Episode 4: Easy Gardening, Starting Beet Seeds, and Stopping Deer & Critters

Elizabeth from Zone 7

A: A good place to start is with perennial herbs like parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Annual herbs like basil, dill, and cilantro are also very easy. In the leafy green category: chard, lettuce, kale, and collards fit the bill.

On to fruiting vegetables: peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, okra, green beans, pumpkins are all fairly easy.

Easy-to-grow root crops would include garlic, radish, turnip, and potato.

And then on the perennial crop side, asparagus and rhubarb are very easy to grow. AsparaBest™ Asparagus from Gurney's, and KangaRhu™ Rhubarb are great selections.

As far as fruit: Red raspberries are a great choice. I would go for the shorter-statured red raspberries like ‘Crimson Knight’ or ‘Crimson Treasure’. Erect blackberries are a nice easy crop to grow; Gurney’s Sweet Giant is especially nice and Ponca or Prime-Ark® Freedom. And then of course, strawberries like Gurney’s Whopper. Strawberries are just the easiest garden fruit to grow in your garden. I would also like to include haskaps, or honeyberries, they’re really easy: you plant them, you protect the fruit from the birds, and then you pick the fruit.

Gerald from Zone 7

For spring planting beets, it's best to wait until the soil warms to around 50 degrees. Once you make your little shallow furrow and plant your seeds, it's good to cover them with fine soil. You want to break up any lumps, you don't want any twigs in there that would inhibit the seedlings from coming up. Now, if I have Gardens Alive! Earthworm Castings, I like to sprinkle that in the furrow and cover them with like a quarter inch of the worm castings, and that allows that seedling to pop up freely, and it gives you the little extra boost of fertility.

The other big important factor is keeping the seed bed evenly moist while they're germinating. You don't want it to dry out and form a hard crust on the surface, because it makes it hard for the seedling to come up.

For my late summer fall crop, I'll often put shade cloth or insect barrier over the planting bed. That keeps the soil temperature a little cooler and helps keep the soil moist.

You also want to be mindful of insects. Thrips and cut worms can cut off and eat those little seedlings before you even see them, so you might have that issue in your garden. You just have to be mindful of that.

And finally, as an alternative, you can start your seeds indoors. I start mine in our Gurney's seed
starting kit. Just sow 2 to 3 seeds per plug, and grow them inside under lights for about 4 to 5 weeks. Then plant them out in your garden.

Cherlynn from Zone 6

Well, Cherlynn, it sounds like your place is Wild Kingdom. I know the feeling, I have the same problem. The best defense against animals is exclusion. What I do at home: I have a deer fence around my whole garden, and then at the bottom of the deer fence, I put chicken wire all the way around, and secure it to the ground with landscape staples. This keeps the animals, small animals, from getting in and going underneath the fence. They're crafty, these animals.

You can also just individually cage plants to protect them. Or there are many premanufactured crop cages that are easy to install and very effective in the garden, or on your deck or patio.

To protect the whole bed, I'll often put hoops over it, and put bird netting over it or insect fabric. You want to make sure the edges of that are secure, because rabbits and chipmunks, who knows, they can get under there.

Repellents have a limited use in the vegetable garden. Sprays are out because you don't want to spray your tasty vegetables with something that tastes bad. Granular repellents like Plantskydd® Deer & Squirrel Repellent are fairly effective when you sprinkle them around.