transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] To have a good harvest, one must plant good seeds, and must also use the right kind of fertilizer. The carrots have grown large and firm. How good they will taste.

Speaker 2:
[00:17] Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to your number one place for gardening entertainment and gardening news, The Backyard Gardens Podcast.

Speaker 3:
[00:27] News you can use on the gardening tip.

Speaker 2:
[00:31] I thought about that when I was weeding earlier today, so I was really bored. I hate weeding.

Speaker 3:
[00:37] Yeah. My favorite space that collects all of the weeds, we've talked about this a dozen times between the cage baby and the fence. You want to know when it's spring and when things are ready to grow, we have a blanket of every space inside of the cage baby that has weeds. What's that? Four feet by 30 feet. And they're so small now, where basically I can get a hoe and work them up, which I don't typically like to do because all you're doing is pulling more up. But yeah. Weeds.

Speaker 2:
[01:11] Yeah. Scratching them and getting them to the surface helps. Let's put it that way. Excuse me, helps. Whoa. So this is, well, I was going to say this is a little off brand for us, but not really. It's right on, hits the nail on the head. You know, if you are ever wondering, like, are you doing it right in your garden? You know, are you doing everything you can? Well, hopefully we can make you feel a little bit better today. So we're going to be talking about companion planting. Let's just get it out, get it out in the open. Okay. What are your thoughts on it, Batavia?

Speaker 3:
[01:50] Batavia with the Backyard Gardens Podcast? Is that? Okay.

Speaker 2:
[01:55] Yeah, Batavia with the Backyard Gardens Podcast or Batavia with whatever the hell you want.

Speaker 3:
[02:03] I think that it's something to grab hold of. I think, you know, as I go back right in this moment and think back over, you know, the garden years, it's a concept, it's a technique. And I think that there's some level of like, oh, I understand this. Oh, I could do this. This makes me feel like a level of legit. Or like, it makes me feel like, okay, this is a road to success. Personally, well, you have to listen to the episode to understand how I really feel about it.

Speaker 2:
[02:34] Yeah, yeah. I didn't, you know, for me, I think it's a good tool for your toolbox and a good guide. But yeah, you're gonna have to listen to the rest of the episode because there's a lot to be said about that. But before we do that, let's get this out of the way. Good afternoon, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, gardeners and homesteaders, welcome to the Backyard Gardens Podcast. I am your host Ben and I am with my co-host, Ms. Batavia.

Speaker 3:
[03:00] I had a stretch for it. Wait, no, wait.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] Oh, that stretch looked painful, by the way.

Speaker 3:
[03:07] It was, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[03:09] If you'd like to support the show, you may do so by becoming a subscriber, Apple, Patreon. Come check out our website, get all the good stuff on there. We've got seeds, we've got tools, we've got trinkets, we've got all kinds of gardening things. Everything's gardening related and a little bit of honey stuff, just so you know. So check all that stuff out and get the Planter app. The Planter app is a sponsor of the show for a long time. Use the link below. Get yourself a discount so that you can plan. And look, let's just get it out of the way now. If you don't know what you're doing, companion planting, get the Planter app. It's color-coded. I mean, dude, it's color-coded, okay? Kindergarten, easy, color-coded, bada-bing, bada-boom.

Speaker 3:
[03:52] So see if you can remind me to tell you the story about soil and trunk space. Those are your two notes. But I'm in these garden streets now, right? Like places in Chicago are opening up, and there are things to be, like things to look at, things to admire. I was pulling into a parking lot and I said, shoot, because I started to think about, oh, this would be good here, this would be good there, as if it's like a brand fresh new idea. So I went to the planter app and I was like, what was I going to plant here for summer? Because I was thinking I want to plant something different in particular space. Then I went to the notes that I had made, and I'm like, oh yeah, you were going to plant that full bed full of X. This new idea is it's not the plan. So that's one of the reasons why I know that we use it as far as devices differently. I love having the planter app on my phone. Love it, love it, love it.

Speaker 2:
[04:53] Yeah, I might have to put it on my phone. I use it on my tablet and the computer. So, okay, companion planting. So in a nutshell, what companion planting is, Batavia, if I missed something, please by all means fill in for me. But it's a way to manage nutrition, deter pests based on plant profiles, what they require and what they do. They may let a chemical pheromone off to ward off pests. They may consume a pest. It may attract something that consumes a pest. And then as far as nutrition, typically speaking, one would be high nitrogen needs and one would be low nitrogen needs so that it's not competing for that. So that's basically what companion planting is in a nutshell.

Speaker 3:
[05:50] Yeah, it's like you can eat like mashed potatoes and then you can separately eat gravy. But there are some folks that really enjoy having them together. Just came up with that. I feel soup. I'm so hungry. I made my lunch and you were like, oh, I was going to say, you must be a couple of minutes. And I'm like, I could have gotten like four bites of my lunch in.

Speaker 2:
[06:12] So yeah, you should have told me I had to water plants. It was a little bit of a nightmare. Things are getting hot here quick and it didn't work. It's not looking great, but we'll figure it out. It's going to be a hot, dry summer.

Speaker 3:
[06:29] In advance of our average last frost date in Chicago, we got a high of 80 degrees in April. So average last frost date for me in particular, my zip code is April the 17th. So prior to that, we had like definitely six, seven days of like 60 degrees, 70 degrees, but to get to 80. And then the next week, it was like a low of like 35. So Jerry's still out about how true that average last frost date is going to be, about whether or not we'll get frost afterwards. But this is it, man. When I was in the garden streets, the amount of tomatoes I'm seeing folks put in their carts.

Speaker 2:
[07:13] Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?

Speaker 3:
[07:15] Yeah. One little guy.

Speaker 2:
[07:16] This time though.

Speaker 3:
[07:17] A little wise gentleman. I saw, and I learned my lesson like five years ago. Like there's nothing about, there have been plenty of people that have asked me questions when I'm in garden centers. And so I basically don't volunteer any opinions unless someone asks, it's just easy to embarrass yourself. And so he looked and he said, you know, it's a little early. I said, oh yeah, I was thinking that to myself. But then I said, it's very clear to me that you've been growing tomatoes for a while and you know what you're doing. And he said, well, yeah, I have a solarium. Like who the hell has a solarium? He's like, I'm going to put them in there for a bit. Because you know, the real day is Mother's Day. We were a ways from Mother's Day. Let's just say that.

Speaker 2:
[08:06] So yeah, they look good about a month away.

Speaker 3:
[08:09] He said it, I said it, they did look good.

Speaker 2:
[08:12] What's a solarium?

Speaker 3:
[08:14] Like an enclosed structure. Think like greenhouse but smaller.

Speaker 2:
[08:21] Like a cold frame? Like a cold frame?

Speaker 3:
[08:25] No, no, more like I only know about them from plants, which is probably he has it probably indoors, like for his house plants or whatever, kind of create some level of humidity and all. And so he's probably just going to bring them from outside and let them live there for a while.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] Dang dude, just wait and get them. It's a lot of work, but hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

Speaker 3:
[08:49] I hear him, I hear him. Well, you know what though? The trick with that though is, and I think I said something like, yeah, they look good when they first get put out. Because guess what happens when it's going to be 39? Is that particular store going to cover those plants? They're like outside outside.

Speaker 2:
[09:07] Yeah, they're done.

Speaker 3:
[09:09] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[09:10] So, back on subject, which doesn't take much to get us off track. Do you actually practice companion planting in your garden?

Speaker 3:
[09:21] Not very intentionally.

Speaker 2:
[09:25] Okay. So you don't go out with the actual plan to start it?

Speaker 3:
[09:30] I do not.

Speaker 2:
[09:31] Yeah. I don't either, and as a matter of fact, if it happens, it happens. But really the way that I grow now, it's not going to happen for the most part. There is a couple of combinations that I use, one in particular, but that was very misleading at the time as well. So we'll get into that. But we want to go over some examples of what some companions are, because it can be confusing and having a little bit of a guide can help you, you know, at least plan it out to some extent. So we're going to stick to the summer plants though, because it's summer. It's summer growing season. Let me rephrase that. Okay. Oh, I thought you were going to say something. Okay. So let's start with cucumbers. Sounds like a good one to start with. What would you grow with cucumbers?

Speaker 3:
[10:33] So I would for sure grow interesting. I'm looking at the list and I may be hitting many of these notes. I would grow pole beans with cucumbers, and I actually plan on growing corn near, very near those cucumbers and pole beans.

Speaker 2:
[10:58] You know what, Batavia? I like that you said right off the bat near, because what you're referring to is that they're not actually in the same bed, correct?

Speaker 3:
[11:10] Look at you, the Batavia decoder.

Speaker 2:
[11:15] Look, you don't sit across from somebody for as many years as I have talking gardening and not know how to decode somebody.

Speaker 3:
[11:22] Yeah, jury's still out. So the very initial plan for this year was no, they wouldn't be in the same bed. A trellis would separate them. So I'd plant pole beans and cucumbers on one side of the trellis, and the corn would be on the other side of the trellis inside a separate raised bed. It depends on how things go, because that space where I was going to plant the pole beans and the cucumbers, I may end up planting something else there. So I may default, which I've done before, and just the edge of the bed along the trellis, planting those vining crops more so inside of the bed, doing the corn.

Speaker 2:
[11:59] Well, the reason why I bring it up is the question becomes, are you getting the benefits if it's near it and not in the bed? The argument is absolutely yes, but some of it, the argument is no. It depends on what the companion portion of this is. So, I will say, I need to say this out loud. We're using spruce.com as our guide for this episode. And the reason why I want to give that to you, number one, it's a great website. But two, if you look somewhere else, you can find different companion plantings. And that's a real problem. There's not a succinct cohesive list that goes out there floating around. So we're using spruce for this. And some of it makes sense, some of it doesn't. But we'll see as we go through that most of it's pretty good. So for me and my cucumbers, I gotta be totally honest, I'm not sure what I'm putting next to them. And this is one of the times that I would be able to actually use them to my advantage because I'm like you, I plant my trellises right there at the edge of it. So the whole rest of the bed is wide open. And I'm looking at the list here and corn could possibly be on it. No, yeah, corn. I possibly could grow corn in that bed with it. I'll have to see how it goes. Depends on when my onions are done.

Speaker 3:
[13:42] Yeah, put a note around when your onions are done. That's going to feed into some of my, the way I practice or don't practice companion planting.

Speaker 2:
[13:56] Right. So I guess just since if you're doing corn, obviously cucumbers, and we all know that beans and squash go with it, right? I mean, three sisters. So the question for me on this whole, and specifically beans and corn, is what is the companion portion of it?

Speaker 3:
[14:21] Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[14:22] Why is it a companion? Do you have any thoughts about that?

Speaker 3:
[14:28] Yeah, well, I think if we go back to, I don't know that it's from a nutrient perspective necessarily. I think it's more of just functional. So what we read oftentimes is the tall corn plants are used as the structure that those bean, pole beans are climbing on. I mean, when I use, when I say pole beans, it could be beans that you're going to eat dried or green beans, but it's not a bush bean. That's my point. But it's used for that structure purpose, right? So if you can envision where you would plant corn and then kind of planting the beans around it, think about if you didn't have the corn, what would those beans look like?

Speaker 2:
[15:15] So we touched on this in a previous episode, and Batavia, and I never thought of this, but what Batavia said was, the corn that you grow matters. Your sweet corn that you're going to grow and harvest doesn't really work well, but like popcorn and long standing corn, because those stocks are going to be there, right?

Speaker 3:
[15:41] I feel like it's also, I think it's dried beans too. I think that's, when we talk about the core of it, it's going to be dried beans versus green beans. Because if you look at it just for a second, think about you trying to harvest an ear of corn once, what is it, 75 days or something once the sweet corn is ready, and then you have some type of bean vines wrapped around it.

Speaker 2:
[16:03] That'd be a nightmare.

Speaker 3:
[16:04] Yeah. Think about trying to pluck out green beans while you're trying to let the corn finish out. Generally, based on your planting time, I didn't look this up prior, I'd say your corn is probably going to be ready before you get your big flushes of green beans. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[16:22] Well, and one of the other things too is beans are nitrogen fixers, right? So what does that mean? That means that they add nitrogen back into the soil, they produce nodules on the roots that convert the nitrogen from the atmosphere, which is, I believe, correct. Seventy-eight percent of our air is nitrogen, and then they turn it into usable nitrogen in the soil. However, this is something that's really important to remember and a thought to have. How much of those roots do you have to have in the ground to benefit your corn as it grows? That's the question I have. So one bean plant, it's not going to give you much, right?

Speaker 3:
[17:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[17:11] I would think it would be fields of it you'd need.

Speaker 3:
[17:15] Yeah. When you say how much, when you initially said it, I thought you meant like how deep you're planting it, but it's almost like how many plants, right?

Speaker 2:
[17:25] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[17:26] It's pretty classic though, like something starts, there's the origin of a thing. So if you go back to Native Americans that used this type of planting method, and then over the years, we, for lack of a better term, kind of bastardize it, right? We start taking pieces and pieces out of it, even in our explanations of why to do a thing. And it again goes back to, yeah, there's a symbiotic relationship, you know, many, many, many, many, many, many moons ago. But are we doing this method now and really gaining what we think we're gaining from it? Or even do we, again, reason why I liked when we talked about doing this episode is, do we understand what we should be gaining from it? There is something like, do no harm. Like as long as it's not doing any harm, it must be doing some good. I think some people move like that in the garden.

Speaker 2:
[18:20] I had that for a long time, but I got away from that. The reason why I think it's important too, that you brought up the Native Americans is, why did they do it? The Three Sisters Planting Method, it's a Native American tradition. We all know that. What kind of corn did they grow? How did they use their corn? They dried it and then they ground it up. Therefore, we have long-standing corn. Much to your point, why would they grow green beans? They were probably growing dried beans because they'd last and they would all sit there. Then third on all of this is, why were they doing this companion planting? Do you think hundreds of years ago, they were like, if I put these beans here, I'm going to get more nitrogen in? No, they were probably doing it because they're like, these beans are a pain in the ass to bend over and pick. So if I can get them to grow up this corn, then we're good, right?

Speaker 3:
[19:18] I imagine that there was some realization of, oh, this improved soil over time, right? That is a benefit though of taking a method, a technique, and then researching it, kind of get closer to present day, researching it, studying it, because we can say definitively, this is what the benefit is, and then the fine print, if you do it in the prescribed way, right?

Speaker 2:
[19:46] Right, yeah. And so, it's important to remember that 2,026 years ago, they were practicing letting their grounds go follow for a year, every seven years, in order to let it recover and rebound, so they would plant. So, it's been used for many, many years. Back in biblical, it's in the Bible. I mean, the plant is simple, you know? So, it's important to realize that, like, historically, the knowledge has been there. I don't know if it's like, hey, don't plant because it's going to be, you know, we need to get the nutrients back in, or if it's like, hey, just give it a rest. You know what I mean? Just give it a rest and it makes it better. I don't know, you know, and we'll never know what the actual thinking was. But what we do know is it was a practice. And so looking back at how these things are used, I don't like the term and I hesitate to use it. But like, in your opinion, do you think the Three Sisters method has been bastardized?

Speaker 3:
[20:55] Bastardized?

Speaker 2:
[20:56] Over the years? Bastardized.

Speaker 3:
[20:58] I think probably that and nearly every kind of technique or method or practice. I think there's some like as soon as it kind of goes mass commercial, I think, yeah, I think you lose quite a bit of it. I was thinking to myself, as you say, does it fixing of the soil and all or letting the ground go fallow? We almost never say it and I hope it's like what's understood doesn't need to be said, but I'm going to say it in this moment anyway. We had to talk about these things as if like all soil, all growing areas are equal. If we're all starting from the same place, then it makes sense to do this and then do this and do this. But that's not the case. The soil for your garden, before you even tap in one amendment or another, is going to be different and not even the soil that you or I have had shipped to us, even stopped there. If you go back to the soil that was under both of our grass, from your area to my area, it was going to be totally different.

Speaker 2:
[22:07] Totally. That's why it's called Sandy Bottom Homeset here. It's so much sand here.

Speaker 3:
[22:13] And be better comes from my soil could have been better. No, I'm joking. I'm joking.

Speaker 2:
[22:18] No, you're not. That's okay. Okay. If we go along the lines and let's just keep the train going. We said beans and corn, so what goes with beans? You've got a couple of things here just to read off the list of summer growing crops. Corn, which we already did. Cucumbers, we already did. Eggplants, peas, potatoes, squash, strawberries, and tomatoes. So you could pick your poison with that. And again, I don't think a lot of people are planting a bed of just pole beans. You know what I mean? It's usually like there's a lot of the beds open because they're going up a trellis. So I do think that there is a ripe opportunity to companion plant with trellising plants.

Speaker 3:
[23:09] Yeah. I did corn and potatoes, and I'm sure it was for the purpose of them being friends and not foals, and maybe somewhere where I read about companion planting. And one of the notes to add here is, so we already understand all soil isn't equal from gardener to gardener or garden to garden, but all soil isn't equal inside your own garden or inside your own homestead. And like your immediate reaction is going to be, oh, you did? How did they do? And I'm like, you know what? They didn't have the best chance. Like I didn't give them the best chance when I think about where I was growing the two of them together. It was in a set of beds in my backyard. On the patio. And I can grow a lot of wonderful food there. But potatoes in particular, probably, like that 12 inches of soil wasn't the most ideal. Like everything else has done just fine. But that was like, and I've tried it twice. And like the same sets of bed or same setup. And so also consider that, like if you're trying some of these groupings and you don't feel like it's been successful, like peel the onion back a little bit, no pun intended. What was the intention? And did you give it the best setup? Like are you being really true to the way that those two or three or four things should have been planted together?

Speaker 2:
[24:39] Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of variables and you know that come into play when you're planting. And you brought, I meant to say this earlier, but you were talking about the different methods and stuff like that. And if it's a secret, then you haven't been listening or watching me long enough. I do not like the term gardening methods. I had somebody ask me the other day, well, what method do you use to garden? And I'm like, I use the growing method. I grow food. You know what I mean? Any way possible, I grow it. And I've tried, I don't want to say everything, but it feels like I've tried just about, I mean, it's always something different. And companion planting, it doesn't work out for me. And I'm going to show you why right now. So if you go back to that list, beans and tomatoes are a combination, right? So if we go to tomatoes, what are the combinations for tomatoes become? And simply it's basil, carrots, cucumbers and squash. So here's my issue. I'm just going to jump right in and say it. When I first started looking into companion planting, I read on one website that tomatoes and peppers were companions. And I planted them that way. And they did amazing. Best tomato and pepper year I had ever had, ever. It was shocking. Well, then the next year, I go back and I read it and I come up and it says, no, they're combative. So then I go, okay, well, let me stop. So then I stopped doing it and then I was just back to normal. Did that for a couple years. Last year, I made up my mind and I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do my way and better than the year before, or the year that it was the best. So it's every time I've done this and it's clearly, if you look at each individual plant, because they are both nightshades, they're not companions, but it works every time because they have the same nutritional needs. So I'm not feeding any extra nitrogen to this group of plants or anything like that. If you had something like corn and beans, for instance, like corn needs a lot of nitrogen, a lot. So if you give beans a lot of nitrogen, what are you doing? You're creating more leaves. So it's this weird relationship, right? And I don't like it. It makes me very uncomfortable.

Speaker 3:
[27:15] Well, there's also this, it's not a one size fits all, meaning they're not companions. Every companion is a companion for the same reason. And so that makes it a little bit more intricate when it comes to understanding it. You know, I look at anything with tomatoes that isn't kind of low growing is problematic because you're going to, and I use this term very loosely, like choke out your tomatoes. I did. So you have cucumber vines growing around your tomatoes, right? I mean, although I love in my mind, my garden mind, like the look of what it could be, but I know the mess that it would be. I grew, I don't know if I listed it here, tomatoes and pole beans. Not, no, it wasn't intentional. And unfortunately, again, this goes back to the, did I have it in the best place? It was inside of the cage, maybe, which only goes up about five feet, five and a half feet or something. And so the pole beans get wrapped around everything. It was nearly impossible for me to get to them to actually pick the beans. And it's like, oh, well, this is everything. I'm just saving seeds because that's what's happening here. And again, obviously, there are nutrients that those beans are taking, those plants are taking out of the soil. And yeah, so that's, it kind of goes back to the, even if there's some nutrient benefit, is it practical to grow them in that way?

Speaker 2:
[28:54] Right. And that's a good question. I mean, I will say this though. There's a reason why I like Spruce, and I scrolled down a little bit, and then it gave, it gives explanations for why they consider these three sisters. So, shout out to, what was the young lady's name that wrote this? Nadia Hasani. I can't say your last name. Hasani. So, very good. This is a quality article, I think, and even if I don't agree with it, I appreciate the fact that there is reasons put in. And so, the corn, pole beans, and squash was, it was for the support of the beans, and the squash was to cover and retain moisture. And then they had like cucumbers, sunflowers, and pole beans, where it was sunflowers supported the beans, and here's the part that is ridiculous to me. They let the cucumbers grow on the ground and it shades the ground. So, I would never do that, but that's just me. So, you can look at it that way. And I mean, I think it's important to take it and say like, hey, think about it for yourself. Why would this be good to plant together? And then go from there.

Speaker 3:
[30:15] For years and years, I grew, which I think is traditional when it comes to growing cucumbers. I didn't grow them vertically. You know, I grew them on mounds that didn't stay mounds for long as the soil kind of settled. I remember one of my first memories of my grandparents in my own garden was my grandmother, you know, saying, yeah, yeah, the mounds need to be higher. And me and my granddaddy look at each other like, man, what did she want? How much, how much, I don't know. Or like, it's like, if you can think about making like mud pie or like a sand castle or something, like you're just pushing soil, pushing soil.

Speaker 2:
[30:53] So, it's funny you bring that up, because I actually asked granny about that before she passed away. And she said, because you know, she was growing back in the 30s, like they didn't have trellises and stuff like that. And she said that they made the mounds about three feet high. That's a lot.

Speaker 3:
[31:11] Yeah, that's high.

Speaker 2:
[31:13] But I mean, when I heard it, the first time I was thinking, you know, if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see like six inches at most. But then you start thinking like, well, what the hell good is that going to do? It's just, you know, so.

Speaker 3:
[31:25] That's what my grandmother was saying from the porch. That's what she was thinking at least.

Speaker 2:
[31:32] She's sitting there yelling at you, what the hell is that going to do? Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. So the other thing that factors into this whole companion planting thing is flowers. And this is something that grips people. I'm not gonna lie. This is a sexy, sexy idea. As a matter of fact, it may be one of the sexiest ideas in all of gardening. And the reason why I say that is because who doesn't want anything more than to put flowers in their garden and then have amazing results based on growth, pest and stuff like that. It's a little misleading at the same time. So we do need to cover that a little bit. I will say before we get into it though, remember, your vegetable garden is for growing vegetables. Your flower garden is for growing flowers. Let's just go there.

Speaker 3:
[32:34] I am a fan of incorporating flowers within the plantings of vegetables. I honestly just don't get to it as often as I'd like to. It's prime real estate. So near, using the term near again, is what I typically do. And it starts for aesthetic purposes. Then obviously in many cases, I'm able to benefit with the vegetable plants. There's just, can I keep on biting at it? How do you know if it went by at a time? I grew cosmos for the first time like two years ago. Like maybe I picked up cosmos over the years from a nursery or something. But I started them from seed and I bought the seeds, started them from seed, planted them out. And I had to go back and look to see like, how tall does this plant get? You're talking about like two to three feet. And so I bring it up because there are varieties that grow. There's a little bit more stout that are shorter. But flowers are interesting because a lot of us know kind of what to expect from the size of your vegetable plants. Right? When you do something like you're growing certain flowers, you know, is it for a period of time you're able to enjoy those flowers before the vegetable plants kind of dwarf the flowers or vice versa? And I think that's it's not necessarily trial and error. I think there's enough information to come up with a good plan. I will be very frank and say it's not always my desire to dig into the details around all of this. Like, you know, it's the I like the way this thing looks. I'm going to put it there. And then sometimes it works. A lot of times it works. And sometimes I'm like, oh, maybe not.

Speaker 2:
[34:20] Yeah, I mean, that's it. And I like that, you know, when it comes down to it, like, what do you want? You know, so one of the big, big, there's two really big combinations. One of them is tomatoes and marigolds. And then the other one is nasturtiums and brassicas. So if you look at that and you think about it that way, we've said many a times on this show and there's a study out there. I need to find it and post it one of these days. But the study basically said in order to get the, yeah, Leonard, in order to get the results required for the pest deterrents from the marigolds, you basically need to have a field of them planted close by to your tomato plantings. That speaks volumes to me because one measly marigold in my garden bed is not really doing much, right? So, yeah, makes me feel good.

Speaker 3:
[35:25] Yeah. Well, I think that's probably one of the most common things I hear when I'm in the garden streets over the years. Right. Yeah. And I, I never bought marigolds for the purpose of that, like in those early years for the purpose of some community planting and some beneficial, you know, partner or anything like that. It was such a common plant to find in garden centers. And I like the way they look, you know? And so, and so I've done like borders around my plants. And so then I start coming across things like, oh, it's a deterrent for insert, whatever it's not a deterrent for with my 12 plants. Right? So I think, but that's so common for people to say that they'll be loading them in their cart and they'll say, oh, yeah, this is supposed to keep pests away. And they're like, oh, okay. The other one you mentioned, the nasturtiums and brassicas. You lie!

Speaker 2:
[36:24] Is it nasturtium or nasturtium?

Speaker 3:
[36:26] I don't know. It's whatever, tomato, tomato. I always say nasturtiums. But I'm a kind soul and I could be wrong, or you could be wrong. But we both know what we're talking about when we say it.

Speaker 2:
[36:39] Oh yeah, yeah. And I can't say it any other way. So, who's lying? Who's lying? You said you lie!

Speaker 3:
[36:47] Yeah, I'm about to come back around to that. Whoever is confident in nasturtiums deterring the cabbage moth or cabbage butterfly, one or both, they're lying in my Chicago garden because I've done everything from the little paper cutouts of the white moth, right? And they suppose, oh, they're territorial. They'll see your little paper cutout and they won't, nope, that doesn't work in my garden. The surrounding them, like a particular brassica plant, surrounding them with nasturtiums, nope, didn't work. As much, if not more, joking about the more, but as much cabbage worm damage as I ever get. I've not seen, and I've not seen anyone that has said, hey, look at my plants. Look at all of these companion flowers that are around it and there's no damage. I've not seen that on the interweb. It may exist, but I've not seen it.

Speaker 2:
[37:49] You were speaking of the cutouts and I'd never heard of that at all. But my question is, how many of these hacks do you think are out there that are worth it? Because every time I hear somebody bring one up, I'm like, I can just envision people out there cutting up moths out of white paper and taping it all over their garden and just causing a big mess. You know what I mean? It's sad. When you grow them, how many nasturtiums do you grow next to your?

Speaker 3:
[38:29] I did this one year, maybe two, but the year I'm thinking about when I said you lie is, it was one container and one, I don't know, I don't remember if it was a cabbage or a color green plant, but one plant and then probably I'd say six or eight. Like again, it was the border for that particular container and that plant.

Speaker 2:
[38:52] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[38:53] And so, because there's also there, I didn't go back to read to say, does it deter them or is it more of a trap plant? I don't remember which one is supposed to be.

Speaker 2:
[39:05] It's a trap.

Speaker 3:
[39:06] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[39:06] So it is a trap plant.

Speaker 3:
[39:07] And I see no damage on those leaves instead.

Speaker 2:
[39:14] Funny how that works, isn't it? So, I mean, but look, there's benefits of putting flowers around your garden. You get flowers, they're beautiful. You're creating an ecosystem. You're bringing in pollinators and stuff like that, which is where I want to land too, because everybody wants to put flowers in your garden for pollinators, to attract pollinators. And when I say in your garden, I want to be clear because I can hear the hate mail coming. What I'm referring to is in your actual vegetable patch, not your property, not the surrounding garden beds, in your actual vegetable patch. The thing is pollinators are not stupid. They don't need to be baited in within inches of your plant in order to do their job. That's not how it works. So there's this thing called wind, and it pushes everything around. It pushes the sense of the flowers and the insects and the pollens and all this stuff. I mean, look, I have bees. Do you agree you are a pollinator, Batavia?

Speaker 3:
[40:22] Bees? Yes.

Speaker 2:
[40:26] So I've got a bunch of bees next to my garden, and they go into the trees and eat. They go everywhere. They don't really come in my garden. But the reason why is because most, I would say 90 percent of what we grow is all wind pollinated. It does not require an insect to pollinate. Very few like squash does, but most everything else is wind pollinated, so they don't need to come in there. So there's plenty of other options.

Speaker 3:
[41:00] Yeah, I can watch bees go from squash blossom to squash blossom, right?

Speaker 2:
[41:08] Bumblebees? Big fat ones?

Speaker 3:
[41:11] Yeah, bumblebees. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[41:12] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[41:13] I was hoping that you didn't get that much more technical. I was reading about this recently. I can remember the distinction. Yellow jackets is the term I was looking at. Anyway, so yeah, I definitely can see that pollination is happening, right? Yeah. And I can see them in my garden going from like sunflower to sunflower, right? I'm in my garden enough to see that. But ants also pollinate things. And you're so right about so many things that are wind pollinated too.

Speaker 2:
[41:48] Yeah. So one thing that's funny is, so my bees will eat the pollen on my corn. Like I've shown it before and people are like, they don't need that. Corn doesn't need to be pollinated. I'm not saying it needs to be pollinated. I'm just saying the bees consume it. So it definitely helps. But you know, everybody wants to plant a bunch of flowers in your yard to support the pollinators. And if you look at the grand scheme of survival and you just take it and you break it down and you say, okay, the goal here is the least amount of energy expended for the most amount of calories brought in, essentially. And if you look at the way the food is, and it's provided for the bees and the pollinators and stuff like that, a tree with thousands of flowers in one small area where they can just go boom, boom, and jump from one to the other versus a big wide area or just a couple of plants here and there, they're going to skip by it because it's too much effort for them. You've got to provide enough to draw them in and keep them there. Because if you ever watch a bee land on the dandelion, it's just boop, boop, and they just move on. So it's a very poor argument for companion planting in my book.

Speaker 3:
[43:15] I may be indifferent about it. I don't know if I feel strongly one way or another. I came across a picture recently. Another gardener recommended this. Excuse me. I had beautiful, I think it was like button something sunflowers. That's a whole thing. In my neighborhood, people that I do know that I stop and chat with, my true neighbors that I know and know well, and then just again, people that drive by like, I'm not the lady growing food. All year they are with the sunflowers. So anyway, I had this huge in the front yard bed that goes like three and a half feet by 10 feet. This huge sunflower right in the center, and it was beautiful. And it gave like some depth, you know, to the actual growing space. I can't in this moment remember what I planted around it, but I'm going to tell you one thing. When it was time to kind of like flip that bed and that sunflower, because at some point, sunflowers, if you're not saving the seeds, they peter out too. Trying to get that root of that sunflower, this is like a eight or nine foot tall sunflower that I planted in that case. It was the biggest pain ever. Right? And I hadn't thought that through when I was planting it. Now that said, a beautiful sight, you know, like, I do think that it was a small space to sacrifice for that. But again, not as practical as I would have hoped for. And flowers don't necessarily just mean sunflowers, but I'm just giving you an example of like best intentions and kind of how things really turned out.

Speaker 2:
[45:02] When you stop and think about it, did that spot bring you joy that year?

Speaker 3:
[45:06] That spot brought me joy up until the time that it didn't.

Speaker 2:
[45:11] And I mean, that's worth it.

Speaker 3:
[45:12] Yeah, it's worth it initially, but it's also at some point, it was like, oh, it's just kind of an ugly sunflower there now, too. You know, because everything that's beautiful about it has, you know, it's done for the season. So anyway, it doesn't have to be sunflowers, it could be anything else. Last year, my intention was to do much more flower planting. I just didn't get to it. And I'll be frank, I don't, I didn't set out to do it this year and I don't think I'm going to get to it. There's plenty of flowers in my area, don't get me wrong, but I really wanted to go bigger with that.

Speaker 2:
[45:48] Yeah, I've been trying, man. I got a bunch of stuff I put out this year. We'll see how it holds. I want to be clear, obviously everybody knows Batavia's position on flowers, so she's safe. But for me, I'm not saying don't plant flowers, I'm just saying they don't need to be in your vegetable patch. Personally, my thoughts. I have a lot of flowers planted and I'm always trying to add more every year, bring them in. I'm big into the native stuff. Native is what you want, it's what's useful. I didn't realize it at first either, but certain pollens from certain flowers don't do anything for pollinators. They don't have the proteins available to them. You got to be very careful if you're just like your main goal. Like zinnias aren't really the best. They're beautiful, they're great, but they're not really the best. Marigolds are pretty good, believe it or not. I see a lot more action on marigolds than I do zinnias.

Speaker 3:
[46:49] Me too.

Speaker 2:
[46:53] So that's, you know, flowers, just be careful. As far as the companion planting goes, Batavia, at this point in the episode, are you going to go back to doing it at all? And also, what was the main reason you don't do it?

Speaker 3:
[47:12] This wasn't something that I did, you know, all throughout my garden and then I pulled back from. I, again, as we opened up the set of plants, I think it was cucumbers, pole beans and corn, that's probably the extent of it. I did last year, we didn't mention it yet, but I did onions and carrots, which are listed here. Near it were beets. The reason why I don't go out, like with my cup of coffee, with the intention of doing, you know, a notable amount of companion planting is because of the quantities and the types of vegetables and those quantities that I want to grow. And I have to really be intentional about how I design that garden. And so you do something like, oh, I'll plant these three things together because they're companion plants, but I really don't want that much of two of the three of those things, right? Like it's, and I do, and I don't ever refer to it as monocropping, but I do plant a number of the same thing together. We're not talking about a hundred plants, right? Like I got, I got a couple of broccoli starts and I got six pack of broccolis I picked up and I'm going to plant those together. And you know why? And this is one of the biggest reasons it's easier for me to manage.

Speaker 2:
[48:33] There you go. Yeah. And I mean, for me, it's I don't do it. Well, let me start over. I did it religiously. I attempted to. And then I kind of fell off because it got too complicated. Plain and simple. I just didn't want to go into my garden and and put the effort in because I was getting lost in the sauce. I had so much mixed up on what was going on, what was going in the garden that it just didn't make sense. So I stopped and I mostly monocrop and a family plant. And that works for me. The biggest problem I have looking back is I was wasting a lot of space trying to companion plant because something would be done and I couldn't get something back in there because I was so worried about being a companion that I wouldn't put anything back and then I just have these big large gaps within my garden. So it was just another tool to hold me back from producing as much as I could. Which brings a quick thought to me. Why is it you think that it's so heavily pushed if it's not that great?

Speaker 3:
[49:48] I think it's marketing. I think it gives us something to talk about on this show. I think it gives the spruce, and Ben loves them. I don't have to put you away another. It gives them something to write about. It gives, back to my earliest point, it gives people that want to grow something to hold on to. I'm stopping short of saying a camp to be a part of, because when you say what method you use to grow, that's what those people are trying to figure out, like what camp are you in, right? You know? And that part, no, I don't like that. Like, I get the, I mean, you get me started about the zones and all of that, you know, but it's very similar to that mentality. Like, how much are alike are we?

Speaker 2:
[50:40] Yeah, okay. Let's go to the question of the day. What do you say, Batavia? So this question actually comes from Batavia's YouTube channel, Be Better Garden. And it's, is the number, is the name?

Speaker 3:
[50:56] Oh, gosh. How many years have we been doing this? And how long have I realized that we normally give the name? So it's, so it's a, well, I got it.

Speaker 2:
[51:09] I was going to say, it's because he didn't leave it, or they didn't leave it on our channel, maybe we shouldn't?

Speaker 3:
[51:15] No, I think it's okay because it's not an actual person's name, but even if it was, so it's a, it looks like a username, channel name. Hey, seeing your style. You see what happens when I say it, how smooth that goes? I mean, besides the point of me forgetting that I needed to say it, but yeah.

Speaker 2:
[51:37] So the question here goes, growing in buckets, if these buckets were in full sun, how would you minimize the Arizona sun?

Speaker 3:
[51:49] Such a good question.

Speaker 2:
[51:51] Such a good, simple question. I love it. We have everything we need to answer that question. Go.

Speaker 3:
[51:58] And for reference, this is from our super short short over on Be Better Garden, where I just have buckets lined up. And I don't know if that person is picking up on like the time of day I'm shooting it. It looks like it's a little bit shaded. Maybe, maybe not. But even if that person is or isn't, they know enough to know Arizona sun is hot, right? And in my mind, because I do this all the time, I'll read something. I'll write the response in my mind. I don't always get to the typing it. But, you know, shade cloth is going to be that person's best friend, like.

Speaker 2:
[52:32] Yeah. I definitely. But so here's something that I think we talk about a lot, but we don't hone in a lot. And that's combining all these methods together for it. So shade cloth, absolutely number one. And I would think a heavy shade cloth of that, you know, Arizona sun is pretty hot. I mean, hell, it was already 100 degrees there, right?

Speaker 3:
[52:56] Probably so. Let me see.

Speaker 2:
[52:57] Am I not mistaken? I think I saw it recently.

Speaker 3:
[52:59] I removed Arizona based on that from, you know, I have people I love like you and my family members on my weather app and then other places that I'm interested in either visiting or living. And yeah, Arizona had been removed based on it. It probably is.

Speaker 2:
[53:17] No shade to anybody in Arizona. No shade.

Speaker 3:
[53:20] Oh, well, you know, Arizona as a state is 70 degrees. I guess we could probably get more specific. Oh, but it's going to be like in 96, like next week.

Speaker 2:
[53:30] There you go. So, you know, this is something where like you use the mulch. Well, now you know what I'm going to say. You use the shade cloth, you add mulch, you water extra, stuff like that. Keep your soil and your buckets topped off and just hold on tight. You know, water, water, water, water. And it comes down to the, I hesitate to say varieties because heat tolerant varieties don't really cut the mustard for me. It's basically the plants you grow. Like lettuce isn't going to be a good plant to grow. You probably grow the hell out of some okra, you know?

Speaker 3:
[54:07] Yeah. And so again, since these buckets were of peppers, if I take it and answer it in two ways, if you're saying, how do I, what do I do for growing peppers and buckets with Arizona sun? It's what you described. I also, I could elaborate and say one pepper plant per bucket, you know, it'll be going, because you think about how those root systems are. I use that anyway, one pepper plant per bucket. These are, you know, you're not going to get that large of buckets, true buckets, and that's what she wrote. So, five gallons is the largest that I would normally see. So, a single plant, mulch, absolutely right. Watering, probably, like, I'd even go as far as to say, if you can get a drip irrigation set up, who is that? Where did that response come from?

Speaker 2:
[54:54] Yeah, really.

Speaker 3:
[54:54] Who is she?

Speaker 2:
[54:56] Well, here's one that's very unpopular. Don't plant in buckets. There's a reason why I don't container garden, and it's because it sucks to water it and cool it down in the heat. So, I know a lot of people that container garden around me, and my garden lasts twice as long as theirs because they just can't keep up with it. So, it's another one of those where the camp, you get in the camp, and container garden, y'all container garden people, y'all are hardcore, man. Y'all are like the bloods of the gardening community.

Speaker 3:
[55:34] Definitely some infractions that are giving out. I think time of year, I think Arizona sun blanketly, we know that it's going to be hotter than it is in my Chicago garden. But you wonder similar to this area of my Chicago garden, there are shadier spots and I'm using that loosely. There are hours where there's a lot of sun, but that space that I'm growing in, she probably wouldn't know this based on the seven second video. It's not, I wouldn't consider it like full sun. What is it, six to eight hours?

Speaker 2:
[56:12] Yes, six hours plus is full sun.

Speaker 3:
[56:14] That wasn't intentional. As a matter of fact, I'm happy it worked out that way. It was just a convenient place to put buckets along the fence line.

Speaker 2:
[56:24] There it is. It works out. I mean, I would get creative. I would stick to put plants in the ground personally. I know that Arizona's, it's either, I don't know the soil structure of it. It's probably in my imagination either very sandy or very muddy or clay, a lot of clay. So just amend compost, topsoil, which I don't know how easily you can get topsoil there, but mulch, stuff like that, and you'll work that ground over time and it will make it. And plus the plants need the cool off. They have that earth below them to help draw that heat out and to pull water out from deep down. When you put it in a bucket, it's a really volatile spot. There's not a lot in there. It's very limited. And as the plant grows and gets bigger, it gets worse and worse and worse, which coincides with the heat, right?

Speaker 3:
[57:24] Yeah. And it's something to be said about how long like a pepper plant could grow in Arizona, which I'm not sure of compared to my window is much shorter. So you think about like the needs of that plant. I'm only managing it for like five months or something, you know, where I would imagine maybe not twice as long, but a pepper plant probably could live in Arizona for seven, eight, nine months. And then when you think about like the span of how long it's going to grow, and that's a lot for a five-gallon bucket, you know, a 15-gallon container that we're talking about a different story. Again, you're still going to have some of the same challenges that you walk through. But I think you have a better chance with a larger container because it has more medium, you know, able to hold soil, more soil and more water longer.

Speaker 2:
[58:14] Yeah, I think I had something and I forgot it. Oh well, what? Yeah, I can't remember. Okay, everybody, companion planting done. Yay or nay on companion planting, Batavia?

Speaker 3:
[58:31] Nay for me.

Speaker 2:
[58:33] Nay for me. But if you do it, good luck. Let us know how it works out. And if you'd like to be like, sing us a song, or I can't remember what was her name.

Speaker 3:
[58:44] That's great. This is why I don't do this part of the show. Sing your style. Sing your style. I have to go and check the channel now.

Speaker 2:
[58:55] Yeah, leave us some, leave us a comment on our YouTube channel. Check us out, Facebook or anywhere, really. And check out all of our links, all that good stuff. Affiliate links are below for some gardening materials that will help the channel out and keep us on the air so we continue to help people because we do two things and we do it good. We learn to grow, but we're growing for change.

Speaker 4:
[59:18] See you.

Speaker 1:
[59:23] Now you know why people feel like celebrating at harvest time.

Speaker 4:
[59:27] All over the world, people have feasting and good times when the crops have been gathered in.

Speaker 2:
[59:36] Thanks for checking out the show. If you like what we're doing and you'd like to support us, you can become a patron at patreon.com/backyardgardens, or you can be an Apple subscriber. And in both of those, you'll get an extra episode every month. You can also make a one-time PayPal donation with the link below. And you can get all kinds of gardening gear, like t-shirts and mugs and cups from the link below at Teespring. And we have an Amazon store which has all the products that we use and recommend in our gardens and it helps support our show. And we also add to this list periodically. Be sure to check it out periodically to see if there's anything that you need for your garden. Everything that you do, including a like and a subscribe, and even a review will help us learn to grow and grow for change.

Speaker 3:
[60:22] See ya.