Well, I was able to get out in the garden because it dried up and These things here take a heap of patience, but I actually made some Brussels sprouts this year yeah, I did too and Let me try to pick them off so everybody could see them a little better there. One of the first years I know of that I have made a real good crop of Brussel sprouts planted them in the fall Memory serves me best I planted them about the end of October We've been eating Brussels sprouts for about two weeks now But they're just getting real good maturity size them on the bottom is getting a little too big there. Yeah, I probably let mine some of them go a little too long I kinda, well you can't you can't have it All you can't have it all so that that's a good full stalk of them right there. Yep. Now you go in your fancy grocery stores or whatever and they'll sell them You know on the stalk like this you buy them in a bag at the grocery store then pick them off. For our vegetable bags a lot of times We'll just leave them on the stalk But we may pick them off this time because I need to cull a few of them there. I was not very Confident that they were gonna do well because they usually need a good shot of cold To trigger sprout production, but they did okay And so we've got those. I'll let you hold that one and then this one is that's the Jade cross. Yep Now this one is the Red Bull Brussels sprouts now I got some that are a little more full along the stalk like that But I just grabbed this one it was easier to cut this morning Mine are fuller than that one is mine aren't as spaced out as that one Is there however I will tell you the Jade cross seemed to have done a little bit better to me than the What's the name of this one the purple one, Red Bull. Red Bull the Red Bull didn't perform and growed side by side Didn't perform quite as well to me as what this one did. Yeah. This is more of a specialty Variety that's more of a straight production variety. Hence the differences there, but these red ones are nice and pretty and If you was doing a farmer's market or something this would definitely be eye-catcher. For the last two weeks just About every meal we have had Brussels sprouts. Now the way we like to prepare them our favorite way of preparing them is put a little olive oil on them, cut them in half, put them in a cast-iron frying pan, stick them in the oven. Mm-hmm, that works. I'll tell you a neat way to do them buddy of mine That was a chef and or still is, would do them like this in his restaurant So he would take a baking sheet and he would slather slather the bottom up with bacon grease Yeah and he would lay the Brussels sprouts on top of it and he'd take one of them stoned baking pans or something heavy and Sat on top of it. So it kind of smoosh them down a little bit and put them in the oven and it basically Fries them almost in that bacon grease there. Some people would say that would be lard, lard Yeah, either way, it's good good that way. It's gotta be. Gets any better than what we've been eating I don't know that I want any of it we love them. Yeah, they are If you never had homegrown Brussels sprouts, they are quiet delicious. I don't know that I would recommend that for the beginner gardener It is somewhat challenging to grow sometimes but I've do fine with it. Now I could have babied these more and I could have actually cut the Took the tops off them probably got some more even sprout production there I it was one of them things I planted and then I kind of got a little discouraged with it and I kind of just didn't full with them and then next thing, you know turn around you got something there which is always a good little surprise. So I've got those I got to uh. You didn't punch pinch the head out of those. I didn't like I said, I did mine, I should have. I did. There's one little sprout at the top right there. Yeah, I should have pinched the head out of them that does help Kind of even everything out a little bit So we've finally dried up and it don't look like we're gonna have any rain again for the next four days or so So I'm itching to plant a lot is fixing to happen around here a lot is fixing to happen. I'm gonna plant squash probably Today or tomorrow Followed by some beans and I'm gonna be getting some corn in the ground pretty soon. Amen, me too. The commercial guys around here have already started putting peppers in the ground. Yes they have now they grow them on black plastic Which is keeps the soil a little warmer so they can kind of get away with that but yeah A lot of people getting ready to plant I've had several people email me Talking about they itching to get some corn planted, can they go ahead and plant it and I'd say Sure. Yeah. Zone 8, yeah, absolutely. A lot of people do some fancy garden plan and I know you've done that this year you sit down at nighttime and draw off what you was going to do a lot of Other people do that. I have done it in the past but didn't do it this year, what I do is Bed time planning. So I lay in the bed at night We get ready to go sleep figuring out what I'm going to do this is what I'm gonna plant I always have an issue every year what I'm gonna do corn wise because I like to grow all these different stuff. I have not grown Hickory King in awhile so I'm gonna grow me a big patch of Hickory King You're not gonna grow any sweet corn? I am gonna grow some sweet corn but I'm gonna grow me a patch Hickory King field corn. Well you know the good thing about them triple sweet sweet corn varieties and we'll do a whole show on sweet corn coming up is that They don't require isolation. So you can grow some of those, you know alone, you know in close proximity to your Hickory King you don't have a lot to worry. I for one and know some other people out there Probably not a lot But I prefer one like to eat field corn on the cob when it gets ready and they got a small window there But taking that field corn and roasting it when it's on the cob man Yeah. There's a little window there where you got to get it just right. Yeah, it can get too starchy on you. Yeah, yeah, but I love that field corn. To get it just right so I got hold One of our customers, I think his name's Brian Basso, he's he's it's Brian he lives around close I think he's in Enigma or somewhere around here. Anyway, he comes by here about every Friday and He was telling us that we're talking about compost and soil amendments and chicken manure stuff like that and he was telling us that Cotton gin not far down the road from us had some pretty good stuff, and he said it was gin trash and when I hear gin trash the first thing that You know alarm kind of goes off You got to be careful pigweed cause that cotton. I was not impressed when he told us about it I just kind of shook my head and I gritted and everything and he said no you got to understand this is some good stuff. So. So I went down there yesterday and picked up a big load of it and I got three tons pretty reasonable price $18 a ton. I got a big old truckload of it for $50 Which is a lot cheaper than anything else I found Around here as far as good compost goes. And it looked like really good compost they keep it turn they keep the water managed on it the moisture level keep it turned keep and I did stick my hand in It was still just a little bit warm, but it pretty much worked off. Yeah for bulk compost It's some of the best I've seen which is good that it got warm at some point kind of cook those seeds So they even the cool thing is they even gave us an analysis sheet right here And what I did I still got to go get some more. I put a whole ton per Plot in my dream garden, which is a thousand square feet and I put it on there think. You put a ton per thousand? Yeah Now based on this analysis right here. It says For it Says that there's 29 point say 30 pounds of nitrogen per ton of that stuff But since it's organic matter not all of that's available right from the get-go, and I guess that's why they give you this number Right here of 14.8 pounds of nitrogen per ton will be available for the first crop. You following that, yeah, I am I am following that but what they did there it's a 1.48% They just moved the decimal over there, right. Yeah now that's a good bit After I put a ton on there, I kind of look at these numbers in a little detail. That's a little hot But it does it this stuff doesn't smell like the chicken manure. No, but I think you could get by with less than that I didn't say I was I didn't realize it was that hot I should've looked at this in some more detail. Anyway, we're gonna yeah give us We're gonna we're gonna till it in good and it ought to be fine with some corn. Yeah We're gonna talk about squash little later and why you know might not want so much nitrogen for squash Anyway, I'm really excited about this stuff. They got plenty of it I can go get any of it any time I want. It's gonna really help my dream garden This stuff's got potassium in it the phosphorus even traces of sulfur, boron, a lot of micros Really good stuff. And the reason I was looking for something besides that chicken manure in my sandier plots, my older plots it doesn't happen But in that kind of clay or stickier soil that chicken manure Even if it's tilled in good if that stuff gets kind of wet it just gets even stickier and Kind of come become tough to work with with what this is going to do is gonna increase the organic matter in your soil that Chicken litter you're not you're not able to put enough of it down there to have a big impact On your organic matter as you are with this. This is also going to increase my drainage too. Yup. So good stuff all around there and on my squash plant video, that'll be coming out, I think this weekend Will I'll show you some of that stuff what it looks like so excited about that. Let's talk about seed germination real quick So I've had a lot of people telling me a lot of our people we work with on YouTube a lot of our customers Everybody out there has been talking that they say man I planted your seed side-by-side with another company seeds or some big box store seeds and the difference in germination rate is just is and the germination time there's just a big big difference there and I I guess a lot of people just didn't realize they was planting sorry seeds They just didn't they thought that was just normal normal, yeah So it's been it's been nice to hear that. We do take really good care of that It doesn't happen by accident folks We put a lot of work of effort in make sure we're getting fresh seeds and we move a lot of products So therefore we don't have it hanging around we rotate our stock. So just because you get good seeds germination from us don't mean it's gonna happen from everybody else We put a lot of effort in there making sure you get good quality seeds. Yeah We always packing fresh seeds, new stuff and if we did have a batch of seeds go bad, they get thrown away We don't and if you ever Have a problem you can rest assure, you can contact us and we'll take care of you on that I can't guarantee that you we won't never mess up, right. But I can guarantee you that we'll take care of you and we'll make it right. That's right. That's right I did a video earlier this week on stepping up peppers peppers we've got peppers growing, I just planted some more earlier today and So in that video I explained that we try we'd rather not step up anything if we didn't have to The one thing we do step up is peppers Most everything else we can take right from the trays To the soil and a lot of people will comment on a video said well if you got to step up them peppers Why don't you just put them in the big pots to start with? and the main reason for that is space and that heat mat, you know, we only have Enough room for too long heat maps in there and with all the peppers we grow You couldn't get them fit them all on that heat mat So it's advantageous to grow them especially like we did this year in the 338 We get all of our peppers germinated there. Another thing is peppers don't you don't always get a hundred % germination with peppers and So if we start them in the big pots there and we get some that don't come up you can end up with some kind Of wasted. I actually planted some in some 12 inch, some are 12 inch cells that we sell in our seed starting kit I planted some there this morning and put them on a heat mat just to see how they do See how everything turns out and I was looking at some of the germinations on some of those peppers and they were in the 90's 97% so We'll see shouldn't have any problem. To give you an example This right here is sangria watermelons which is the watermelon I'm gonna plant this year and I planted these about five days ago and you can see they're They still coming up, they still popping through right there But for the watermelons, I planted I've gotten pretty much a 100%, yeah, I'd say on that one You still got some coming up close to 95% Yeah, so I did something different this year I'm trying something experimenting trying to figure something out all the commercial growers After they dibble in their potting soil and put their seed down they put perlite on top They use that as a coverage on top of the seed there instead of dusting it with more Pro-Mix. We've always used more Pro mix and they use this perlite, now perlite is a natural products it's classified as Volcanic glass and it's it's mined out of the soil in Certain regions of the world and this stuff here is a major component of most potting soils But they use this perlite on top For the seeds. I've never understood it so I'm gonna test it and see if it makes difference so far I hadn't been able to tell a huge difference out there But if we got any commercial growers out there and you know why the primary reason they use this perlite for top dusting seed I definitely like to have your comments or your insight on that where we could know the only thing I can come up with Is that it's easier for that seed to push through it's very light and porce and it didn't compact That's the major benefit of this perlite it keeps the soil medium from compacting so I think the the being able for that seed to easily push through there to get out is the major benefit, but I'm not sure. That makes sense that make sense. The biggest reason the biggest thing you think about when you're talking about soil seed germination is normally You don't want that seem to have access to any oxygen or any air you want to have full Soil contact and full moisture contact so it doesn't dry out and you have better germination there That kind of goes across the grain a little bit with this perlite because with perlite being porce you're gonna get more air down in there Around that seed everybody does it seems to have worked good so far I don't believe everybody we asked around here They don't know why they do it, they don't know why they do it so I'd like to know why what's the purpose behind it You gonna, we're gonna have a heap of sangria watermelons I mean, I got three of these planted, so I'm getting ready to plant, I'm getting ready. You gonna grow three flats of watermelons? I am I'm gonna plant some 100-foot rows, I'm excited about this sangria it's classified as an all sweet correct? Mm-hmm So I've never grown the sangria. They gonna be bigger than your crimson sweets now Yeah, I've never grown it before so I'm excited, you sit down by the tree to eat one every afternoon, I don't know if you can finish a whole one Oh I can too, I get me a bellyache But watermelon dirt is the next couple of days is gonna be getting ready it's wet now I hope it dries out by maybe the weekend and I can get out there and finish getting it prepared And we got to get our we're doing another big seed crop of Cherokee tans We've got get ready and I got a special winter squash variety lady sent me called Algonquian squash and really excited about trying those. We're going I've had a little bit of issue in the last couple of years with Disease and water level so we're planting my watermelons on new ground. New ground that'll work good One more thing so we had that your little sauerkraut accident the few weeks ago and So what I did was I went and You know how I am you go big or go home I could have bought me a little old crop could of did a mason jar I went bought me one of them five gallon Big old crocks and I had a bunch of cabbage them, yeah them ole big ole cabbage. A bunch of them that I picked before I turned that area in and Had them in the fridge I need to do something all these cabbages so gonna make some sauerkraut and I got some going now I took it easy on my salt I went with Well, I had found online said three Three tablespoons or three teaspoons I can't remember what it was but three Small spoons per five pounds of cabbage now them cabbages I had was more than five pounds But just to be on the safe side on the salt side and went with three per head of cabbage and we cut up I think four heads of cabbage and put in there and My wife got. How long ago has this been? Shoot this was last Friday we did this so it say in two weeks, you can try it should be made. Yeah Yeah, it still got another week or two But it wasn't but a day after we did it I had it was already the water was up There should be you gotta wait on it pushing it Yeah, I got the kit with the weight and the lid and full meal deal. Now I'll try to bring it to the show but that son of agone is heavy Well, bring us some of the finished product anyway, and I if it turns out for you I may have to borrow your your big Doohickey to do it. I wasn't able financially to buy one of them Yeah, so I wouldn't able to do I had to do the smaller ones I'm a do me some carrots in their I wanna try me some fermented carrots And my wife wants to do some pickled onions in there, that'd be good. So we're gonna play around with it and try it out and Get the hang of this ferment kit they say you can take that juice from that making that sauerkraut and And just drank you a little bit of it every day it cure what ails You know in this day and time and I don't wanna get into this very heavy But we're having a little bit of an issue with food scarcity and other things scaring us right now And we worried about being prepared. I can tell you this much I feel as comfortable as anybody out there about having enough put back to take care of ourself Now if it comes down to it, we're all gonna be in lost trouble if things get really really bad But when it comes down to food storage, I just don't panic about it because we do canning we put stuff up we know we have the Talent or the knowledge how to grow our own food. So I feel in these troubled times I fill a little more comfortable than probably some other people out there do It's gonna leave that out there as that and if you are worried right now we all worried a little bit but if you have the Abilities to grow your own food and put your own food up and it takes a little bit off of you there. Alright. Let's move along. Yeah, I was just gonna say yeah, I got plenty to eat in my garden right now We got plenty of seeds. I can plant more stuff now I may have to go down the pond and wash my rear end if we run out of toilet paper, but uh They talking about we're gonna do but besides that We gonna have plenty to eat, we're gonna have plenty to eat. We're going and I ain't got to go nowhere to get it. That's right Alright. So tonight's big topic. We're gonna talk about which is very timely we're gonna talk about summer squash We're gonna leave winter squash out of it for now I think that's a good plan just talk about summer squash because there's plenty to cover there We talk about you know varieties fertilization pest control everything because summer squash for us is what is the first Not really counting potatoes which speaking of I got taters coming out of the ground Summer squash is kind of the first warm-weather crop we like to plant don't we kind of have our own schedule We like to get squash in before anything cause if you got good fertile soil you can start you can have squash Producing in 30 days a lot of times 45, 30 to 45 days according to how much heat you get. Yeah, but pretty quick. Yeah, we like to get those going and turning and it always happens every year those first squash that come in are so good And we do succession planting I had them come in all the way last year to July They're not as good to me if I gorge myself, out on them a few times but those first, three or four harvest we get off those things man I love those fresh squash fresh squash is one of the easiest things grow out there I think everybody should be growing summer squash. Mm-hmm And I had a fellow in middle Georgia was asking you plant squash already and he was up around Perry and I said, yeah I mean we this this is right timing he He had said something about Well ain't you worried what if you get like a late freeze or something, well, if you do you do you just go with it. Well we're gonna plant some more two weeks later anyways, so yeah it's part of our succession thing if you get you gonna get hit every now and then you just yeah you get hit and go on. Yeah you gotta take risk You don't ever get the reward. It's always kind of like a bragging thing around here, who has the first squash. That's right. So squash are one of those things that you need to be, you need have some natural or some Honeybees, you need to have some natural pollinators, but they do take pollination by an insect So we'll plant squash now and then we'll usually get three or four rounds of squash in before the squash bug pressure gets real bad. So we like to succession plant them. Let's talk about different types of summer squash and what we have to offer here And I'm trying to kind of categorize these so I had them sorted out Just a second here we got lots of squash I was back there showing some boys other day how many squash varieties we had. Okay, let's start off. Let's start off with the patty pans. Yep And if you never grown patty pan squash, man These are the ticket they they little got a little more texture to them then a straightneck or crookneck They are a little more nuttier flavor in my opinion now this Sunburst has been a favorite of ours for years, years, and years way before we I plant Sunburst every year. You can't go wrong with this sunburst now last year this I grew this heirloom variety this Bennings green tint and one would think that the Sunburst being a hybrid has a little Higher production on it but I tell you what this Bennings green tint produced, produced and produced. It's a really good one just a little different color on it. They kind of taste the same but that light green color it adds some nice little I've never grown the green tint before I always grew the Sunburst and it makes a wonderful squash for Sauteing because there's no waste there. Yeah. I got a video out there a two-minute tip So a lot of people said well, how do I cook these things? Oh just cut them up little wedges and I could eat a bowl full of them right now make you some onions and stuff in there So those are patty-pan. You'll also hear them called scalloped squash It's always good to have a few of them. Yeah, let me just say this right here about these now You don't want to plant just these you wanna plant these in conjunction with the zucchinis and the regular yellow squash You gonna plant anyway, I've never plant just all this one of these varieties here I always plant my yellow and zucchinis and I plant me a few of these now on them A lot of people make the mistake they let them get big a round as a personal pizza there. Yeah you want about that size right there No bigger than that when you see a bloom on that plant you Be hunting you some squash about a day and a half two days after that. They gonna be about ready to pick. Yeah Yeah, you get in there and get your buckets ready. The the other kind before we get into the more traditional types we've got the eight ball here This is around one this is actually a zucchini. I didn't realize that we call this the eight ball squash, but I'm pretty sure it's related more to the zucchini. These are good, too these are round ones and You take these babies and you just cut them in half and put them on the grill You can stuff them you can do all kind of good stuff with them but I'll really like these round ones as well It's always good to have you a couple of those in there. Now let's get into kind of the traditional the more traditional ones everybody's use too so let's start off with Yellow our straightnecks and crooknecks. So the one Probably the oldest one out there this ole early crookneck squash right here The ole bumpy skin, the bumpy skin we get a lot of people that has asked for this particular squash here thirty years ago this is the only one we knew of, now this one it has a It's not as a bright yellow color as some of the hybrids are it's more kind of Yellowish orange got that bumpy skin on it Granny come by the other day and I tried to to get her on some of these Hybrids, once she said nope, this is the one I like to grow right here, a lot of old-timers when you can't talk them out of that one. So we got that one for those of you who like that old tried-and-true bumpy crookneck squash. Then we got this one, which is a has been around for a while and it's a favorite of many this is your smooth Crookneck, they're called Gentry. This was been around for a long time really good producer on this one These puppies got 98% germination rate So you're gonna get your money's worth out of those and when you plant these things there you get good moisture and good temperature They'll come out of ground in a hurry. Yep in a hurry. So what will do as I show on my video we'll lay that drip tape and we'll just put a seed on top of every emitter and They'll come up in no time. So got the gentry and then we've got an improved Smooth crookneck that's got a lot of disease resistance to it and that is this gold star right here And that's the one old Trav is gonna be planting that's a good one to plant in your succession planting later in the year so if you start out with some of these other varieties and the later you get you want to switch up to some of these varieties that have these disease packages on them because we do notice we Get a little more disease and insect pressure The later we go and then this last one here, which I'm gonna probably grow again and I had a lot of people say last year and this ain't really a word but This was the making-iness squash they had ever seen So a lot of people who was used to growing the old-school crookneck, grew some of this Goldprize Straightneck and I'm telling you this you bout got to back out to pick it every day So had a fella in the seed room the other day and we were talking about squash He was about my age and he knew all about the crooknecks and he was he was on up he was mature And he told me he says you know why the the the grocery stores prefer the straightneck nowadays over the crookneck. I never thought about this there's way less waste with that squash there then there are with the crookneck Yeah, and you can package them a lot easier. You can package them a lot easier They did the the farmers always had problem with those crooknecks the end breaking on them when they was packing them. Right because it's very tender and they just wouldn't straight Just a problem but these this variety right here is your go to variety now and your grocery stores, your commercial guys Not as much waste they pack better Good squash now I tell you what that little crook on the end of them crookneck ones Them little tiny pieces is fine for frying if you like fried squash But that we yeah, we normally plant squash it says 18 to 24 inches on pack I normally do it anywhere from one foot to two foot and just let him sprawl out that way Yeah, but uh that that we had a good time with that Goldprize last year I would highly highly recommend that one Let's talk about some zucchini. We got lots of zucchini. Let's get on these gold zucchinis First got two of these one We had last year one of the new ones so we had this golden delight zucchini last year. That one did really well for us It produces well Big producer and then we got new one called golden zebra Which is similar to golden delight except it's got some white stripes on it So just a little different appearance there if you want something a little more eye-catching and then green zucchini Have to help me here we've got the two Spineless varieties we've got the spineless beauty and the spineless supreme, and then this one called pascola. So now what is the difference between the supreme and the beauty So the supreme has a little more disease resistance to it, this one costs I think a dollar or so more packed. It's just a You know a little more a little more higher quality Breeding went into it then then it's also got 45 days to maturity So it's a early maturity compared to the spineless beauty, which is a 50-day, right. So we grew the I grew the spineless beauty last year and and did awesome with it I really liked it this year I'm gonna try the spineless supreme. I also have this Pascola here. So both of these two have Excellent, excellent disease packages. So this is an OP? No. No, it's a hybrid as well. It's got some disease resistance as well. This one these two were resistant to everything under the moon Those are that ones resistant to most of your common stuff so three good options there You can't really go wrong with either 93% germination rate. Yeah. 98% on this Pascola here. Alright, so we've covered the varieties let's talk about fertilization real quick So I talked about adding in all that gin trash in there The I looked up just kind of a general rule squash is gonna like a complete fertilizer for the most part You know anything that's relatively balanced a 20-20-20, 10-10-10 If your just growing a few squash plants, you can't go wrong with this stuff right here this pelleted hen manure Which is a 5-4-3 this right here, even though it's just 5-4-3 Don't let that that scare you off that it ain't got much in it. This is some powerful stuff powerful stuff. What happens most time with squash is it gets ahead of everybody it's such a fast growing We talking about 45 days almost these varieties from time you plant it to maturity and most people get behind the eight ball on Fertilization you got to have that fertilizer out there when that plant needs it that plant is gonna need it quick because it's gonna grow off quick. Right, so You either wanna put something down at pre plant or pretty soon after that seed germinates now the general rule for squash on nitrogen and then it would everything else will kind of follow that is one and a half pounds of nitrogen per Thousand square feet and that's total nitrogen requirement. Yeah, that's fairly low feeder that would be classified as a as a low feeder in my book. Now, this is this number is is considering you don't have Anything out there so if you grew like a Nitrogen fixing cover crop you take some of that away because if you get too much nitrogen on squash you growing squash plants and not squash. So this is assuming fairly Unfertile soils now if you've got some like I said, you've had a nitrogen fixing cover crop or you mixing in some manure Yeah, or good compost, good compost you can dial that back a little bit so 1.5 pounds of total nitrogen per thousand square feet if We figure that up with our 20-20-20 that would come out to seven and a half pounds of 20-20-20 Per thousand square feet.A thousand square feet in case you don't know it folks is a heaping lots of squash right so you can you can dial that back depending on what you have I normally plant me one row at a time and I say one row I'm talking about Oh, man, 15 to 20 feet at the most at a time with my succession planting So I won't plant me more than one row now let's just say 20 feet in a row at 3 foot. So you talking about 60 foot Yeah, so you don't need a whole lot of fertilizer there. No, but you that holds seven and a half pounds It's better if you can break that up a little bit and spoon feed them a little bit if you can If you plant them in raised beds, which you know squash is fine to grow in a raised bed. Mm-hmm This stuff right here is the cat's meow Incorporate it in a week before you plant do a little side dress after it comes up maybe about 10 days after it comes up That's pretty much all you have to do with this particular one in a raised bed Yeah If you just I say if you growing five or less squash plants this right here And all you got to do like I said just scratch it in the soil a little bit and you're good to go now Let's talk about the bad guys. Disease pest, pest yeah stuff like that so squash and all cucurbits They're gonna be susceptible as you like to say to you powdery. I don't do as well on that word as you did But yeah powder, prone Too right powdery downy mildew is gonna be a problem especially if we have a lot of moisture one way to solve that is to grow some these disease resistant varieties like we had if you live in a humid climate I would certainly recommend growing a disease resistant variety You have a lot of success having healthy plants also helps battle some of that stuff Yeah, also drip irrigation and not having overhead watering on that that helps a lot of rain there's nothing you can do about that, but you can minimize the Exposure to these downy and powdery mildews by doing that drip irrigation putting that water right underneath the plant instead of putting it on the leaf. Yeah because if you if you know what you do and you can mess around grow your squash plant big as this studio right here and Having that drip right there feeding it all is The ticket get the grab those two right there for me. Talk about Disease Control just a little bit. So we have two main products here one is an organic product One is not so we've got the liquid cop and the Monterey Disease Control. We'll be talking a lot about these as we get into Pests and disease season so to say so the liq- both of these are fairly comprehensive Fungicides for your garden, you can basically put them on anything the copper like I said is a Will call a synthetic product the disease control is a naturally occurring bacteria and organic product. Yeah, I will use both Yeah, this product right here also works well has a soil drench and I did this last year never done it before but I made me up a soil drench in a five-gallon bucket and I drenched particularly to my tomato plants and some of my other things with a soil drench and that helps a lot with your root diseases such as pythium and What not there's a lot of them in there and that whatnot disease is bad This right here helps build up some beneficial colonies inside of your root system there it helps fight off a lot of those diseases One of the main benefits I had one of the which he works for Monterey comes by and sees us every now and then And he was explaining this to me one of the main benefits this product right here is soil drench. So which means you could also run it through your injector if you got your drip out there, yeah, out there Yeah run it through your injector and have a little bit of you know, get the jump on them. Yeah a little preventive out there That's not a bad idea at all so we've got those diseases we have to deal with lots of things we can do to kind of reduce that pressure and that on a normal year a Normal year you plant and you hit your timing pretty good on squash that first two or three Crops of squash that you make you're not gonna have to do anything. Right. Your not gonna have any pest problems whatsoever Now sometimes things can happen beyond our control, but if everything works in your favor That is the easiest crop to grow because you don't have to do nothing to it get your fertility down right now those Crops secession planting till you get into the May and June you stressing them out, then you gonna start having some issues especially when you get into July Let's talk about pest real quick now The three main ones you gonna have on squash is your squash bugs when everybody talks about the vine borers Which I don't really have an issue with the vine borers Now pickle worms we did, yeah I do have those. And you know a pickle worm when you see one cuz you go out there you pick your squash You don't really notice it when you pickling them you get in the house washing them off you got these little holes been drilled in there and they just eat in the middle of them and Make you mad, yep might as well through them out. Yep and once you get them pickle worms It's hard to get rid of them because you can't spray that worm if he's sitting inside your squash eating it So let's talk about a little pest control Regime here. You got to start early on the start early on this stuff. You got to start early Especially if you got a history of these problems and you can't no way you're gonna you can't eradicate Squash bugs or vine bores. You can't eradicate them. What you can do is you can minimize or Delay that population boom that population boom is gonna happen sooner or later whether you like it or not for us. It's usually early August when it just explodes and you can't do anything about it, but if you can delay that and Make sure you kill any nymphs Out there any of those juveniles there ain't a whole lot You can spray to kill the adults no you lost a battle once you get to that point But if you can kill those little ones and keep that population At a minimum, you can have some success and there's another thing that I really struggle with Is when those plants get done making get them out of the ground and get rid of them That's right, sometimes you may think I'm gonna get me another I'm gonna get me one more mess off of them maybe next week all you doing is giving those insects a good hotel the Hilton to stay in they got plenty of Food, I mean yeah food there They got plenty of cover to sit there and multiply so you just creating a host for them to live and multiply on. You just giving them up get rid of them just soon as they start making get rid of them and move on Yeah, then old squash plants is but just like a squash bug brothel man, it's hard You don't know you just want to get rid of that thing. So this is this is kind of my Pest control rotation when it comes to squash and cucurbits and I'll mix one of those Fungicides we talked about earlier in every time I spray so I'll spray this BT With the neem oil one week and then I'll spray this with the Take Down the next week So I'm always putting BT and some one of the fungicides in there and I'll alternate this neem oil and this take down. Yeah neem oil also has some characteristics that will help you against some of the mildews also. Right. So that that's a pretty simple rotation here all of these are concentrated It's usually one to two ounces per gallon of water so you can get quite a few sprayings Mm-hmm out of these right here normally on your first one I thought about this again normally on your first crop or two if you plant early like we do you can kind of skimp by and not have to Worry a whole lot about what he just talked about but boy you better get on your game plan is in that third and fourth Succession planting you start getting late, you better be getting on your program there then. Yeah and don't dilly-dally around getting them if you in 8 If you in zone 8 especially an 8B You need to be planting them squash this week or next week getting them in the ground Alright, so if there were any questions or anything? We didn't cover summer squash related put those in the comments below. We'll be glad to get to them on next week's show We do got some questions from last week's show and if we answer your question on the show send us an email to custserv@hosstools.com and we'll send you a nice little prize Yep. So Leonard, you gonna have to help me with this last name, Leonard, I think that's Lavalier. Lavalier that's a pretty last name. Leonard Lavalier wants to know how do you know when the onions are beginning to bulb or when the payoff stage begins I will try growing onions for the first time this fall and do not want to over fertilizer with nitrogen. I've had several people since you since we showed that Onion that I brought on the show a few weeks ago several people been asking well How do I know when it starts bulbing you'll know. You'll see it's just like when them tater plants come out of the ground You'll start seeing that ground cracking around it and if you need to you just go out there and pull a couple of them up and you can see if it's if it's Starting to enlarge there at the base It's pretty obvious, you'll know when it happens And you'll kind of have a feel when that times about to come. Yeah, this year is around the 20th of February, I felt like it was right around that area. It is happening for us. I haven't put any hope you haven't either no I backed off of it I learned my lessons. Alright question number two is from Linda McKeown and she says got any tips on growing corn on a smallish scale Wind has blown hers down the last two years She even planted in the middle of the garden to try to protect it from the wind ain't nothing more frustrating Then have grown you a good Crop of sweet corn and it come a thunderstorm and it blow it over it has happened to me or a hurricane Or hurricane it has happened to me numerous times. Now the wind will I say that wind, the Sun will pull it back up sometimes and sometimes you just have to salvage. It's a common thing that people have that plant small crops of corn now One thing that you can do is to make sure that corn is hilled well and that will help somewhat with that So we hill corn for several different reasons one of them to keep from sucking out but one of the main reasons we do this Is to keep that stalk Supported down at the bottom there. It's hard it's kind of like taters. It's hard to hill corn too much So I like to hill my corn on lots And one of the reason is to help be stable in there and also to cover up those weeds in there smothers them out But I hill, hill and hill them corn. Yeah, and I know she said she's on a small scale But the more rows you can plant side by side the better off you are. The better off you are able to lean on a little bit But Linda rest assure you're not the only one that struggle with this we all struggle with it. Well now we had some well I forget if that was hurricane Erma or Michael we we did we were doing the expo we had crop of sweet corn out there and it was about little over waist-high and it got Just blowed to the ground and then two weeks later come expo time It was standing up, yeah, it will amaze you how it will stand back up. It's a according to what stage it's in if it's in that later stage after it started making corn. It won't stand these heavier Of course, it won't stand back up as easy as it will when it's younger. Yeah I had some that during I think was the same hurricane Some fall corn that was ready ready to be picked and he got blowed over and it was burnt. Yep So the next question is from Ohana Strand It's a winter squash question Travo Can I plant winter squash from the same species Pepo like Delicata and Acorn squash together will I end up with some weird kind of squash or only the seeds from the potential combo? That's a complicated question. That is a little bit. So there's three main species of Squash, summer and winter there's a few oddball ones out but three main ones you got your cucurbita pepo or your c pepo, you've got your C moschata and your C maxima so your pepo is all your summer squash like we talked about earlier your butternut your spaghetti and your Jack-o'-lanterns your moschata or moscato, however, you want to say it Are your butternut, your Seminole pumpkins even like your Cherokee tan pumpkins Okay, and then the last group there the maximas those are like your candy roaster, your Hubbard squash, your kabocha squash. So as long as there are different species that you're planting close to one another You're fine. They won't cross-pollinate. They won't cross-pollinate. The other thing is if you're planting hybrids like I do so, I'll plant a Sunburst squash right beside that spineless supreme right beside that Goldprize and don't have any issues with cross pollination If I'm planting all those hybrids so I can plant my Hickory King and then plant me a but it has to be a super-sweet right Next to it. I don't have to worry about cross pollination and you done switched up talking about corn I know but I'm just going back here. Yeah. Yeah, but I can't plant I can't plant Hickory King next to Silver Queen it will cross-pollinate Right yeah, and when we get on the corn show, we'll talk about why those triple sweets are like that it's not real complicated, but we ain't got time for it today. Alright question number four is from Larry Moore He said just cut my taters and half of them had a hole in the center none of them had any signs of rot were all very juicy when cut What would cause the hole in the center and I would preface this I looked his name up and I don't think he bought his taters from us I didn't notice, I didn't notice any ones I cut up having whole. Well, I didn't either but it's not a it's not a genetic problem with the potato It's what we call a physiological, physiological Problem. It's a problem with the growing of that potato So if you do have a hollow heart and that's what they call this right here hollow heart. It's not a genetic thing That's gonna cause a problem if you are planting potatoes a lot of people said it's caused by calcium deficiency I don't think it is I think it's caused by a water problem whether it be too much or a lack of water inconsistent watering or a temperature variation That's very strange or to the extremes will cause this so basically what it is is a stress to that plant at the ideal time Causing this problem of a hollow heart in potatoes. Well, you know inconsistent watering can affect calcium uptake so it could be it could be, it could be a little bit of both there. Yep, could be a little bit of both. Okay, so if we answer your question send us an email to custserv@hosstools.com and will send you a nice little prize. I hope everyone enjoyed the show tonight. Don't forget to Like and subscribe Give us a big thumbs up and if you enjoyed tonights show, I think you'll really like these two videos here. We've got one that I did last year on when to harvest winter squash how you know when they're ready and Another one on Greg's crop of Goldprize squash last year that was really good. We'll see you guys next time.
