East Lansing Gardening 101
The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and East Lansing residents are spending time outdoors, preparing gardens of flowers, vegetables and more. But despite our best efforts and inherited words of wisdom from grandma, who had prize-winning petunias, sometimes even the greenest thumb turns black.
ELi spoke with Brent Crain, a horticultural educator with Michigan State University Extension who coordinates the master gardener program for six mid-Michigan counties. The master gardener program prepares gardeners who can educate the public in sound, science-backed gardening best practices.
We asked Crain about some common scenarios that East Lansing gardeners may be dealing with.
Are there any near-foolproof things you recommend for people just getting started?
“It depends a lot on what their soil is like. People really like tomatoes [and] they can be an easy one, but they do have a series of diseases that will hit them and defoliate them. It starts in the lower leaves as they get spots on them, they turn yellow, they fall off, it spreads up the plant, and the whole thing’s dead in two weeks.
That’s the drawback for tomatoes. If… if somebody’s wanting to do something in a pot, tomatoes in a pot, I think, are a little easier to manage, like, as your first time.
Lettuce is easy but also, rabbits will get into it, slugs will get into it. But they germinate really fast, and it’s just really cool to pick lettuce, turning greens, beet greens, greens in general.
A lot of the libraries now have seed libraries. You can go in and you can try a few different things, and kind of see what you like.
Don’t worry if stuff fails. Just get out there and try it, find out what things you like. Be careful on the watering; if you can avoid overhead watering, because overhead watering causes the leaves to get wet, and then you get fungal diseases a lot of times.”
Are heirloom seeds always better?
“Definitely not. Heirloom seeds offer a lot of advantages. Let’s talk about tomatoes. You can get some flavor out of heirloom varieties that are just fantastic.
What they don’t have is disease resistant so it tends to be a lot harder. There’s just some challenges to growing, especially if you want to do organic.
If you’re starting out and you want to start out with heirlooms, the chances are it’ll be a little tougher than if you start out with something that’s actually bred for disease resistance.”
Is it okay to use chemical fertilizers?
“Absolutely. Absolutely.
There are two main kinds of fertilizers. You got the chemical fertilizers, sometimes called synthetic, and you’ve got the organic fertilizers, organic sources. To the plant, they’re exactly the same.
With the organic ones, microbes typically have to break these down into a form that plants can use. That process extends over months and even into years. If you want to grow something that’s a heavy feeder, you want to grow corn, you want to grow tomatoes, you want to grow cucumbers…if you’re going to do that with organic sources, it’s a lot harder. The nutrients are just not readily available. It takes a while for them to become available through that microbial action.
With the synthetic fertilizers, they’re designed to be in the form that plants use right away. If you use the synthetic ones, it’s just easier and around planting time, you hit them with some, and then 3 to 4 weeks later, you give them some more for another boost. That usually gets a garden off to a good start. Alternatively, use a lot of the high-quality compost or a blend of composts and that’ll usually be good for the first year.”
Will people notice a difference between starter plants from places like Meijer as opposed to a local nursery like Van Atta’s?
“It really depends on what you’re getting. Some things are super hardy and they won’t matter.
When you’re buying something local, especially if it’s a tree or a shrub or something, you know that it grows in this area well. At these local nurseries, you can tell what the history is on it [and] it probably hasn’t been shipped from who knows where. There’s a lot of stressors when you start moving things around.
[As for] the stores that are not not garden centers, I just see a lot of times someone who really knows their stuff. But a lot of times you don’t, and stuff is overwatered, so when you get them and just pull a plant out of a pot and look at it and find rotted roots inside, or dried up roots inside. You’ll find insects like aphids, and things like that, but you also can find those at garden centers.”
How do we keep the deer at bay?
“MSU Extension has a “Smart Gardening Tip Sheet” that can help with that.
But the short version is [that] a hungry deer will eat anything. There are different types of plants that they don’t prefer and there are certain ones they absolutely love. Arborvitae [for example], we call that Dear Candy. Ones they don’t like are hairy or spiky. They don’t like textures and things like that, so there’s certain plants that we recommend based on that.
But if they are hungry enough, they will eat anything. There are deer sprays, and there are some that are pretty good. You typically have to reapply after rain. It’s good to mix up products, because they get used to them.
We find that if you can train deer where to go early in the season and teach them to stay away from certain plants, that sometimes you can get away with just doing the sprays early [in the season].
Deer eyesight is not very good and they don’t want to get themselves trapped, so you can use that to your advantage. If you do a fence that’s kind of tall, you make it where they can’t really tell where the top is, they probably won’t jump it.”
Would you give the same advice for squirrels or rabbits?
“They can go through much smaller spaces, especially young rabbits, so you’ve got to use something a lot smaller than [fencing you’d use for deer].
Rabbits are tricky, and you gotta do something like chicken wire, or hardware cloth or something at least a couple feet up to keep them out.
Squirrels will climb [but] they don’t tend to do as much damage in the gardens as groundhogs. I had a groundhog get into my garden, the world’s most annoying groundhog. I had 16 tomato plants. In one night, that thing took one bite out of every tomato.
You can use the chemical sprays, but if you want to keep them out with fencing, you have to go underground an absolute minimum of 8 inches underground, and then 8 inches outward.”
How can gardeners handle weeds?
“Well, I don’t do such a good job with weeds, but there are multiple approaches to use with weeds. My favorite one is just a good, thick layer of a clean wood chip mulch. And I say clean [because] we are seeing problems with those invasive jumping worms that are coming in in wood chips sometimes, and the eggs will look like coffee grounds.”
Should every homeowner keep a compost bin in their backyard?
“No, probably not. Composting is a fantastic idea [but] it’s more work than what most people realize. You gotta get your ratios of greens and browns correct. You gotta make sure that air gets to it [and] you’re adding some water when it gets dry. You’ve got to stir it. If you don’t do those things, the microbes that are in it will die.
If you don’t do those things, it’ll take a really long time. We see rats nest in it.
I would recommend looking into it a little bit to see what’s involved with it. There’s even a master composter class for people who really want to do it.
An easier thing for people [is] if you’ve got trees that dump a bunch of leaves and you’ve got a space to just make a huge pile of those leaves. Just make a huge pile, and just let them sit there. And what’ll happen is it breaks down into something called leaf mold, which is a leaf compost. It’s fantastic to add to a garden. It doesn’t add any nutrients, but it adds a lot of organic matter, which is important for soil structure and health.”
Are some backyards just not able to support a good garden?
“Absolutely.
If you’re on heavy clay or even sand, it’s going to be super tricky. If you’re in an urban, industrial area, you’re concerned about soil contaminants.
We usually recommend raised bed gardens or container gardening at that point. Honestly, I do more on my deck now with tomatoes and things like that growing in containers than I do in the ground, just because that’s super convenient. I can just step outside, grab some herbs, grab some tomatoes.
Raised beds are a good way to go, too. You can literally grab 2x10s and just nail them together. It can be that easy, if you have at least a third of topsoil and the rest of it can be a mix of composts and things like that.”
More information from MSU is available online.
If you have further gardening questions, Crain recommends Ask Extension, which can provide guidance on Michigan “lawns, gardening, agriculture, nutrition and physical activity, food safety, food preservation, natural resources” and more.
He also provided this tool to address other frequently asked questions.