Science Friday - FDA To Analyze COVID Boosters Efficacy, Dig Into Spring With Gardening Science. April 8, 2022, Part 1

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

FDA Convenes Panel On COVID Boosters And New Vaccines This week, the FDA convened a panel of independent experts to discuss COVID-19 boosters and possible variant-specific vaccines. This comes after last week’s authorization of a second booster for people over the age of 50, and some immunocompromised people. Ira talks with Maggie Koerth, senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, about the latest on boosters and other science news of the week, including a new particle measurement that might shift our understanding of physics, fish who can do math and why Mars has two different speeds of sound.   Want To Get Your Spring Garden Going? Here’s Some Expert Advice In most parts of the U.S., it’s time to get the garden going for the year. From readying your soil to picking your plants and getting seeds started, April can require a lot of decision-making to set the stage for a successful growing season. Have questions about choosing containers, hardening your seedlings, or dealing with excess water? Our panel of expert gardeners is here for you. Ira talks to Cornell University Extension’s Elizabeth Buck and Oregon State University Extension’s Weston Miller about common spring troubleshooting, chemical-free pest management, and even how to brace your garden against climate change. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. A bit later in the hour, we're taking your questions about spring gardening, whether you're in your first round of planting or still getting the soil ready. We've got answers to your questions, and we're back in the studio live taking your calls. Our number 1-844-724-8255 or 844 side talk. But first, earlier this week, the FDA convened a panel of experts to discuss the best use of COVID-19 boosts. and the possibility of variant-specific vaccines. This comes after last week's authorization of a second booster for people over the age of 50 and others who are immunocompromised. Joining me to talk about this and other science news of the week is Maggie Kerth, senior science writer at 538 based in good old Minneapolis. Welcome back. Maggie, nice to have you. Nice to be here. Thanks so much.

Let's talk about this meeting after their meeting this week. Did the FDA panel come up with any new recommendations on booster timing or new vaccine production? No, I mean, some of the booster timing recommendations had actually happened before the panel got together, which was something that they ended up asking the FDA about pretty early on in the meeting. And they came away with about the same level of as they went in. You know, this is something where both the FDA and CDC officials have said in the past that boosting everybody every four or five months is just not a good long-term strategy, you know, just on the basis of logistics and public buy-in alone. But coming out of this

meeting, it seems like there's still not really a good plan in place for an alternative, whether that's how we're going to get new vaccine or new variant-specific vaccines authorized or even how we're going to decide in a really evidence-based way how often people need new boosters of existing vaccines. Yeah, so that meeting did not end with a concrete plan to study. It did not. It ended with people saying we really need a concrete plan and we need one before next winter, but that plan has yet to materialize.

Let's change the pace a bit with news that's shaking up the world of physics, some of my favorite stuff. This week, scientists announced that the W boson particle is a little heavier than originally believed. I mean, before we dig in, I think we need to explain what a W boson particle is, don't we? Well, it is one of the fundamental particles that particle physics really studies these things where they go around crashing protons into one another and seeing kind of what kinds of particles come out of that mix. These are the things that just sort of make up all of reality, but they're really too tiny to even see until you have an opportunity to kind of crash bigger things together and see what comes out.

And W protons are one, or W bosons rather, are one of those kinds of particles. So what these researchers were looking at was actually the data produced by proton collisions that happened over a decade ago. And they've been trying to better quantify the particles that happen when you smash these proteins. protons together. And this process has actually allowed them to get more precise in their measurements of fundamental particles than ever has happened before. And the result is that they found that this one particle, the W boson, was 0.1 percent to heavy. Point 1 percent. 0.1 percent too heavy, yes. Is that a big deal?

It is, if you're a physicist, because it is heavier than the standard model of physics, predicted it should be. So this is a big deal because the standard model is kind of this framework that physics has been working off for more than 40 years. You can kind of think of it as like a rough draft of a map, and the particle physicists are like explorers who are trying to verify that all these tiny details of the coastline really do match up with the way the map suggests they should. And up until now, it has, but this 0.1% difference in mass is like finding a a bay where you would have expected a peninsula to be. So if this measurement is correct, it means that the standard model is wrong, and the scientists are going to have to create themselves a new, different map. Yeah. And it always seems like we're getting more information that shows that the standard model isn't exactly perfect.

Right, exactly. And that is a really big deal. I mean, there's definitely some physicists who stand to lose some bets here. Yeah. And look for new theories of physics. I always like it. I like it when that happens when they're looking for new kinds of stuff and new physics, which we love. Then we can talk about it, right?

Exactly. Let's continue with this theme of upending what we thought we knew because there is a really interesting story about humans, humans might have arrived on the American continent earlier than previously recorded. Please tell us about that. Yeah, so this is something that has been playing out of the last 25 years or so. you know, when I was a child and really for a very long time, the majority of scientists would say that people first came to this continent about 13,000 years ago and that they got here traveling over a land bridge between Asia and North America. But both Native Americans and other scientists have been pushing back on this idea for decades. And in recent years, there's been a number of new archaeological finds that provided increasingly strong evidence that that old consensus was wrong. Now, a lot of these finds are things that are debatable.

They're cracked animal bones that could be represent, you know, food cooked by humans or could just be some cracked animal bones. They're stone tools that could be stone tools or could just be really convenient-looking rocks. But those have, so those have been questioned by scientists who still want to kind of believe in this, you know, relatively late, relatively late. relatively late discovery of America. But there's this new find, and this new find is a big deal.

You know, it's human footprints, which kind of take away all of the ambiguity. And they've been found in what was once the banks of ancient wetlands at what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico. So the researchers who found these Foss Life tracks have dated them using several techniques, including radio carbon dating, the fossilized plants that got squished under these ancient people's feet, which I just love as a concept in and of itself. Especially when you think it's what's a desert now. Right, exactly. Yeah, and like you're smushing like water plants.

And these studies have turned up an age that's between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. So if this is right, that timing would underline. both the idea of a recent peopling of the Americas, and it would undermine the method of travel because 23,000 years ago, that land bridge was under an ice sheet. Wow. Wow. So, yes, right, because majority of the scientists say that people came to America's 13,000 years ago, and this would then change that estimate, right? It absolutely would, yeah. So this is controversial because there are archaeologists that don't necessarily think that these older dates are accurate. There's a lot of people who want to run more dating tests on these tutzies.

But depending on what happens, we are talking about something that could completely rewrite the history books. And what might be an alternate theory then? If we're talking about the land bridge not being viable, what other way could they have come? One of the most popular theories is really about following coastlines in boats. You know, that's something that could have easily been done in this time period. And it's also something that would explain a lot more about how you get some of these very old dates as far south as South America, Central America. You know, some of these dates that are coming back at like 30,000 years old for these stone tool sites and the cracked bone sites.

it'd be a lot easier and faster to get people down to those southern locations if you're talking about coming by water along the coast. Yeah, because the theory of people being in the Americas before 13,000 years ago used to be linked to like pseudoscience, right? Yeah, yeah, it did. And I think that that's really where a lot of the controversy around this has come from is that, you know, the peopleing of the Americas has a lot of pseudoscience. that has cropped up about it over the years, everything from lost tribes of Israel to aliens, to Thorhiderhol. And the idea that people were here before 13,000 years ago often got lumped into that. And it has just been in the last 25 years ago or so that we've started to see real evidence

that those older, like the idea of people being here a lot longer ago isn't pseudoscience. It's something that you can separate out from that. Yeah, and this field is changing so often. It's really nice to come up with some new news. It's super is. I mean, I was in anthropology school in the early 2000s, and everything has just completely changed since then. Well, you're the right person to talk about this.

And I'm sure you're the right person to talk about some exciting news for we audio folks. And I'm talking about the Rover Perseverance on Mars to send back some new audio recordings. We have a little snippet. We're going to play a little snippet of the sound. It's using its dust remover tool, and there's some Martian wind sounds in the background. So folks put on your earphones and turn up your earbuds. It's a little hard to hear. We may play it twice.

Let's listen to that sound. That's spooky. That is. That sounds like an action movie soundtrack sound. Yeah, it's going to show up in a movie. So what were we listening to there? Well, that is the sound of the aliens creeping up behind you, Ira. They're getting better at it.

Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that's really interesting about these sounds is that they have showed us that the speed of sound is working really differently on Mars than it is on Earth. And this is in some ways something that was predicted. You know, scientists had guessed that the speed of sound would be slower on Mars than it is on Earth. and that's because the Martian atmosphere is a lot thinner than ours. And we already know that sound waves travel more slowly when they're moving through a less dense material. So even on Earth, sound moves more slowly in our air than it does underwater, for example.

So it's not a super big surprise to find that sound moves at 550 miles per hour on Mars compared to 767 miles per hour on Earth. but these recordings also showed an even weirder effect because on Mars, higher-pitched sounds are traveling faster than lower-pitched ones. Two separate speeds of sound is what you're saying. Two separate speeds of sound, 537 miles per hour compared to 559. That Maggie? Great stuff, as always.

Thanks for taking time to be with us today, Maggie. Maggie Kurtz, senior science writer at 538 based in Minneapolis. We have to take a break on when we're going. come back. We're going to talk about tips on your gardening. Our number 844-724-8255. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. Hey there, folks. Just a reminder that Science Friday depends on donations from our audience, and that means you. You help fund the radio show each week, plain and simple. So if you find value in what we do, please go to ScienceFriday.com slash support and give what you can. Any amount makes a difference.

And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. April is here, at least in the colder climbs, like where I'm living. That means it's time to get the garden ready for planting. We have had so much rain this season that getting my garden ready has been a real challenge. But I am getting the compost in. I am starting with my cold weather veggies, my spinach, my lettuce, my broccoli family.

And I'm actually trying to serve some new raised bed hoop ideas with PVC plumbing pipe and netting, making a hoop out of the pipe. It's really cool. And then I can throw the netting over and keep the critters out from crunching on my veggies. I'm also trying to grow flower seeds like Blackite Sousins and sunflowers, especially this time. And you may be getting things in your ground already, depending on where you live. I mean, it's 100 degrees in California this week. So you have your own challenges there, and maybe we can help you out whether you're cold and damp or hot and dry. Maybe you have questions.

I know you do, like Lynette in California, who called into our SciFri Vox Pop app. We have an enviably long growing season, and I love tomatoes from my garden. But these plants get to be huge. So can you help me with the debate over whether to prune or not to prune? Oh, yeah. I am familiar with that. one in my own tomato patch. What to do with those tomatoes? They're really vines. Well, we're in luck. We've got two experts on the line today to help answer those gardening questions. Let me bring them on.

Elizabeth Buck, a fresh market vegetable specialist with the Cornell Cooperative Extension in East Aurora, New York. Welcome back, Elizabeth. It's great to be back. Nice to have you back. Weston Miller, a community horticulturist with Oregon State University's Extension Service. He joins us from Portland. Welcome back to Science Friday, Weston. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to have you. And also we want your calls.

Give us a call out there. Our number 844-724-825-8-25. 844-Sy-Talk. We'll be talking not only veggies, but flowers and plants and all kinds of stuff, problems that you may have going on in your garden. Lots of questions. 844-724-8-255. Elizabeth, you're in a slightly different climate zone.

I mean, what's happening in your garden right now? What should people be doing at this point in the season? Sure. So I'm up in the Buffalo area, and right now our daffodils are just beginning to bloom. Our bulbs are starting to come up. It's pretty early here. So in this neck of the woods, we're really looking at that spring cleanup of our gardens, getting ready to plant our peas and lettuce, some of the beets and other crops.

that we can do really well at this time here and watching for our perennials to start coming back to life. And with all the wet weather we've had, I know you've had that also. Is there a danger getting out too early in a muddy garden? There is, and that's something called compaction. So compaction happens when you put weight on wet soil, and it basically squeezes the water out and sticks those soil particles together. And when they get stuck together, they don't come back apart. They create a hard layer, and that's difficult for the roots to get through. So anytime you're working in your garden, you want to make sure that it bears your weight well that it's not squishy underfoot.

Okay, so wait for it to dry out a little bit more before we go in there. Weston, you're up there in Portland. What's going on there? Will Springs a little bit further along here in Portland, the daffodils are starting to fade a little bit. And in terms of vegetable gardening, folks planted their peas and whatnot in March. and in April the recommendation is to plant the broccoli family plants and carrots and beets and things like that. Well, we had a question from Lynette, who is thinking further along in the season about her tomato plants, which are, well, you can't get them started here in the cold weather,

and she's trying to figure out if she should prune her giant tomato plants this year, Elizabeth, what's your advice on this? Because we all have that same question. Yeah, tomatoes are lovely and there's two different kinds. They've got the kinds that are called indeterminate and they really want to be vines. They'll grow feet and feet long if you let them. And then there's the determinate kind that grow into a smaller plant, maybe four or five feet big. And so what we recommend is that when the plant is little, you pick one or two main branches and you pinch off the side branches at the bottom of the plant up until the first flower.

If you reduce the size when the plant is small, it helps contain how big it gets later in the year. And with the tomato, anytime it's too big, you can just cut the growing point off. That's fine. Yeah, because it loves to grow back. Let's go to the phones. Let's go to Chris and Tulsa. Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Chris, hi there.

Hello. Yes, go ahead. Hi. Yes, I was calling about, I had planted all heirloom varieties of lettuces this year. We got those from our public library, which offers you can come by and basically check out these different types of heirloom seeds that grow really well here in northeastern Oklahoma. And my question was, since we did plant all heirlooms, usually we would have some hybridized plants in there somewhere. But this year we went with all heirloom. Is that better for the environment?

Is it going to change anything by planting all heirloom varieties? Oh, good question. Elizabeth, do you want to tackle that? Sure. So heirloom varieties are old historical varieties. They're still bred by somebody. Someone selected traits they liked in that lettuce. Maybe it was color, maybe it was crunch.

Hybrid varieties are also based on traditional selection. Someone saw that plant and they liked it and they picked that trait and they crossed it with another plant to keep it going. So in terms of environmental profile, whether you have a hybrid or you have an heirloom, it's about the same. They're both equal to the environment. I hope that answers your question, Chris. It did. Thank you very much. You're welcome. You're welcome.

Let's go to a question that was sent to us over the Internet. Do I need to dump my soil after four years of using a growing box? That's the same question I have. How long can you get away with the same soil you've been using year after year? Weston, what's your idea on that? Especially if it's on your patio or you're in an urban environment? With container plants, the soil certainly is going to get tired over time. Four years is probably stretching it.

I generally get it to go about two or three years. But I think it's really important that people also know that with containers, especially that the nutrients drain out really quickly. And it's important to add a fair amount of fertilizer along the way during the growing season. And then to keep it really well watered as well, since the drainage is also really good. And then it also depends on the kind of plant. So with perennial plants in a container, you're going to want to just keep that going and maybe step it up into a new container and add more potting soil. But for annuals over and over again in a container at some point, it's going to make sense to dump it out and start afresh.

So just don't add, keep adding stuff, just refill the container with new potting soil. Better idea. Yes. Yeah. All right, let's go to the phones to Chelsea and St. Louis. Hi, Chelsea. Hi. Go ahead.

Hi, I'm calling because I'm wanting to start growing my own vegetables, and I live in an apartment with no, like, access to a yard. So I was wondering what are the easiest vegetables to grow on a patio? Yeah. And when should I start? I'm in St. Louis, and it's still frosting. Weston, let me give you a first crack at that. Well, first off, I would recommend talking to your local county extension office about when to start the plants in St. Louis area.

And then overall, with container growing, I would recommend growing herbs. They cost a lot to buy at the store, and they're also relatively easy to grow partially and then rosemary, time, sage and things like that. that. Lettuces are also relatively easy to grow in containers. And then if you want to grow tomatoes, choose smaller varieties and zucchini, smaller varieties as well. There are specifically adapted varieties that do better in containers because they're a bit smaller type plants. Elizabeth? Anything to add? I would add pole beans. They're really fun. You can plant three or four them around a small stick or a steak and watch them climb up all season. Yeah, Chelsea, and they're really fun to watch.

Awesome. Thank you guys so much. You're welcome. Yeah, I just started putting my beans in the ground and indoors. And can you do that? Can you start early and then move them outside? You sure can. Absolutely.

Yeah, starting them indoors is a lot of fun. You need to make sure that you have plenty of light. Oftentimes people start plants indoors and they don't have enough light and they get a little bit leggy. So having supplemental lighting or a really good window with lots of light would be recommended. Yeah. Because they grow quick. I was so surprised how fast beans grow. I mean, how fast they germinate. Let's go back to the phones to Nina in Hancock, New Hampshire. Hi, Nina. Hi, how are you? Hi there. Go ahead. I was wondering if there are any easy fixes for very sandy soil that don't involve in trucking in a lot of new soil and bark moultz.

We live in New Hampshire, and our front yard is very, very sandy. Elizabeth, what would you say? Sandy soils are excellent because of all the drainage, so your vegetables would love it out there, but it can be a little hard for lawns. Adding any sort of organic matter will help improve the water holding capacity, so you can do simple things like when you mow your lawn, leave the grass clippings there, And over time, they'll break down, they'll kind of help sponge up and hold on to some of the moisture. Spreading compost can help too.

And it just takes time to build those things up. Okay, great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Well, let's talk about the different kinds of fertilizers that people use. A lot of people like to go with the liquid fertilizer that turns a little blue when you mix it. And there are other people who like to go with the organic fertilizers. What is the difference, West, and between the two of the two of them?

them. The difference between organic and conventional fertilizers is based on the origin of the material. Organic materials are derived from natural sources, including animals and plants and minerals, and synthetic fertilizers are synthesized in essence. Plants don't really care which they get. They just like the right amount of nutrients at the right time. Oh, that's good. Let's go to the phones because there are a lot more questions than I have answers, Certainly. But in Syracuse up there, hey, in the neighborhood. Oh, we lost, we lost Bud. Well, is there a bad time, let me ask you, Elizabeth, is there a bad time to put seeds in the ground when you shouldn't be doing that?

Probably January when it's frozen? No, you can, for every season there is something that you can plant out. for a specific plant there may be a bad time. So we'll take spinach, for example. Spinach seed will germinate meaning it will break out of the seed coat, but if the soil is

too warm, if the soil's over 80 degrees, that little tiny seedling dies before it makes it up out of the ground and into the light. So we don't sow spinach in the middle of summer. Instead, we can sew a bunch of different crops like you could sew zucchini instead. So there's something for every season, but not

every crop in every season. Yeah, thank you. We have, we have Janet, who's asking Weston the question. How do I deal with too much water? We've had so much rain and my houses in a flood zone. Are raised beds my only option, Weston? Soil drainage is really important for most plants and especially vegetables. Raise beds do that really well. You don't necessarily need to use wood or something to retain the soil. You can mound soil to increase the drainage. And then also adding compost or organic matter to the soil is going to help to improve the drainage as well. And then if you're in a really, really wet place, I would recommend growing in containers if the soil is just too wet to work.

This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios talking about how to get your garden up and growing this season. It's been really different kind of weather, a lot of different places around the country. Around the country this time to Jackson, Wyoming. Let's go to Valerie. Hi, Valerie. Welcome to Science Friday. Valerie. Hello, is this for me?

Yes, this is for you, yes. Yeah, well, this is more of a little mystery. I planted about 150 mixed-colored tulip bulbs about four years ago in the fall, so it's not a springtime question, but it's a fall-time spring tulip question. The tulip bulbs were planted in groups of three to seven randomly, and the foxes kept digging them up over and over and over again. So they kept rolling around my driveway every night for about a month, and I kept putting them back in the ground. when they bloomed, every cluster bloomed the same color. And I just thought, that's not possible. It's not possible.

It was a mixed bag of colors. They were rolled around so many times in the driveway. How could all of the red be together, all of the yellows be together, all of the whites be together? Wow. I wondered if there was a chemical. Do you blame me it on the foxes digging them up? I don't know. So it was either some kind of chemical communication in the bolts or something, or it was incredibly random, and I should have bought a lottery ticket. I don't know.

Wow. Elizabeth, I'll let you tackle this mystery. So color is genetically determined, and it doesn't really change. So I think you probably should have gone with that lottery ticket. I hope that hope, well, at least they came up, Valerie, right? Well, some did. Some got chewed to pieces. Some disappeared. I only got a fraction. But yes, if you did.

Keep trying. Thanks for calling. Thank you. Bye, bye. Here's a question on Twitter. Megan says, what is the most affordable way to fill a raised bed with soil for the first time? We moved, and the cost of lumber for the beds has gone up a bit, and our budget is tight. I have that same question. If you've got, let's say, a four by four, you're talking about

a lot of cubic yards of stuff. Is there a cheaper way to put, Weston, to put that stuff in there? First of all, I'd recommend filling raised beds with native soil as much as possible. And then when you need to keep filling from that, going to a local landscape materials yard and purchasing a soil mix specifically for raised beds is a good option. Potting soil would also work if you need to add just a little bit on the top to bring up the level of your raised bed. Now, I've seen a lot of bags of soil. I've seen a lot of them in my lifetime. And there's some for potting soil and there's some for outdoor garden soil. And it says there do not use for potting soil.

The garden soil says that. Why is that? Their garden soil is going to have actual soil in it. And when that's put into containers, the drainage isn't quite good enough for containers. plants. And what's the difference between soil and dirt then? What is soil? Soil is an amazing mix of the mineral parts of the actual soil, air, water, and millions and millions of organisms. In dirt is a word that refers to the same thing, but it's really inappropriate. Soil is a living entity and dirt has implications that it's not. All right. We're going to have to take

a break. When we come back, we'll talk more about gardening, taking more of your questions. Don't be afraid to call us in. 844-724-8255. Maybe someone will have an answer to that tulip question for us. What happened to all the different colors and her tulips? Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. You're listening to Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato in case you're just joining us. We're talking about the challenges you may have as you get your garden ready for spring from enriching the soil to deciding what to plant and getting those seedlings hardened and into the ground. And we are taking your calls. 844-724-8255-8-4-4-Sai Talk with my experts. Elizabeth Buck, Fresh Market Vegetable Specialist with the Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York

and Weston Miller, a community horticulturist with Oregon State University's Extension Service based in Portland. Before we go to the phones, let's talk about. things I've been thinking about also. Elizabeth, is it possible? I know it is to manage pests without using any chemicals. How do we do that? It is, and it requires a little bit of study and planning. And what you want to do is figure out what pests like the things that you want to grow. So if you're growing marigolds, they'll have certain pests. If you're growing zucchini, they'll have others. And when you learn what pests they have, you can learn how to prevent them coming in. are you were talking about using netting over your vegetables.

You can do it with open nets for, you know, wood chucks and things, but you can also do it with something called row cover, and that keeps bugs off. So it's making that plan in advance. Wait, wait, wait, wait, row cover. Describe that for me, please. Yeah, sure. Roe cover is a kind of like a spun woven, lightweight blanket. It's about the same weight as a sheet, but it's made of tiny little fibers,

and it lets light in and it lets water in and it lets a little bit of a breeze through, but it does not let a lot of pests through. And the other nice thing about it is you can use it early in the spring to get a little bit warmer conditions, and you can use it in the fall to help give a little bit of frost protection. Wow, I'm going to look into that. I know that some people are using fabric tool. You know, they make dresses out of tool that works very well.

It's got tiny little holes in it. But rope cover, I'm going to look into that. Now, now that we're talking about chemicals, I want to ask you a question that lots of people have asked me, and I'm wondering myself, when people are making their raised bed gardens, right, they're using wood. In the old days, they said, do not use pressure-treated wood because it had arsenic and other bad chemicals in it. And now I'm hearing that the pressure-treated wood is not so bad because it just, I think, is using copper or something safer. Weston, is that true?

What should we do about that? The new pressure-treated wood with copper is allowed for use on raised beds for people who are strictly organic gardeners. They'd want to avoid it. It's not allowed in the National Organic Program, which regulates farming in the organic standards. I personally wouldn't buy any used treated wood off a Craigslist or something like that for fear that it could be an older product with arsenic. Now, I know additionally that you think a lot about climate change and how we can get our gardens more hearty for severe weather. What should we be doing anticipation that the climate crisis is a crisis? That's true. With regards to gardening, I think what we can expect is that there's going to be increase in frequency, in severity of extreme weather, whether that be an early or late frost, a torrential rainstorm.

a drought, a hail storm, and things like that. So what we can do is, I think, as much homework as we can to choose plants that are adapted to our area, know that there might be weather events that will damage them. For me, in the Northwest, we have a lot of trees, and I have been working with an arborist in my yard to get trees ready for ice storms and things like that. And then otherwise, I think a lot of it is just,

hoping that we make the right decisions in terms of the plants we choose and then being prepared to replace them if we need. That's great. 844-724-8255 is our number. We have a lot of folks on the phone. Let's see if we can get this one right. Michael in Louisville, Colorado. Hi, Michael. Hi, can you hear me?

I can. Please, go ahead. Great. So I live in Louisville, Colorado, where we just had these horrendous fires, and a thousand homes were lost within like seven, eight hours of time. And there was smoke storms of all the debris going in the air, toxic elements from computers and just awful things. and it's settled in our gardens. And last summer I built beautiful raised beds and conditioned my soil,

and I'm scared to plant food. And I have worked with the Colorado State University extension. They test soil. But there is great confusion in the town of Louisville. There's very different answers. Some are saying, take all the soil out, just start over. Some are saying take out the first, like, five, six inches. Then, of course, where do you put it?

It's toxic. It's awful. And we've gone through a terrible time. And any help would be so appreciated. You have my sympathies. Elizabeth, Weston, Elizabeth, let me start with you. What would you suggest? I think you started in the right place, and that was getting a soil test, specifically to look at heavy metals and other contaminants.

Once you get the results of those tests, there are really good standards. New York State has a good set of standards. I'm sure Colorado has some too for what is acceptable for urban soils, and that's because those contaminants usually we find them in urban environments, not out in more rural places. So you can follow those guidelines and see if your soil is above or below the guidelines for things like lead, arsenic, chromium, barium, other contaminants. And then based on where it comes, they'll help you decide, do I need to remove the soil? Do I need to cover the soil or can I grow in this soil? Weston, anything to add?

I would agree with everything that Elizabeth said there and would also say, keep consulting with your local extension folks, and they can help you make those decisions. Good luck. Good luck to you, Michael. Can I just say one quick thing? Sure. When we do a soil test, we're only taking from like the top five, six inches. The bed is fairly deep. So it's just very confusing where to take the sample from. And, you know, the upper part, might read one way, the lower part, since we've had snow and drainage, might read another way. So it's just confusing how to get a final definitive answer. I hope that makes sense. It does. It does. And so we're mostly concerned about the root zone and the zone that you're

going to be turning over when you work your garden. That tends to be the top eight inches. So that's the zone that you sample. All right. I hope that helps you out in good luck. Look, thanks for calling. Speaking of soil, while we're still talking about it, Weston, I know that you say we can even use our gardens to help take carbon out of the atmosphere to help fight climate change. How do we do that? Well, that's true to a degree. And when we add compost and other organic matter to the soil, it's going to slowly break down and it feeds the soil microorganisms that are there.

eventually some of it reaches a stable organic matter called humus, and that is known to stay in the soil for anywhere from 100 to 5,000 years or so. So when we are adding compost and adding mulch to the soil, some of that is going to be captured. Of course, the scale of that's going to be very small. It's going to be very difficult to measure the actual contribution to fixing carbon in the soil. But those are the things that we want to do to soil anyway to improve it for growing conditions and to help retain water and block weeds in terms of adding the mulch. Thank you for that advice. Let's go to Christine in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hello, thank you for taking my call. Yes, I have a question. A friend of mine who's a master gardener. She had asparagus for about five years, and it grew to be really big. She dug it up and she gave me a good portion of it, which then I broke up and I put into my garden probably about six weeks ago. And I know it's so early in the season, but we've been having quite a bit of warmth and I have them in a nice sunny area. And these things still look dead.

Should they have been started to sprout by now? Should I have seen something coming out of them? Should I just dig them up and start with something else? You have my sympathies on asparagus. I've had challenges with asparagus myself. Well, let's see if we can get an answer from Elizabeth. Elizabeth, what do you think? I'm excited for an asparagus question because I have a research trial on it right now.

Ooh. Yeah. So question for you first. When you split up the asparagus, what stage was it in? Was it throwing up spears? Did it have ferns on it? Was it dormant? It was dormant.

It was dormant. Yes. Okay. So the crowns on asparagus are very deep down, usually at least 10 inches, sometimes as deep as 12 or 14. So you want to go all the way down and get the crown that has, you see the buds on the top of dormant asparagus, and you see the really thick, long roots on the bottom. When we replant asparagus, it's not unusual for it to take several weeks to come up because it is, again, and planted deep, and the plant has to spend a lot of energy to do that.

I would say six weeks is getting towards kind of the iffy bit. If it has been dry, try giving it some water and see what happens in the next two weeks. Good luck. Yeah, I have it on a dripper system, so it is getting water regularly. You know, so like every other day, it gets about, you know, five minutes of the dripper system that doesn't put a lot of water in it, but it is getting water. but I'm just like it doesn't look like anything's coming up. I'm with you on that.

I'm having the same problem. Then at this point in time, I would do two things. One, I would dig down gently and see if you can see the buds starting to grow. It may just not be time for the asparagus yet. And when you dig down, they'll either look alive and so whitish and thick or they'll look shriveled and brown. And you will have your answer. Good, good. All right.

Good luck. Thank you so much. Thanks for calling. You're welcome. See how many calls we can get in in the last few minutes that we have here. So many people. Joe in Greenwich, Connecticut. Hi, Joe.

Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Go for it. So I was wondering if you all could speak to the pros and cons and any health issues of using local, stable horse manure and cow manure. Hmm. Which one? To augment your, well, both, to augment your soils. Yeah.

In my garden, vegetable garden. Okay. Is there a preference? Let me ask my guest, is there a preference or just get what you can get, Weston? With local matures, a couple concerns. One is food safety. You don't want to apply any fresh manure to crop areas when you're going to be eating lettuces and things like that.

The general guidance is to wait 120 days or more after adding manures to soil before. you harvest anything from it. So if you're taking care of that, another concern with the manure is weed seeds, and I would generally want to compost manure first to try to kill the weed seeds before putting them out in my garden. And then a third concern is potentially, especially with horse manure and horse bedding, there can be persistent herbicides that come in through the horses' food, and then it's in their manures, and then it still persists after composting, and that can sometimes have a negative impact on plants as well. So with manure, if it's free, I would ask a lot of questions and make sure that you're not going to run

into any problems with the persistent herbicides particularly. Thanks for calling. Our number 8447-248255. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Seeing how many questions I can get in because there's so many in the last few minutes. Let's go to Florida. We haven't been to Florida. Let's go to Mark, and is it Hobbit Sands? No, it's called Hope Sound. Hopes.

Oh, wow. My screener has got it all wrong. So much for AI. Sorry, go ahead. Yes, I have perennial peanuts that I had planted about 12 years ago, just for ornamental purposes. It's the variety called Arachus. Labrata in about an 8 foot wide by 30-foot-long section.

And, you know, over the years just because of them kind of waning, triveling up and so forth, I've gone in and put in some new plugs. But, you know, and it's at Atlantic Ridge type of soil. You know, at one point I put, you know, I put some garden soil in it. But the biggest issue now is weeds, you know, like coming in and just a horrific amount of pulling them by hand. And I'm loath to spend the money on this stuff called BASA grant to apply it to it. Is there any good way to revitalize this bed of perennial peanuts? Who wants to tackle peanuts?

Elizabeth. I'll give it a try. So I'm not as familiar with peanuts, but my understanding is that they bloom, and then the stalk grows down into the ground, and then the peanut works its way down into the soil. So you have a window of time to control the weeds before that peanut tries to push into the ground. What you can do in that period of time is you can use a shallow tool like a hoe,

or I even like a putty knife and just sort of scratch just barely under the surface and cut off all those little weeds as they're coming up. And then once the peanuts are about ready to go down, you can put in a mulch layer of some sort of organic material that they'll be able to get through, something like maybe a wood chip or something fluffy. And the mulch layer will let the peanuts go through, but it should prevent a barrier to the weeds and just make it that much harder for the weeds to come up. Well, we have run out of time. Everybody's gotten in. So I want to thank everybody for calling, and sorry for those who did not get in. Let me thank Elizabeth Buck, Fresh Market Vegetables Specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension in East Aurora, New York, and Weston Miller Community Horticulturist with Oregon State University's Extension Service based in Portland. Thank you both for joining us today. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. I wish everybody good luck with the garden. And that's about it for this hour. Here's Diana with some of the folks who help. make this show happen. Thanks, Ira. Kyle Marion Viterbo is our community manager. Ariel Zitch is our director of audience. Danielle Dana is our executive director, and I'm Diana Montana, Experiences Manager.

Thanks for listening. And thank you, Diana. BJ Leideman composed our theme music, and we had helped this hour from audio engineers Lisa Gosselin and Kevin Wolfe. And of course, if you miss me part of the program, or you'd like to hear it again, we gave out so much information about gardening and it doesn't have to, you know, reside on your little pad. If you couldn't get it quickly enough, you can subscribe to our podcast or go to our smart speaker and ask to play Science Friday and relive these great moments in gardening history. I hope we helped you out today. Thank you for joining us. Good luck with your garden this weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.