know, like a rectangular frame, don't have the sticks, stick up through the fabric, you know, sticks and like, uh, you know, just out there.

[00:03:06] Serena: Okay. I'm going to do that because I just I've been amazed that we've been able to eat kale for this long in the season, and it's not been completely destroyed by caterpillars or having to spray it every single week every time it rains. I think we had talked before about using BT and that works pretty well if your kale is uncovered, but the problem is then the minute it rains, you have to go back out there and spray it.

[00:03:29] Eric: Right. And it's one more thing you got to do, which I can't stand. So the fabric is very passive, you put it up once and it's done. 

[00:03:36] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. Now, would this be a good time for people to start kale? I mean, if even if you haven't had it during the summer, can you start kale now and have kale throughout the fall?

[00:03:46] Eric: Down where you are, yeah, I mean, I'm up in New England. You can eat kale when it's this big or this big. So if you've got some kale seeds laying around, throw them in and see what happens. I mean, I'm all about, let's try this and see what happens. So... 

[00:03:59] Serena: So what are some other things that people can do to get their garden ready for the fall? Because right now, what I've got of course is the kale and my peppers really didn't do too well. And I think it's because I moved everything to the back of the yard. I had these garden beds. Right that I built a few years ago when they were in a nice, really sunny area, but I'm getting this huge shed at 16 by 26.

[00:04:23] Eric: I saw the she-shed, yeah.

[00:04:25] Serena: Super excited about that, but because they have to bring the trucks and everything in through that part of the yard, I had to move them. So I didn't use those this year. So everything's in the back corner where there's not a lot of sunlight. So I'm thinking that I'm going to just leave everything in the garden.

 But is there anything that I can do to the garden, right now in order to continue it into the fall? I mean, will the peppers grow at this point? They really haven't grown. I see the little buds where, you know, the little flowers where they want to come in, but they just never took off. So I don't know if maybe I should just leave them, pull them up, plant something else for the fall.

What would you recommend? 

[00:05:01] Eric: I would yank them. Peppers need heat. They need heat and long sunny days. 

[00:05:06] Serena: Okay. Yeah. That-- I can tell! 

[00:05:08] Eric: I'd put lettuce in. 

[00:05:09] Serena: That's a good one because that does well in the fall, right? 

[00:05:11] Eric: Yeah. In the spring and the fall. I mean, lettuce doesn't like heat. Everyone's got a cardboard box of seeds laying around and even if they're a year or two old, just put them in really thick and you know, it seems like most people's gardens, there's a lot of empty real estate in the later part of summer. And you can just fill that in with what stuff like lettuce. 

You can actually plant lettuce under your kale in the middle of summer, or like under your basil or something, because it shades it. 

. Yeah. 

[00:05:39] Serena: There's so many things I don't know about gardening.

I usually just put whatever out there and whatever grows, grows and whatever doesn't does it. I don't spend a lot of time planning it. 

[00:05:48] Eric: Yeah, our friend, Erin, The Impatient Gardener who has the YouTube channel is the planner and you and I are not, which is just fine. 

[00:05:55] Serena: Yeah. I think I get so bogged down by projects that I'm doing in the inside that I don't spend a lot of time on the outside.

The problem is that I want to have this robust garden, but I feel like if you have this robust garden, it takes a lot of time and attention. And the times when I've planted things, and then I'd never go back and spend any time, de weeding or, really tending to it, cutting off the blight from the tomatoes, maybe a month or so into the garden, it just looks, it looks horrible.

So I like things that don't require a lot of effort for me. That's why the row cover was great this year, because I could put it out there, and then when I'm ready to eat kale, just go snip it and go back inside to do whatever I do, but are there any other, really low maintenance things that we can grow for the fall, aside from the kale and the lettuce. 

[00:06:43] Eric: You can try carrots.

It's kind of a gamble, but, you have to have. Pretty loose, deep soil to get away with it. Um, but there are some short season carrots. Fedco Seeds has some really good ones cause they're in Maine. So they need a short season, but down by you, you have a longer season. And also the hardware stores, they sell their seeds at like 50% off, starting in the middle of the summer.

So you can grab stuff. . And then planted in the fall. Also sugar snap peas grow really fast and they are a cool weather crop. And you can eat them right off the vine. 

[00:07:15] Serena: Ooh. Okay. I'm definitely going to get some of those. 

So I wanted to talk a little bit about garden beds. The reason why I was thinking about this is because I recently put in a garden bed and I don't know what happened, but I forgot to put down weed block.

And so I just started dealing with these weeds that just keep coming up and coming up and coming up. So I wanted to talk to you about the proper way from start to finish. What's the proper way to put, a garden bed in. And is this time of the year, the best time to do it? Or should you wait until spring?

[00:07:45] Eric: I think the best time to do it is when you have the shovel in your hand and you have the time. Yeah. Cause if you guys put it off, it's not going to get done. At least in my brain. 

You have to think about the shape of the bed first and what people will use, either spray paint and draw it on the grass, or they'll take a garden hose, decide, the shape of the bed.

And then they just, you can just let it sit there for a day or two or a week and think about what it looks. Or you might have already been thinking about it, then I would just start. I'm a big fan of, instead of the, weed block fabric, is cardboard. 

[00:08:22] Serena: Now here's the thing about the cardboard though, because when I did the fire pit, I did this really nice fire pit in my backyard.

Oh my gosh. I think it's got like 2 million views, which is crazy. There was a lot of people that had commented, you never want to put cardboard down because it's going to draw termites to your house. That's a food source for them. Have you heard anything about that? 

[00:08:43] Eric: No. Termites can tunnel underground hundreds of feet, but there is so much organic material already in the ground. I don't think that cardboard is really going to invite them. Termites like, damp wood and I've had termites in my previous building here in Brooklyn. We had termites and I got a crash course in them and they will travel from your building to the next building and they will tunnel through the dirt to get there.

I mean, I get the same kind of thing in my videos. They're like, oh, you shouldn't do that. Like I put wood chips on my vegetable garden beds and people are always screaming at me. And yet the science says that it's perfectly fine to do, but there's this thing in people's heads, that you shouldn't.

So I ask him, is there like an article from a university you can cite or a state extension service you can site and they, then they just don't answer. But no, the cardboard will not attract termites. If you have a dead tree in the yard and it's laying in the ground, it can get full of carpenter ants or termites.

Um, so you want to get that off the ground. 

[00:09:45] Serena: I did a really interesting for people listening that want to listen to the interview that I did.

There's this guy, he actually is my pest guy. He's from, Bug Boys. Yes. Oh my gosh. In that video we talked about termites. We talked about bedbugs. I mean, I've never seen a bedbug infestation the way he has put it on his channel. And I made the mistake of watching it right before I went to bed. I was like, what did I look at that like--

[00:10:12] Eric: and then your legs start itching. 

[00:10:15] Serena: I couldn't get it up out of my head. I couldn't get it. And that was one question that I forgot to ask him about the cardboard, but since we were talking about it, it just brought it to mind.

 Now do you think. The cardboard works better than the weed block or just that it's free. We usually have shipping boxes. We can just put it down and still get good results. 

[00:10:33] Eric: Well, there's two things. There's the weed block you could buy at the orange or the blue store, which I think is junk. I made the mistake of using it around my blueberry bushes and it starts kind of sticking up out of the ground. It breaks down very quickly. Yeah. Um, I like cardboard for killing grass, to create a bed. 

If you want to create a bed where you know, you're not going to plant somewhere and you don't want anything to pop up, I would use what's called geotextile fabric, which I don't know if you've ever been in like a greenhouse, a commercial greenhouse, or a nursery.

It's this woven plastic sheeting. The threads are about 16 inch long. You've seen it once you, I could send you a picture and you go like, oh, that that's that stuff. That stuff is bulletproof. It's very hard for plants to grow through it and it allows water to percolate through. If you're got to plant an apple tree and you want to just a thing of wood chips around it, I would use geotextile fabric.

But if you're going to plant a garden bed and you're going to have chives here and then a blueberry bush over here, I'm a big fan of cardboard, a double layer of cardboard will kill all your weeds with the grasses and crab grass and that. It won't kill like Virginia creeper. And then it just kind of breaks down.

You don't have more plastic in your yard. You do have to, I mean, any garden bed you're going to have to weed unless you use the geotextile fabric. 

[00:11:48] Serena: But how do you prevent the weeds from, well, I don't know if you can prevent them, but because even if you do the weed block or the cardboard or the geo-tech You're still going to have weed seeds that are going through the air, right.

So you're going to have to still go around and pick because they're going to grow from the top, not necessarily from the bottom. My fire pit, I mean, it looked amazing for many years and it still looks amazing, but just recently I had to pay and I feel embarrassed even saying this, professional landscapers to come and deweed, my entire yard. The fire pit area, the garden beds.

And they brought in, some mulch and things like that. Eric, it had grown so out of control. You know, you had the cicadas in your area, right? Did you get to cicadas? You're in New York.

Yeah. 

[00:12:34] Eric: Yeah. Not too many, but they're here so-- 

[00:12:36] Serena: Yes, we had tons of them. I was definitely afraid of even going outside. It made me realize how much time I actually spent in the yard during the spring and summer, because my yard had never overgrown like that. So the fact that I just wasn't out there, I wasn't doing anything.

I wasn't de weeding. I wasn't even just walking across the path. It just grew out of control. It got to the point where I needed professional help. Yes. I had to bring in professionals. And I think it was like, oh my gosh, it was like $660, which was insane. But when I started thinking about the time that it would have taken me to do the same thing, I just decided I'm just going to pay someone to do it.

I could be doing something else with my time. And I felt so guilty as I saw the men out there working hard with their shovels. I was like, Serena, you are not a good DIY buyer, but you know, what can you do? Sometimes you get a call-in help. 

Okay. So let's walk through this. So creating the shape with either spray paint or a garden hose and then putting cardboard down. So if you've got grass in that area, put cardboard down to kill the grass and you can just leave it there and then start your bed. Now, let me ask you about the shape of garden beds, because I know this is where I struggle a little bit.

 Are there any rules to how you shape your garden bed? What are the guidelines that you follow when putting in or deciding on the shape of a garden bed? 

[00:13:56] Eric: I make sure I can get my lawnmower around it.

[00:13:59] Serena: Oh, that's a good one. 

[00:14:01] Eric: If the curve is too tight, you're going to have to go back there by hand and with your trimmer. 

[00:14:06] Serena: Oh, that's a good one. I didn't even think about that. So basically, you don't want any tight tight corners, because then you're going to have to get the weed wacker and come out there and finish off that section.

So you just try to keep things as smooth as possible, just a little gradual curve. Okay. 

[00:14:24] Eric: The other thing I do, before you even lay in the cardboard or your fabric is when you have the exterior shape of your bed. I dig a trench, with a straight flat metal garden what's it called the shovel? Yeah, that's the word shovel. And you're essentially digging a kind of like a V trough around the new garden bed. And that keeps the grass from creeping into your garden bed because grass grows by seed, but also grows by rhizome. So, and also like if you have like raspberries or blueberries nearby, they can pop up as well.

But if you dig this -- it's essentially like a moat, it will keep a lot of that stuff from creeping across and growing up into the raised bed. 

[00:15:07] Serena: Oh my gosh. I had no idea. 

[00:15:09] Eric: And it also, it's kind of a cool look. Erin from The Impatient Gardener, I think she has a special shovel just for that. I could be wrong.. 

[00:15:16] Serena: Okay, so I'm going to look that up.

 And then how much soil do typically, use, I mean like how many inches. I think sometimes I tend to be very skimpy on the amount of soil that I put down because I feel, I mean, part of it is because I, I only have a minivan and there's only so much that I can transport at one time. But the times when I've actually used a nursery, it's been helpful to at least with mulch, just say, hey, I'm going to put a tarp in my driveway or in front of my house.

And just come and just dump. And they're usually pretty good about, you know, if you tell them what size of the area that you've got, they're pretty good about calculating how many cubic yards that you need. And to me that's been helpful. Especially when I was doing a garden beds, back before they got crazy several years ago.

And I think I even did that. No, for the fire pit, I actually went and bought individual bags of pebbles. That was, that was horrific. I will never do that again. Cause I think I had like 30 bags and I had to lug it all home. So whenever possible, whenever you can get a nursery to deliver that stuff, I would highly recommend having them do that. It just saves so much energy. 

[00:16:24] Eric: The irony of the delivery is that delivery usually costs more than the stone or the mulch, but, you know, you're, you, a truck is very expensive to license and ensure and run. So, yeah, you can combine to think about all the things you want mulch for, and then just get a giant load of it.

But on the other thing is if you're putting down cardboard, take all the tape off. The plastic clear tape, because that doesn't break down. And I've a couple of times, several times I've been digging a hole and a bed that I had cardboard underneath and I pull up tape. 

With at least on the east coast here, we're getting these invasive bugs that are killing a lot of trees. We're losing the Ash trees up here. When an ash tree comes down, if it's along the road, the town has a crew that does it, but if your neighbors are getting a tree chopped up, getting rid of the chips is a pain for them. Mm, if you're, down the road, you can just say, hey, would you mind dumping those in my driveway? And, you know, throw them 20 bucks or something, but the worst they can say is no, and it's free mulch. 

[00:17:24] Serena: Yeah. I actually did that once when I, I think this was a couple of years ago when I was putting in my blueberry garden.

I think we were doing a Troy-Bilt collaboration. Yeah. And I was collaborating with, Emily, I believe. And she said, well, hey, you're getting that tree in your backyard cut down. Why don't you just have them take the mulch and put it over in your blueberry garden? And I was like, Hey, that's a great idea.

I didn't do that this time. I should have, when they took the pine down because three weeks ago, the site where I'm going to have my shed, I had this huge pine tree cut down. Yes. This huge pine tree cut down. Initially they were just going to take a few of the branches. But when you look at the cost of removing some of the branches versus having the whole tree removed, it was only a few hundred dollars difference.

So I said, just take the whole tree. But when they were taking all the wood, I saw all the chippings and it just looked like a hot mess. It didn't look like a nice clean pile of chippings. I said, you know what? I'm just going to let them take it. I'm not even going to keep it. 

Okay. Is there other tips that you would recommend, like in starting your, garden bed. Those are good tips, making sure that you've got the little moat, the little V-shape along the edge because I didn't know that. But to get best results, like what are some other things people should do.

[00:18:36] Eric: Think about how big the plant is that you're putting in, because when you put it in, it's tiny, but it's seven years. How big is that thing going to be? We're running into that now because we bought what we thought were semi dwarf apple trees. And they're not, they're 35 feet tall now. 

[00:18:52] Serena: Oh my gosh.

[00:18:53] Eric: And my wife loves them. So I can't chop them down. I was going to cut them up, you know? So you just have to be careful what you're going to plant, because it will get big. There's a lot of stuff you can drop in the fall. Also the plant centers drastically cut prices on plants after the middle of summer, and you can get bushes and stuff cheaper.

You just have to make sure that the bushes aren't root bound, because when they've been in a container for too long, like the roots can get circular and you can kind of help with that breaking the roots and pulling them out, but you can get some bargains in the latter part of summer and in the fall, if you're thinking about plants, established plants.

[00:19:31] Serena: Yeah. That's good to know. Now what about in terms of placement? Let's say you do have a tree that's going to be or a shrub. That's going to be larger than the others. Are there certain places where you should put that so that it looks better? I'm thinking about the side yard that I did, this was another Troy-Bilt project and I bought an azalea.

And of course I worked with Emily, but she had laid out a really nice drawing of what I should be planting and where, and it always seemed like the largest thing needed to be sort of in the back.

Right. So the biggest thing that your plantings in the back, and then all the other small ones are just decorating. Do you always have to do groups of three and five because I didn't necessarily follow that planting rule. But what's the rhyme and reason to size, placement, numbers, groups? 

[00:20:16] Eric: I think it's whatever makes you happy. The heck with the numbers, I think. I'm like, I just put in there what makes me happy. Like, we have a bed with a bunch of bee balm or Monarda in it.

And I didn't really care how many, it just comes back up and it looks great. You know, if it's like a specific plant, I guess odd numbers seem to work better. And it's like a specific decorative flowering thing, but you come to my yard, it's chaos. I just don't work that hard on it. Cause it's like there's golden rod.

There's something always blooming that makes everybody happy. I would say if you're this bed, you're building is near or next to the house, I would not put anything tall next to the house because it holds moisture against the wall of your house and moisture and houses don't mix. That's when you start to get things like termites.

 If the soil over there is moist if you have a wood-sided house, it gets kind of punky and rotted, you can get termites over there. 

[00:21:12] Serena: That's a good point. Yeah, that brings up something that, again, someone had commented on something that I did.

It was in the same area that I was working with Emily, but she and I did one side and several years before I'd done the other side and I planted like three boxwoods. And I didn't know, and I wasn't even thinking of it, honestly, how far from the house I should be planting this and I tried to place them so that it was like centered in the garden bed.

But when someone looked at it, they said, you know, Serena, you, you kind of planted those a little too close to the house. They should have been out a little bit further. And when I look at it to me, it doesn't look like it's too close, but is there a rule of thumb in terms of how far to plant things from the house?

Or is it just, like you said, relation to the size or maybe the root? 

[00:21:56] Eric: It's relation to the size. Like we have a bunch of daylilies in the bed, up against the house and I laid down two feet of geotextile fabric and then stone. And then it's the garden bed because the daylilies kind of lean, you know, they get big and they spread out and we have a wood clapboard house.

That's like, it's just not good to have moisture. We want, you want air flowing through there. So yeah, you don't want leaves of the plants touching your house. Be it be vinyl or wood or brick. Just moisture and houses do not mix. And also think about like, if you're planting a little pine tree, that pine tree is going to get big and then it's going to shade the bay window near where you're planting it.

So I always try and think about, I'm trying to get all the trees away from my house. 

[00:22:43] Serena: Yes. Yes. I feel you in that. When we moved in here, we had tons of trees surrounding this area. We live on a treelined street and these are county trees that are on the street.

So they're not ours. We can't cut them. But in the yard, in the back, we had two large sugar Maples. Well, when we moved in, it was in December. Well, the leaves are gone in December. And I remember, I was like, oh, this house has a lot of sunlight. I love it. Well, let me tell you, Eric, when those leaves grew in, In, April, it was like, my house was a dungeon. 

And I remember going through this period where I just, I hated my house because it was this time of the year. It was so closed up and so dark. And, the 10 years we've been here, we've since cut those two trees down, one was cut I think it was last year.

That's the one where I was working with Emily. And she said, take all those chippings and put it in-- so that was recent. So that was really in the last couple of years, but it's done wonders for opening up the house so that there's a lot of sunlight that comes in. So you're right. You have to think about this.

You know, my husband says he wants to get like some, some sort of fruit tree. He doesn't even know what kind, he just says some sort of fruit tree. Oh, we should put it here. I said, well, you know, we do have this, this huge shed that's coming in the back. So we got to see what that's really going to look like and where are you placing this tree?

Because it's going to grow. And if we end up blocking the kitchen light again, it's not going to work for me. Like I cannot block-- so when you said that you're trying to get rid of the trees that are close to your house, I completely get it. I feel like for me, I love homes that just have a lot of sunlight, a lot of natural light.

It makes me happy. And when I am walking through the neighborhoods, like when my morning walks, I see some homes where some of their windows are completely blocked by trees. And I say to my husband, who does that? Like he said, well, some people love it. Who? Who loves living in a cave, but I guess everybody has their personal preferences, but you're right.

You have to think about those things and how this is going to look, and how it's going to affect the sunlight. And whether it's going to create moisture, you have to know those things. So planning it out and paying attention to the longevity of the tree will help you with knowing where to place it.

 Those are all good tips. Any other tips that you have for people putting in a garden beds or starting gardens or anything specific you're working on you want to tell people about 

[00:24:58] Eric: Don't overthink anything and you can always redo it. You know, you're going to need something to do next summer.

[00:25:05] Serena: It's true. Right? You could always pull it out and put it somewhere else. 

Well, let me ask you that. Let me ask you that question. How careful do you have to be when let's say you plant something and you're not liking it and you decide next season or two seasons, you want to move it. Is it easy to do or are there certain considerations you have to keep in mind so that it doesn't die?

[00:25:25] Eric: Well, it's better to move it when it's dormant. Uh, you know, dig it out in the fall or think it out in the earliest spring, but you can move it in the middle of the summer. If you move in the middle of summer, you got water it a lot and try and get as much as the root as possible. I actually even cut back the limbs because you've cut a huge amount of the roots.

So you have, so it can't keep up the root, those roots can't supply all that, all the leaves. Nature is going to fill the void anyway. So you might as well move your plants around and put them where you want. 

[00:25:54] Serena: Yes. You know, when we had the tree, people come in to cut that huge pine where the site is for the she-shed.

I had a fence there and I had two grape plants and one of them, I just had them transplant it into a different part of the yard. It immediately looked like it was dying. And I thought, okay, like how can this be? I thought they'd know what they're doing, but I think you're right.

That nature is just going to take over. I mean, they, they replanted it and I didn't give it extra water. I probably should have. So do you think that it'll come back next year ? Whatever grapes were on there, they were not ripe, but it it's almost like it hastened the ripening of the grapes. I don't know what that was about.. 

[00:26:35] Eric: When a plant knows it's dying, plants job is to reproduce, to produce seeds, basically. When a plant knows that it's stressed or it's dying, it will bolt, like lettuce when lettuce gets too hot, it shoots up and puts his flowers out because it knows it's dying and it wants to get its seeds out before it dies.

So that's probably what the plant was probably in shock and it bolted 

[00:26:58] Serena: Oh, but does that mean that it's going to be dead for next season? Or do you think it will--

[00:27:03] Eric: I'd have to drive down to Maryland and see, but 

[00:27:07] Serena: You're always welcome! 

[00:27:08] Eric: When you transplant, you have to water a lot, like, you know, every other day or every three days, just for, a couple months let it get established. 

[00:27:16] Serena: See, that would have been good to have talked to you before, because then I would have been watering it every day.

I don't think I, I don't think I even watered it. And we had, I mean, now this week here in Maryland, we've got just tons and tons of rain. But at that time when they transplanted it, we didn't get a lot of rain, so I didn't even go and water it. That's so bad of me. , 

There's a danger of over-watering too.

So that's why I said like every other day or something. So you don't have to be mud. 

So. Well, we'll see if it grows back, but the good news is that if it doesn't grow back, I know where I can go and buy another one. I'll just pull one out. And those things, I didn't really do anything to the grape plants.

I mean, I just put it in the ground and like you said, nature took its course and it just started to grow. So yes. So where can people find you? 

[00:28:01] Eric: Uh, just go to YouTube and type in Garden Fork. And then, uh, I also have a podcast, the Garden Fork Radio. You can hear us talk about what we hope are interesting things there.

[00:28:11] Serena: How often do you publish, once a week?

[00:28:14] Eric: It's usually once every two weeks right now, just, regular work is kind of overwhelming. So-- 

[00:28:19] Serena: Yeah. What's your regular, you mean regular work for Garden Fork? Or is, is there other work that you do? 

[00:28:25] Eric: Well, I'm a landlord and yeah. But I also just working on the building and working on, I also run a website, you know, the website, it's just a hot, I'm a hot mess.

So focus is an issue for me. 

[00:28:38] Serena: I hear you. I hear you. You know, it's so funny because the people that are closest to me know that sometimes I get these ideas, I get really excited about things. And then it's all I want to talk about and everything else that I've been working on, I just lose focus on it.

And I just want to focus on that one thing. And my one thing that I wanted to do with this podcast is that, and I mentioned this in my podcast every week is I want it to be consistent. So January, I think I released four episodes in January. And then my goal was every week, every Friday, I want to have an episode available and I'm so proud of myself, Eric I've actually done it.

So this is Episode 29. I know it's, it's been amazing. And I've actually created a schedule for myself just last week. I said, every week I want to know exactly what the podcast is going to be about and I'll properly plan. So I feel like if I can tackle this, then I can move on to the next thing.

Maybe have a YouTube video every week. Maybe you never know good luck with that. Serena. I've never been able to be consistent with that. 

Okay. So people can reach you at Garden Fork you've got your podcasts. Check Eric out. I tell people this, whenever I'm talking about you, I love your videos. They are so fun to watch and sometimes you just show up in the weirdest places and you'll be on the ground next to your dog speaking up to the camera and yeah, it's like, it's just a feel-good channel.

So for people that want to listen to you talk about gardening stuff and just other stuff too. Cause you talk about a lot of things. You can definitely check Eric out there. 

Okay, Eric. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us and we will see you maybe on a future episode or maybe you'll invite me to yours. 

[00:30:11] Eric: All right. I'm here. I'm right by the brick wall here. Okay. 

[00:30:15] Serena: All right. Thank you.