[Cynthia Stringham] Hello, garden enthusiasts.

If you're like me, you're wearing your super suit because it's spring and it's time to clean up the garden.

Okay, before we dive into it, I wanna give a quick shout out to our sponsors, Merit Medical and Red Butte Garden for making this episode possible.

My number one thing to do in the spring is clean up.

I'm gonna be focusing on getting dead branches, leftover leaves that aren't really mulched in, or just weeds in general that have grown over the wintertime.

This is the time to tidy up, clean it up, make sure that you can get rid of any issues that you may be causing with other pests that may develop.

This is also the time when I'm gonna fix up my Peter Rabbit fence that has broken stems all over the place.

Also, it's the time to fix up my trellising that collapsed on itself.

With all my pruning, I don't compost this because most likely you're going to find some pests in here.

We don't want them in the garden anymore, so I will make sure that I get rid of these completely off my property.

Just lounging in my spring cleanup.

How about you?

Get a little nice sun in, a little bit of rays?

No, we have work to do, and it's time to get going now!

But seriously, I've already got my 10,000 steps in today just by working in the yard.

If you're wanting to grow a big, beautiful garden, number one thing is soil health.

I highly recommend going to a university or an agriculture department that does soil testing.

Utah State University has a fantastic program that could give you the results that you need to know what your levels are.

Things that you're gonna expect in a test.

Not only you're gonna learn about your pH, you're gonna learn about your salinity.

You're gonna learn about your NPK, your nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Your nitrogen's probably gonna be low if you're in Utah.

Other places you may see it higher, but nitrogen is something that moves throughout the soil.

What I really wanna know are my potassium and phosphorus levels to know if they are too high, because that is an element that doesn't move in the soil.

And Utah is notorious, at least in this area that I live in, for having really high levels of P and K. So first I'm gonna dig into the soil.

I wanna get about six to 12 inches down because you gotta remember, even though you put stuff on top, your roots go down.

So we're gonna go way down.

When you do a soil sample, you have to remember what area you wanna test for.

I have a big garden area here, so I recommend doing two to three soil samples.

But if you're like, no, nope, nope, I'm not gonna do that.

Just try one.

Just try one and see what your garden is telling you.

So if it were me, I would dig three different holes in this gardening bed, so that I can get all the variations of the soil and send it in as one sample.

I really wanna know what's below the surface.

Hi.

You wanna know what's below the surface too, huh?

Look what I got for you.

Who's gonna get it?

Who gets it?

You know what I got for you.

Okay, let's get ourselves a couple scoops of dirt.

This is a very important tool that you must have in your gardening system.

A measuring cup.

I use a lot of butter knives, too.

That's my main tool for planting.

Gonna get a good scoop here.

Now, I'm gonna go get dirt in other spots in my yard.

I'm gonna mix it all together, and then I'm gonna take my soil sample.

Pull out any extras that may not be necessary in a soil test.

Giant root.

Don't need that.

Okay, I'm gonna get my Ziploc bag, my very important kitchen and gardening tool.

And if you're wondering, do I use this still in the kitchen?

The answer is absolutely yes.

Simplify.

That's my motto.

Okay.

One scoop, two scoops, three scoops.

All right.

I got my soil sample in my Ziploc.

I'm gonna put this in a box along with my form and ship it off to Utah State University and let them do the soil testing for me.

There's a few things that I wanna talk about when you get that test back and how to amend your soil.

When I'm thinking about amending my garden in the spring, I wanna make sure that I'm adding stuff that will help my garden this year.

Generally, when I add in a lot of my amendments, it will happen in the fall, but this time when I'm doing it in the spring, I'm gonna make sure of a few things.

One, I wanna make sure that I'm not adding any hot manure.

That means any manure that is really fresh and new that needs time to break down and that it's gonna be too hot for my plants, it's gonna kill my plants.

So I wanna make sure I'm not adding anything that is going to be too new, that it's gonna cause problems in my garden.

The other thing, I'm not gonna add any wood chips to my garden because wood chips take a long time to break down.

Wood chips are awesome, but they're definitely not something I wanna add in the spring as it will suck all the nutrients in the soil to break it down.

So that's something that you wanna do in the fall, and just do it in small quantities so that it doesn't completely absorb all the nutrients from the soil.

And I'll make sure that I add some aged compost if it's needed or any organic material that has been broken down.

What my goal is, is to make sure that I bring my pH down.

On our pH scale, generally, most vegetables do really good at a six to seven, and Utah soils tend to be higher on the alkalinity level, so they're more like up in the eights.

So I wanna figure out a way to bring that down with adding some aged, organic material.

While you're waiting for your soil test to come back, while you're waiting to amend your soil, now is the time to start planning and devising a plan for your garden.

We're gonna think about where we want things.

Thinking about crop rotation.

Where did you plant things last year?

Where are you gonna move them this year?

'cause you're not gonna plant 'em in the same spot, right?

Right?

I'm also gonna think about my watering and making sure that I'm grouping plants that need the same amount of water together.

Something else that is an awesome idea, I'm really not the best at I used to be really good, is keeping a garden journal.

Writing down what transplants well, writing down what grows well, writing down what failed, writing down what you liked and what you didn't like, and keeping good notes.

Something else that I love and I highly recommend you do is try one new thing every year.

Try to grow something that you haven't grown before, whether it be a flower, whether it be an herb, or whether it be a new vegetable that you haven't tried.

But think about your eating plans and what you want to have in the summer to cook with, or potentially in the fall if you're gonna do some canning.

And meanwhile, I'm also going to put some spring crops in the ground because I can't wait anymore.

So let's talk about crops that you can plant or direct sow from March to April 15th.

Artichokes, you can direct sow some cabbage.

Why not direct sow, some radish, rhubarb, broccoli, onions, spinach, brussels sprouts, peas, turnips.

And then there's also those semi-hardy plants that you can direct sow from about March 20th to May 1st.

And that includes beets, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, parsley, cauliflower, Swiss chard, or lettuce or leafy greens.

Let's remember that gardening is not about the end goal, it's about the journey.

So let's go on this journey together.

Let's learn some things, let's make some mistakes and enjoy growing together.

Until next time.