207 Survival Seed Sowing - Powerful Fall Season Gardening

Tonight, we’re talking about Fall Season Crops

Finally…

The morning air is crisp again. The days are getting shorter. And although it’s still warm, or even hot during the day, most people are winding down their gardens for the year. And why not? With Labor Day and Football just a few days from now, the summer is coming to an end. Kids are back in school. Grocery stores are already stocking up on Halloween Candy. Before ya know it, they’ll be jack-o-lanterns sitting on bails of straw on front porches and coffee houses pushing Pumpkin Spice Lattes to passer byes. And yes… I’m a big fan of Autumn. I love it. But our gardens don’t… Or do they…?

Ya see, homesteaders know that Fall may be the end of Summer growing season, but they are keenly aware that it’s just another beginning for their gardens. Cuz when one door closes, another always opens.

The start of this season is important, if you want groceries in your pantry throughout Winter. It’s all about planting cold-hardy greens, root vegetables that thrive underground, and cover crops that rebuild the soil, so next year’s harvest is even stronger. And it’s about turning challenges, like shorter days, dropping temps, and pests looking for a last meal, into opportunities for your family's resilience and abundance.

If you’ve never planted in fall, this is your moment to start. Spinach, Kale, Carrots, Radishes, Garlic, and so many more, these aren’t just crops, consider them nutritious survival insurance. And while pests may be hungry and persistent, the right strategies, like organic deterrents, companion planting, and watchful management, you’ll keep your garden thriving while others are shutting theirs down.

From nasty bugs to cover crops, we’ll discuss everything you need to know, as Preppers, to begin Fall Season Gardening. 

Let’s get to it…

Please Visit Our Affiliate Links to Find Great Preparedness Products:

• Organo Republic 25 Winter Seeds Variety Pack Non-GMO
• OutsidePride Gardenway Cover Crop Seed Mix 5lb Bag
• OutsidePride Gardenway Crimson Clover Seeds 5lb Bag
• Home Grown 12 Winter Vegetable Seeds Non-GMO Heirloom
• Sow Right Seeds Cover Crop Collection Non-GMO Heirloom
• Four-Season Food Gardening Paperback
• The Amish Farming & Gardening Handbook Full Color Paperback

Music: BADLANDS by Casey Parnell

Transcript

Keith
Preppers, survivalists, off-gridders, homesteaders, and the like, welcome to Topps Bunker, a podcast for preppers. Email shdf at topsbunker.com, website topsbunker.com. Don't forget to check the show notes on your podcast player for valuable links and extra info on this episode.

04:07.94
Keith
I want to thank you all for joining us. We've got a great show for you. Tonight, we're talking about fall season crops. Finally, the morning air is crisp again. The days are getting shorter, and although it's still warm or even hot during the day, most people are winding down their gardens for the year.

04:27.23
Keith
And why not? With Labor Day and football just a few days from now, the summer is coming to an end. Kids are back in school. Grocery stores are already stocking up on Halloween candy.

04:40.09
Keith
Before you know it, there'll be jack-o'-lanterns sitting on bales of straw on front porches and coffee houses pushing pumpkin spice lattes to passerbys. And yes, I'm a big fan of autumn.

04:52.57
Keith
I'm a big fan of... And yes, I'm a big fan of autumn. I love it. But the gardens? But our gardens don't. Or do they?

05:04.97
Keith
You see, homesteaders know that fall may be the end of the summer. You see, homesteaders know that fall may be the end of the summer growing season, but they are keenly aware that it's just another beginning for their gardens, because when one door closes, another always opens.

05:23.60
Keith
The start of this season is important if you want groceries in your pantry throughout the winter. It's all about planting cold hardy greens, root vegetables that thrive underground, and cover crops that rebuild the soil so next year's harvest is even stronger.

05:39.45
Keith
And it's about turning challenges like shorter days, dropping temps, and pests looking for their last meal into opportunities for your family's resilience and abundance. If you've never planted in fall, this is your moment to start.

05:54.33
Keith
Spinach, kale, carrots, radishes, garlic, and so many more. These aren't just crops. Consider them nutritious survival insurance. And while pests may be hungry and persistent with the right strategies,

06:09.23
Keith
Lack organic deterrence, companion planting, and watchful management, you'll keep your garden thriving while others are shutting theirs down. From nasty bugs to cover crops, we'll discuss everything you need to know as preppers to begin fall season gardening.

06:26.14
Keith
Let's get to it.



08:57.38
Keith
I think it's good.



00:01:18.72
Keith
I didn't have my camera going this morning. I was in the house and I had him outside with all the, all the birds were out there and everything. And I see him like a, like a cutter horse going back and forth, back and forth. So i walk up to the window to see what he's doing.

00:01:32.07
Keith
And there's a big old giant, biggest Turkey that I've got bowed up chasing him, going back and forth, trying to, trying to get them. And I guess, cause he want, he want to play. He's a puppy and Turkey's like, i we're not playing.

00:01:44.86
Keith
You're going to eyeball popped out. Something's going to happen.

00:01:47.40
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. Turkeys don't play, man. They're jerks.

00:01:52.32
Buddy
Yeah, it looks like you're right on that, Jeremy.

00:01:52.59
Jeremy
So.

00:01:54.87
Buddy
They're assholes.

00:01:55.99
Jeremy
Yeah, they are, man. Then they're, they're, they're, people think that they're just basically big chickens out there in the wild. now No, no, no. The jerks. They attack stuff. They attack people. They have attacked me before.

00:02:09.50
Buddy
But they're so cute.

00:02:09.92
Jeremy
and They're just, no, they're, well, they're tasty, but they're not.

00:02:11.13
Buddy
They're just so cute.

00:02:13.23
Jeremy
Have you ever seen their faces up close? It's one of, oh, golly.

00:02:15.61
Buddy
No, they're not cute at they're not cute at all

00:02:18.87
Jeremy
That's like people who say flamingos are pretty. Wait until you look at a closeup view of flamingos face. They are not pretty in the face. They are ugly, super ugly.

00:02:26.72
Keith
Yeah, they're ugly.

00:02:30.38
Jeremy
So yeah. Yeah, turkeys have like really pretty feathers. um That's about it, man. They got that big old nutsack hanging from their face, and it just... It's just... ah I mean, they're they're they're they're hunted strictly to for the challenge of it, because they are... um Well, they're incredibly stupid animals, but they do have a really, really keen sense of eyesight. they can They can see insanely well.

00:02:59.86
Jeremy
So...

00:03:03.60
Jeremy
But yeah, I'm still sick to my stomach about having to destroy most of the garden.

00:03:08.17
Buddy
Oh yeah, man.

00:03:08.56
Jeremy
It was just...

00:03:10.46
Buddy
That's a tough one.

00:03:12.50
Jeremy
it was We were out there and I had just picked a whole bunch of green beans. And we were doing something and Missy called me over. And i was doing something i looked down and I saw one walking.

00:03:25.59
Jeremy
And I was like, that looks like a...

00:03:27.80
Keith
We drop them. Where's he at?

00:03:29.48
Jeremy
a ah

00:03:31.90
Keith
Hello.

00:03:32.09
Jeremy
a bug that isn't good. And I took a picture of it with Google lens and it identified it as a, um what am what am I trying to say here?

00:03:43.77
Jeremy
ah squash bug.

00:03:43.84
Buddy
Squash bug?

00:03:44.75
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:03:44.92
Buddy
Yeah.

00:03:45.15
Jeremy
Can

00:03:47.42
Keith
Did I sound to me like everybody just cut out for like 10 seconds.

00:03:51.94
Jeremy
you hear me now?

00:03:53.01
Keith
Yeah, I can.

00:03:53.35
Buddy
Yeah, I heard him.

00:03:53.45
Keith
I can hear.

00:03:54.99
Buddy
He was...

00:03:55.27
Jeremy
Yeah. I was just saying that the, you know, we were working out in the garden and then I saw one of the squash bugs and I looked at it and at first, uh, the, the white color kind of threw me off.

00:04:08.62
Jeremy
Um, and then I started looking at cause I thought at first that they were assassin bug larvae or, you know, the babies and assassin bugs are, you know, bad for, for everybody.

00:04:20.24
Jeremy
Um, And then I took a picture of it with Google lens and it identified it as a squash bug. And then as i started looking, I realized in the picture there was hundreds of them and i started looking and they were just, they were everywhere.

00:04:35.17
Jeremy
And two days before Missy and her cousin got back from PA, the, everything was fine. Everything looked normal. I didn't see any. The day after they got back, uh,

00:04:48.45
Jeremy
one of the honeydews was completely collapsed in and the pump, the pumpkins had, ah holes with this like kind of slimy sort of jelly stuff coming out of them.

00:04:52.04
Buddy
Oh, wow.

00:05:01.06
Buddy
Oh, yeah.

00:05:01.65
Jeremy
And my my guess is, is that they went in through the vines and got into that honeydew and that's where they manifested. And they basically just like came out of there and went and attacked everything.

00:05:15.64
Buddy
Yeah, once they got full, they depleted that.

00:05:17.30
Jeremy
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

00:05:19.25
Buddy
Yeah, I talked to a dude at ah the farmer's market, one of my favorite farmer guys. I'll talk to him when we go. And we go try to go every Saturday and grab a few things we don't have and kind of support the local guys.

00:05:34.42
Buddy
And this dude, he said the same thing, man. He's the same thing that's happened to, you know, the squash bug thing has been happening around here. So neighbors got there, had to rip out all their crops because of the squash bugs. and And then the the horn that horned worm, the what do they call it? Anyways, the horned worm and then the blister. Nobody really noticed the blister bugs, but man, there they are wreaking havoc on the tomatoes.

00:06:06.37
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:06:06.50
Keith
What do the blister bugs look like?

00:06:08.94
Buddy
I sent a picture, or there's a picture on the on the Facebook page. it's just black It's a black bug. it looks like a beetle.

00:06:15.43
Jeremy
Oh, yeah.

00:06:16.92
Buddy
They'll get in there and eat your tomatoes, man. And and when I really know, i've I've noticed them like when I mowed one day, i was looking down and I looked down at my leg and there like five of them crawling at my leg. I was like, what the hell is this?

00:06:28.98
Buddy
And then I went to identify them and i was like, that's a blister bug. That's not good. I didn't know that they attacked plants because it's the first time I've seen them on plants.

00:06:33.44
Jeremy
Huh.

00:06:38.19
Buddy
So I started looking at them and they were in the beds and ended up, you know, Looking at them, like, something is eating. And I thought it was birds maybe pecking at the tomatoes.

00:06:50.53
Buddy
And I only mess with the really ripe tomatoes or when they so first start to turn. And, man, talking about just running nice fruit. I mean, we I was letting this one go all weekend just so it would, you know, start to turn a color and get a little bigger and get fruitier and softer.

00:07:08.45
Buddy
And i was just licking my lips of a BLT. ah blt

00:07:13.12
Keith
ye

00:07:13.90
Buddy
And I went to pick it and it was next to another one that was kind of greenish color. It wasn't ready yet. And they had bored in there on it and just hollowed it out. I was, man, i was pissed, but yeah, they're, they're pretty nasty. Um, we started out with diatomaceous earth, uh, did like three applications.

00:07:33.34
Buddy
Didn't really work out. And then, uh, man, I, I hate to admit it, but I went for the seven dust. Uh,

00:07:40.51
Jeremy
Well, seven dust, I mean, yes, technically it's it's a chemical, but it's one of the only... i I think for me personally, if I have to go for a chemical, which I try not to do, it's going to be seven dust because you can, yeah, you can use it up to a short time before you harvest.

00:07:54.02
Buddy
Yeah, it's a lesser of the two evils. Yeah.

00:08:00.31
Jeremy
And, you know, it's perfectly safe, you know, up to that point, but and man.

00:08:05.94
Buddy
You should have seen those bastards run. Oh, my God, they didn't like it. There was white covered bugs that were, you know, black.

00:08:12.28
Jeremy
Oh yeah.

00:08:12.98
Buddy
They had the white all over the back. just run They were dropping off the the tomato plants and just running for their lives, man.

00:08:14.91
Jeremy
Yep.

00:08:20.05
Buddy
It was it was kind of cool.

00:08:20.07
Jeremy
okay

00:08:21.49
Buddy
It reminded me of the time that I had squash bugs and I used a pepper spray on them.

00:08:28.81
Jeremy
ah That's awesome.

00:08:29.56
Buddy
It's some organic gardener guy. i went to an organic gardening store and I walked in and I was like, Hey man, I got these squash bugs. You know, you got anything for it? He goes, well, I got some pepper spray.

00:08:42.43
Buddy
and He goes, I'm like, yeah I go pepper spray. And he goes, well, it's like pepper spray. It's made, it's like a pepper, uh, Oil, it's a concentrate.

00:08:52.23
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:08:52.89
Buddy
and You mix it with water and you spray it.

00:08:54.90
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:08:54.95
Buddy
gets you one of those you know pressure sprayers and go out, a gallon pressure sprayer mix it with it. And, oh my God, that was fun. And I had a bunch of, I mean, I had a big garden at that time. i mean It was at my mom's house and I was managing it for the family.

00:09:09.63
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:09:09.73
Buddy
And yeah, that was that was a lot of fun. mean, was almost as fun.

00:09:12.87
Keith
Is that something you can make yourself?

00:09:14.91
Buddy
Yeah. Yeah.

00:09:16.77
Jeremy
yeah I imagine it would be, I know one thing that we do is um, Whenever we strip off the leaves off the bottom part of the tomatoes or we're pulling suckers that we're not going to repropagate,

00:09:29.08
Jeremy
ah We make, we call it tomato tea. So you take the leaves and you just kind of squeeze them just to get them to open up a little bit. And you soak them in water overnight.

00:09:41.77
Jeremy
And um because ah the the the tomato plant itself is full of tannins, you basically just take that tea and you spray it all over your garden.

00:09:48.80
Buddy
yep

00:09:53.26
Jeremy
Bugs absolutely hate it. So...

00:09:55.65
Buddy
i've heard that yeah i've heard that yeah a couple of these old-time guys uh in this gardening class i took uh

00:09:55.83
Keith
Really?

00:09:56.91
Jeremy
Yeah, it does work well. It works very well. It stinks, but it works well.

00:10:05.82
Buddy
ah one of them was instructor. He talked about the tannins and how it works and, you know, everybody's trying to go organic at that time.

00:10:10.57
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:10:12.90
Buddy
And it, you know, I mean, I guess people still are, but, um, I knew, know I was really into the organic thing and even thinking about going to the Redale Institute in Pennsylvania, going to their vet program just to learn, you know, the organic stuff, the, you know, the the way of the Amish and basically is what it is.

00:10:24.24
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:10:31.69
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:10:31.97
Buddy
And, uh,

00:10:32.22
Jeremy
Well, that diatanasius earth, man. I love that stuff.

00:10:35.77
Buddy
yeah It works great on a lot of things, but for some reason, man, it didn't do shit to those blister bugs. So...

00:10:45.73
Jeremy
I'd imagine you have to like get it right like right on them. cause So like we found ants. We have a large a couple of these large bucket kind of things, they large containers.

00:10:57.02
Jeremy
And all the excess, uh, uh, compost dirt that I had, uh, I had brought in this last load we put in there and we just, we've been using it to, to seed like, you know, peppers and things like that.

00:11:09.81
Jeremy
And, um, I was out killing ants and I found, um, where the ants had worked their way into one of these buckets and they had like a very large nest going. And, um, so I just kind of took a stick and I stuck it down in there and I swirled it around and got them all riled up and I just put a bunch of diatonaceous earth down in that nest and it's all dead now.

00:11:32.00
Jeremy
It's completely dead. So, yeah.

00:11:34.75
Buddy
Yeah, it's more it's more of the the insects eat it, and it just grinds up their guts kind of thing. It's it's not like, but it doesn't work the same as, I guess, seven dusts.

00:11:49.94
Buddy
They'll eat some of that as well, but a lot of seven dusts is uncomfortable to their, lot of them to their skin.

00:11:55.08
Keith
Diet to measure earth is not a, ah not a poison.

00:11:55.95
Buddy
Yeah.

00:11:57.53
Keith
it's It's more like a crystalline substance in it. It just cuts them up really bad.

00:12:00.18
Jeremy
Yeah, it's yeah yeah works so

00:12:01.81
Keith
It's like glass.

00:12:02.04
Buddy
Yeah, yeah, it's like glass, it's like stepping on glass, yeah, and they'll eat it and stuff, so.

00:12:04.25
Keith
Yeah.

00:12:06.75
Jeremy
it works its way down in the carapace of crawling insects, and it gets up underneath there. And because they can't move, you know, because most insects that have a carapace, they're not articulated. So each piece is kind of...

00:12:22.76
Jeremy
moving independently. So like their thorax is connected to their whole body.

00:12:26.04
Buddy
Yeah.

00:12:26.72
Jeremy
And so those crystals work their way up underneath the carapace and it basically just shreds them from the inside, which I think is hilarious.

00:12:34.58
Buddy
Yeah.

00:12:35.77
Jeremy
And I hope they all die. Yeah.

00:12:37.46
Buddy
It's like taking out a tank, man.

00:12:38.18
Jeremy
ah

00:12:39.68
Buddy
you you don't You don't shoot the side of the tank because there's armor there. You have to get up underneath it and to the sides and there's there's places to get it.

00:12:43.90
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:12:48.29
Buddy
So it's just a matter of figuring it

00:12:49.00
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:12:48.98
Keith
We ran out, so we ordered some. We ran out, I guess, unexpectedly. And we ordered some, and it just takes so long for stuff to get here. I think it's coming in tomorrow today or tomorrow. It'll be here, big old giant thing of DE.

00:13:02.63
Jeremy
yeah

00:13:02.68
Keith
um But, yeah, so we had the same problem. I guess you guys saw the pictures I sent today, squash bugs. I didn't know that that's what they were. And um those red ones are um or assassin bugs, which I heard they can sting you.

00:13:16.27
Jeremy
Yes.

00:13:16.37
Buddy
Yeah.

00:13:18.17
Jeremy
Yes, they have a very nasty bite and they transmit Chagas disease.

00:13:18.31
Buddy
Oh yeah.

00:13:22.43
Keith
What's that?

00:13:23.52
Jeremy
Chagas disease is a bacterial infection that's carried by um it's carried by the assassin bug. And assassin bugs are not supposed to be here. Um, they are native to South America.

00:13:33.70
Buddy
Yeah.

00:13:35.88
Jeremy
So take a wild guess how they got here. Um,

00:13:39.88
Keith
Boat.

00:13:40.09
Buddy
Hmm.

00:13:41.28
Jeremy
Hmm. Very strange. Um, but they, and they're related to what some people call the kissing bug. They're also related to stink bugs.

00:13:49.14
Keith
They look like a kissing bug.

00:13:50.52
Jeremy
Yeah. And, um, at the very, and at its mouth parts, it has a very long proboscis. And what it does is and normally when it like goes to eat an insect, it, you know, stings the insect through its proboscis and it injects a liquid that um Kind of like a spider, it digests and basically melts the insides and then they suck it out.

00:14:12.27
Jeremy
um But the the insect itself carries inherently the Chagas disease bacteria. And a lot of people who travel or have been bitten by it, they don't even know that they've been bitten by it.

00:14:28.35
Jeremy
um It just feels like an itchy you know bug bite. And then certain symptoms start to appear like fever. ah Certain hives start to appear without the right kind of blood tests.

00:14:41.72
Jeremy
It's extremely hard to figure out exactly what's wrong because the bacteria itself, the disease, takes a while to manifest. So yeah, they are not good. and and the first time I found them, first time I found them here in our yard, along with the hornworm or not the hornworm, but the hammerhead worm, um I actually reported it.

00:15:03.49
Jeremy
They actually, here in North Carolina, they ask you if you find certain things that you know are not native to report, like where you found it, how you found it, you know, general location and that kind of thing.

00:15:14.57
Jeremy
So yeah, the the hammerhead worm,

00:15:14.82
Buddy
yeah i was about to say that hornworms bad news, man. Yeah, they're trying to eradicate that shit all over. i mean, it's it's a it bad news.

00:15:23.40
Jeremy
Yeah. um Yeah, they are the the the hammerhead worm is again, not supposed to be here. It's also from South America. You know, surprise, surprise.

00:15:33.64
Buddy
Hmm.

00:15:35.80
Jeremy
Um, ah but it is, um they will, they, they like to stay in a, in dead wood for quite a long time until they're completely grown. And when they emerge, they, will go after native earthworm species and just completely annihilate them.

00:15:56.83
Jeremy
That's what their main focus of food is, is, or is, is native earthworm species. Yeah.

00:16:00.80
Keith
Are you talking about that giant worm? It looks like it wiggles all over the place and it's like massive.

00:16:05.78
Buddy
Yeah, it'll jump too.

00:16:05.99
Jeremy
Um, they, well, I mean, it looks like a white, it looks like a grub. It looks like a white grub, but it has but basically like kind of like a hammerhead shark. It's got that shape of head.

00:16:17.86
Jeremy
They're nasty, dude. They're gross.

00:16:19.15
Keith
Oh, I haven't seen one of those yet.

00:16:20.91
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah. It, um, uh,

00:16:23.74
Keith
The one I'm talking about looks like a giant earthworm, but it wiggles and moves and almost moves like a snake.

00:16:29.04
Buddy
Yeah, that's, oh, I can't think of the name.

00:16:30.62
Jeremy
well, there might, it might be a worm snake. There's a snake that looks exactly and acts exactly like a earthworm, but it's a small snake and they eat tiny insects and stuff like that.

00:16:43.15
Jeremy
They don't, they're, they're fun to play with. They don't do any harm to you.

00:16:46.30
Keith
So what what's the, what's the one that that's coming out, buddy, you were talking about it. It's not supposed be a big worm.

00:16:52.41
Buddy
Yeah, it's a there's there's something called a jumping worm, Asian, an Asian jumping worm.

00:16:58.56
Keith
Right.

00:16:58.77
Buddy
That's real invasive. I'm looking it up because it's been a while we talked about it before. um

00:17:04.70
Keith
Right.

00:17:06.86
Buddy
I'm trying to get Yeah, it's let me me pull this up here.

00:17:08.20
Keith
Well,

00:17:11.15
Buddy
toda

00:17:11.43
Jeremy
Eight inches?

00:17:11.46
Keith
well that, um, oh yeah, that,

00:17:13.76
Jeremy
That's how big they get?

00:17:15.43
Keith
The ones I'm finding are definitely eight inches, probably sometimes even bigger, but they they move like a snake and they bounce and jump all over the place.

00:17:15.70
Buddy
Yeah.

00:17:23.73
Buddy
Yeah, and they'll eat the top layer of take you know the the very top layer and take, you know eat what they're doing is they're eating out all the organisms out of it and the in the microbes and fungi and all all the good stuff.

00:17:23.83
Keith
like they Like they move fast.

00:17:37.75
Buddy
And then they'll leave their castings back and their eggs and then they just, it's like a rabbit, man. they just They just keep on regenerating and

00:17:50.67
Keith
And they have but they have a ring. They have a ah ring just like ah an earthworm.

00:17:55.00
Buddy
Yeah, well, we talked about the, the, it runs with clitoris.

00:17:57.23
Keith
Yeah. Uh-huh.

00:18:02.92
Buddy
We've had that, we've had that before.

00:18:05.57
Jeremy
No wonder it's a mystery.

00:18:05.80
Buddy
Uh, yeah, yeah, we've, we've actually talked about this on, and I gotta to remember the episode, but we've talked about it, but they're very invasive.

00:18:07.35
Keith
Uh-huh.

00:18:14.82
Buddy
These jumping worms, they jump really high. Um, they can jump high, but they're, they'll, they'll kill out other worms. They'll they'll kill, and i don't think they're mainly eating the worms as much as they're just killing the habitat out.

00:18:32.02
Buddy
they're They're bad news, and and it's hard to get rid of once they get in, because they populate so quickly.

00:18:33.20
Keith
good

00:18:38.37
Keith
Well, Rhonda ripped out all of those crops that showed you on the video that had the ah squash bug. Ripped them all out, threw everything into a bucket, ah put it out by the ah by the driveway. I'm going to burn them.

00:18:51.26
Keith
And then she went around to all the other plants and with gloves on and started smashing anything she could find. That's what she did lunchtime today. Smashing assassin bugs and... squash bugs and beetle anything she can find use because i told her i said if this these get out of hand we got to burn the whole section of the garden it's got to go down and she didn't want to do that so

00:19:09.70
Buddy
Yeah, well, usually once usually once you see them, it's too late for the squash bugs. um

00:19:17.60
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:19:18.31
Buddy
And they're going to get your your cucumbers, your any viney type plants. Your cucumbers, zucchinis, like Jeremy said earlier, your'

00:19:24.55
Jeremy
Yep.

00:19:33.69
Buddy
gosh dang it, buddy spray ain't working again.

00:19:35.36
Jeremy
Pumpkins. Yeah.

00:19:38.28
Buddy
pumpkins, watermelons, things like that.

00:19:38.44
Keith
So,

00:19:40.64
Buddy
They're going to just take those out. and The thing is, ah once you get them, man, you you have them forever. it's The only thing you can do is burn them to get rid of them and just keep the spread of them and wait until next year.

00:19:55.47
Buddy
and then I've said it a hundred million times. It's called pest management, not pest eradication for a reason. You succession plant you plan on different ink you know different corners of your garden or in different areas with this uh don't plan you know in rows because they'll take a row out quickly take all your viney plants and keep them separated so if it does get one of them you can rip that crop out and then you got two or three more crops somewhere else away from it so uh

00:20:24.42
Jeremy
yeah Yeah, once we found them, we um I actually have a blowtorch that you connect to a propane cylinder.

00:20:35.76
Jeremy
um And it's a lot of fun. But um Missy just kind of started loosening up the vines. And as soon as we saw them like falling, um I was like, just, just move the rake.

00:20:48.04
Jeremy
Let me just get in here and just start torching.

00:20:50.97
Buddy
Yeah, I enjoyed that.

00:20:51.11
Jeremy
And I just started, I just started.

00:20:52.42
Buddy
i enjoyed that video.

00:20:53.78
Jeremy
Yeah, I was just torching. And then she, would we started collecting them all up. And even, even while I was torching and they're running for their lives, I was just seeing more and more. And once they realized the heat was on them, they were coming out of the vines and um they were coming out of the different like pumpkins and and all those, because pumpkins are a type of squash and kind of like with the, with the zucchini and like crick neck squash and yellow squash and all that kind of they're all related.

00:21:24.41
Jeremy
Um, and then what was it yesterday or today? um we were doing something and I looked and I found one on a pepper and I was like, Nope, Nope, we're not doing this again.

00:21:36.29
Jeremy
Flicked it off, smashed it. And I just, I went on the hunt and I couldn't, couldn't find any more, but that's not to say that there's not some remaining. That's why once once we got everything off the ground and over to the fire pit, um, I took that same tour, my, so my blow torch and I actually burned the ground.

00:21:53.98
Jeremy
to get any, anything that might be really remaining in next year, what we may end up having to do is, tilling up everything and spreading it all out and then going along and blow torching it again, just, just for good measure.

00:22:10.42
Jeremy
So, and I'm, I'm considering whether or not we're going to have to go and head and pull everything out of our compost, um, and burn it, which,

00:22:19.94
Buddy
Now I've seen, I've seen a guy never sink. He does a series of videos and trainings and stuff up in New York. And he uses a, what's it called? It's like a flame, a garden flame and he'll hit weeds with it and pests.

00:22:39.24
Buddy
So, and I think I've even watched him, like he'll plant it going before he plants a row of stuff, go in and torch the soil just to kill all the bugs.

00:22:48.09
Jeremy
yeah

00:22:48.35
Buddy
And it's been a while since I've seen that video. But if I do remember right, he was planting his fall garden and and and it was summertime still.

00:23:00.17
Buddy
And he had, you know, pest pressure in his garden. So he was going through and trying to kill off everything he could in the meantime, you know, so.

00:23:12.07
Buddy
Could be a good practice.

00:23:14.32
Keith
The dog barking.

00:23:14.37
Buddy
I might have to.

00:23:15.85
Jeremy
Yeah, they are barking and I'm umm here alone. And so there's no telling, I mean, a mosquito could have farted outside. i have no idea, you know, so I'm trying to find out if somebody is downstairs either home or planning my imminent doom. I'm good with either at this point with that damn dog.

00:23:37.10
Keith
So you're saying that I know this was, this is an episode on, on this is an episode on, uh, fall crops, but starting out with the, with the pest, because these are basically summer going into fall and everybody's going to have these types of pests anyway.

00:23:52.91
Keith
But you're saying that even if you burn them, burn all the crops that a lot of them can stick around till next year, like somewhere they're going to underground or something.

00:24:01.68
Jeremy
Yep, they'll go underground.

00:24:02.28
Buddy
Well, they once you notice them, yeah, they're they'll go under underground. They've already planted their eggs. and And you're just at a point to where you're trying to keep them from killing the rest of your shit, I mean, at this point.

00:24:09.06
Keith
Well, gotta be,

00:24:12.65
Keith
There's got to be something you can do about the, about them. mean, dig up the ground, do some more burning, put some chemicals.

00:24:19.37
Buddy
now

00:24:19.63
Keith
I mean, something, right?

00:24:21.02
Buddy
Now, there's a school of thought out there that the the till community or the no-till community says a lot of times when you till your soil, you're waking all those bugs up.

00:24:32.55
Buddy
So if you can keep from tilling or at least deep tilling, minimal till, it helps with your pest control, you know, along with some other organic, you know, there's trap plants you can use in order to to help your pest pressure, they call it. It's if you want to take the population of the the crazy shit that's killing your garden out, you know, you can plant stuff in there that they like and you're just going to sacrifice it.

00:25:05.35
Buddy
So that's, that's a technique to use, but I mean, you're always, you're always going to have something.

00:25:09.21
Keith
I wonder there's anything you could do. ah oh

00:25:12.20
Buddy
I mean, it's, it's just part of the game.

00:25:14.83
Keith
I wonder if it there's anything could do over the winter time to mit help mitate mitigate, you know?

00:25:18.39
Buddy
There are a few things that I, and I, I'm prepared to talk about that in a little bit. Part of the fall, the fall gardening, winter gardening kind of episode.

00:25:29.53
Buddy
I've got some things talk about for that. So,

00:25:31.30
Keith
Yeah. Yeah. Let's go ahead and start that. Jeremy had jump off real quick to go figure out what's going on that dog. um So, When we say fall gardening, um are we talking about like right now we're in August and fixing to go into what, September? So what are we on that now? Yeah, we're at the end of the month.

00:25:51.21
Keith
Is this the time where you want to be transplanting or even seeding? Can you be seeding at this time? i Because I think that they say you're supposed to be seeding fall crops like eight weeks before the the the first frost comes or something like that.

00:26:08.08
Buddy
Miller, Well it's going to depend it in every zone is different so and I did a kind of a if if you have a patent pin there handy this is kind of a checklist for you to come up with for your fall crops, but when I could dive into that real quick if you'd like.

00:26:23.95
Buddy
David Miller, So.

00:26:26.03
Keith
Yeah, I mean, let's say let's do it.

00:26:28.18
Buddy
So the first step you need for your fall or winter garden is you need to figure out what you want to plant.

00:26:29.82
Jeremy
me

00:26:36.33
Buddy
OK, so you need to do some research and there's a there's some different places to go out and some websites to go look at. One of them is the Old Farmer's Almanac. They have a ah nice planning calendar for and you've got to we've talked about zones before. You've got to figure out which zone you're in.

00:26:55.81
Buddy
And so there's a nice zone map up there and we put it up there before on other episodes to where you figure out what zone you're in. Once you figure out the zone, you can go back and backwards plan. Okay, well, if I want, I really like corn, you know, fall corn, or I like broccoli. So when do, then you can backward plan.

00:27:16.41
Buddy
When do I want to plant it or when, when's a good time to plant it? And so depending on your zone, you have a certain time to plant it. Like right now, there's certain stuff I should have planted in July.

00:27:27.89
Buddy
Other things I'm good now to plant. So in my in my zone. So you just have to figure out what zone you're in and then go down the list and figure out what you want to plant. And then it'll tell you when to plant it. And that's all about, you know, prior planning for your garden. And you should be, if you're going to do a garden, you know, everybody, the the most popular garden is is a spring and summer garden.

00:27:53.75
Buddy
So you plan those things. But you know if you want to fall garden, you have to figure out in the spring what you're going to plant, what you're going to rip out in order to plant for your fall garden, if that makes any sense for you.

00:28:09.09
Buddy
so there's So there's some planning that starts a year out almost. So yeah, first thing you need to do is figure out what you want to plant and then you backwards plan, find out when I need to plant it.

00:28:19.95
Buddy
And you can use the old farmer's almanac is a good website. You got the county. I use Oklahoma County extension offices, but there's always an ag extension office. Every county in the United States has an ag extension office.

00:28:34.48
Buddy
ah You just have to figure out, you can Google it. It'll come up for you in whatever state you're in. And then, ah you know, of course, I talked about checking your zone. So if you have any questions, the best resource for any of this is call your that county ag extension office.

00:28:50.02
Buddy
There's going to be somebody there that's going to be a subject matter expert for this and they're going to coach you through it. So they're they're the ah great resource for you. And that's what they get paid for. So definitely get out there and use them.

00:29:05.00
Buddy
All right, so now you figure out, okay, I figured out what I want to plant when I need to plant it.

00:29:09.96
Keith
Hold on, for for the for the total idiot, when you say cant reach out to these people, what exactly what, step by step, how would you how do you do that?

00:29:12.80
Buddy
Yeah.

00:29:18.69
Buddy
All right, so I go on the Googles and I Google, you know, i let's say, give me a county, I don't know, Tulsa County Extension Office.

00:29:31.32
Buddy
Tulsa County Ag Extension Office. So I Google it up. and it'll pop up number or a website.

00:29:39.80
Buddy
And hopefully, i'm I'm assuming every county has a website. I i might be putting a cart before the horse here, but they should have something or a phone number. But they have, there's universities out there that partners with the local county offices to do these ag extension programs.

00:30:02.35
Buddy
And so you just call them up on the phone, the number they provide, or get in a chat room with them or whatever. It's just a matter of doing some research. So did that answer your question?

00:30:14.45
Keith
And then whoever answers the phone, say, I have questions about buth blah, blah, blah. blah

00:30:19.08
Buddy
Yeah, and if it's a secretary or they don't know, they'll get somebody there. So like in Oklahoma, there's um what they call a master garden program, master gardeners program.

00:30:30.72
Buddy
And so it's about a year long program you go through and you you learn all these great things about, you know, flowers and vegetables and you learn how to be the the master. By the time that you're done with the program, you're a master gardener.

00:30:44.72
Buddy
Well, then you have a year of service that you have to provide for that. So you'll work at the county extension office, you know, couple days a week or you'll do something as on Saturdays or wherever it may be.

00:30:57.42
Buddy
You'll do something in service to that. for that program and a lot of times they're man in a phone tree or they're answering emails so you're getting subject matter experts in these you know different sections of subjects or whatever and in a lot of times if they don't know the answer they're going to go to the ag extension agent that's there and ask them

00:31:21.36
Keith
Okay, so now that puts it in perspective. So there there are actual people out there whose jobs it is to answer these questions and help you with your your area, your county.

00:31:31.32
Buddy
Yeah, and and there' that's what they get paid for. so

00:31:34.94
Keith
ah Okay.

00:31:36.69
Buddy
So then the next thing you need to do is is prep your beds. So let's say you did get squash bugs and you you did the things that we talked about earlier and you ripped out everything. and and Okay, what do I do next?

00:31:49.09
Buddy
I want to do fall some fall crops. you know I'm going to do spinach and I'm going to bok choy and I'm going to do some brassicas cauliflower whatever.

00:31:59.89
Keith
What would be good, let's say, for your area? Just let's go with that.

00:32:03.48
Buddy
Oh man. Uh, I like greens. I like to do greens in the, the the fall and winter. Um, I always, yeah, lettuces, um, and they'll produce and, and eventually, they'll poop out, you know, they'll, they'll do their thing for a while they'll freeze out.

00:32:10.39
Keith
Like collard greens, mustard greens, that sort of thing.

00:32:23.34
Buddy
And there's some techniques of of extending your season, you know, with some other things I can talk about later, but, um, so, You know, I like the lettuce, the spinach, the broccoli cauliflower.

00:32:37.19
Buddy
I've tried Poc Choi before. ah Didn't do too well with it. Kale. I love Russian red kale. I love that stuff. And I don't let it get very big.

00:32:45.40
Keith
Yeah, me too.

00:32:47.10
Buddy
I like to make it about size of a quarter to a silver dollar. And just I'll just make a salad out of it I'll put in my smoothie in the morning. I just love that shit. And I.

00:32:56.13
Keith
We just planted the the red the Russian red kale ah about a week ago, and it it didn't do well first because it was in that damn heat, but now that it's cooling off and starting to pop up.

00:32:56.36
Buddy
Yeah.

00:32:59.09
Buddy
Yeah. yeah

00:33:06.14
Buddy
Yeah, and loves rain or it loves a lot of water too. So a little bit of fertilizer, not not too crazy. little bit of nitrogen for it. But yeah, I planted mine actually today.

00:33:17.50
Buddy
And it's some cilantro. I can get a short season cilantro here. So I'm going to throw some herbs in there. I'm going to do some, like I said, some of the things i already mentioned.

00:33:28.53
Buddy
And radishes and beets. Now that...

00:33:33.03
Keith
root plants. Okay.

00:33:34.95
Jeremy
Beats.

00:33:34.95
Buddy
So... and that's going to go into something I can talk about later about cover crop. And I want to get back, get back to the soil.

00:33:44.79
Keith
yeah wellll we'll get what Yeah, let's get back to let's let's do the cover.

00:33:47.40
Buddy
Yeah.

00:33:47.63
Keith
I definitely want to get into the cover crop. That's important.

00:33:50.34
Buddy
Yeah. So beets, beets and radishes will help with that. So those those are the things I like to do. And I mean, ah you guys can, you know, talk about what you like to do, but those are a few things.

00:34:03.50
Buddy
I don't get too crazy. I just, put some things in there, but I do mainly it go heavy on the spinach and, and the lettuces, the cool, cool weather lettuce and stuff like that.

00:34:13.84
Buddy
So, um, so now you, you want to, you've gone out there and you figured out what you want. You got prepare your beds. Okay. So what you want to do is inspect your bed, you know, make sure that, you know all your irrigation still work and your hoses aren't, you know, uh,

00:34:31.84
Buddy
Repair your hoses if you need to buy new ones. If you have drip irrigation, check out your drip irrigation, make sure it's functioning well. And then, ah you know, look at if you're in a raised bed, look at the raised bed, make sure it's still in good order.

00:34:46.67
Keith
You know, it's funny that you say that because all of our, hos we don't have drips or we have all hoses and and sprayers and wands. And ah believe it or not, they wear out by this time. we We went down to Sternhead by all kinds of new parts and, you know, and fix them, or repair them so they're not dripping all over the place and wasting water. They do get a workout if you're if you're using your garden properly.

00:35:08.97
Buddy
Yeah. And, and, um, you know, depending on your water, some places have hard water. Um, that's wreaks havoc on, on different, I've lived in places with hard water that, uh, some of my, uh, yeah, the nozzles last about a year.

00:35:20.00
Keith
that clog up the nozzles and stuff.

00:35:23.91
Buddy
I mean, maybe a season. Um, it just gets crazy. Um, I like to do the quick disconnect hope because I don't like to buy hoses. Uh, so I'll do quick disconnect so I can drag a hose from one place to another and, and you know, do some things with it. i But I prefer drip, drip line hoses, you know, the flat drips in gardens because it saves water.

00:35:44.78
Keith
Yeah. Yeah.

00:35:46.44
Buddy
And in the wintertime, especially the fall and winter, you don't want to spray the tops of your crops, you know, with ah aerial type watering because if you get it for,

00:35:58.09
Keith
It's too cold, right?

00:35:59.41
Buddy
the air is colder than what the ground temperature is. So you can, you know, ruin your crops.

00:36:02.12
Keith
Yeah.

00:36:04.08
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:36:04.73
Buddy
So use the drip lines. So that's a smart way for the, especially the fall and winter stuff. So

00:36:10.78
Keith
So so not not soaker hoses. Those are too so slow. You're talking about the ones that actually drip.

00:36:15.28
Buddy
yeah a drip line, a better higher end, but I've used, so I use the 10, $12 soaker hoses too that are, you know, yeah.

00:36:21.54
Keith
Oh, soaker hoses. Really?

00:36:23.81
Buddy
Now they'll freeze up on you too. So when, when the ground does freeze you got to watch that, but,

00:36:30.13
Keith
Yeah, a couple months from now, yeah.

00:36:31.87
Buddy
Yeah. So, and there's some techniques in there with that too, I can tell you about. So yeah. So once you, once you've inspected your bed, you want to remove any weeds, you get those seasonable weeds in there. You don't want them, you know, leaching off your, your fertilizer, your compost that you're about to put in the soil again.

00:36:50.92
Buddy
When you rip everything out and you're starting to go fresh again, or maybe it's, it's a bed you have and you, you took out a crop or a crops dead and you got a row there, then it's time to put some compost in. So just go out there and feed a little compost on top.

00:37:06.81
Buddy
Okay. After you remove the weeds, put this compost on and then I use a broad fork if I can, or I till very just surface level till, you know, maybe one, two inches down.

00:37:19.77
Buddy
I don't get too deep in there and just till down a little bit so I can plant a seed. So, so And i'm putting that compost back in the soil and help me it i'm putting back in what i've leached out over that season, so it's a good that's a perfect time to use your compost.

00:37:37.94
Keith
Right, right.

00:37:41.31
Keith
Yeah, so a lot of those plants are going to suck up all that that nutrients that you put in throughout the beginning of the summer and spring, but also rain and watering also dilutes all those ah nutrients as well.

00:37:52.56
Buddy
yeah and and. You know, the i'm a I live in where the Dust Bowl happened. And, you know, I was fascinated about the Dust Bowl when I was a kid. I had grandparents who homesteaded that that and great-grandparents that lived through it. and i you know, would ask them about it.

00:38:07.45
Buddy
Hey, what what was this Dust Bowl? Did you live through it? What happened? And, you know, basically they over-tilled the soil. They went in and they planted crop after crop after crop after crop.

00:38:21.04
Buddy
and they didn't put the nutrients back in. So they had soil erosion. The wind came in, they had drought. they They just set themselves up for the perfect storm to where the soil went foul.

00:38:33.10
Buddy
And I have areas on my, the land I have now that are still fallow. I mean, nothing's produced there because, and there's pictures of that same area from, ah I guess the twenties or twenties,

00:38:49.32
Buddy
teens and 20s or whenever the Dust Bowl came through that was all sand. It's, it's, I have pictures of it that, you know, I've got from my great grandparents, grandparents and stuff.

00:39:01.20
Buddy
So I've, and I can go into what I was doing to try to turn that over, but I'm just now getting grass to grow back in it as a Bermuda.

00:39:02.04
Keith
crazy.

00:39:09.97
Buddy
So, but it's working out. So,

00:39:12.07
Keith
So you got to put a lot of fertilizers and stuff down if you want something to grow.

00:39:17.14
Buddy
Yes, yes, it's it's crazy. In this one little area, now the rest of it, I got some low-lying areas that I have a native grass coming back in. It's called bluestem.

00:39:28.31
Buddy
We used to call it buffalo grass. you know and

00:39:30.66
Keith
Buffalo, yeah.

00:39:31.88
Buddy
Buffalo used to roam through this area and and would eat it down. And there's areas and on the farm growing up to where you know it was... I mean, I'm a kid, but it was waist high.

00:39:43.62
Buddy
It was this bluestem buffalo grass. It grows up in clubs.

00:39:45.96
Keith
wow

00:39:47.53
Buddy
But anyways, I digress. Okay, so now that we've inspected everything, we've removed the weeds, we've added compost, we've tilled it in or broad forked it in, which is better, then ah you need to water deep.

00:40:01.03
Buddy
You need to you know soak that area of that bed, if it's a raised bed, or soak that area and just let it do its thing and let it sit for a couple days and and soak that water in before you plant.

00:40:13.09
Buddy
And then you go in and plant your crops. Once you've you've planted the crops and either in rows or whatever you do or transplants or whatever you've you've got set up, then you water it in especially if you have seeds, you got to water them again.

00:40:29.70
Buddy
a way some of your seeds you want to pre-soak to jumpstart the germination process. um You can inoculate some of the seeds as well.

00:40:39.96
Buddy
I might can get into that, but it's it's going to help you get um you know and faster into the process of ah this whole process of you know fall planting.

00:40:51.66
Buddy
Because fall, yes,

00:40:51.86
Keith
Like the big seeds, you ah you definitely want to soak the big seeds because it takes a while for them to get wet and you know back to life again.

00:40:58.42
Buddy
Mike M.D.: And the fall you're you're racing it's time because at least fall here in my zone is not very long, you know it could be a week two weeks a month is a long.

00:41:03.30
Keith
Right.

00:41:09.28
Keith
um I remember in Texas, one day it's summer, next day it's winter.

00:41:10.17
Buddy
Mike Noble, M.D.:

00:41:12.32
Keith
It's crazy.

00:41:12.64
Buddy
Oh hell yeah yeah it's like that. Mike Noble, M.D.: So. Noble,

00:41:17.01
Jeremy
but we're in the middle of what we call false fall right now.

00:41:19.89
Buddy
false fall yeah you know i think.

00:41:21.09
Jeremy
Yeah. Lies and deceit.

00:41:24.07
Buddy
I got a feeling we are too, but we're going to plant that fall crop. So, and yeah, but okay. So the last thing you really need to do um is you fertilize. ah You want to throw down your fertilizer. You compost it already.

00:41:42.33
Buddy
So that's going to let you, you know, it's going to get you through the first 30 days. But if you want to put it a little additional in there, the two types of comp or the, excuse me, the two types of fertilizer I use ah for the fall plants.

00:41:56.81
Buddy
And right after I plant them, I'll throw down some, something that's higher nitrogen because you want to get that kickstarted. You want to get the growth. You want to get the seeds going and get a stand on them while the ground temperatures are, are,

00:42:10.73
Buddy
in the 70s, 70s ish. And in my state, I have I use a what's called a Mesonet. And it's in a few different states where it gives you and you there's just Google what the ground temperature is in your area.

00:42:27.69
Buddy
And a lot of seeds need to germinate at some of them at 60, some of them at 70, some of it 75, 80. So figure out what that plant needs, what tim ground temperature needs.

00:42:40.94
Buddy
in order to germinate. So right now I'm setting about 65 to 70, depending on you know time of day here. So um I'm good for a lot of seed germination. Even some of the spring plants, you can plant for a short season now and they'll germinate. so And then, ah so the, the fall crops, I want to 24, 412 or somewhere in that area.

00:43:07.20
Buddy
But that first number is the nitrogen. So you want that number to be higher. And then,

00:43:14.85
Keith
Now, what if that number is high? Like, I've got all different types of organic stuff out there, but one of them I've got is a 20-20-20. So 20 is pretty high for the nitrogen. So the nitrogen is the first number. Then it's what? Phosphorus is in the second number, I think.

00:43:30.63
Keith
And then...

00:43:30.94
Buddy
Yeah.

00:43:32.29
Keith
ah ah but but but bla blah yeah I'm having a brain fart now.

00:43:32.46
Buddy
ah

00:43:35.67
Keith
What's the three? It's NPK.

00:43:38.02
Buddy
It's MPK.

00:43:38.12
Keith
oh

00:43:38.54
Buddy
Yeah.

00:43:39.50
Keith
ah One of them is phosphorus, and one of them is...

00:43:39.86
Buddy
It's nitrogen.

00:43:41.51
Keith
is

00:43:42.43
Buddy
ah potassium.

00:43:43.51
Keith
Potassium. Potassium.

00:43:45.50
Buddy
And yeah.

00:43:45.70
Keith
There. So even though potassium is ah starts with a P, it's actually a k on the the scale. and Phosphorus is the P, the middle one. So the first one. So what if you have like 20, 20, 20, you're still getting 20 of the nitrogen, even if you have higher other numbers. Is it okay to use that?

00:44:04.70
Buddy
It depends on the crop. You got to look at the crop. If you want to fine tune everything, ah good general, this is ah for a general planning for the fall. The higher nitrogen 24, 420, excuse 24, 412 good mix for your fall first fertilization.

00:44:17.50
Buddy
Now, later in want to to 10, 2010 because don't want to necessarily grow as much

00:44:20.76
Keith
Yeah.

00:44:24.30
Buddy
first fertilization yeah later on in the fall you want to switch to a ten twenty ten ah because you want to you don't wanna necessarily grow as much you're wanting the fruit or you're wanting the growth.

00:44:36.29
Keith
The fruit and that that's where the phosphorus comes in.

00:44:38.95
Buddy
Yeah. And you're not going to get fruit out of of lettuce, but you' you you've got to stand now. You just need it to sustain. It's usually going to have its nitrogen in there. Now, keep in mind, if you put compost on your on your garden, it's going to be higher in nitrogen probably. So you might even be able to get by with the 10-20-10 for your fall and winter garden. But i I'll use over fall and winter for the most part after I compost is a 10-20-10.

00:45:09.54
Buddy
So, and and it goes on my it goes on my yard too.

00:45:09.73
Keith
Interesting.

00:45:11.90
Buddy
So if I'm if i'm doing my yard, I'll do use a 10-20-10 over the winter time. And I'll usually hit it fall and then early spring.

00:45:23.43
Buddy
And then once you get that in there, water water are the piss out of it again.

00:45:23.53
Keith
Granules. Use granules.

00:45:27.05
Buddy
And and people don't understand that a fall garden, it needs just as much water as it does in summertime. You can back it off a little bit because of the evaporation that happens during the summer, but you gotta keep that ground moist.

00:45:39.49
Buddy
And I, you know, I tell people use that pinky test, you know, you get next to the plant, stick your pinky in there. If you can get it down, you know, to that first knuckle, then, uh, or to the first bend of your pinky, then that's, that's a pretty good, uh, a pretty good, uh, soil moisture te So,

00:46:00.76
Keith
That's good. That's good advice. Yeah.

00:46:04.77
Buddy
So that's that's the steps and in the fall gardening. you know it's not It's not rocket science. It's it's just a matter of planting a little bit. um just want to you want to get... Planting is a key to it all and knowing a little bit about you know each plant that you want to plant and go out there and experiment. you know I've had some stuff I've never gotten to grow in the fall in the winter and I've had spinach that I planted one spinach plant And I transplanted it in one of those pop-up hoop houses.

00:46:39.32
Buddy
I mean, it was like five by five. And it was, I wanted off of ah one of those.

00:46:44.56
Keith
That's tiny.

00:46:46.18
Buddy
Yeah, it's five by five, but I wanted off of ah one of those sites you go on and you bid for things like DealDash.

00:46:54.08
Keith
Yeah.

00:46:54.93
Buddy
Was it DealDash? One of those bidding things. I got it for like 83 cents. Nobody wanted it.

00:46:59.55
Keith
Did you like crawl?

00:46:59.80
Buddy
And so

00:47:00.35
Keith
You had to crawl into it or you couldn't stand up in it.

00:47:03.03
Buddy
it wasn't very big. So, but I had a, I had about a three foot round spinach plant that I put in there and it was so terrible because it was so big.

00:47:04.38
Keith
Yeah. Yeah.

00:47:14.69
Buddy
It was bitter, but by God, it lasted all winter. So I got, you know, one of those things.

00:47:19.70
Keith
Hmm. wow

00:47:22.20
Buddy
So it kept, I kept it alive all winter. Now the broccoli and cauliflower didn't last, but that spinach plant did so

00:47:32.05
Buddy
So that's, that's the steps that I had put together for, you know, the fall slash winter gardening. But every time you go to plant, it's a good, good time to inspect your beds, inspect your, your, uh, planting plot, uh, all your equipment, inspect them, you know, repair, make your repairs, check your hoses, check your, you know, you yeah all, all the things that all your tools you're going to need.

00:47:56.97
Buddy
And then, weed, know, get the weeds out of there and, uh, you know, go out there and give your, your bed or your garden, the best chance of, uh, you know, making it through that season.

00:48:11.45
Keith
Yeah, and then you've got you have to also consider how long it takes for whatever plant you're planting to grow and then to fruit. You know, like peppers.

00:48:23.06
Keith
You obviously couldn't start pepper plants right now because they would be fruiting in the in the snow. So it wouldn't work.

00:48:28.71
Buddy
Now, there are some cool weather tomato plants out there.

00:48:33.62
Keith
What? No way.

00:48:35.32
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:48:35.43
Buddy
In my area, I've done it.

00:48:35.46
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:48:36.67
Buddy
I've done it. So I looked at that and I forget what zone it is up there in New Jersey and New York, Southern like Pennsylvania through Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

00:48:48.29
Buddy
And I planted some cool, they call it cool season tomato plants and they were actually pretty good.

00:48:55.25
Keith
Wow. Wow. wow

00:48:56.39
Buddy
And if you, if you play with, if you like tomatoes, tomatoes and peppers are kind of my little pet thing. Uh, I like, I like the plants. So if you play with different varieties, you know, you can have tomatoes and peppers, peppers, not so much cause they like heat, but you can get tomatoes from early spring to, you know, almost winter time, depending on where you live. But, um,

00:49:23.82
Buddy
you can get them to produce now summertime. I don't have luck with keeping my tomato plants alive, but this time of year when it starts to get a little cooler and kind of backs off of it, then they'll start going crazy with a little fertilizer. So.

00:49:39.53
Keith
What were you saying earlier about ah being able to extend your season?

00:49:45.27
Buddy
Okay. So extending your season is basically, you know, I'm going to cheat nature a little bit. you know i'm gonna I'm going to artificially make something or add something to the garden that's going to cheat Mother Nature a little bit.

00:50:03.97
Buddy
your're And Jeremy has his hoop house or his greenhouse. That's a season extender. Stuff like row covers, um using them in ah in a raised bed.

00:50:17.50
Buddy
You can take PVC pipe. and fast, you know, put some six mil plastic sheathing over and attach it to the, you're basically making a raised bed or a hoop house, but it's called a low, my brain's not working out, a row cover.

00:50:41.78
Keith
Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's it's almost like a like ah like little like little tunnels, almost like little hoop houses, but they're but they're real small.

00:50:49.42
Buddy
Yeah, it' so like a miniature hoop house or a row cover is what they call them. And so you're using PVC pipe. You can put it in the ground. Or if you're using a raised bed, you can just take three foot or four foot of it, however tall you want it.

00:51:02.53
Buddy
And you fasten, somehow figure out how to fasten the six mil plastic to it. Six mil is good thickness, and it allows the sun to come through good.

00:51:18.98
Buddy
and what you're doing is you're causing a, you know, you're making a little greenhouse and you're extending that season out to where, you know, when it gets kind of warmer days out there, if it's, if it's 70 out, well, inside that thing, it's going to be close to 90.

00:51:31.17
Buddy
So you might want to open it up, but you know, you want to fix, you're making a micro climate, you're cheating mother nature a little bit.

00:51:33.03
Keith
ah Creating like a little microclimate.

00:51:37.96
Buddy
And, uh,

00:51:38.75
Keith
Well, we had our freeze last year, our first first freeze. I remember very well because in my I had a hoop house and everything on the outside, all my peppers on the outside, dead overnight.

00:51:51.85
Keith
Like overnight, the frost, they just hit the ground.

00:51:53.01
Buddy
Yeah.

00:51:55.49
Keith
It was incredible. Everything that was inside the hoop house was perfectly fine. I was still producing peppers for a few weeks.

00:52:01.73
Buddy
Yeah. And it's good for that. Cause i mean, it's just going to write, it's going to extend that season out. Um, hoop houses were great for that or the, uh, the row covers. Um, you can also do it with, uh, they call them, uh, clotchies or clock, cool watch.

00:52:14.43
Jeremy
Thank

00:52:18.70
Buddy
Uh, I'm probably mispronouncing it. Um, it's just a ah glass, uh,

00:52:22.80
Keith
Man, I love me some kolaches, dude. You get them down there in West Texas in one of those little stores.

00:52:24.90
Buddy
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00:52:27.02
Keith
Oh, man, they're good.

00:52:27.60
Buddy
Little chick kolaches.

00:52:28.98
Keith
The Czech ones, yeah.

00:52:31.73
Buddy
These are just like the top of a cake. I mean, it reminds me of something you put on top of a cake. You know, the glass. It's just a glass, like globe half a globe thing. You stick over top of your plants.

00:52:43.64
Buddy
And it it makes a little greenhouse over the top of the plant. um the The ghetto or the the trailer park version of it, which I use, is milk jugs. or you know some juice jugs so you take a milk jug cut out the bottom of it open up the top a little bit you know take the little cap off and you can keep them because you might need it to when it gets really rainy or if it gets really cold to cap it off but you just stick it over the plant put some dirt around the bottom and you got a little microclimate there and then the last thing

00:53:17.39
Keith
Huh. I feel like a small plant.

00:53:19.73
Buddy
Yeah, the last thing is a cold frame and and I'll let you guys look that up. I've done it before.

00:53:28.45
Keith
Looks like you muted yourself.

00:53:31.77
Jeremy
He just got muted.

00:53:31.94
Buddy
Okay, sorry.

00:53:33.29
Keith
Ha ha ha ha

00:53:33.53
Buddy
Yeah, you just got, I did a Jeremy.

00:53:33.91
Jeremy
ah You got the voice. You're getting the voice.

00:53:36.63
Buddy
Yeah. So the last one's a cold frame. So the yeah cold frame is is usually made out of glass. You take a, like a window pane.

00:53:49.42
Buddy
and you stick it over a raised bed, you know, you make a little, I don't know, if you got I don't know, six by eight frame, you make it,

00:53:59.72
Keith
I like to, i i like I describe them as being like a glass coffin.

00:54:04.03
Buddy
it's like a glass coffin. Yeah. And, and it's good to make them at an angle. I've learned that the hard way. And don't stick it underneath your house to where the snow will come off the top of your house onto it.

00:54:17.05
Buddy
That, that's a bad idea. I thought I would. OK, so um I digress. I busted one one year. It worked great. I had some you know nice little crops in there, but it snowed and went out there and looked.

00:54:31.14
Buddy
But when it still started to melt, came off the side of the house and it crunched it. But my my good idea was to take it and move it as close to the house as I could because it would leach the heat off the house, the brick, you know.

00:54:38.05
Keith
Yeah.

00:54:44.15
Buddy
And yeah, we're great, man. I had some nice crop in there and all sudden went out there one day and bam, all the snow fell off the house and crushed it. So there's that too. Yeah.

00:54:55.29
Keith
I saw Gardner. There's one that I watch on, excuse me, on YouTube. Um, I think it's MG Gardner or something. He's over in your area, uh, Jeremy. And, um, he has these 50 gallon black plastic, uh, you know, drums and he fills them with water.

00:55:15.65
Keith
And, um, He puts them like between some of his citrusy type plants and other stuff, and they heat up all day long with the sun. And then they then they they burn off that heat at nighttime into the plants.

00:55:27.42
Keith
And it kind of keeps everything warm in that area.

00:55:27.92
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that and I have seen some people who have um um our our greenhouse that I built is fairly decently sized, but I've seen some people with much larger ones and they actually have a one of those smaller buddy heaters and they go in in the morning, um close the door behind them.

00:55:49.52
Buddy
That's racist.

00:55:50.91
Jeremy
I know, but

00:55:53.74
Buddy
I'm kidding.

00:55:55.42
Jeremy
I don't mean to heat you up, buddy.

00:55:55.53
Buddy
I'm buddy either.

00:55:56.90
Jeremy
However, um the brand buddy heater, it's just a simple propane, safe indoor, um, uh, uh, heater. They'll crank that on for a few minutes. Let the entirety of the, um,

00:56:11.00
Jeremy
of the greenhouse get nice and warm, get that warm air in there, they'll crank it off. And then as the day warms back up, if it does, they just let ah the windows open just a little bit, let some of that out.

00:56:23.06
Jeremy
And then they close it back up in the evening and it helps retain that heat on the inside. um But my big question for y'all, and I know it's a problem here because our water table is very different than y'all's. um What is your freeze line like?

00:56:38.81
Jeremy
Because I know that ours is, once it gets to a certain point in the year here, um it's almost impossible to get down on the ground.

00:56:48.45
Buddy
Well,

00:56:51.48
Buddy
sounds like you almost sir you're in a tundra type area. So with you're you're trop you're almost tropical out there. So we have what they call frost pockets.

00:57:00.38
Jeremy
Mm-hmm.

00:57:02.01
Buddy
It's just a little little low lying area on that's on the opposite end of, so it'd be the on a slope. So it'd be the morning side where the morning sun side is of a slope.

00:57:13.89
Jeremy
Yeah.

00:57:14.43
Buddy
where it doesn't get that afternoon sun to where it'll it'll freeze up and stay frozen. So we have to watch for that, but we really don't get hard freezes.

00:57:27.07
Buddy
And we we have something we call the Indian summer. it's, it's a summer that just, it seems like it usually happens in December. We'll get two weeks of warm, you know, might get cold for a couple weeks and in the ground, we just don't really get a ground freeze.

00:57:37.16
Jeremy
yeah

00:57:41.63
Buddy
I mean, ah and honestly, um, a hard freeze. I mean, we hardly get them. And if we do, it's first part of February into January. And then by March, it's usually gone.

00:57:54.12
Buddy
So, uh,

00:57:55.14
Jeremy
Yeah, our coldest times of the year here is the towards the end of December going into January, February. um But we we have so much water here um and we have so much groundwater, it does...

00:58:06.18
Buddy
Yeah.

00:58:12.88
Jeremy
cause an issue with trying to get down, you know, get down into the, into the dirt and, um, do all those kinds of things. I know some people who at the end of the growing season, at the end of the summer, you know, they're pulling crops and these are, these are people who like, they sell mass amounts of crops, like, you know, thousands of heads of corn.

00:58:34.27
Jeremy
Um, but once they get everything out of the ground, um, I know one one guy in particular, he sells he sells corn, and he sells it primarily for feed and deer corn.

00:58:47.94
Jeremy
And they'll get up all the plants out of the field. You know, they do their thing. And then once that's all tilled, he'll actually, he has a, I've seen him do it, but he has this massive thing that looks like a waterer, but it's actually a flamethrower on both sides.

00:59:02.70
Jeremy
It's got like several, like hundreds of these little small heads of but like fire coming out and he'll burn his whole field, ah let that settle down.

00:59:06.88
Buddy
Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah.

00:59:13.04
Jeremy
But he pre-tills. And going into the winter, he pre-tills the ground before the freeze happens. So that section of his his growing area is already pre-tilled.

00:59:28.14
Jeremy
So that way, when it starts to thaw and the spring starts to come, it's that much easier to get ready to sow for the next season.

00:59:36.95
Buddy
Now is he using cover crops or he's just pre tilling it?

00:59:40.23
Jeremy
um He's got a couple different sections, and this is a guy that that he works out on the contract. um He rotates his crops pretty heartily because he'll grow corn, but he also does soybean, and soybean is notorious for just absolutely wrecking ah soil after you've tilled it.

00:59:49.21
Buddy
Yeah.

00:59:54.11
Buddy
Mm-hmm.

00:59:58.46
Buddy
Yes.

01:00:00.16
Jeremy
um He does, um and some of his leases, he has acres of nothing but clover and Bermuda and, you know, Kentucky blue and that kind of thing.

01:00:09.13
Buddy
Yeah.

01:00:11.73
Jeremy
But those are deer.

01:00:12.32
Buddy
Wiggrass is a good one.

01:00:13.19
Jeremy
Yeah, that's deer plots. And, you know, some of those areas out kind of where my contract is, the deer out there look, man, they look so much better than the deer that we have around our particular area because,

01:00:28.02
Keith
Yeah, because they're eating good.

01:00:29.72
Jeremy
Well, they're eating good, but they have whole crop fields that are dedicated to those food plots for the deer.

01:00:29.72
Buddy
Yeah.

01:00:37.93
Jeremy
um Unfortunately, in this past, oh gosh, I don't know exactly when it happened, but um we now have wild pigs in certain areas and they're starting to become a problem.

01:00:50.04
Buddy
Yeah.

01:00:51.45
Jeremy
Um, and it actually goes all the way back to around 2017, 2018, there was a couple of farmers who were faced with a choice of their pigs drowning in a hurricane or releasing them. And a couple of them, they, they went ahead and released them. And I've talked about this before, but pigs will turn feral within two weeks.

01:01:12.37
Jeremy
Um, all pigs, no matter what kind of pig it is, they'll just, they'll turn feral within two weeks. And, um, They were able to recover some of them, but now we've got ah pig issue here and they will go, oh my gosh, man.

01:01:26.82
Jeremy
Pigs are, they're a prolific problem across, it's almost getting to be countrywide. Yeah.

01:01:33.32
Buddy
Yeah, I used to hunt them down in in East Texas. I had a company that that's all I did.

01:01:38.63
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:01:38.90
Buddy
i mean, at at night, I would just go shoot until I'd run out of bullets and then go to the Walmart the next and buy more.

01:01:45.10
Jeremy
yeah Yeah, but as far as ah for us, you know you had talked about planting bok choy. All the bok choy that we grew this year was actually um ah regrown from store-bought bok choy.

01:01:59.55
Jeremy
um

01:02:00.16
Buddy
Nice.

01:02:00.39
Jeremy
We would cut it off. You just kind of shave off a little bit of but um off the bottom of the bulb, put it in some water, wait for it to start to come back up. And once it's you know good and thick in the middle, you just put it in some dirt and let it go.

01:02:12.83
Jeremy
But um was it probably two weeks ago, i think it was, we had to pull all of our bok choy. We've had to pull most of our um arugula because of cabbage cabbage moths.

01:02:28.42
Buddy
Is that a vegetable?

01:02:28.73
Jeremy
and ah yeah it is a vegetable um but we we were doing really great with it and then we walked out there we're looking around and i looked and i could see ah the webs from the the silk that the the cabbage moths they weave and there was there was you see these little black dots and stuff in there that's the knits that's the actual larvae that are developing and

01:02:44.50
Buddy
Oh, man.

01:02:52.90
Jeremy
We just got in there, we pulled it all out and put it in the fire pit. And man, those stupid cabbage moths, every year, every single year, we have we have not been successful with any cabbage plants, any of them at all.

01:03:02.06
Buddy
So

01:03:09.55
Jeremy
And I'm not 100% sure of the how and the why, but it's always cabbage moths. And I'm not sure if we're not planting in the right time. This time this this time ah this time this year, we are going to try and do ah your cabbage plants and your broccanoids, your broccoli type you know plants now that it's going to get cooler.

01:03:30.20
Buddy
so So you're doing a fall a fall garden?

01:03:34.46
Jeremy
We are going to try. And the good thing is, is we do have the, uh, the, the, the greenhouse that I built. Um, and it's as solid as it is.

01:03:42.30
Buddy
Yeah.

01:03:45.57
Jeremy
um it's, it's, it's, uh, it's really fricking solid, but it, it, it, where it's located, as soon as the sun peaks up over the house in the morning, it's hitting the, um, it's hitting the, the, the greenhouse and warming it up.

01:03:46.64
Buddy
Four docks.

01:04:03.75
Buddy
Oh, man.

01:04:04.05
Jeremy
So hopefully, um yeah, it is.

01:04:06.00
Buddy
Blessing and a curse there.

01:04:08.88
Jeremy
um

01:04:09.23
Buddy
then

01:04:10.07
Jeremy
I mean, this time of year, the only thing that we're using it for, and we have the door open, is Missy's drying out um ah flowers that she's gathering from um some of the pollinators. She's you know harvesting seeds um and doing that kind of thing. She's got trays out there with the flower heads drying out, so she'll have the seeds.

01:04:31.89
Jeremy
um But next year, yeah, and next year I do want to try a little bit of chaos gardening, but i mean, ah I'm so distraught about what happened with all of the with all the damn cabbage bugs.

01:04:32.98
Buddy
It's a good idea.

01:04:48.38
Jeremy
It was... It was it was a killer, man, just to pull up. And that's most that's mostly Missy. That's all Missy did those rows. Missy planted that stuff.

01:04:59.82
Jeremy
She was out there tending to that particular area every day. And I was like, that sucks. That's really nice. as soon as I saw them, I was like, we got to burn this whole area.

01:05:10.91
Jeremy
We have to rip out everything and burn it. And

01:05:13.19
Keith
Yeah, Rhonda had the same effect today. She was very, she was she was upset, but she was also very pissed off because how much money she spent on the seas and the time going into it and everything.

01:05:22.15
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:05:22.37
Buddy
Man, it's it's heartbreaking. i mean, I heard i was heartbroken for you guys, man.

01:05:24.76
Jeremy
And it's, and these weren't,

01:05:28.36
Buddy
cause

01:05:28.71
Jeremy
well, it it wasn't even just seeds that we bought. These were actually seeds that we had harvested from um previous plants and previous melons and stuff like that. These were, these were pre-harvested seeds from something that we had already consumed.

01:05:45.84
Buddy
Yeah, it's a hard work and all the sweat equity you put into it all, you know, it's holy shit.

01:05:46.23
Jeremy
And yeah, Yeah. Yeah. ah That's, you know, like our, like our, what the hell are they called? The zucchinis. We got a total, I think, a total of maybe three zucchinis, but, but ah two neighbors over, man, she's got zucchini for like, you know, a small town and she's got a, her garden is half the size of ours and she's got

01:06:00.77
Buddy
Wow.

01:06:14.35
Buddy
Well, now she's got squash bugs.

01:06:16.37
Jeremy
Well, i don't I don't know, but she's got but just tons of it. I remember, it was it last year or the year before?

01:06:20.86
Buddy
she'll shell She'll have squash bugs now.

01:06:23.19
Jeremy
Yeah, yeah.

01:06:23.29
Keith
do they Do they fly? Hmm.

01:06:25.26
Jeremy
not No, they do migrate.

01:06:25.40
Buddy
No, but they migrate, man.

01:06:27.93
Jeremy
They'll go sniffing stuff out. And their main their main source of food is their their vine borers. So they're looking for vines. um I did see the one, like I mentioned today, on on a pepper plant.

01:06:41.31
Jeremy
And I was like, I'll go full retard out here. I don't care. I will burn in this whole yard to get rid of these.

01:06:47.08
Buddy
Never go full retard.

01:06:48.96
Jeremy
Yeah. But again, we're gonna the good thing is is we do have the greenhouse and we positioned it specifically for ah the where it's located, where the sun, as soon as the sun peaks over the house, it's already warming that area back there.

01:07:05.45
Jeremy
um But again, one of our big issues out here on the East Coast, especially here in North Carolina, is we have a very high water table.

01:07:06.31
Buddy
Yeah, smart.

01:07:14.08
Jeremy
We have underground streams. We have a lot of water. um And our freeze line, you can, know you know, some people say it's like, oh, it's 24 inches. Well, it may not be 24 inches of this year. It may be different.

01:07:28.42
Jeremy
So, you know, you're, when you're, when you're getting down into the ground, um you really got to like get down in there until you can find a spot that actually feels normal.

01:07:40.96
Jeremy
um

01:07:41.14
Keith
Get down on it.

01:07:42.38
Jeremy
Yeah, exactly.

01:07:42.63
Keith
and he i here Get down on it.

01:07:44.68
Jeremy
um when we were building a deck um we had to we overbuilt it but we actually ended up putting in four feet four foot of um pillars down um before we put in the six by six yeah four feet just to just to make sure yeah just to make it it was it three or four it may have been three

01:07:44.69
Keith
and here and Sorry.

01:08:00.72
Keith
Four feet. What the? What? Wow.

01:08:08.00
Buddy
There's that Fort Knox thing again.

01:08:09.77
Keith
Yeah.

01:08:10.53
Jeremy
Well, it's a buddy of mine, he he um he's extremely handy and um he overbuilds everything because he also overthinks everything.

01:08:14.89
Buddy
That's racist.

01:08:24.37
Jeremy
I'll just say it to this way. If there's ever a tornado going through our neighborhood, you get up underneath our deck and hold on you're not going anywhere.

01:08:31.94
Buddy
Shit, I'll just go to your greenhouse.

01:08:32.28
Keith
Yeah.

01:08:32.64
Jeremy
um yeah

01:08:34.43
Keith
yeah

01:08:35.34
Buddy
Like an F5 shelter.

01:08:37.10
Jeremy
yeah it's uh i i still gotta plan out the roof um because i do plan on actually um building out and and putting in you know everything there but i asked missy i said um you know the day that that happened with the the the squash bugs i said do you want me to build you another greenhouse and make it larger So we can try to maybe prevent this from happening again.

01:09:04.12
Jeremy
So she's got a she's got to come up with that that answer. um I don't mind building it now that I have the blueprint.

01:09:10.14
Keith
And the money.

01:09:10.42
Jeremy
you know Well, yeah, the money the money was in the lumber.

01:09:13.82
Keith
Cost money to build a greenhouse, man.

01:09:15.78
Jeremy
Yeah, the money is in the lumber when you're building that kind of thing. um The time, I don't mind because I learn along the way. yeah. but

01:09:23.99
Buddy
man, we built one in a class and it's been, was pre pandemic and it was a hundred, think it was $135 or something we built and it was very crude.

01:09:25.62
Jeremy
yeah

01:09:38.58
Buddy
Um, but we built a little greenhouse looking, you know, with plastic, uh, sheathing and, and, I can't remember the diameter of it, but,

01:09:45.73
Jeremy
yeah

01:09:49.26
Keith
Oh, so you're not using like a glass or plastic roofs or anything like that. You're talking about using like six mil plastic.

01:09:54.43
Buddy
That was an A-frame, little A-frame, but it was all under 135 bucks, but i don't think you can do it now.

01:09:58.14
Keith
Right. Right.

01:10:02.97
Buddy
I mean, if you got scrap wood, you could. i mean, only your fasteners and your plastic could be only thing you really have to buy.

01:10:05.64
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:10:10.59
Keith
Yeah.

01:10:10.73
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:10:10.79
Keith
Because I mean, just the screws alone are going cost you 135 for a box.

01:10:14.81
Buddy
Yeah.

01:10:14.80
Keith
I mean, you know, they're expensive.

01:10:16.10
Jeremy
Jesus.

01:10:16.56
Keith
I'm i'm i'm exaggerating, but yeah, I mean,

01:10:18.97
Buddy
No, no, you're not.

01:10:20.66
Jeremy
I was like, what kind of screws are you buying?

01:10:20.72
Buddy
That's the thing, you're not.

01:10:20.85
Keith
i mean

01:10:22.47
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:10:22.88
Keith
i bought um I bought a giant box of deck screws for this last project. and I think it cost like $65. It was very...

01:10:27.72
Buddy
Yeah.

01:10:27.89
Jeremy
Yeah, yeah. i The decking screws that I use from Deckmate, they're great. therefore I use them for literally everything, but man, they are getting more and more expensive.

01:10:40.01
Jeremy
um

01:10:40.12
Buddy
Yeah.

01:10:40.21
Keith
Yeah, well, the good thing about is you can take them out and save them if you need to.

01:10:40.91
Jeremy
But the, yeah, yeah, and I do, I do, I do.

01:10:44.63
Buddy
Yeah, I do. Every time somebody throws a law, I was helping the guy with a fence and he was using some deck screws and some other stuff and a project and He was throwing away.

01:10:56.96
Buddy
i was like, man, those are perfectly good. He goes, nah, they've been used.

01:10:58.88
Keith
Yeah.

01:10:59.76
Buddy
I'm like, shit, no, they're not.

01:11:00.24
Keith
Hell no.

01:11:01.35
Buddy
I was picking throws, putting them in my pocket, man, because

01:11:01.57
Jeremy
Yeah. and um

01:11:03.97
Keith
yeah Even if I find a bent one, I'll take a hammer and bend it back.

01:11:07.04
Buddy
and i won't go that far, but. Yep.

01:11:09.44
Jeremy
Yeah. yeah that As a matter of fact, half of the screws that were used to build the um the greenhouse were actually taken from projects that I took apart from something else.

01:11:20.49
Jeremy
And just took the screws out and saved them all because they're really good screws.

01:11:24.01
Buddy
ye

01:11:24.24
Jeremy
um But we're gonna we are gonna try for that we you know we we have um like also like mint you know we have mint 24 7 basically um we have rosemary all year

01:11:36.98
Buddy
You put it in the ground or is in a container?

01:11:39.17
Jeremy
No, it's in a container.

01:11:40.48
Buddy
Okay. Yeah.

01:11:41.60
Jeremy
we actually We actually have a friend of ours who, um he owns a little motorcycle shop, and we actually collect tires from him from motorcycles that he works on.

01:11:53.02
Jeremy
And rather than him have to pay the fee to dispose of the tires, we take his tires and we stack them on top of each other and turn them into planters.

01:12:01.85
Buddy
yeah

01:12:01.96
Jeremy
So... But yeah, that's what we've got our rosemary and mint And then which we're just, I want to be able to at least once for once be successful with some kind of broccoli, something or another.

01:12:15.02
Buddy
Oh, man.

01:12:15.30
Jeremy
Because it's just, because like one year we had um we had started growing cauliflower, not cauliflower, but Brussels sprouts.

01:12:15.90
Buddy
Yeah.

01:12:23.68
Jeremy
Brussels sprouts are a cabbage plant. And they got attacked.

01:12:26.44
Buddy
yeah

01:12:28.33
Jeremy
But then they bounced back. And then the cabbage moths, again, just like just just kept nailing these plants over. And then... We just kind of let it go just to see what would happen with this plant. And it turned into this weird, monstrous looking plant thing. It was all gnarled up and the the the damn cabbage little things look started looking like alien pods. And I was like, I just want to see what happens because this is turning into a horror movie.

01:12:56.88
Jeremy
And we ended up finally pulling them out um bit that every single year that we've tried cabbage moths. So we either have to plant somewhere else or figure out how to prevent that from happening the first place.

01:13:12.20
Jeremy
And the only thing I can, that's what I was about to say.

01:13:12.63
Buddy
You might use some nets. Maybe net.

01:13:15.36
Jeremy
The only thing I can think of is netting.

01:13:15.94
Buddy
Yeah. Yeah.

01:13:18.37
Jeremy
So

01:13:18.69
Buddy
Maybe only thing I can think of. Because I don't really. I'm going to look that up, man. Because I don't. um I haven't had the problem with them all. I've seen them.

01:13:27.81
Jeremy
yeah, they're just they're just tiny little white moths.

01:13:28.23
Buddy
But i you know they didn't really do much. Yeah.

01:13:32.60
Jeremy
tiny little white moths

01:13:34.26
Buddy
Yeah.

01:13:34.50
Jeremy
And once they plant their their eggs and they start to develop, they start spinning silk. And then you'll start to see them. um But um we might, you know, if we can't if we can't grow anything this year, and that's okay if we can't during the winter, we're going to take this whole winter to plan out going into the spring.

01:13:57.10
Jeremy
for next year. And i think I'm going to go ahead and build the chicken house this year. i We were going to do it last year. We didn't. So I think it's time. um But our biggest fear with the chickens is our dogs.

01:14:08.55
Buddy
Well, one of the things I was going to cover is doing a cover crop.

01:14:11.75
Jeremy
So yeah.

01:14:16.92
Buddy
And I mean, you might think about, you know, the areas where you plant in your beds and stuff, or, you know, the soil is go ahead and do a cover crop to

01:14:25.74
Keith
Well, I was going to say, because we're we're getting short on time, just in interest of time, maybe we can talk about cover truck huer crops and you know what what that is used for

01:14:31.89
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah, ahead. yeah go

01:14:34.77
Buddy
You want to you want to you wanted to put that on another episode and and you guys talk about your what you're going to plant for your fall winter stuff? Because, I mean, I think I mentioned what I was going to and Jeremy touched on it, but you haven't really.

01:14:49.04
Keith
Well, no, I think i think for the yeah the the for the listeners, I think that they've got plenty of information off of what you guys have already talked about. I don't really know what we're going to plant, right? I know what we've already planted and what we're going try to do.

01:15:01.79
Keith
But like Jeremy said, for us, all of our brassicas didn't work. So we're going to try them again see what happens. i mean, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, ah cauliflower, none ah not a single one them you know gave us anything.

01:15:12.87
Keith
We got next to nothing. So we might try those. We might, might even try some carrots. I know they take a long time, but we'll try some carrots too.

01:15:20.46
Buddy
Now they're good for fall plants. I mean, now's the time to get them in the ground.

01:15:26.10
Keith
Yeah.

01:15:27.83
Buddy
It'll work. I mean, you can you can get out there and do it for sure.

01:15:31.64
Keith
So what are, a wait a minute. and One more thing. ah and Jeremy just doesn't doesn't have to go on the show, but Jeremy, you don' you're worried about your dogs for the chickens. You can keep them in their their own run.

01:15:42.34
Keith
You can separate them. You don't have to free range your chickens because if you free range your chickens, they are going to destroy your entire garden. They're going to eat it in one day.

01:15:49.70
Jeremy
Oh, yeah.

01:15:50.96
Keith
that Everything is gone in one day.

01:15:52.80
Buddy
ah Yeah.

01:15:53.20
Keith
It's gone.

01:15:53.98
Buddy
Yes.

01:15:54.30
Jeremy
Well, we and we we've talked about that, too. And, you know, we've thought about, you know, because like, for instance, we have German Shepherd, Belgian Malinois cross. That's what our dogs are.

01:16:05.89
Jeremy
They're entirely too smart, but also extremely and mentally handicapped.

01:16:08.73
Buddy
High energy.

01:16:12.06
Jeremy
But have a feeling that even if they were in their own run, they're going to figure out a way to get in there. Especially we are my female is very animal aggressive.

01:16:24.68
Jeremy
um She will figure out a way to get in there if if she can. Now, if we stay on top of them, and condition them, maybe they won't do anything. I'm not sure.

01:16:36.94
Keith
I built a, uh, a predator fence around our run. And, um, which, which was a, you've seen like the, the, the fencing that's welded together. The good stuff, um, comes in like, i think three foot tall or four foot tall.

01:16:51.83
Keith
I think four foot as well. Yeah. It was four foot, uh, by a hundred foot rolls. And, um, I put it two feet up on the fence line and then rolled it at the bottom and then two feet away from the run coming out.

01:17:06.56
Keith
So nothing can dig under it because all animals, including dogs, will walk up to the fence and then try and dig under it. And all they're going hit that predatorp predator, predator friends. And what happens is the grass and everything else grows up around it. You don't even see it. It's gone.

01:17:19.91
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:17:19.87
Keith
It just disappears into the dirt.

01:17:22.05
Jeremy
Yeah. The only thing else that we can think of is um the two males are on a perimeter collar. We can try to put it outside of that perimeter and and we'll end up having to put our female on I don't want to do it, but we'll have to put a collar on her as well.

01:17:41.35
Jeremy
um

01:17:42.76
Keith
Well, a lot of people have ah chickens would and with dogs like the ones you have, and they do just fine with a run and and a coop, a coop and a run.

01:17:42.90
Jeremy
She's...

01:17:52.47
Keith
And that's exactly what we did.

01:17:52.53
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:17:53.67
Keith
And then we finally made the decision to free range because it's so much better for the yard. It's so much better for the chickens. And then we had the dog problem. So what did we do? Well, I trained Ozzy to not, you know, Ozzy actually grew up with him as babies.

01:18:08.03
Keith
So he was, even though he's a big hunting dog, he knew what they were. The new dog coming in, i had to train him. Then every single day i had to bring out there with a leash, a shot collar thing and walk him up to him.

01:18:20.58
Keith
He would try and go over and nibble on him and I'd i'd work it, work it, work it for days and days. Now he's out there by himself running around with him.

01:18:27.27
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:18:27.63
Keith
No problem. No problem at all.

01:18:30.63
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

01:18:32.55
Keith
And if he eats one, he deserved it. It's fine. You know, but no, he hasn't, he hasn't, haven't done anything yet. It it takes a lot of work and and some dogs can't, you know, be trained, but some dogs can.

01:18:44.27
Keith
So you can definitely have your chickens with, with dogs as long as you think, you know, plan it out with

01:18:44.44
Jeremy
yeah

01:18:50.30
Keith
I don't think you have enough space to free range your chickens.

01:18:53.67
Jeremy
No, we would have to build a, um basically a porch run, you know, have an area outside of the coop for them to be able to, um you know, to get get their peck on and, you know, that thing, either that or I build a movable um run for them, you know, kind of put it on wheels, pick it up, put them back, and you know, into a certain area.

01:19:09.87
Keith
A tractor.

01:19:14.37
Keith
chicken ah Chicken tractor. Yeah, they're popular.

01:19:16.78
Jeremy
Yeah. Yeah.

01:19:19.46
Keith
my My sister and her husband, their family, they have a giant property, but they can't free range your chickens. And that's what they do. they have a run And they got there like every day or every other day. They just move it like a few feet.

01:19:30.77
Jeremy
Yeah.

01:19:31.12
Keith
You know.

01:19:32.41
Jeremy
Yeah, that's what we may have to do.

01:19:35.73
Keith
Okay. Well, yeah, that probably won't make on the show. but I thought we'd talk about it. um we We can do a whole chicken show. I mean, um honestly, by now. um Buddy, cover crops. What we got?

01:19:46.19
Buddy
All Cover crops or it's a it's a really smart thing to do.

01:19:52.00
Keith
It's a concept, right?

01:19:52.08
Buddy
um Yeah, it's a constant, I mean, it's a practice.

01:19:57.04
Keith
To practice.

01:19:57.48
Buddy
It's a practice that a lot of farmers use, but you can actually use it in your in your garden if you want.

01:20:05.49
Buddy
you're trying, all you're doing is you're putting back in what you took out from the season. So if if you're in a situation where a you're you're not gonna do a ah winter crop or fall crop, and you're just gonna start in the spring, you know, fresh and going from there, you can plant certain crops in there that'll help put nitrogen back in the soil, keep your soil from, you know, help help the,

01:20:32.28
Buddy
the biodiversity of your soil. um a lot of the cover crops will increase you know the bacteria and the fungi and all organic matter in your soil. Helps the soil structure to where it holds water aerated a little bit.

01:20:49.48
Buddy
you It suppresses your weeds. oh It helps the biodiversity as far as you know your pests to come in there. you know the Birds will be used to coming in there during the wintertime if they're if they're not migratory birds.

01:21:04.15
Buddy
Different animals, if you need animals or care about animals coming in and and feeding off of it. And ah your insects will be used to it as well. Some of the bees, you know, once, you know, wintertime they they go dormant or whatever, but you know, the in late fall, early spring, when it's still, weather's kind of good and the bees are still around, they'll they'll be, and if you get an Indian summer, like I was talking about earlier, they'll come out and feed on it, on these on these cover crops, because a lot of them will actually bloom.

01:21:36.22
Buddy
But they also help in erosion as well. So cover crops are good for setting the stage for success for your your your next season garden.

01:21:47.24
Buddy
And some some of the cover crops that you can use that are smart to use is a legume type of cover crop. And that's kind of the most popular one for so the a lot of your organic gardeners they that practice ah the, you know, we practice the, we call it green manures, basically what it is, is for your cover crops.

01:22:14.47
Keith
So you're growing these green plants and then when and when they die off, you're putting them right, you're leaving them them there basically for, I

01:22:21.39
Buddy
Yeah.

01:22:22.68
Keith
i see

01:22:23.64
Buddy
So some of the crops are legumes. You got crimson clover is a good one. I've actually done that before. it's beautiful. It's nice color. It gives a lot of color to it. It's something pleasant to see um during the winter. It'll overwinter for at least here.

01:22:41.31
Buddy
And it won it'll be there in the spring when it when it comes, you know,

01:22:45.49
Keith
Oh, really? It'll come back?

01:22:46.98
Buddy
yeah, you know it'll, it'll, it won't necessarily all the way die out. Um, and if the weather, you know, it depends on your weather too.

01:22:50.78
Keith
I see.

01:22:53.72
Buddy
If you get a hard, yeah, bees love it.

01:22:53.90
Keith
and And clovers are good for adding nitrogen, right? Isn't that one of those plants that does that?

01:22:58.35
Buddy
It it fixes nitrogen. Um, it's just a beautiful, I love it. I don't know. It's my go-to depending on what's going on. Uh, hairy vetch. Um, it was something that my grandparent, uh,

01:23:11.53
Keith
Vetch. I've never heard of that.

01:23:13.38
Buddy
It's called hairy vetch. It's, it's, I don't suggest it.

01:23:15.95
Keith
Wow.

01:23:18.05
Buddy
It's a very, yeah it's like ah it's pangle foot.

01:23:18.14
Keith
Why?

01:23:21.60
Jeremy
Can you spell that?

01:23:23.76
Buddy
but

01:23:25.03
Jeremy
Because I'm hearing something.

01:23:25.15
Keith
i was afraid to look it up.

01:23:25.33
Buddy
Hairy vetch.

01:23:27.10
Jeremy
I'm hearing something, but it's not registering correctly.

01:23:28.70
Buddy
Yeah, it's called hairy vetch, V-E-T-C-H.

01:23:34.10
Jeremy
Okay. Okay.

01:23:35.51
Buddy
Not a hairy bitch.

01:23:35.66
Jeremy
All right. No, no, no. I wasn't going in that direction. I was i was thinking.

01:23:39.42
Keith
i was scared to Google it, so just...

01:23:44.10
Buddy
Yeah, it might come up, ah you know

01:23:45.60
Jeremy
You might want to go incognito mode for that one there.

01:23:49.54
Buddy
It's great. It's great for your garden, but it if you let it get out of hand, it'll recalve it. You can't even till it up. it'll It'll gum up your tiller.

01:23:59.44
Keith
o

01:23:59.80
Buddy
I've had just i've had terrible problems eradicating it once it got out of hand.

01:24:04.64
Keith
Then why why do the old timers use it?

01:24:07.93
Buddy
it's great nitrogen fixer for the soil. I mean, if you can, and they would get out there and they'd plant it and then they'd go out there and till it, not till it up, they'd go out and brush hog it and then till it. And it didn't have a lot of problems with it. But when it gets evasive, when it gets out of the the field, comes up into your yard, I mean, it's just a pain the ass.

01:24:30.59
Buddy
So I don't like it, ah but it's good. It's it's ah a good practice. If you have a raised bed, that you can manage really easy, you know, might be good to put in there.

01:24:42.26
Buddy
and Another one is ah Austrian water peas, or excuse me, winter peas. It's, um I have not used this, i haven't really looked into it as much, but it's a winter pea that will actually make a pea that you can, i don't know if it's edible or not, I don't know, but you can harvest it.

01:24:59.58
Keith
so they actually make it actually makes pea pods oh because i know green beans will will add nitrogen but you can't grow them in the winter time

01:25:01.92
Buddy
Peapods, yes. ah I don't know if you can eat it or not. I'll have to look into that. But

01:25:11.43
Buddy
yeah, this will overwinter. So a lot of like in my area, it's great for overwintering.

01:25:14.22
Keith
wow

01:25:17.72
Buddy
Now you need to check, and is this is Google. Google your area and your zone to what the winter crops are. Ask your attention agent. Hey, what's so cover crop for You know wintertime, there's there's two different types of cover crop, by the way.

01:25:31.50
Buddy
There's warm and there's cool. So the warm crops, if you wanted to not plant a summer garden, you're going on a cruise all summer, going to be out of town. But I want something in there to fix the nitrogen, you go for the warm weather.

01:25:45.62
Buddy
In the wintertime, if you're not going to a winter one, you can do a cool weather crop.

01:25:46.21
Keith
Oh, okay.

01:25:49.52
Buddy
And the ones I'm talking about is the cool weather.

01:25:51.41
Keith
So your gardens can actually work for you while you're not there.

01:25:54.77
Buddy
Yes, it's going to put all the stuff back in the soil that you leached out of it, that your crops have taken out.

01:25:54.81
Keith
That's great.

01:26:00.17
Keith
Nice. Yeah.

01:26:01.83
Buddy
Winter rye is a very good one. It's just a rye grass that you can put in there. You mow it down in the spring, till it in and it'll get in there and it'll break down in your soil.

01:26:16.10
Keith
Winter rye like the greenest, most softest grass I've ever seen.

01:26:19.91
Buddy
Yeah, now,

01:26:20.28
Keith
I mean, it is crazy good stuff.

01:26:22.69
Buddy
it's it could cause problems in your garden.

01:26:25.66
Keith
Well, won't grow back.

01:26:27.25
Buddy
it It'll grow back, but you're tilling it in, you want to till it a little deeper than what, you know, a couple inches.

01:26:33.96
Keith
So you're you're basically trying it into its own compost.

01:26:35.43
Buddy
So it'll actually break down, but you can, you can enter once you introduce it in there, it's going to be hard to, it's going to always be there.

01:26:36.84
Keith
Yeah. Yeah.

01:26:45.49
Buddy
Yes.

01:26:46.31
Keith
you met You might be weeding in the cool months because winterize, it pops up when it gets cool.

01:26:49.22
Buddy
yes you're going to have that weed in the winter months. So now if you don't let it go to seed, then you're not going to have that problem as, as much, it'll still have its root, but, and that's a whole and nother conversation, but any, any of these things, once it starts to flower or go to seed, you need to automatically go into the weed eater or whatever, and or mower and get rid of it, get it, you know,

01:27:04.45
Keith
Good to know.

01:27:19.76
Buddy
get it off your garden, get it off this the soil because once it seeds, it'll be there. And then and the last one I want to mention is barley. Barley is good. Hell, you can go make some beer out it if you needed to. i don't know, some bread, whatever.

01:27:35.16
Buddy
But it's a good nitrogen fixer that it's just going to put the good stuff back in the soil that that you took out and set yourself up for success in the spring.

01:27:49.52
Keith
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was thinking about, we were we were considering like mustard greens and that sort of stuff. And then, you know, whatever's left, just let let it die off from the freeze, lay it down, and then cover it over with compost and leaves and stuff like that.

01:28:04.70
Keith
Maybe even some some plastic, like black six mil or something, ah just to let it rot over the over the winter. Yeah. But there's all kinds of little techniques I've seen online of people doing you doing different things with cover crops.

01:28:17.96
Keith
I didn't realize, like you said, like the crimson clover might even make it through the entire winter. That's that's cool. I didn't know that that that can happen.

01:28:24.93
Buddy
Yeah, in your area, it should, and it might go dormant and then come back. But once spring hits, ah the best practice to use is if you're in the ground, go ahead and mow it or weed eat it down once it starts, you know, warming up, you you start watching your ground ah temperature.

01:28:44.48
Keith
Yeah.

01:28:44.69
Buddy
You want to go ahead and try to get that stuff out of there, till it up, do the things you need to do. And you want to make sure you're tilling it up or getting rid of it but about a month, month and a half before you plant.

01:29:00.59
Buddy
So that's part of your planning for your next year. You don't want to, you know, the day before till it in and then plant because you're going to have that problem still. Go ahead and the best practice to use is go ahead a month, month and a half out till it.

01:29:15.65
Buddy
Go in there and you might even go in with your flamethrower and do your flame to your your ground, your soil. And then like you said, cover it. Now, before I would cover, I would go ahead and and apply my compost before you cover it with your tarp or your black plastic.

01:29:35.98
Buddy
And if you use black tarp or black plastic, it's going to also start heating the ground up quicker and you can come in and and it'll make the ground temperature heat up in that area higher. So you're going to also cheat mother nature once again and be able to plant a little bit sooner.

01:29:55.72
Buddy
So a lot of people will do that. They'll rip that tarp up and within 24 hours they're planting because they've got that heat in the, in the soil.

01:30:09.48
Keith
That's great idea. I like that. Yeah. So the, uh, just to wrap up, the garden is not, not dead yet. Even though we're so we're going to go into cool months, it's not dead. There's things we can do.

01:30:20.58
Buddy
Yeah, it's, it's, you can garden all year long. You just got to figure out how to do it. I mean, it's, it's a little bit of education. i would, Definitely you use caution when looking at the YouTubers out there because some of them are good, them are bad.

01:30:37.00
Keith
And they might not be in your area.

01:30:38.74
Buddy
And they're definitely not, I'm not in San Diego, so the dude who has these great ideas in San Diego, that his whole block is a garden now, doesn't work in Oklahoma.

01:30:44.26
Keith
Right.

01:30:48.90
Buddy
But go ahead and and use your extension agent that ag extension agent use them because they're a plethora of information i can't spell the word i just said it but you know you got all that information right there at your fingertips let them help you through this process and and you could there's no reason why you can't have you know some kind of fresh vegetables all winter long you got to be

Keith
My Prepper brothers and sisters, while most people close the gate of their gardens for the last time this season, you'll keep growing and building strength, resilience, and independence for your family.

08:07.80
Keith
Plant those cold hardy greens and root crops. Protect your soil with cover crops that will heal, enrich, and guard your land for the battles ahead. And don't let pests steal your harvest.

08:19.09
Keith
And don't let pests steal your harvest, because with diligence and smart management, you can outlast every challenge nature throws your way. It takes skill, practice, and discipline to be the best prepper survivors you can be. Don't just sit back and watch the leaves fall this season.

08:36.97
Keith
Plant something. Protect something. Secure something. Because every seed you sow today is a promise of survival tomorrow. Stay prepped, stay happy, and thanks for listening.

08:48.62
Keith
Stay prepped, stay happy, thanks for listening, and good night.