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>> Always enjoy seeing community gardens at work.
So much joy there and so much community actually taking place in the garden setting.
So thank you for opening the gates for us. Right now we are going to be talking about
getting ready for fall and dealing with summer in the vegetable garden and we are joined
by special guest, Sari Albornoz, from the Sustainable Food Center and website to sustainability.
>> Thanks for having me. >> And congratulation to the Sustainable Food
Center and you have brand new facilities and a brand new garden and a lot of our listeners
are in the same boat, brand few garden or people who are trying vegetable gardening
for the first time, and I understand that your new garden site in east Austin, you have
particular challenges? >> We do, it is very unusual.
First of all, we are very excited we have a new space.
>> Right. >> We existed for a long time without having
our very own garden so we can't wait to get started.
>> Right. >> But we do have strange soil.
The site where the garden is going to be situated used to be a brick company and so they would
stage lots of materials that they used to make the bricks, including a lot of sand,
so really unusual for east Austin, we have sandy soil to deal with.
>> Well, that is unusual because most of us on the east side have clay soils.
>> Uh huh. >> But we all have some problems to deal with,
right, so what is the response to the sandy soil situation that you are working with?
>> So the refrain has been lots and lots and lots of compost, lots of organic materials.
>> Right. >> And we also are not going to just evenly
distribute organic material throughout the entire area because it would be a ton of compost
so we are building up some and kind of doing lasagna in some spaces and we will be doing
raised beds in some spaces but also we will be enriching the soil in some spaces with
lots of organic material because we will have great drainage, and once we get the microbial
activity going and kind of the substance started, then I think we will be good.
>> Well, I think people may also want to borrow some of your sand to help with that drainage
question. >> Maybe so.
Maybe we will have extra. >> You used the phrase "lasagna garden" and
there will be people going out there, "lasagna garden," does that mean?
You are growing pasta and cheese? [LAUGHTER]
>> It is layering. >> Uh huh.
>> Describe that technique for us. >> Sure.
It is kind of like sheet composting, you can start by putting cardboard down if you have
a Bermuda grass situation or other lead situation, cover with a nice thick layer and then add
the vegetable scrap, add lots of leaves and kind of layer that way so you are essentially
composting right there where your garden is going to be and building the soil right there.
>> Right. I think that's a great technique, actually.
I love to see composting as a very practical thing to do in the garden, so I think that's
a great tip for just about everybody, really. Here we are, you are starting this new garden
in the heat of the summer. There are a lot of other people suffering
through the same extreme weather conditions that we all have in central Texas.
I want to focus in on some survival tips. >> Sure.
>> Some basic things that can be employed in the garden at this time of year.
A lot of people are prepping the soil for the fall vegetable garden but a lot of people
are still trying to nurse along plants from the spring.
>> Yes. >> What would you do in that situation?
>> I think the most important thing is mulch. Mulch is just a savior as far as regulating
the temperature of the soil, minimizing evaporation, so you can use woodchips as mulch.
You can also just use leaves you have collected. You can use pine needles if you have them.
You can use straw, just basically anything that creates a nice blanket to protect the
soil and then also making sure you are watering deeply, not necessarily just a little bit
every day, but just deeply and infrequently, just to make sure that you're keeping the
soil moist at a regular temperature and just kind of keeping those plants happy.
>> You know what I like to do and whether it's a vegetable garden or ornamental garden
is exactly what you talked about with the watering, good, deep, infrequent gardening
but the gardener in me can't resist doing something when I am out there, so sometimes
what I will do is just wash the plants off sometimes in the morning. They take in water
through the foliage and that combination of frequent but extremely light, just washing
the foliage down with the deep watering can work really, really we well.
>> It makes sense, kind of cool them off. >> Cool them off, wash them off, knock a few
of the bugs off, you know. >> Uh huh.
>> What about shading? >> Shading.
So there is lots of cool techniques for shading. You can trellis and in the summer we are growing
beans. You might have kind of a shade structure created
out of a trellis that has beans growing on it.
>> Right. >> You can also do kind of cool shapes of
trellising like a teepee trellis where you can just use bamboo and have it intersect
at the top and have it kind of supported at the bottom, either using PVC or rebar to fortify
it and that is a cool trellis, and you can use fencing.
Kind of strategically you have done it to this point but strategically plant in a way
that you have a fence next to it to trellis something up to provide a little bit of shade
and also just shade cloth. >> Right.
>> You can you know our citizen garden classes that we teach, we teach people how to create
little hoop houses on their four by four beds with PVC and you can just lay a little shade
cloth on top of that, situate it strategically so it is blocking maybe the really strong
west afternoon sun and then give your plants a little release that way.
>> Yes, and I think that's incredibly smart thing to do, and I think it's been really
widely adopted now, the whole thing and very simply, using PVC and arched over the bed
makes it very easy to drape a shade cloth overhead and so it's a really smart technique.
Now, those who are preparing for the fall vegetable garden.
Let's talk about the soil preparation for that.
Lots of compost, I know, but let's talk about aimed beds.
>> Sure. You mean constructing raised beds from scratch?
>> Yes. >> Okay.
Well, you can if you were wanting to start a little garden in the fall from scratch and
you've got a raised bed in mind, you might have weeds to start out with, so you can either
dig out all of those weeds or you can solarize, and that means putting plastic on top.
>> Right. >> And letting the sun kind of help you cook
those leaves. >> Right.
>> And then they are pretty easy to take out, or you can take a shortcut, which is putting
cardboard, which does biodegrade in a very thick layer, and then you can have your raised
beds on top of that. You can use different materials for the bed.
You can use wood. Cedar is really great because it holds up
and doesn't breakdown as quickly. >> Right.
>> And you can also use composite decking which is a synthetic substance but it holds
out pretty well, too. >> Right, right.
It doesn't have a lot of the preservatives that treated wood have.
>> Yes, avoiding treated wood is great because it will leach toxins into the veggie cultivating
soil, which you don't want to do, and you can also have limestone which provides help
there. >> I like limestone beds.
A lot of plants don't like the limestone so much but a lot of them will do just fine with
a little bit of limestone along the periphery. >> Yes, that's true.
>> Well, I think the raised bed is a great thing for especially for the person who is
really beginning to garden because I think you have a lot more success that way.
>> Uh huh. Uh huh.
>> And also you can control the soil more. You can bring in the compost and the granite,
sand, and all of the different things that you want.
>> Uh huh. Uh huh.
>> And really nice blend of materials there. Typically what do you recommend in terms of
that blend? Everybody has their favorite recipe.
>> [LAUGHTER] Well making sure it has enough drainage, so
you want to make sure it has a sand component to it.
Making sure that it's got enough organic material, so making sure there is compost in it.
>> Right. >> I think there is some good gardening mixes
that are available for vegetable gardening at nurseries around town but I don't have
a specific favorite but making sure there is a balance there.
>> Very briefly, let's talk about harvesting. >> Sure.
>> Because a lot of people are still harvesting. Anything that you would like to pass on there?
>> About harvesting, well, can you be a little more specific?
>> Well, I would say in terms of utilization of the foods and preserving?
>> Oh, cool, sure, sure. Yes, that segues nicely into a recipe I wanted
to highlight. >> Okay.
>> From the happy kitchen which is our cooking and nutrition program.
If you are harvesting a lot of cucumbers right now, you can make a nice Thai cucumber salad
which is onion and chilly paste and mint and mix it together and with cucumber and we have
a recipe that goes into more detail. That's delicious and also if you have a lot
of okra, you can pickle it, you can pickle the cucumbers, so, yeah.
>> I hope a lot of people out there will go to your website to get your recipes and learn
more about the Sustainable Food Center and also visit you in your grand few location.
Thanks, Sari, for coming on board. >> Thanks.
>> Great. >> Nice to meet you.
>> Nice to meet you. >> And coming up is our friend, Daphne.