 All these things present challenges to the gardener, vegetable gardener. So fog and cool weather, it all depends on where you live in the city, right? You can see on this chart on the left, basically the western half of the city is what's known as the fog belt. The eastern half is more sheltered and that's the sun belt and actually can get reasonably sunny in there. If you look over on the right here, this is a more detailed map that breaks the city out into seven zones. But if you compare them, you can see that one, two, three and four basically equate to the fog belt, OK, with five, six and seven being the sun belt. Now, this second map here comes from a book called Golden Gate Gardening. This is I don't think you're screen sharing. Sorry to interrupt. Oh, dear. Oh, oh, my goodness. OK, sorry about that. Thank you. Here we go. OK. How's that? Good, Jamie working. That's good. We're seeing presenter mode, presenter view with your notes. How's that? Perfect. OK. So let me just go back here. OK, so these are some of the gardening challenges in San Francisco here. This these maps show basically western half of the city is fog belt, eastern half of the city is sunny. I wanted to show people this book. It's called Golden Gate Gardening. It's by Pam Pierce, who is the former gardening editor of of the Chronicle, and it was really the first book that address the unique challenges of gardening in the Bay Area and specifically San Francisco. OK. So here it is here, Golden Gate Gardening. If you look on the reference page, you'll see her name and the name of the book. And I hardly if you're serious about vegetable and fruit gardening in the Bay Area, this is an indispensable book. And this this map up here is a page coming from that book. This is another thing from from the book. And this is a really interesting thing. It's called Delay of the Maximum. What does that mean? Well, it's the number of days after the longest day of the year. Summer solstice, January, June 21st. That is the warmest day of the year. And and in, you know, most of the continental US that's going to be in late July. OK. But if you if you look at this in San Francisco, it's over 90 days, which means that your warmest time of the year. Statistically is late September, early October. And in fact, there was an article in the Chronicle that I saw a few months ago that said statistically the warmest day of the year in San Francisco is October 2. Now, again, if you grew up in San Francisco, you know this. The summers are cool because of the fog, and then the fog breaks down in the fall and you actually get warmer weather. So that influences your gardening choices because your your warmer crops are going to do better in September and October than they're going to do in July and August. And that's different from, say, if you live down the peninsula here in Menlo Park, where the delay of the maximum is like 35 days. OK. So so that's an important thing. So this is basically telling you that fog and cool summers are prevalent the closer you get to San Francisco and to the coastal regions. And how does that affect gardening? Well, number one, it's hard to grow the warm weather summer crops. Most of the tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, beans, etc. OK. And then the other the other thing and part of that is cool weather, but part of that is fog because plants need sunlight to photosynthesize and fog block sunlight. So depending on, you know, how close you are to the fog belt, that's going to really influence your decision about what to plant in your garden and when. Here's another page out of Golden Gate Gardening. I'm not going to go through it in detail, but it basically says here's what you can grow in in the area. And they break them down by the moderate fog list, the less fog list, the inland microclimate, which is going to be warmer. And the short answer is, again, as I said, a lot of those warm season vegetables just aren't going to do well in in most of San Francisco. Now, I do want to point out that we in the Master Gardeners Program have done a lot testing out cool weather tomato varieties because we have such cool regions here. And we will have 19 varieties of cool weather tomatoes at our Spring Garden Market on Saturday, April 15th. There are details about that further on in the presentation. Now, you've got cool summers as a problem, but mild winters are also a problem in a different kind of way. It's almost unheard of to get a freeze in San Francisco or even a frost. But most fruit trees require what they call chill hours. And chill hours are basically number of hours. It's roughly there's this complicated calculation for it. But roughly speaking, it's hours below 45 degrees during the winter when the fruit trees are dormant. And without sufficient chill hours, your trees are going to not have enough blossoms and fruit production is reduced. In fact, they just read a couple of weeks ago, the famous cherry blossoms and the tidal basin in Washington, D.C. They had such a warm winter on the East Coast, they didn't get enough chill hours. So their cherry blossoms are all off this spring. So most varieties of fruit trees, every fruit tree that you research is going to say how many chill hours they need. And like, you know, apples, you're going to find apples that are over 1,000, 1,500, et cetera. You have to look for what's called low chill varieties. And so your options are really reduced for growing fruit trees. The other problem you've got with fruit trees are that they mostly like warmer weather in the summer. So that's why, you know, the Santa Clara Valley was the Valley of Hearts Delight and grew all the fruit trees because it had enough chill hours in the winter, but it had nice, hot, dry summers, which is perfect weather for them. So you could say, well, I'm going to grow subtropical fruits because we don't get frost. But you need a lot of summer heat for those too. So you're kind of in a bind in terms of growing fruit trees. And like I said, if you grow low chill varieties, if you really must. Now, everything that I say here has an exception, right? And I know plenty of gardeners in Half Moon Bay in San Francisco who are growing tomatoes or growing figs, et cetera. So everything is site specific. And if you have good wind shelter, you have good afternoon sun, then, you know, it's possible. Some other things, sandy soils in large parts of the city. They're low in nutrients and the water just drains right through. Hilly sites leads to runoff of water and nutrients. Small yards, right? You know, your sunlight gets obstructed by trees and structures and stuff like that. So what does that mean? Well, it means that if you have a big enough yard, building a raised bed is probably a good way to go to, you know, ensure that you have some good soil to work with. And then, you know, a lot of people are going to be using containers in the in the city. And I will touch on container gardening. It's mostly the same. But there are just a few other few different things to pay attention to. All right, so let's talk a little bit about soil. If I've learned one thing as a gardener, it's that it's all about soil. OK, 90 I would say 90 percent of growing good vegetables is having healthy soil. OK, so this is tells you what soil is made of. And, you know, look at this 25 percent air, 25 percent water. That's a lot of space down there. And then 5 percent organic matter, 10 percent organisms. We've learned a lot about soil and the the microorganisms in the soil, specifically a lot has been written about the mycorrhizal fungi, which are just amazing, amazing organisms that basically have a symbiotic relationship with your vegetables. The vegetables give them carbon and sugar in exchange for the fungi releasing nutrients from the soil to the plant. OK, so, you know, I heard recently and Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong here, there's a billion organisms and a teaspoon of soil. It's just you can't see them. They're they're so small. So your soil is a living thing. Learn to support it and feed it. You we always talk about feed the soil, not the plant. OK, when you think fertilizer feeding the soil and making healthy soil, not the plant and then water the soil, you're not watering the plant. The plant's getting its water out of the soil via its roots. So feed the soil and water the soil. Don't feed and water the plant. I heard this recently from from a soil scientist, and I think it's it's it's a great thing. Four steps to soil health, OK, maximize living roots. So have stuff planted all the time, if you can, because that helps. Again, keep the soil active and prevents it from blowing away. Minimize soil disturbance, OK, as little tilling as possible. Maximize biodiversity, so grow a diverse range of crops and keep your soil protected from from blowing away. You do that by having plant cover, but where you don't have plant cover, use mulch. It keeps the water in the soil. It keeps the soil from from blowing away. So these are really for good things to bear in mind with your soil. What should you be doing now for you for your soil? Well, the main thing is probably to introduce some organic matter to your soil before you plant. Specifically, that means compost, OK, compost. Doesn't really add much in the way of nutrients to soil, but it's going to improve water holding capacity and soil structure. And it's also going to put some of those microorganisms back into the soil. So. So before you do your spring planting, add a few inches of compost and just mix it into the top few inches of soil. You know, there's a lot of discussion about, well, should I is it OK to disturb the soil by turning it into the top few inches? Should I just let it sit there and filter in? You can do either one. I mean, from what I've heard, you're not going to really damage the soil if you just kind of break it up a little bit and let the compost settle in there. And once your your your plants are growing, then put some mulch on top to reduce evaporation and to prevent weeds. I like to use rice straw. It can't always get that everywhere. Straw makes a nice mulch. Remember, get strong, not, hey, hey, has seeds. And you will you will get a big surprise at what's growing in your garden. Straw does not have seeds in it. OK. So compost now, do you want to add fertilizer or not? Well, to some extent, it's it depends on how much how many nutrients are in your soil. So you could run a soil test and see what are the levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. But you can also look at what you grew last year. So there's for vegetables, there's what we call heavy feeders and light feeders, meaning how much do they take a lot of nutrients out of the soil? And the heavy feeders are most of our popular summer vegetables, right? So cucumber, squash, tomatoes, eggplants, et cetera, corn, notoriously heavy feeder. If you grew these things, they've basically removed all the nutrients from the soil and you're going to need to add nutrients. OK. These are the light feeders. The legumes are what we call soil neutrals, meaning that they actually add nitrogen into the soil while they're growing. They have, if you pull out a bean plant and look at the roots, it's got little white nodules on them, which are nitrogen fixing bacteria and they're putting nitrogen into the soil. But what happens is once the seed pods form and it needs to nourish the seed pods, it's taken the nitrogen back the other way. So net net legumes are neutral. OK, so depending on what you had there, if you've been growing lettuce in your in your bed, then, you know, maybe you need to add some nutrients. But if you've been growing these things, maybe not. OK. So just a word about cover cropping. Cover cropping, it's too late to do it for this year. Cover cropping is something you do over the winter to restore nutrients to the soil. And oftentimes that means nitrogen. The most popular ones are fava beans and clover, but a lot of other things, buckwheat, oats, vetch, etc. You're typically going to plant that around October. Let them grow through the winter. And then, you know, around March, March, early April, they're going to start flowering. And what you want is you want them to flower, but you don't, as I said, want the seed pods to form because then you lose the benefit of the cover crop. So as soon as they flower, just cut them off right at ground level, leave the roots in the soil, they'll decay and turn into organic matter. And then a good thing to do is to just chop up those fava beans and clover and they'll you'll turn into green mulch. And you'll be amazed if you put that back on top of the soil. Once it dries out, it shrinks by about 90 percent in size. So that's if you had a cover crop. If you didn't have a cover crop, it's too late. Remember that you could do it next October, basically. So if you didn't do a cover crop and you do need to add nutrients, then then choose a good organic fertilizer. And add the appropriate amount of that to your soil in preparation. So, you know, a typical thing to do is, you know, if you're getting ready to plant in a raised bed, add the compost, add some organic fertilizer. If you need it, turn it into the top few inches of soil, water it well, let it sit for a week and then and then plant. OK, I'm not going to really talk about crop rotation here. All right, this is presumably what everyone's interested in. When to plant. This is a planting calendar we have on our website. You can see the URL down here. If you go to our website, there's a section called Gardening Resources. If you go to Gardening Resources, there's something called planting calendars. We have these in English, Mandarin, Spanish, and we have three varieties, one for foggy regions, one for sunny regions and one for hot regions. And that's because we have real microclimates in this area. Foggy regions are going to be what you expect. It's the whole Pacific Coast, plus the western part of San Francisco, basically. The hot regions are going to be southern San Mateo County, Menlo Park, Atherton, Woodside, Redwood City, probably San Carlos. And then kind of everything in between northern San Mateo County is what we call sunny, meaning it's mostly sunny, but it doesn't get super hot there. So I chose the sunny because it's kind of in the middle. But, you know, you should figure out which microclimate you're in and choose the appropriate one for you. So if you look at March here, S means plant from seed. T means plant from transplants. I'm not going to go through the details, but basically to summarize at this point, you could plant any of your root crops from seed. Carrots, turnips, you know, I'm blanking, parsnips, radishes, et cetera, right? And the root crop should always be planted from seed. You don't want to transplant root crops, OK? All your greens are plantable now pretty much, you know, lettuce and kale and mustard greens, et cetera. And mostly you could plant from seed right now. The greens could be planted from seed or as transplants. They're a little shallow rooted, so sometimes they can be fussy as transplants, and they tend to germinate pretty easily. So I like to start most of my greens from seed. They also can tolerate cool soil conditions. And I'll talk about that in a minute. You want to make sure your soil is the appropriate warm for planting things. So you can plant your greens now. And then your cruciferous vegetables, your broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, et cetera. You can plant them now, but really from transplants rather than from seed. So you'll see all those things with teas, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, et cetera. So the one thing you won't find here in March is your warm season vegetables, tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplants, et cetera. You're not going to want to plant those things until April and, you know, more sort of later April. OK. Seeds versus seedlings. What are the advantages? Well, you know, seedlings are just easier, right? And you don't need to do any advanced planting. It's like, hey, I want some Swiss chard in my garden and you run out to the garden store and bingo, you got Swiss chard in your garden, right? Seeds, you need to plan in advance because if I want Swiss chard in the garden, I got to plant it, you know, several weeks before I have, you know, decent size Swiss chard plants. The other thing is that with seedlings, you can only get what the nurseries have, right? And, you know, they do have much better selection than they used to. Many more heirloom varieties of plants. But still, you know, they're going to stock what they can sell and what people want to buy. So if there's some variety that you really like that you don't find in the garden story, you're kind of going to have to do it from seed, OK? For example, there are a couple of varieties of pole beans that I really like that I can never find in the garden store. So I just buy the seeds and start them myself. And beans are just really easy to grow from seed. So I'm not going to spend time on this. But basically, as I was saying before, you know, the root crops, you have to direct so you can't transplant the greens and the the cuker bits, the squash and the cucumbers. You can kind of do either Swiss chard. You can do either this mustow in pots. You know, that's not really hard and fast rule. I know people who grow them from seed. It's just easier to do them as transplants. So just a little thing about different types of seeds, just so you understand, there's there's what we call open pollinated and hybrid. Open pollinated is just a naturally occurring variety. So if you grow an open pollinated variety and you save the seeds, which is a whole science in itself, you'll get the same variety the next year. OK. A hybrid seed is a commercially bred seed, right? So like a mule, it's a hybrid of two varieties. And so if you save those seeds, you're not going to get the same thing the next year, you're going to get one or the other. OK. Now, why do we plant hybrids? Well, hybrids are bred for a reason. Often it's disease resistance or, you know, big producer or something like that. So there's lots of good reasons to have hybrids. One of everybody's favorite tomatoes is a hybrid, sun gold, the orange tomato. What are heirlooms? You hear a lot of buzz about heirlooms. Heirlooms are simply open pollinated variety that's got a long history to it. I grow a lot of heirlooms. A lot of times they're not used for commercial farming because either they don't travel well, they, you know, they easily bruise or they're ugly or something like that. I mean, if you think if you grow heirloom tomatoes, you know, a lot of them are pretty ugly looking or or or they're just not nice round tomatoes. But they sure do taste good. Heirlooms are going to be a little more susceptible to disease, to disease, probably. So depending on your circumstances, you might want to choose a hybrid that's more disease resistant. I'm not going to spend time on this, but just a couple of points. First of all, go ahead and buy yourself one of these things. It's the most useful thing you can have as a gardener. It's a soil thermometer. It'll cost you probably eight bucks. And it's just a probe that you stick down in the few inches into the soil and it tells you your soil temperature. And that'll tell you like whether you can plant something from seed right now. OK. And you can you can see that, you know, for a lot of plants, they can deal with pretty cool soil temperatures. Last time I checked in my garden, it was it was in the 50s. And if you think about it, the days have been until this week, you know, just in the 50s and the nights have been 30s or 40s. So the soil is pretty cool for late March. And so, you know, this is the number of days to germinate a different soil temperatures. So, for example, if I planted tomato seeds right now, you know, they might not die, but they sure wouldn't germinate for a long time. OK. Whereas if I started them indoors and had them on a heating pad, they would germinate inside of a week. And then I could, you know, I would grow them and nurture them inside and transplant them outside. And that's what most people are going to do with tomatoes and peppers and eggplants. And those are all the things we sell at the spring garden sale, because we've been growing them in our greenhouses. But if you look at lettuce, I, you know, I can plant lettuce seeds right now in a fifth in 50 degree soil and it'll germinate in a week. OK. So this is a really useful chart to figure out when is it OK to to plant certain things in your vegetable beds in combination with your soil thermometer. Not going to spend time on this starting seeds indoors. You know, there's a lot of stuff online about this. So it's it's practically a whole class in itself. This is my setup here. I've got four inch pots. I've got a heating pad underneath for germination. A plastic cover here when I germinate the seeds, I cover the whole tray with the plastic cover that keeps it moist and warm. And once everything's germinated, I pull the plastic off and I turn on the grow light. Grow lights are specific lights for indoor growing. Plants, vegetables absorb at the extremes of the light spectrum, the red and the blue. And that's why they look green, because they're reflecting all the stuff in the middle and absorbing this stuff at the sides. So a grow light is a specific kind of light that combines the red and blue extremes of the spectrum. This one here, I got a local hardware store. It actually has white, red and blue LEDs. So no heat and very low energy. And I've got it on a chain here so I can raise it or lower it as necessary. So lots of stuff here. Just one quick thing. Potting soil and planting mix are not the same thing. A planting mix is a lighter weight medium that's easier for germinating seeds to poke through. And it also typically doesn't have any nutrients in it. So if you germinate things in a planting mix, you're either going to need to what we call up pot them to larger pots with potting soil or start to add a liquid fertilizer of some sort. And then just keep them moist, keep them relatively warm. Giving them a little airflow is important. It helps them build sturdy stems. And this one, I mean, I've made this mistake so many times. So you've got to label your pots because you get there and something's emerging. It's like, OK, now what variety tomato was that? Soil blocking, this is this is something we're starting to do a lot of. It's a very old technique, but it's a really useful tool. You can see here, it's this little spring loaded thing. And you take a big mound of soil in a tray and you just go like this through it. And it basically creates these separate soil blocks with a little hole in the middle where you put your seed. And then this is a planting medium. It's a growing medium and a transplant medium because and what's interesting is that the air block between between the blocks basically prevents the roots from from spreading. They stay within the block and then you just take the whole block and transplant it into your garden, not an expensive toy. OK, not going to spend time on any of these things other than to say you got to remember to thin or, you know, particularly things like carrots or chard are going to be too close together and they're not going to grow well. Also, follow your spacing guidelines. OK, you know, they tell you to keep your zucchini a certain distance apart and you think, well, my seedling is only this big, right? So I'm going to put it close by. But that zucchini is going to grow pretty fast. And all of a sudden, everything's going to be too close together. So there's a reason they give you the spacing guidelines. When you get your tomatoes at our spring garden sale, you're going to want to plant those things a third to half way up the stem. Believe it or not, you're going to want to bury a third to a half of the stem in the soil, and that ensures that it develops a deep root system. OK, you want to do what they call hardening off, which is taking your your plants from indoors to outdoors over a seven day period so they get used to the harsh elements outside. And then you're generally ready to go. Make sure your soil temperature is at least 55. And then don't forget fertilizing over the summer because things like tomatoes are heavy feeders. This is a sun gold, by the way, here. If you've ever grown sungolds, you know that they will grow to enormous proportions if you don't prune them, going to skip through this. OK, let's talk a few minutes about containers and then then we'll wrap up. It's mostly the same except if you're going to grow tomatoes or squash or something big, you know, make sure you have at least a five gallon or larger container. Make sure it's a good solid 18 inches deep. And again, that's to allow the root structure to develop. If you if you're reusing pots, I do that all the time. If I buy a fruit tree and it's in a five gallon pot, I don't get rid of that pot. I keep it and then I'll, you know, use it for a tomato plant or something. But make sure you wash it in 10 percent bleach solution. In order to eliminate any pathogens that might be hitching a ride on that pot. OK, so, you know, people often ask, can you reuse potting soil? And, you know, you can. Potting soil can last two to three years, but you have to maintain it just like you maintain your garden bed soil. So that means you got to be adding nutrients and soil structure. So you want to add compost and fertilizer every year to your containers and refresh it, you know, so maybe like a third or a half is new stuff. Mix it, mix it together. So this is another thing from Golden Gate Gardening, a nice chart that says how deep should your container be and it tells you how deep it should be for, you know, depending on what you're growing, very useful information. Just remember with containers, it's a smaller bed than your in-ground bed or your raised bed. So the water and nutrients are going to get used up more quickly. OK, so you need to water them more frequently. You need to add nutrients more quickly. And pay particular attention to hot weather. Ceramic pots in particular can get very warm and that will dry out your soil and dry out the roots of the plants. So just pay attention. Droopy plants is a sign of a plant that needs water. Put some mulch in there. I do that when I plant tomatoes and containers, I'll mulch the top of that just like I will my raised bed. And again, just like we do with a raised bed, water the soil, don't water the plant, OK? And in general, it's good to keep water from splashing onto the leaves of the plants because it can bring diseases in that way. So you really want to try to water at the soil level because we're feeding the soil, not the plant. And the best thing is to run a drip line into the pot. I have my containers next to my raised beds. So I just run a drip line from my raised bed out into the pot with a little emitter on that. And so they run at the same time as the beds. And that sort of takes care of that. All right. Not going to talk about any of this. So this is a very useful chart for you. Math whizzes out there in terms of how to calculate irrigation for a raised bed, how much you should do. Talk a little bit about pest management. I'll just say on pest management, as master gardeners, we probably get more questions about pest management than anything else. It's absolutely amazing. I make active use of these things, floating row covers. It's a synthetic woven fabric, very lightweight. Let's say like 95% of the sunlight, it is water permeable, but it keeps out insects and vertebrate pests. So for my low crops, all my greens and stuff like that, I will cover my raised beds with a floating row cover. And I even make use of an electric fence for squirrel protection. There's not a lot of good things you can do about squirrels. I'll be honest with you. Okay. Just a few things here at the end, flyers for the spring garden market. If you come and you're interested in specific tomato varieties and specifically the cool weather varieties, I would urge you to get there in the first hour because they sell out quickly. Here are some of the references. You can see Golden Gate Gardening up there, plenty of stuff on starting seeds indoors. Integrated pest management is a very useful website from UCANR. Just a shout out to the library for hosting us. This is how you can get our monthly newsletter, lots of cool stuff in there, how you can get in touch with us. We do have a helpline, okay? Free resource. If you have a pest problem or just a plant that looks sick or just a general question, you can call us. Email is great. You just attach a couple of photos to the end of it. Or you can show up in person at any one of these locations. We'll generally get back to you in like a day or two. And if we don't know the answer here as volunteers, we'll send it up to UC Davis, to the experts. Okay? Really good to know where you live because as I said, we have micro climates here and it's not like, you can't just say, I live in San Francisco. It's like, where in San Francisco do you live? Okay. That's it. We went five minutes over and do we have any questions? Yes, we do. Thanks so much, Jonathan. That was amazing. So I'm Jamie. I'm a brand new master gardener, class of 2022. And I'll be relaying the first three questions to Jonathan. Okay. So the first question was from earlier in the presentation. Hey, Jamie, we just, your, your audio, just. Yeah, your audio just got a little hard to understand. That's so interesting. Okay. Now it's better. Maybe it's from my hand on the keyboard. So the first question has to do with cover crops. Yeah. You did a great job covering the fall and winter cover crops, but someone asked, what about spring cover crops? That's a great question. And I have never done that. I'm going to punt that one to you, Jamie. Do you know anything about. Very funny. So what I can do is I can drop a link in the chat when I finish. My Q and A portion that will link you to a page that will cover fall, fall, winter, spring cover crops. That's great. I know it's a good idea. Right. And to even like interspersed with your edibles, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, that's going to put nutrients in the soil. And it's going to potentially attract nice insects to your garden. And it's going to help with, with this keeping the soil. In good shape. That's great. Okay, great. So the next question. And you had a slide that kind of alluded to this, but it didn't answer the question. Exactly. So the question was, I read that soil temp should be 50 degrees Fahrenheit before planting outdoors. True or not. Again, if you look at that chart, you'll, you'll see some things that will. That'll germinate under 50, but there's, there's not a lot. I mean, for me, I won't do anything out there. Until it's over, over 50. So, you know, again, all these rules have exceptions and I'm sure you could probably germinate some, some cool weather things like mustard greens under 50, but as, as we saw in that chart, they'll be slow. Okay. Thanks, Jonathan. And then the third question here is. Someone actually asked if we could share the link to the list of plants in foggy San Francisco. I actually. Cute up. Can you do that? Can you just go to the web? Maybe don't. I've got a cute up. I can post it. Cute up. Oh, you do have a cute up. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, if you just go to that garden resources section, go to planning calendars, that's probably the best thing to do because then you can see, do I want foggy. Foggy, sunny or hot. Yeah. And also everyone who registered will be getting a copy of this presentation. So just so that you're all aware of that. So those are your three questions, Jamie. So I'm, I guess, okay. So I'll move on to the next one. Thank you, Jonathan. Great job. You've inspired me to go to the spring garden market. April 15th and get my tomatoes in early, even though I live in San Francisco. So thank you very much for your presentation today. Another question for you. Can you speak about how to properly water. With a drip line. In other words, how to set up. And which way should. The water be directed. Which way should the water be directed? I know you have a part in your presentation on irrigation. So maybe you could address that first. Yeah, I'm not sure I understand. Which way it should be directed. Because, you know, basically in drip irrigation, it's coming from a water source somewhere, which is like a pipe. And then. You run it out into a drip line and that drip line gets. It gets stopped at the end. Okay. So there, you know, it doesn't like keep flowing, right? It just the water, there's an end to the drip line and the water just comes out of the holes. In the drip line. So, you know, drip irrigation is wonderful. It reduces water use considerably. It delivers water to the soil directly, as opposed to a hand spraying from above, much lower evaporation. That said, it's not simple and it, and it costs money to do. I mean, it's, it's a little bit of a tinker toys project to do it. It's a little bit of a tinker toy. It's a little bit of a tinker toys and stuff like that, but you get the hang of it after a while. It. The other thing with drip irrigation is it does break. Or clog or stuff like that. So it takes sort of constant maintenance. If. You know, I have a drip irrigation system and it's all on a, on a controller with different zones in it and so forth. And recently I got one of those smart irrigation controllers and it's fantastic. I love it. It, it adjusts the amount of irrigation for the seasons. It turns the irrigation off and, and, and stuff like that. So I also recommend those. If that didn't answer the person's question, they, perhaps they can, you know, follow up to it. Yeah, they could type a follow up in the chat because I have a, another one for you, but I also wanted to mention for those people from San Francisco, there's a great resource. For drip irrigation right here in the city called urban farmers. And they actually have given classes in the past and they have, you don't want to do it yourself. They have lists of. People who do do it in San Francisco. So they'll give out a few names to people going to the shop. And of course they're hoping that you buy your supplies from there. And then we're not supposed to just recommend one resource. We're not supposed to recommend one resource. We're not supposed to recommend one resource. So there's other nurseries in the area where you could also go for help like flower craft or. Slow garden nursery out near the zoo. So just a little. Extra resource for you. Next question. Can I just interrupt for a second? I'm looking at the chat and I'd see this question about, if I grow tomatoes in a pod and eventually got a tomato virus. I don't know if it answered. Not yet, but we're, we're getting to it. Okay. So this is the question before that, right? So the question is. Has to do with go furs. And the question is. Does garlic. A health. And can you. In other words, can garlic help. If you have go furs. And can one grow garlic. In the. In the sunset district of San Francisco, which is our very sort of, you know, micro climate out by the zoo. Ocean. Our wetter area. So I, I, I'm not an expert in that. I'd be inclined to look at Golden Gate gardening and the list of what you can grow, what you can't grow. But it's, it's not particularly. Heat loving. In terms of, does it help with go furs? Gosh. I kind of doubt it. Yeah, I don't know much that does help with go furs. To be honest with you, other than just trapping on. Yeah. And that's what our master gardener expert on go furs. Yeah. He says, Yeah. You need to trap them, but. Yeah. You could also take this question to our helpline. And we have that. Our service school helpline is out at the botanical garden. And there. And you could take it there. The phone numbers posted. And the location is posted. So that's a good place to go. And all these resources, by the way. Are absolutely at no cost. To people living in, in any county. In California. So good to know. All right. So you were spotting the question. There's also another question, but this will be my third. And maybe you could take the tomato question. Jamie. Yeah. That do okay in San Francisco. Or do they need warmer and sunnier summers? Yes. They do. So, you know, an avocado is a subtropical tree. I mean, when you go to the grocery store, where are all the avocados coming from? They're all coming from Mexico. So, they're not going to be in the hot spring area, but really more in the warmer locations. So, you know, I, there might be a variety out there. That requires lesser heat. Perhaps. But they're generally sort of heat loving trees. They also can be kind of fussy to grow. Okay. Thank you for answering. So back to Jamie. All right. The questions that we get questions. Yeah, great. Before I ask the tomato question, I just wanted to make a note for folks who are asking about irrigation. I put a couple more links to the UC master gardener. Irrigation resource page. So that has some really great pictures on the tools that are used to find the answer to the question that you're looking for. If I could just jump in, Jamie, I mean, if I've learned one thing in years of doing drip irrigation, is that it's worth investing in, in good quality drip irrigation. The cheap stuff that you find in the hardware store, you know, it's not just a mass like a season. And then you just, you add it to the landfill. Where, you know, the, the, the, the, the well-made stuff. What's the. What's the brand, the Israeli brand that's the brown, the brown. Tubing. I don't know it'll come to me, but. I think it's really worth investing in higher quality because the, the better quality tubing has like filters built into the drip holes so they don't clog with soil, which it is a very common failure mode. They're not going to get punctured as easily. I mean, all those things. Yeah. So invest in good quality drip, if you can. Thank you. Jonathan. Thank you so much for taking them up to 3pm. So that question is, I think, I think this person means if I have, if I have tomatoes in a pot and eventually got a tomato virus, should I just throw the soil away? Yes. And what about the pot? No, you can, you can wash the pot, but again, you know, a good solid 10% bleach solution. If you don't want to put it in there for a while, scrub it down pretty well, then rinse it out. Well, and that should be okay. But, you know, any disease soil, you don't want to reuse. Any disease plants, you don't want to put in your compost bin. Okay. You want to put those in the. Um, the green bin and have it taken away to a much higher temperature compost pile somewhere. Yeah. There is another question that just snuck in under the wire at 2.56pm. And well, actually both of these came in around the same time. Yeah, I saw, I saw that this coffee deter squirrel. Peppermint oil. I, you know, the squirrels just come into my yard and they just look at stuff and laugh and go and eat whatever they were going to eat in the first place. Um, you, you have, you know, some people have experimented with peppermint oil and chili oil and stuff like that. But, you know, it's more to deter insects than to deter squirrels. Um, with coffee grounds, you have to be careful with coffee grounds because coffee grounds are highly acidic. Okay. Um, so first of all, never rock coffee grounds because those are very highly acidic. Use coffee grounds where the waters pass through them. They're very low on the pH scale. And most of your edible fruits and vegetables, like a mid-range pH, slightly alkaline of the center. Um, so coffee grounds are actually going to be bad for them in that sense, in that they're acidifying the soil. The exception to that, and I do this at home. Um, and that is, I have blueberries. Blueberries like an acidic soil. Um, which is why naturally they don't grow well in the Bay Area. They grow really well up in the Pacific Northwest where they have very acid soils. Um, but, um, I spread the used coffee grounds at the base of my, um, blueberry plants. Um, but I've been doing it religiously for years. Um, I, you know, I heard a podcast recently that said, no, it doesn't help whatsoever. Um, but I've been doing it religiously for years, but the point is, um, coffee grounds will acidify your soil and pretty much anything you're growing in a vegetable garden doesn't want that. Okay. That's a very clear answer. Um, about your thoughts about wire mesh in the base of a planting bed. Oh, essential. Absolutely essential for go for protection. Um, because. The last thing you want to do is build a garden bed and then, and fill it up with soil and then have to retrofit it with, uh, the wire mesh. If you want to build a new garden bed, you want to line the bottom with, and you want to make sure you get a sturdy enough wire mesh. And it's called hardware cloth. Okay. If you go to the hardware store, it's called hardware cloth. You can get it in quarter inch or half inch. Squares. Um, if you get it galvanized, it's going to last longer in, in the soil than if it's not galvanized. And basically you want to line the base of your bed and, and like staple it to the four sides at the base of the sides and then put your soil on top of that. It's an absolute must if, if you're building a garden bed because it's going to prevent the gophers from tunneling up underneath. Okay. Uh, there's another one. Do you want to take this from Jamie at 258 on the plum tree? Sure. Let's see the question is, is there a plum tree recommended for foggy sunset in San Francisco and where to find low chill fruit trees in San Francisco or online? Um, so, um, I would kind of doubt it that you could grow plums over there. Um, if you go to the UC A and R website, agricultural natural resources, you know, if you look at the slide I've got up here, it says, you know, you canner.org. Um, just Google you canner. Um, and that'll take you to the UC agricultural natural resources website. They have a site in there called the backyard. Um, the backyard orchard, I think it's called. And they have a ton of information on fruit trees there. Um, including, I believe. Um, the chill, the, the, the chill requirements of different fruit trees. Um, another resource that's useful for that, I remember is the sunset garden book. Um, also has, um, like, if you go to plums, it'll have all the different varieties listed with their various chill hours. Um, so those are two good resources for looking for chill hours for all your fruit trees. Um, you know, again, I don't want to, you know, give a plug to a commercial operation, but Dave Wilson nurseries is, is a major commercial nursery in the central valley. They have a lot of good information on their website. About fruit trees. Um, you know, I think that's a good resource to know about, um, Jonathan, are there any other questions that you see, Jamie? So I saw one there about someone asked about soaker hoses. Can you use soker hose instead of a drip line? Um, you absolutely can. I did originally because they're easier. Um, you don't have all the tinker toys stuff. You just run this thing out and it, you know, the water was out. I gave up because I found they were just particularly poor quality. Um, and so I went over to drip instead. All right. Well, you have some thank yous in the chat for you today for a wonderful presentation, Jonathan. I'm wondering if our. Um, librarian. Uh, Ramon has any closing. Thoughts or statements from the library itself. I was just going to mention all of the thank yous in the comment and feel the same. The library would like to thank, uh, the master gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco counties. Um, for this wonderful presentation. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, uh, to the co-host for all of your knowledge and, and sharing that with us. And I would like to thank everyone who joined us today. So thank you very much. And this concludes our program and please a, uh, look out for, uh, those slides that we will be sending with all of the information. So if you didn't get a chance to have your question answered, don't worry. There's plenty of information on those slides that, um, where you can send your, your questions to. So thank you very much. Right. Bye everybody. Thank you.