0:05

Welcome to leafing out a podcast about gardening.

0:09

I'm Rebecca. And I'm gay.

0:11

We are not experts. We are amateur gardeners

0:14

sharing what we learn

0:14

as we learn it on our gardening journey.

0:18

We're also amateur podcasters,

0:18

so I'm really happy

0:21

that you've actually stuck around because I think the last episode we did

0:22

was like nine months ago.

0:26

Six months ago. Much too. Long. Very long.

0:29

We're going to try to be back. It's almost like we have two toddlers,

0:30

not one, but two toddlers.

0:34

We're less sleep deprived now, though. Yeah, we should be able to figure out

0:35

the words that we're trying to say.

0:40

I mean, I mow the lawn this morning. That's a. Big deal. People can listen to us on, like, 1.5

0:42

instead of two

0:45

X as we get as our children get older.

0:48

Yeah, the. Older. Children are the faster

0:49

you speak. That's right. Yeah.

0:52

All right. Today we're talking about. I think we're gonna talk about

0:56

some mistakes that we've made recently

0:56

that you might be able to learn from.

1:01

Yeah, a little. Do as we say, not as we do.

1:04

Action. Yeah. And we're going to talk about watering.

1:08

Watering.

1:08

Everyone's favorite part of gardening.

1:11

Now I'm being sarcastic. Not my favorite part of gardening.

1:14

But it is like a it's it's like,

1:14

I don't know, salting your food

1:18

or it's like this very foundational thing

1:22

that is also, like, really complicated

1:22

and not that straightforward.

1:25

Not all that weirdly complicated.

1:27

A little bit weirdly complicated. So we have some tips and tricks

1:28

that we've picked up

1:31

that we're going to share with you. It's a new segment

1:32

that we're calling Whoopsie Daisy.

1:37

So when you say

1:42

nothing. Yes, you did.

1:45

No, I didn't. You said, oops, Daisy's.

1:48

No onesies for the Daisy's, do they?

1:51

I mean, honestly, there. Is no unless because no one has said

1:51

whoopsie Daisy's for, what, 50 years?

1:55

And even then it was just little girls

1:55

with blond ringlets.

1:59

Exactly. Right.

2:02

So here we go again.

2:05

Oh, oh. Oh.

2:09

That clip is none other than Hugh Grant

2:12

in Notting Hill

2:12

for those who haven't seen Notting Hill.

2:16

There is this on the podcast. Just go. It's true. What will you. Do?

2:20

What do you do in your life?

2:20

Get out of here.

2:23

Be more important. Go out and watching Notting Hill.

2:25

One of the best rom coms ever made.

2:25

Notting Hill.

2:28

You'll be quoting it for the rest of your life. It'll be really obnoxious like we are.

2:32

Oh, that's. Quite good. Then. Oh, well,

2:32

that's quite good.

2:34

I mean, it's just. It's in the lexicon in this household.

2:38

What's it Easy is a segment where we talk

2:41

about a mistake

2:41

that we have made recently.

2:44

So the mistake that we made

2:44

recently is which one?

2:48

So August in Rhode Island as a lot of

2:48

the other country was crazy hot.

2:54

We also have a concrete skirt like this,

2:54

sort of like short little patio

2:58

wi thing on the back of our house

2:58

that just reflects light is like a mirror.

3:03

It's like just blistering hot. Even a lot of our full sun plants

3:04

don't do very well there.

3:08

It's like a pizza stone and.

3:08

It's like it needs a stone. Exact.

3:10

It gets real. It like, bakes in the sun.

3:12

Toasty in this. Heat. And I was like, Oh, it's hot and water.

3:18

The garden, you know, when I think of it

3:18

like probably a few times

3:22

a week or something,

3:22

and that was not nearly enough.

3:26

So gardening is all about observation.

3:29

And I was distracted

3:29

and not really paying close attention

3:33

to the water needs of these plants. And then, you know, we'd go out of town

3:34

for a weekend or like just an overnight

3:39

or something, and maybe I hadn't

3:39

water in the day or two before.

3:43

And there was one time in particular

3:43

we went out of town

3:45

for just like two days. We didn't really think about it

3:47

like, oh, whatever.

3:50

And I came back and several of the plants

3:50

were like desiccated,

3:54

like these little corpses. I was like, Oh, I'm sorry, you know?

3:58

Oh, I'm so sorry.

4:00

Please don't die. So, yeah, observation.

4:03

Try to just go out and look your plants.

4:05

If I've been looking at my plants a little more carefully, I would have noticed in the days

4:07

leading up to our trip out of town

4:10

that they were, in fact,

4:10

starting to get a little wealthy.

4:14

And plants are pretty communicative.

4:16

They do a lot of different things

4:16

to conserve water

4:21

before damage actually starts to happen.

4:24

So as their leaves

4:24

start to droop little bit,

4:27

sometimes if they have flowers,

4:27

those will close a little bit.

4:31

You'll see these signs that say to you,

4:34

you know, hey,

4:34

this plant is is a little dry.

4:37

And one thing to pay attention

4:37

to in particular,

4:39

when you're trying to figure out

4:39

if they're dry, don't look at your plant

4:42

in the middle of the day

4:42

because a lot of plants

4:44

do when they're exposed

4:44

to really intense sunlight and heat.

4:48

They just do that like every day,

4:48

even if they do have a lot of water.

4:52

Look at your plant

4:52

in like the late afternoon or evening

4:55

and if it's bounced back,

4:55

then it probably is doing okay

4:58

if it sort of like

4:58

had a little bit of a wilting

5:00

look in the day and then came back

5:00

in the evening, it's it's doing all right.

5:04

Or first thing in the morning. Or first thing. And a lot of people

5:05

water first thing in the morning.

5:08

I want to be that person. I'm so not that person.

5:10

But I picture being an old lady

5:10

and like a fabulous sunhat going out at

5:15

630 in the morning and watering everything

5:15

and it being all paradise.

5:18

It's true. The never end up doing that.

5:21

Thing that I'll say. There's a lot of back and forth

5:22

about what kind of water.

5:24

I'm not certainly like an expert on this.

5:27

I will say that in the absolute

5:27

heat of the summer,

5:30

I like to water in the evening

5:33

because then you give the plant all night

5:33

long to be absorbing that water.

5:37

That water's

5:37

not evaporating very fast overnight.

5:40

It's the sun. And the heat, obviously,

5:41

is what really evaporates it.

5:44

If you're going to be watering in the morning,

5:44

then you really got to be

5:47

out there every day

5:47

looking at your plants because

5:50

00 by 1030,

5:50

it could be 90 degrees.

5:55

That water's evaporating. That plant

5:56

that was it's shot to absorb water.

5:59

And now it's sort of done

5:59

drinking for the day.

6:02

Let's talk about some more general stuff

6:02

with water.

6:05

Yeah, because if you like,

6:05

we were like three years ago

6:09

or four years ago

6:09

are just starting out with this stuff

6:12

and buying a lot of plants

6:12

and hoping that they do well

6:16

and wondering like, how much should I be watering? Do I really have to water every day?

6:20

I didn't sign up for this. This sucks. What like how lazy can I be?

6:25

Give. I think you have learned a little more

6:26

than I have about like exactly what things

6:30

need. Yeah. So. So you'll see when you buy a new plant,

6:31

it'll have on the tag

6:34

what it's like sunlight needs are watering

6:34

need some, some plants are water lovers

6:40

that usually you would find next

6:40

to a pond or something.

6:43

There are wetlands, flowers

6:43

and wetlands plants where they want

6:47

a ton of water,

6:47

a lot of ferns, like a lot of water.

6:51

Liguria is something

6:51

that we have right next to our birdbath

6:54

because we're always

6:54

refilling the birdbath and splashing

6:57

it all over the stuff

6:57

and it like gets the most water

7:00

of almost anything in our garden.

7:04

But a lot of plants have stuff on the

7:04

on the tag that will say like low

7:09

watering once established.

7:12

What does that mean? Gabe So established

7:16

is a little bit of a general term,

7:16

but from what I've heard, my,

7:21

my understanding is generally plants

7:21

established after two years.

7:25

So you get through two summers,

7:25

the third summer

7:28

you have an established plant

7:28

and that that's where we planted our lawn.

7:33

That's what they said, you know, water. Well, for the first two summers,

7:34

the third summer it comes back, then

7:38

it's established just meaning

7:38

that there is a really robust root system

7:44

that can support this plan.

7:47

I am definitely like reaching a little bit

7:47

here, but my understanding is that,

7:51

you know, you have the sort of big roots

7:51

that you see when you pull of a plant

7:55

and then you have all these root

7:55

hairs, these really fine little

8:00

root hairs

8:00

that come off of those main roots.

8:02

And those are doing a lot of the water absorption

8:03

and they take a while to really like

8:07

grow out,

8:07

like have those big solid roots coming out

8:10

and then all the root hairs

8:10

coming out of those larger roots.

8:13

So when you're planting a plant,

8:13

it just doesn't have

8:17

a lot of water absorbing capability.

8:20

It can't like pull in a lot of water

8:20

really fast.

8:23

It doesn't have roots that are going deep.

8:25

So it's this kind of

8:27

it's sort of top heavy in a way. It's got all of this

8:30

this greenery, presumably

8:30

because it looked good at the nursery

8:33

or wherever you bought it. But to support that,

8:35

it just has this very small root system.

8:38

So you are really kind

8:38

of taking very careful care of it,

8:41

making sure that those that limited root

8:41

system can absorb a lot of water

8:46

as it balances out

8:46

because all plants will want to balance

8:49

their belowground growth

8:49

with their aboveground growth.

8:53

It's like a baby, like we have a newborn

8:53

baby.

8:56

It's stomach is so teeny tiny, right?

8:58

And it's growing so much that you have

8:58

to feed it like every couple of hours.

9:03

And it's difficult. Yeah, challenging and fussy.

9:07

And then once your once

9:07

your kid gets old enough,

9:10

they can have three meals a day

9:10

and two snacks and be pretty.

9:13

Good, put them in front of the TV

9:13

and they're fine all day. Long.

9:15

Water, water. Heavily until established.

9:15

Yeah.

9:17

Yeah. So what we tend to do

9:18

is especially with new, new plants,

9:23

make sure that you're not letting them

9:23

dry out because that kind of damage

9:27

is really hard for them to bounce back

9:27

from if you plant something.

9:30

This is why also they say plant in spring

9:30

and fall.

9:33

Don't plant new plants

9:33

in the middle of summer

9:36

because it's so hard for them to absorb

9:36

enough water that they just will.

9:42

Parts of the plant will die.

9:44

The roots won't establish well,

9:44

and it will take years for the plant

9:49

to grow

9:49

as much as it would in like one year

9:53

if you had just planted it

9:53

at a more mild time of the year

9:57

when the plant could really kind of start

9:57

to thrive above ground and below ground.

10:02

So another thing

10:02

I thought might be helpful to hear is

10:05

what do you do about rainfall

10:05

if it's raining off and on?

10:10

You know, oftentimes I'll be like, well,

10:10

it just rained like two days ago.

10:13

Do we really have to water? The ground isn't wet,

10:14

but I don't know, like how much

10:17

it seemed like it rained a lot, but did it

10:17

what do we how do we think about that.

10:22

Yeah. So the rules on that I've heard a lot

10:23

and this is definitely again

10:27

a broad general thing is that your garden

10:27

wants an inch of water per week.

10:33

And obviously we're talking about gardens

10:33

in climates like ours. Yes.

10:38

In the northeast Cottage garden type

10:38

things, woodland garden type ideas.

10:43

If you're in Southern California or something. We have we have

10:45

we have no information for you.

10:48

Yeah. If you're doing like a zero escape

10:48

like southwest cacti thing,

10:53

I'm not sure how much water you need. I'm not sure if you're listening

10:54

to this podcast at this point.

10:57

Yeah. Okay, so go on.

11:00

So the easiest thing to do

11:00

is to just start out

11:04

as you get a rain gauge and rain gauges

11:04

just like a little,

11:09

you know,

11:09

the one we have has sort of like a cone,

11:13

I guess an inverted cone with markings

11:13

on it and you stick it on

11:18

like a we have it on our on our fence. You don't want to put it

11:20

on the side of a house because obviously, like

11:22

if the wind is blowing the wrong direction, then none of the rain

11:24

goes into the rain gauge,

11:26

but it just catches the rain as it falls

11:26

and gives you some sense.

11:30

So it's like a little measuring cup. It's like a stick on a fence pole

11:32

with that, with like one nail.

11:35

It's super easy. It's just a piece of plastic and

11:36

the rain falls into it and it tells you

11:41

how how many inches or is it a quarter

11:41

inch or was it a full inch?

11:44

Yeah. And then from there, you kind of,

11:46

you know, decide

11:49

how much water you want to use.

11:51

I found it pretty helpful, too.

11:53

Also, sometimes I'll take the rain gauge,

11:53

like when that we have a low water line.

11:57

But every once in a while in the heat of the summer,

11:58

there's a week or two when it needs a little sprinkler

12:00

and I'll be like, Oh,

12:03

I don't like how much water is

12:03

the sprinkler giving the lawn?

12:06

So I'll take the rain gauge. It has sort of a pokey and or a

12:07

stick it in the dirt in the lawn.

12:12

And as the sprinkler goes,

12:12

I have a sense of like, Oh,

12:14

all right, it takes half an hour to get,

12:14

you know, half an insurance.

12:17

I'll do that a couple of times a week,

12:17

something like that.

12:20

The other thing I'll say, it's

12:20

sort of broad that I really did

12:23

not understand about watering

12:23

when we first started gardening.

12:27

Is that you're really trying

12:27

do you hear people talking about like,

12:32

oh, get you want a deep soak and like,

12:32

what does that mean.

12:35

Yeah, you want to water your plants

12:35

and give them a really deep soak.

12:39

You really need to like

12:39

leave the hose going and really get it

12:43

so that the whole amount of the like,

12:43

the height of the plant,

12:48

you want to soak through that height

12:48

from below.

12:51

I don't. I'm explaining that in a way. No, I think. That's

12:52

actually a great visualization.

12:55

I was going to say it's hard to imagine

12:55

because

12:58

all we can see

12:58

is the surface of the dirt, obviously.

13:01

So like you sort of, you know, soak that and you're like, well,

13:03

what else could there be?

13:05

But if you think about it, in in sort of

13:05

layer is like this is kind of made up.

13:10

But you think about like different one

13:10

inch thick layers of dirt

13:13

going down to the bottom

13:13

of the roots of the plants.

13:17

You have to completely saturate the first

13:20

inch if you want water

13:20

to go down to the second image.

13:23

So like imagine a stack of sponges, you're

13:23

trying to get the bottom sponge wet.

13:27

You need the first sponge

13:27

to be so full of water

13:30

that it overflows into the second sponge

13:30

and then into a third, fourth, whatever.

13:33

So that's both the amount of water

13:33

that you need to put in.

13:37

And also in terms of timing,

13:37

you really don't want to just like

13:41

sit there with the hose on you want to pour a bunch of water

13:42

around the the roots of the plant,

13:47

go water another part of the garden,

13:47

come back water

13:50

some more again, maybe a third time,

13:50

depending on how deep the soak you want.

13:54

But like if you have a new plant there,

13:56

especially like a shrub or something

13:56

that needs a lot of water,

13:59

you want to really like try and get

13:59

that water down as far as possible.

14:04

You can also just stick your finger in

14:04

and you can, you know, if you're not sure,

14:07

you can water for a little bit

14:07

and then say like, how deep is this going?

14:11

And just like dig a little hole with your finger and feel like,

14:12

how deep is that water going?

14:16

If it's really dry, it's

14:16

going to take more than you think

14:20

to really get in there. It's tough if you're cleaning up

14:23

like a big spill on the kitchen counter

14:23

and you're using a kitchen towel.

14:27

You'll remember that at first

14:29

the dry kitchen towel will kind of be

14:29

like moving the water around.

14:33

And then once the towel starts

14:33

to get damp and absorb water,

14:36

that's when it absorbs

14:36

all the water really well.

14:39

So the soil works the same way. Once it's damp, damp soil absorbs

14:41

water more easily than dry soil does.

14:46

And this is kind of why when we have

14:46

terrible drought like we've been in,

14:51

and then you have a huge rainstorm

14:51

where it drops a ton of inches of water,

14:57

the earth isn't actually absorbing

14:57

that water very well.

15:01

So that's not like hitting the spot

15:01

for your plants because it's so dry.

15:05

It's like the earth is like,

15:05

I can't do anything with this.

15:08

I'm too dry. So what we really need in drought,

15:09

that's why people say

15:12

what we need is like gentle on going

15:12

like on and off rain

15:17

for many days in a row because that's

15:17

how the ground gets saturated.

15:21

So that's what you're kind of mimicking

15:21

with watering.

15:23

And what I do in our backyard

15:23

when I water is I kind of take like a ten

15:28

or 15 foot

15:28

section of the flower beds at a time.

15:32

And I sort of do like 10 seconds,

15:35

10 seconds,

15:35

10 seconds, 10 seconds per plant

15:38

until I'm all the way down the row of that

15:38

like ten foot section.

15:42

And then I just

15:42

start over and do it again,

15:45

because once everything is a little damp or soaked

15:46

a little bit, then you can go back

15:50

and really know that the water

15:50

is kind of getting really deep down.

15:54

And the other thing I'll say is the reason why you want the water

15:55

to get so deep in the soil.

15:58

I know we're getting so into the weeds.

15:58

This may be so boring.

16:01

I don't know. But you're here. You're listening.

16:03

Why not keep going?

16:05

The reason why you want the water

16:05

to get so deep down,

16:08

especially with new plants,

16:08

is because you want the plants roots.

16:12

You want the plant to send its roots

16:12

really far down as opposed

16:17

to outward along the surface,

16:21

the same as a plants above ground apart

16:21

will grow towards the light.

16:25

The below ground part, the roots is going

16:25

to grow towards the water.

16:29

So you want the roots to grow downward

16:29

because that's

16:32

where water is going to stay

16:32

for the longest over time,

16:36

once it's established,

16:36

if you if your plant is growing its roots

16:39

only along the surface, well,

16:39

that's the first area to get dehydrated.

16:44

So it's always going to be more thirsty.

16:46

It's going to struggle

16:46

more in the long term.

16:48

This is why the whole watering thing before something is

16:50

established is so important.

16:53

And the one other thing

16:55

well, I don't know one other thing,

16:55

but another thing.

16:59

Another thing. That I'll say about watering

17:00

this is maybe a little

17:06

this is this is watering 2.0.

17:08

But we have a soaker hose run

17:08

that goes all the way around our garden

17:13

in the the border

17:13

and also in the vegetable garden.

17:17

I will take a brief detour. Vegetables need more water in general

17:19

as a general rule

17:23

than other parts of your garden. So if you have a vegetable garden,

17:24

consider getting soaker hose.

17:27

So far, hoses are amazing.

17:30

We can get a lot of different kinds,

17:30

but we just have the ones

17:34

that are sort of porous and they just like

17:34

leak water all along their length

17:40

because you can just turn that on for,

17:40

you know, an hour.

17:44

And it's just slowly doing this

17:44

drip, drip, drip

17:47

that's really getting the water way down

17:47

without you being out there,

17:51

you know, holding the watering can or the

17:51

or the hose or whatever.

17:56

Again, it's imitating like an off

17:56

and on little gentle sprinkle.

18:00

Like what you have in spring,

18:00

which is why planting in

18:03

spring is a good idea.

18:07

Let's talk about what other tools we use

18:07

for watering.

18:09

Yeah. Our dreams are.

18:12

On. Our podcast. Today is sponsored by the DRAM Rain one.

18:16

Just kidding.

18:16

We still don't have any sponsors.

18:18

We have, I think. How many listeners do we have, Gabe?

18:21

I don't know how. Approximately more than more

18:22

than one might guess.

18:25

More than we make, yes. 30, 40.

18:28

I don't know. Guys, we're so glad you're here.

18:33

Yeah, we use this thing called the dram

18:33

brain wand.

18:35

That is not the cheapest option,

18:35

but really is so effective.

18:40

It's a tool that is always mentioned by,

18:43

you know, professional gardeners

18:43

as being their go to.

18:46

And it's just basically like

18:46

a really good shower head kind of thing.

18:51

It creates the water,

18:51

so you're getting like more flow

18:55

in the right spread.

18:58

Without a lot of pressure.

18:58

That's the thing.

19:00

You can always be tricky. You're trying to hurry along

19:02

and you want to like get a ton of water,

19:02

especially like into your pots

19:06

or something. But then if you turn the hose up,

19:07

you're like blowing the dirt out of there.

19:10

Blast in your plan. Yeah. The rain does a good job of, like,

19:14

a ton of water,

19:14

but without that, that force.

19:18

So that's watering. If you still have questions you want to

19:20

address, please drop us a line.

19:25

You can find the way best ways

19:25

to contact us in the show notes.

19:29

I think there's a bunch of ways

19:29

you can always DM us on Instagram.

19:32

That's a really easy way

19:32

to get in touch with us.

19:35

We think out pod on Instagram.

19:38

We would love to hear from you and

19:41

to get into our second topic,

19:41

a fast one for today.

19:45

I want to talk about tomatoes

19:45

and what's up with my tomatoes,

19:49

something that I know all tomato

19:49

growers are always asking themselves.

19:53

Probably we have tried to grow

19:53

a variety of tomatoes

19:56

and the larger ones are always so tricky

19:56

for us.

20:00

There's so many issues that can come up,

20:00

but we decided to just do cherry tomatoes

20:04

because it's so nice and easy

20:04

and so there aren't a lot of issues.

20:08

But something happened recently

20:08

that I bet most people growing tomatoes

20:13

and everybody kind of comes upon

20:13

this issue at some point in the season,

20:17

which is when your tomatoes

20:17

burst on the vine.

20:21

There's crack, crack there.

20:23

There's a seam that cracks open.

20:25

You can see the inside of the tomato. It obviously needs to be picked

20:27

right away.

20:30

And you might be wondering what happened,

20:30

what made this happen?

20:34

Too much water. Too much water.

20:36

That's what our uneven watering is.

20:39

Actually a more accurate way to say that there was an amount of water

20:40

that the plant was used to,

20:43

and then it got a lot more than that amount

20:43

and that's what caused the fruit to burst.

20:47

Yeah. So we recently had, we've been

20:48

in the middle of crazy drought here

20:52

and then we had a wild storm

20:52

where Providence

20:57

and the next town over got like ten

20:57

and 11 inches of rain in, under,

21:04

under 24, maybe even under 12 hours.

21:06

It was bad, bad, bad, bad flooding.

21:09

And of course, I went out the next morning

21:09

and all of our cherry

21:12

tomatoes were bursting open unless

21:12

they were really, really not ripe yet.

21:18

So I thought I would just share some

21:18

some suggestions of what to do

21:21

with tomatoes that have done that,

21:21

because they're not the most beautiful

21:24

for putting in,

21:24

you know, a salad or whatever.

21:28

But what I did is I picked them all

21:28

and I chopped them all

21:32

and used them, mix them with some raw

21:32

garlic and olive oil and a bunch of salt.

21:38

And I just left them in a bowl

21:38

for a couple of hours.

21:41

And the garlic sort of flavored

21:41

everything,

21:43

all of the juice of the tomatoes,

21:43

kind of the tomatoes.

21:46

I gave up all their liquid

21:46

because of the salt.

21:49

And then I used that as like a fresh

21:49

tomato pasta sauce with pappardelle pasta.

21:54

And it was so good. It's delicious. So that's one idea.

21:57

Panzanella is also always great with

21:57

tomatoes that are a little funny

22:03

if you have like some tomatoes

22:03

that are overripe and kind of soft.

22:07

Panzanella is such a good,

22:07

such a good option for that.

22:10

And you can always

22:10

throw them on a sandwich with

22:14

mayonnaise and salt.

22:16

And that is probably the best thing to do

22:16

if you have big tomatoes.

22:20

Yeah, but with our cherries that's those

22:20

are the two things that we like to do

22:23

the most. Yeah, I think we did it.

22:25

I think that's pretty good. So thank you so much for listening today.

22:29

If you have a question that you want

22:29

answered on the podcast, email us or

22:32

send us a voice memo

22:32

at leafing out pod at gmail.com.

22:37

Like I said,

22:37

you can always DM us on Instagram.

22:39

We're leafing out pod over there.

22:42

Happy gardening. And the other oh,

22:43

the other thing you can do.

22:46

For review us on Apple Podcasts

22:46

that people find the show.

22:49

That really helps us a lot, helps

22:49

other people find the podcast.

22:52

We really appreciate it. Happy gardening.

22:55

See you out there.