Science Friday - Tips And Tricks To Grow Your Garden In A Changing Climate. March 10, 2023, Part 2

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Tips And Tricks To Grow Your Garden In A Changing Climate For many of us, spring is right around the corner—or already here—which means it’s time to start thinking about what is going into your garden this year. But largely thanks to climate change, our seasons are getting wonkier every year. Gardens are feeling the heat as climate change affects the timing of the seasons, temperature extremes, the amount of rainfall, the intensity of droughts, and more. So it’s more important than ever to plant a garden that can be more resilient to these changes. In this live show, Ira talks with a panel of guests about planting a climate-resilient garden, and how to set your plants up for success. He’s joined by Laura Erickson, a birder and author of “100 Plants to Feed the Birds: Turn Your Home Garden Into a Healthy Bird Habitat,” Dr. Lucy Bradley, a horticulturist and extension specialist at North Carolina State University, and Dr. Tiffany Carter, research soil scientist at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. 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 Irafledo. To say that this has been a strange winter would be stating, overstating the obvious, like 60-degree temperatures in the northeast when it should be in the 30s. It's a warming climate trend. The winters aren't as cold in some places colder than other spring comes earlier. And the plants, they don't know what to do. They poke up their new shoots up through the soil weeks earlier than expected. then a sudden freeze comes by and kills the buds.

I was going through seed catalogs looking to plant a garden that's more resilient to these changes, and that's what we're going to talk about this hour. Plants, soil, gardening to attract and feed the wildlife like the birds and the bees and the other pollinators. And the good news is that we're taking your gardening questions too. What do you want to know about planting a climate-resilient garden? Give us a ring. You make the call, but only if you make the call. Our number 844-724-8255-844-Sai Talk.

Or, of course, you can tweet us at SciFry. And maybe you have some hints or tips that you'd like to share. 844-8-255. And we have a bunch of guests who are going to help us out here. Let me introduce them. Laura Erickson, a birder and author based in Duluth, Minnesota. Her most recent book, 100 Plants to Feed the Birds, Turn your home garden into a healthy bird habitat.

Also, Dr. Tiffany Carter, research soil scientist at the USDA based in Lincoln, Nebraska. If you've listened to the show, you know how much I am interested in the soil. And Dr. Lucy Bradley, a horticulturist and extension specialist in North Carolina State University in Raleigh. And I'm sure Dr. Bradley answers all kinds of questions about people's soil and their gardens and what's wrong, what's going right. And you'll answer yours if you phone us. All of you, welcome to Science Friday. Delighted to be here. Thank you. I'm delighted to be here, too.

Nice to have you all. Laura, let me start out with you because I know that you're a birder, but you wrote a book about plants. Fill us in on why that happened. My publisher, Story Publishing, had already published one book, 100 plants to feed the bees, and another one, 100 plants to feed the mice. So they thought birds would be the next one.

And mine is a little different because I'm not only talking about plants that produce nectar and seeds and nuts or acorns. I'm also talking about plants because locally native plants are the ones that provide the insects that all just about every kind of backyard bird needs. insect food is so critical to birds and we're having so many problems losing native insects that that was one of my big focuses on the book. Tell me about why we're having such a problem losing native insect. It's all kinds of things all conspiring together, pesticides, of course, but also we don't keep water. a lot of the wetlands that used to be rich with mayfly streams and rivers that had very clean, well-oxygenated water,

have become more eutrophic now, more plants, which seems like a good thing, except as they die, they use up all the oxygen, and mayflies can't survive there. And mayflies depend on Purple Martins and several other swathes. and several other swallows, nighthawks, whippoorwills, they all depend heavily on mayflies for fueling their spring migration, and when they get to their breeding grounds, that's what they feed their babies. We're losing so many native insects,

because so many invasive exotic plants have crowded out the native plants that supply many of the insects that birds need, too. Interesting. Yeah. Now, you've certainly answered that question. Lucy, let me take you. Well, you take me. Would you want to walk through your garden? What have you got growing now?

Oh, my garden's so fun. I have lots of edibles. So I have fruit trees and fruit bushes and ground covers with strawberries and things. And I also grow native plants to feed the birds like Laura was saying. and I grow plants for cut flowers. So to be in my yard, you have to be multifunctional. So I'm looking for things that are going to feed me or the birds or provide cut flowers that are going to attract people and insects and fun.

Do you see climate change affecting your garden? Have you experienced change there? Yes. I go out now and sing lullabies to my fruit trees to try and keep them asleep for a little bit longer because we get those high temperatures and they pop out. and then they're, like you said, they're susceptible to a late freeze. So the challenge that I see is that it's not just that we're getting warmer, it's just there's so much more variability.

So we don't just need plants that are going to survive a drought. We need plants that can survive drought and flood. We need plants that can survive hot and cold. So we need plants that are more resilient in a wider array of circumstances. Yeah, I agree with you. Tiffany, you're a soil scientist. What made you think that soil is so cool that you want? wanted to study it. I mean, I love soil. What turns you on about the soil? Yes. So I'm actually a

soil biologist. So not only do I focus on the soil. I focus on all the things that live in the soil. Yeah. I just get really excited. Somebody's got to care for these little critters, right? We've got all kinds of cool things going on down there. You've got the microbes and you've got earthworms. And so all that life, You know, I love studying life, love looking at life. And so that's what got me into soil. There's so much life there that we don't see with the naked eye. I read somewhere that there's like a billion organisms in a spoonful of soil. Is that right?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And that's the soil health is important for the garden health. Absolutely. Soil health is probably the most important thing. When we care for the soil, we're caring for the rest of the ecosystem, which does include those soil organisms. Give me an idea of what's going on underground at this time of the year and generally during the whole year.

What kind of interaction is happening there? Well, throughout the year, those soil organisms and things that are living there are interfacing and interacting with the rest of the soil environment, which includes those plant roots. And so those plant roots often provide a food source or a carbon source for those items that are those organisms that are, living in the soil. And so there's a lot of interplay back and forth. So even though it may be cold, even though we may not see plants growing on the surface, there is always something going on down there below ground. And this time of the year, what's happening with the soil? Is it resting or is it getting active? Never resting, always active. Of course, things are more active when it's warm, you know, just like us, you know, if it's snowing outside, I'm not moving very fast. But certainly in the

summer when it's warmed up, we are. So things are slowed down a little bit because we have our reduced temperatures because we're just coming out of winter. But always active, always active. Yeah, I was trying to theme this hour about resiliency, Laura. Tell me about planting native plants. Is that super important to the resiliency of your garden since these species are already adapted to your area? Right. That's super important. Also, it's best to get locally native plants, partly because as we just heard, the soil is so important. And when we get them grown locally, those plants will thrive better in the local soil

with the particular microorganisms that soil has. But plants that are native... Let me ask you, what's the difference between local and native plants then? Well, some people consider a native plant to be any plant native to be any plant native to. North America rather than getting, you know, Japanese honeysuckle or something. But locally native is really important because some plants that are local in one place in America become invasive in other places, mesquite in Florida, black locusts taking over habitat

in areas where it wasn't originally part of the, the, um, the, the, ecosystem. And also the locally native plants are the particular, you know, over time, even within a species, plants evolve. And so the ones that are local are the ones that are best adapted to our yards. Is it possible to go to your nursery and find something hyperlocal that really is about your neighborhood? It all depends on the local nursery. Some of them are very much

focused on people who want to grow food in their gardens or flowers, and some are more focused on the native plants that are part of the local natural ecosystem. And so you have to be careful

in finding out which clubs in your town. or county are most focused on those sorts of things and you'll get lots of advice from gardeners and nurseries that are focused on the native plants that's a big movement right now so my book has one organization per state and province that tells you know that is good for that but you have to get down as close to your backyard as you can as far as local. Lucy, you know, speaking of flowers and ornamentals and fruits and veggies, should we separate

them in different gardens? I know a lot of people do that. I certainly do that. You can do that, but you can also integrate them all into one space. A lot of edibles are gorgeous in the landscape. Swiss chard brings beautiful color and texture. You know, strawberries you can snuggle right in, and people don't even notice that you're growing edibles or they're actually improving the beauty of your landscape. So I think you can do

both very well. Yeah, I think I'm going to do that this year. I know I'm starting my seeds now, hoping that I'm getting a few sprouts coming up. Yeah, some people might not have enough space just to lay out a vegetable garden in full sun, but they can tuck, you know, some lettuce and greens and things into their ornamental landscape in the sun and get double bang. That's a great idea. Let me give out our number because we're going to take a break and then go right to the phones. 844-8255-844-Sai Talk. And you can also tweet us at SciFry talking about gardening with Laura Erickson, author of 100 Plants to Feed the Birds, Turn Your Home Garden into a Healthy Bird Habitat.

Dr. Tiffany Carter, USDA, based in Lincoln, Nebraska. She's a research soil scientist. Dr. Lucy Bradley, a horticulturist, an extension specialist at North Carolina State University and Raleigh, stay with us. Give us a call, 844-724-8255, or tweet us at SciFri. We'll be right back after this break. Stay with us. Hey there, podcast listeners. I were here with a simple request. If you're listening to this podcast, learning something, enjoying yourself, please go to ScienceFriiday.com slash support to make a donation. Our work and this podcast depends on public support from listeners

like you. You know that. You're here listening, which means you find our programming valuable. Any amount makes a difference, even two bucks. But the lasting gifts are the ones we can count on sustaining donations which we can rely on every year. So please go to ScienceFriiday.com slash support to make your gift. Again, that's sciencefriiday.com slash support. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. We're talking this hour about how to plant

a happy, healthy garden that will survive the throes of climate change. With my guests, Laura Erickson, author of 100 Plants to Feed the Birds, Dr. Tiffany Carter, USDA, based in Lincoln, Nebraska,

Dr. Lucy Bradley, based in North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Our number 844-724-8255, and Tom in Gainesville, Florida, has a question I want to talk about also. Hi, Tom.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hey, thank you for taking my call. I've been gardening for about 25 years and throwing in a lot of organic matter, but I've also been killing and recently reading some information about killing may not be as good as we thought it used to be for the soil, and I wanted to see if that question could be addressed. Good question. Dr. Carter, I'm going to direct this at you because I know you were a soil scientist, And I faced this the other day when now we had 50-degree weather.

And I took my hoe when I went into my garden bed and started pulling up the soil. And then remembered talking about how they say, try not to till the soil because you're killing all the interaction of all those bugs in there. Yes. So, yes, research has shown us that there are actually several things that we can do to really manage our soil and make sure that we're maintaining its health. There are four key principles of soil health that we really, really need to keep in mind as we are preparing ourselves for gardening and growing seasons. First, maximize living roots by keeping some sort of living crops and plants in the soil as long as possible. Secondly, minimize your soil disturbance. Tilling, for example, is something that does disturb our soils, breaks up our soil aggregates, breaks up our fungal hyphi that have created a network

to actually help some of those nutrients and things move to our plants. Third, we want to maximize our biodiversity. So a little bit earlier, you guys were talking about, you know, mixing in different crops and edibles. So definitely planting diverse crops. And finally, making sure that we keep that soil covered. Bear soil is not our friend. And so always having something to cover it,

whether it's a crop or cover crop, residue from last year, mulch, something like that. Those are the main things that will really make sure that that garden stays healthy and sustainable, not just for now, but for later as well. So if I'm planting seeds in my garden, I should not create a big row digging my hoe in and dragging it to create a trough. I should place each seed one at a time, maybe pushing it into the ground? Not necessarily.

You know, when I say minimize the soil disturbance, that doesn't mean that there won't be any disturbance. it's just those that are going through and tilling things often and mixing things all the time. Tom, does that answer your question? Yeah, I think that does, yeah, because I would normally put manure in and try to chill it in, but I think what I'll do is just put it between the rows now and use that for the next season. All right, thank you. Can I just say how wonderful it is when the best answer is easy? I just love that.

Well, a lot of stuff is easy, isn't it? Exactly. Yeah. Speaking of easy, let's go to the next caller. Let's go to Lori in Orange Park, Florida. Hi, Lori. Wow. Hello. I can't believe you answered my call. Hi. Go ahead. First of all, I want to say, I love, love, love you. I listen to your show while I'm working in my garden. Terrific. Actually, listen to your podcast, so I thank you so much.

This is fantastic for me because I am a home gardener. And a couple of just little quick questions, and I'll get off the air. The first one I mentioned to the nice lady that answers my call was that I live in Zone 9A, which is Northeast Florida. And with the climate change, it's getting more and more difficult to determine or plan out my garden, Not knowing when the cool weather is going to stop for cool weather crops like my collards and, you know, turnips and beaks, whatever, versus my hot weather crops. I mean, they're blending now and they're not growing, I guess, at the speed that the seed people think they should, so my harvest dates are off. And the other little short question, since you have a soil person there, how often can you re-use? use container soil without just adding more stuff to it.

Both good questions. Let me go to Lucy Bradley, a horticulturist, and this is the kind of question you would get as an extension specialist. Would you not about how to decide what to do? Yes, and I wish there was a perfect answer. And the challenge is that it's going to be different with different years, right? So I think some of it is being flexible. Some of it's paying attention to the plants and noticing how, like, when

you know, when this plant leaves out, that's a good indicator of where you are as opposed to trying to memorize a date on the calendar. Most state climatology offices have first and last frost date averages for you, but that's still an average that you can plan around. And, you know, I, it's not uncommon for me to have to replant lettuce a couple of times because I just get overly enthusiastic when it starts to warm up and I put it out and then, you know, if I don't get it covered, I might have to freeze and replant. So you just have to be resilient yourself, too, you know.

and just recognizing that there's a lot of things you can't control. So you do the best you can with the information that you've got, and sometimes it works. Lori, does that answer or help you at all? It does. Thank you so much. That's typically what I'm doing. Yeah, it's hard.

You know, I can understand what you're saying. I'm trying to say, well, how long is my cold season going to last for my cold weather crops, if it's going to get too warm and they're going to both, right? Right, exactly. Yeah, okay. Thanks for that question. Yeah, go ahead. Can I just say one more thing that you can do is to stagger your planting. So if you replant, you know, every two weeks, so you don't like put in all your lettuce at once, you put, you plant some, and then two weeks later you plant more and two weeks later, and at least one of those planting hits it right, you know? Yeah, do plant scientists understand this conundrum, and are they developing more resilient, climate resilient plants? I think plant sciences are learning all the time and working on developing plants to help meet our needs.

Yes. Okay, thanks. Let's go to Mindy in Akron, Ohio. Hi, Mindy. Hello. Hey there. Hi. I'm so excited.

You're taking my call. And I have to say this show is just warms my heart. You're kind of speaking to the choir here. I am a retired, certified organic vegetable farmer. and I'm also very involved with the Garden Club of America. And I just wanted to kind of announce, and I'm sure, or maybe not your guests as well as your listeners, to be aware that we will have declared by the end of probably April of this year all 50 states. There will be a proclamation.

Each state will deem the month of April, maybe not Alaska, as national nation. native plant month. This would be a proclamation that will have to be renewed every single year, but nevertheless, again, it's just a massive effort on the part of this amazing organization, the Garden Club of America, to draw attention to the critical importance of having native plants everywhere in our yards, in any possible location in lieu of invasives and non-native. So I heard your discussion about that and I just wanted to announce that. Well, Mindy, thank you for sharing. You heard it first on Science Friday that April's going to be. Wonderful. Well, well, thank you. Let me get a reaction from some of our guests. What do you think about that?

It's pretty delightful. All right. Let's let's go. Well, what did you think about what, about the idea of planting crops or, you know, staggering the crops. That seems like an important thing to do about trying to, you know, I guess average out the weather that we're going through. Yeah, it heads your bets, right? Yeah. Let me go, okay, let's go to the phones because there are a lot of folks here. I'm looking at these calls and say, wow.

Jordan and San Antonio, hi, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, yeah, so I just want to know, is there a genetically modified grass out there? It's so dry these days in San Antonio and South Texas, like a genetically modified grass that can handle all this heat that you don't have to water so much. Good question. Maybe we should. Anybody know that?

I mean, I would expect you'd be developing that. I don't know enough of that, Torque, to give you a knowledgeable answer to that, Jordan, but I'm sure there's people who are working on, you know, breeding varieties that will do that. Well, as long as we're talking about lawns, you know, I have noticed that clover is taking over my lawn. And I was thinking about it and saying, this is actually pretty good. Why do I need?

It's excellent. Yeah? Why is that? Yeah, because it makes your lawn more diverse. So instead of having a monoculture of grass, you now have something that's nitrogen-fixing in there that's going to help feed the rest of your lawn. You have something that's going to bloom and include pollinators. So I'm a big fan of diverse green spaces as opposed to,

a perfect lawn. I think we really need to redefine the word beautiful when we're thinking about that in terms of landscapes and stop looking for perfection and look for holistic beauty in a whole system. Yeah, and not only that, it grows so low, you don't have to mow it. Yeah, it's beautiful. You find four-leed clover's too. How cool is that? I started looking. I started looking. But I was so happy to see the diversity of the clover, some tiny little leaves, some big leaves. Yes. Yeah. Yes, and it comes out all different colors.

There's lots and lots of wonderful things about Clover. Speaking of us, let's go to Houston. Tiffany, welcome to Science Friday. Hi. Thank you for taking my call. So I would like to start planning edibles. However, I am not sure about where to start, and I would like to be really good at it pretty quickly

so I can introduce another plant the next. season. Any starting point that I won't be wasteful, too, that it grows so much that I'm wasting more than eating more. So any guidance on that will be helpful. Also, one little tidbit. I work with children, too, but I'd like to

share those goodies at the table, at the lunch table with the little ones I work with. Thank you. Any one of our guests could answer that. Who wants to jump in first? Lucy, Tiffany, Laura? I... Go ahead. Well, I would love to jump in

And Tiffany, that's fantastic. I'm so glad you're interested in growing edibles. And I would encourage you to contact your local cooperative extension office so that you can get a list of varieties that are well adapted to your area. And you can pick things that are likely to thrive for you. So you can start by just planting a few. You can start by planting annuals and just sticking them in. You can grow some perennials that will come back again and again. there's shrubs and trees that you can do it.

But you don't have to do it all at once. You don't have to like install an entire landscape. You can just start sticking things in and just grow it as you succeed. There you go, Tiffany. That's very helpful. Good luck. Good luck. Let me ask my guest, Tiffany, how does the soil health impact the rest of the ecosystem beyond the garden?

Does it talk underground the soil? Yes. So I want to throw in here, you know, when we make sure that we're taking care of the soil, we really are not just focusing on the soil health and the conservation of it, but we're also really caring for the rest of the ecosystem, which includes those organisms and other things that we don't see that are interacting below ground. So that's very important to keep in mind that, you know, just because we don't see it up top doesn't mean that there aren't things going on beneath the surface. everything is interconnected, everything is interacting. And so that's why it's just really so important that we're paying attention to those soil health principles. And the soil, as I say, let me just remind everybody that this is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. And what's really fascinating about the soil is that the soil communicates with plants among each other, right?

Yes, absolutely. How does it do that? Absolutely. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier, those plant roots are really doing a good job of providing our soil organisms a food source. So the carbon that those roots are kind of excreting there ends up being good for what's living there beneath the ground, which is why it's so important that we're taking care of the entire system. That's a great. Great answer. Let me see if I can get a phone call in before we go to the break.

Let's go to John in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, John. Hey, it's so good to talk with you all. Thanks for taking me my call. I love to have my little garden. You know, I love to raise our tomato plants. We had a brutal drought last year. It was so hot and dry, and many of us weren't able to get a good harvest of tomatoes,

even if we watered. It was just, you know, some things I don't know. Some things I don't know how, you know, to keep the water right on plants, If the blossoms fall off, you lose your tomatoes. So something about how to water in really hot situations that would be helpful. But also I have a question about now we're in our pre-spring getting our beds ready for what's coming. Is there something I can be doing to fortify my bed right now where I'm going to plant my tomatoes that will help me have better success in adverse heat conditions?

That's a good question. Lucy, Tiffany, any suggestions? What to do? I'm sorry, go ahead. This is Lucy, and I would encourage you to water the soil instead of your plant. So don't spray the water up on the plant itself, but put the water on the soil. And you're right. When it's really hot and dry, the plant itself gets desiccated.

If it's really hot, the pollen and the flowers is not viable. So when it's really hot and dry, tomatoes are a challenge. Yeah, they need a lot of them. I think I'm saying good luck to you, John. Well, maybe you could, what about starting them indoors so they give them a healthy start, right? Grow them under lights indoors is what I'm trying to do this year. That's great. And the thing about that, too, is you can get an early start, right?

So you can start them six to eight weeks inside before they would be able to go out. And then you get a jump on the season before it gets really hot. So that's a great strategy. You know, but what happens, though, is you think the season is over, right? Winter is over, and then you put it out in an Oklahoma when this big snowstorm comes. Yes. Yes. Yes, it's hard.

Have your frostcloth ready to protect them. I hope, John, we gave you some good ideas there. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. Yeah. We have to take a break.

but before we go to the break Laura, I want you to mention some of the 100 plants to feed the birds. Give me five plants that we should be planting to feed the birds. Oak trees, if you live anywhere where your soil will support them. I live in a neighborhood in Duluth

where there aren't oaks. Some sort of pine tree, another conifer, juniper or white cedar, things like that. Smaller plants, there's all kinds of composite flowers that feed goldfinches and our native and lots of other little birds and support insects.

All right. We're going to come back after a break and talk lots more about gardening. Our number 844-8255. We're talking with Laura Erickson, Dr. Tiffany Carter, Dr. Lucy Bradley. And you can also tweet us at SciFri. Lots of tweets coming in. Lots of interest, of course, is spring around the corner. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Plato. A brief program note. Citizen Science Month is coming up this April,

and it's a great opportunity to do real science anytime, anywhere, and we have got some fun, free projects ready to go, and a series of talks to get you started. So check out ScienceFriiday.com slash citizen science. That's one word. Citizen Science. for information. Science Friday.com slash citizen science. This hour, we're talking about gardening, how to plant a climate resilient garden, our number 844-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Lots of gardening questions.

Laura, it's easy to see why a garden can benefit birds, right? It gives them food, a place to nest, some water. But what about the birds? What can the birds do for your garden? Well, in my yard, we used to have a raspberry patch when we moved in. And after maybe 10 or 15 years here, it started dying out from some fungal infection. But meanwhile, the purple finches who had been picking out on the raspberries, the ones that were harder for us to get, planted a whole new bed for us. Wow.

So that was pretty cool. That is pretty cool. But hummingbirds do a lot of pollinating. for the plants that have evolved to be hummingbird attractors. Those plants depend on the hummingbirds to pollinate them. Blue Jays are credited with starting up the oak forests as glaciers retreated so that the oak forests advanced with the retreating glaciers much more quickly than trees with windborne seeds.

The oak trees got an edge thanks to Blue Jays. And the Blue Jays are the other birds they might help pick away at the insects. Right. And the Blue Jays, you know, they plant, they hide all these acorns here and there. And they go back and take a bunch of them, but they don't eat all of them. And that means some of them will be replanting and keeping young oaks in the areas where oaks live. I was thinking of that house that had 700 pounds of acorns in it. Oh, yeah.

Laura, before, give me a couple of tips of how to grow a bird-friendly garden. What should I be planting? Well, it's very complicated depending on where you live. Like, I live in Duluth, Minnesota, and my neighborhood has horrible clay soil, so some plants don't grow here that grow in other neighborhoods of Duluth. You have to be aware of those little things. You have to think about what birds you want in your yard, and you have to think about your yard. If you have a small yard, you don't want to plant a willow where the roots are going to be getting into your pipes.

You have to think about so many different things, and I tried to touch on all those things in the book, because it was a lot of stuff I hadn't thought about until I started researching. All right. We'll get a copy of 100 plants to feed the birds. Let's go to the phones and see, well, there's so many interesting phone calls. Let's go. Let's talk about this that everybody wants to talk about, and that is pesticides. Christine in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Hi, Christine. Christine, are you there? Hello. Hey there. I'm here. Sure. Thank you.

Hey, my question is, I haven't been able to get this question answered from our extension agent in Colorado. We have 35 acres of dry land alfalfa. We are required by the state to kill all invasive weeds. You cannot spray alfalfa. Nor do I want to. I don't like using poisonous herbicides. and pesticides. How can I kill these weeds

and I'm required to kill? That's a great question. Lucy, can you? So what kind of weeds are you trying to kill? Are they annuals? Are they perennials? Are they both? And we have had years and years of drought here,

so the weeds have just taken over. Yeah, well. So I would say always the best place to start is looking at how do you have your crop thrive? Because if your crop is doing really well, then it will out-compete the weeds and you don't have to worry as much about managing them. I'm not a field crop expert, so I don't want to give you any advice about what pesticides you should use. And I'm sorry you didn't get a good answer when you approached your local folks, but if you want to leave your contact information with the folks at NPR, I'd be happy to follow

up with you individually and put you in touch with some folks. I would appreciate that so much. We're here at Science Friday, not NPR, so we'll be happy. Oh, sorry. One more thing. We also run a dog rescue, so I never use anything poisonous on the ground. So it's a double whammy. I'm required to do it, but I don't want to.

I'm going to put you on hold, and you can talk to our producer who will try to get you some, and we'll get back to you with some information. So, yeah, you know, this is the thing we don't talk about much is how to keep weeds out of your garden without having to use pesticides. You know, it's something that people don't want to do, and I don't blame them. Yeah, I think one of the things is staying ahead of the game. So if you can remove weeds before they flower and go to seed, then you cut down tremendously on the population. for the next year. That's one of the challenges with weeds. Most of them are outstanding at reproduction. So if you have one flower that goes to seeds and you've got millions that you're

dealing with next year. So making sure that the plants that you have are set up to thrive using, you know, a ground cover or mults to make it harder for the weeds to germinate and come up, removing them when they're younger. The smaller they are, the easier they are to get out. Tiffany, let's talk about the soil because I really love to talk about the soil. I want to talk more about it. How do you know if you have good soil or not? And what is good soil? You know, I first want to start by, because I love soil so much, I love all of the soil. And so I think all of it is good. There are things kind of, as I mentioned before, that we can do to really care for the soil and make sure that our soil is sustained in a way that we can get what we need from it.

while also making sure the soil is okay. Soil is really complex because it is a living and breathing ecosystem, you know, making sure that we're caring for the entire body from not just what we're planting in there, but also what things we know are living below ground and interacting below ground. You know, that's the key there. And I imagine that you should get your soil tested, right, to know. Yes. But what would you be testing for? You know, you're testing for just kind of making sure that you have created the right environment for the species that are surviving there.

So you're wanting to know pH levels, maybe some of the chemistry that's going on there in the soil. You know, depending on what type of plants you're growing, you may need more or more or less assistance from, you know, your local extension agents or NRC. You know, NRCS does offer a variety of resources that can assist with figuring out how to best care for your particular soil. You know, of course, me here in Nebraska, I'm at the National Center, the National Soil Survey Center. But we have, you have access to several different resources on our website, nrcs.usda.gov, that can really lead people in the right direction for making sure that they're choosing the right things, make sure they're getting the right soil tests, make sure they have all the right. right information to make sure that you have a thriving soil system.

Let me go to you, Dr. Bradley, because you're at an extension, especially, you are an extension specialist in North Carolina. Do people bring in soil? Do you encourage them to bring in soil for a test? Absolutely. They take it to the North Carolina Department of Agriculture does those soil tests for them, and then their extension agents can help them interpret what that means for them. How do you dig up a sample to bring it in? What you want to do is look at where you want to grow and then take several samples from around that spot and mix them together and then put that in the box to send to get it tested so you have kind of an aggregate to look at. And I want to throw in just in addition to all the great things that Dr. Carter was saying is the importance of thinking about what might be the risks in the soil. A lot of folks who are growing in urban areas really want to think about how is that soil used before you decided to make a garden there.

and what kinds of contaminants could be in the soil. There's a lot of good information out there to help you identify what, based on how the soil was used previously, what might be some things that you would want to consider, what you might need to test for, and what are ways that you can minimize the risk from guarding those locations? Very good point, because it could have been a battery factory there or an asbestos plant or something in a Brownsfield in an urban garden, right?

Right, it could have been an old house that had lead paint or lead plumbing. So there's all sorts of things to think about. And it's really important to know how the land was used previously so that you can make informed decisions. And to get the sample, how deep do you dig? What do you do exactly? Is it two inches, six inches down? Yes, six inches probably.

Okay. A lot of people looking for gardening. Let's go to Laslo in South Bend, Indiana. Yes, hello. Hi there. Go ahead. I have a question about for about three weeks in April to the middle of May every year. I get a bunch of about three or four pounds of morale mushrooms growing in my yard.

Are you lucky? Wow. Wow. I didn't answer the phone said. Yeah, I had no idea, and they're so tasty. But how can I get more of them? I guess they're very difficult to grow. The grocery store right down the street sells them for about $40 or $50.

I don't even know, a pound or something. So you should be selling them to them, right? Yeah, well, a restaurant told me that if I could grow like five pounds, but they're just super good. I don't want to sell them. I just want to eat them for more than two weeks a year. Yeah. I didn't do that.

Is there any way I can spread the spores or do anything? Because they can keep to grow in one specific spot. I think it's under some elm trees or something and under an oak tree. Good question. I don't have an answer. Maybe Lucy, do you have an answer for that? I would say contact an expert. mushrooms and fungi.

I do not have an answer for you. I'm sorry. Yeah. Figure out what you're doing. Figure out what you're doing in that spot and do more of it. There you go. Yeah, I think I'm just lucky. Well, luck is pretty good.

Thanks for calling. Thank you very much. See you. Take care. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Yes, luck will go just so far sometimes until you want to fake some more. Here's a Twitter question from Lee. He says, I have worked hard to naturalize my yard, the natural plants, particularly making it appealing to birds.

But it seemed to be always battling urban living deer. Oh, yes. Eating me out of house and home, what can I do to minimize destroying my hard work by deer? Welcome to the rest of the world with the deer problem. Yeah. Any blood meal, all those kinds of things, those suggestions? Do they work? I think all of them are contented upon how, what's the level of the deer population in your area and how hungry are they?

So there's lots of plants you can look up that are less attractive to deer, but if they're really hungry, they'll eat most of those. Your best bet is exclusion. So if you can fence them out or fence off plants that you want to protect, that's, you know, you can be your best shot. You know, I know the deer are there because the tops of my lilies. are gone all the time. They love, they love Lively. Maddie and Barryville, Arkansas. Hi, welcome to Science Friday.

Oh, hi. I live in a senior citizen community, and it's down a cul-de-sac. It's only about a block off the main highway, but it's completely surrounded with forest. And I have a lot of critters out here. The rabbits and raccoons and possum and skunk and squirrels, So I've been feeding them.

I just throw stuff out that I don't eat chopped up in ends of carrots and ends of strawberries and lettuce and different stuff for them. And they don't always eat everything. They don't like the asparagus ends very much. But I'm wondering if this also helps to help the soil to feed the soil because I don't, you know, if the plants will begin to mulch or whatever, I don't compost, I just throw out the fresh stuff that I'm eating that I don't eat. Let's see if we get an answer to a quick, quick answer.

Should she be throwing that stuff out or comp? She better off to be composting it, right, before you throw it out? I'll step in there. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say, you know, of course compost is a good thing. But, you know, small amounts of lettuce, carrots, strawberries, they shouldn't hurt too much.

Just because, you know, we still are adding that carbon source and that food source to the soil there. So just a couple little things that the critters leave, they shouldn't hurt the lawn there too much. That's about all the time we have. I have to say goodbye. Thank you both, all of you. All of you, Laura Erickson, Dr. Tiffany Carter, Dr. Dr. Lucy Bradley for taking time to be with us. Today lots of great questions, lots of great answers about the soil and gardening.

So thank you all for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. Thanks so much for having us. Before we go, I'm sure some of you who listen to this hour on gardening may have been stung by a bee or a wasp while working in your own garden, right? But you probably have not been stung as often or by as many different insects as entomologist Justin O. Schmidt. Schmidt was stung nearly a thousand times by nearly every manner of bee, wasp, pornid, and ant, all in the name of science. Schmidt died last month in Tucson, Arizona,

but he left behind extensive work chronicling the pain that stings can cause to humans and other animals. And he talked with me in 2016 about his book, The Sting of the Wild. The reason I've been doing this is trying to understand the evolution of social behavior. You know, we're a social species, but so are all ants and many wasps and many bees. And the problem they have is how do you protect a whole bunch of nice succulent, yummy brood or honey in the case of bees from big nasty predators like us or even other animals that want to eat you? and my hypothesis was the only way he could do that was through an effective defense,

and the only affected defense you had was a sting. He also created the entertaining Schmidt Sting Pain Index, which attempts to describe how these stings feel with more nuanced than a numerical scale. Here he describes the sting of the fearsome bullet ant. The bullet ant hurts like a burning ember that was just rammed into. you. Unfortunately, it doesn't just last two minutes. It goes into this crescendo as if somebody's turning on a blowtorch and burning you, and then they kind of turn it off and let it recede for a little bit. Then they turn it on again. Imagine this going for 12 to 36 hours.

Justin O'Shmitt, known as the King of Sting, was 75. And that's about it for this program. If you missed any part of it, or we'd like to hear it again. Subscribe to our podcasts or ask smart speaker to play Science Friday. You can say hi to us on social media, sure, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email us the classic way, SciFri at ScienceFriday.com. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. I'm Ira Flato.