Patti Moreno: Hi! I’m Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl.
Mel Bartholomew: And I’m Mel Bartholomew with Square Foot Gardening Foundation.
Patti Moreno: Well, it’s June today.
Mel Bartholomew: June already!
Patti Moreno: June, we are already in June. Our gardens are growing. They’re doing beautifully. We’ve got our vertical supports.
Mel Bartholomew: Right.
Patti Moreno: But you know our plants need a little bit more help.
Mel Bartholomew: They do. Well, I’ve found that eventhough we’ve built the vertical frames and we have the nylon netting with the big openings. And the plants that do grow up will climb by themselves. Now, sometimes they want to go this way and sometimes they want to go that way. So, you got to say, “You’ve got to stay and keep going straight up.”
Now, tomatoes are different because they won’t grab and climb. They’ll just lay flat and try to spread out looking for support. You have to help that tomato plant and guide it. So, you put it through an opening in the nylon netting, bring it back the next week and go like that. And then the next week of that, it just works its way up like that.
Patti Moreno: So, you have to do that throughout the growing process.
Mel Bartholomew: Yes, otherwise, it just keeps growing and wants to spread out.
Patti Moreno: So, we’ve got tomatoes in our garden.
Mel Bartholomew: Yup.
Patti Moreno: But we also have some other things in there. We’ve got some peppers and eggplants.
Mel Bartholomew: Okay. Now, these are not vine crops they are bushes. And they grow fairly tall so shorter varieties, medium and tall ones. Fruit is all different size. But what happens is they grow so big and the fruit get so heavy that when the winds come later in the summer and the rains come, they’ll blow the whole plant over. So, what I wanted to do instead of tying it up, I don’t believe in tying, it takes too much time and you never get around to it and you forget about it.
So, I thought how could we support the pepper plant or the eggplant without doing any work? Now, we could take that same netting that we had vertically and we’ll lay it down horizontally.
Patti Moreno: Okay.
Mel Bartholomew: Now, I put a stake in each corner of our four by four. And then put that netting on, tying it to the stake, pull it nice and tight. And now that netting is right there and you’ll locate the first netting about 12 inches off the ground. And what’s that plant going to do with that netting?
Patti Moreno: The plant is going to grow through.
Mel Bartholomew: Right.
Patti Moreno: Get that support from the nylon.
Mel Bartholomew: Yup.
Patti Moreno: And if you need to add another one, you just go another for that.
Mel Bartholomew: Right, right. You put in maybe three foot stakes in each corner so you could tie as many of these levels in.
Patti Moreno: Got you, excellent! Well, one of the things that I love about June also is that my basil is ready to be harvested.
Mel Bartholomew: Oh yeah, start cutting quite a few of the herbs. And most of these you can just keep trimming and trimming and trimming. Now, there’s a nice thing about basil. When trim off a branch right above a leaf stem, two little sprouts will come out and you’ve now doubled the number of sprouts. So, the mathematical possibilities of that, you just keep trimming and they keeps growing and multiplying.
Patti Moreno: It’s definitely something you have to teach the kids though because I took it for granted that I already knew that when I was harvesting my herbs. And I sent my daughter out to go get some. She brought me the whole plant. Though I had to go back in there and I had to tell her, “No, we want to cut it above at least two leaves.”
Mel Bartholomew: Yes, right. That’s correct.
Patti Moreno: We don’t want to just cut the whole plant up or even pull it from the ground because it’s going to continue to grow.
Mel Bartholomew: Yup. Now here is another secret in your Square Foot garden, take your salad bowl and your scissors right to the garden and create your salad right from the garden. In fact, some people had parties, a salad party where everyone got a bowl and they all went to the garden and they eat, went around and collected just what they want.
Patti Moreno: I love doing that, actually when I have a few friends over and we got a little hungry especially when you’re walking out in the garden, you see all the great food. All of us will get a bowl each and just start trimming. And it’s actually a really good way to teach your neighbors, and your friends, and your family what you’re into and how to do it too. And if they can get a little practice at your house, they might be inspired to start a garden of their own.
Mel Bartholomew: I hope so. We’ve got to spread the word of Square Foot Gardening and get more people to garden. And that’s going to cut your food bill in half too if you grow your own. Most people don’t kind of think of that. So, we want to show them Square Foot Gardening. It’s so simple, it’s so easy, anyone could do it. And we have gardens on table tops of people on wheelchairs can garden. There’s absolutely no reason why anyone, including you, can’t have a Square Foot Garden. So, tune in next month, I’m going to tell you all about corn and a whole bunch of other gardening secrets from Square Foot Gardening.
Patti Moreno: Thank you for watching.
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