I’m so excited it’s Saturday, March 17th, 2018 when I’m recording and I have the most awesome guest Vicki Henderson on the line because she’s a master gardener, garden blogger at Vicki’s Garden Tips and Vimeo channel GardenBuzz listener and in the Facebook Group and I know she has so much to share today!

Tell us a little about yourself.

I actually grew up in Minnesota. I grew up on a farm, my dad was a dairy farmer. I got back into gardening later in life when I had kids. We have a property in Boise, we have about an acre. 

We have a

• Vegetable garden
• 2 rabbits that I love

use their manure for fertilization of the garden. A big composter! I love composting!

I have kept worms, this past year I stopped having my worms but I’m gonna start vermicomposting again because I like their compost as well

I’m a big vegetable gardener, worked as a personal gardener for homes in Boise Idaho

perennials.

I love this maybe you’ll have some advice for people that might want to start a business like that, I have always thought that would be a good job for mike, he got a little job doing that last year, but it was kind of far away. The bonus was I got onions out of the deal and this year mike grew onions for me.

Tell me about your first gardening experience?

my parents did! we had a big vegetable garden! We spent a lot of time weeding the garden. We sold cucumbers on the market for pickles

get up in the morning and pick cucumbers

sold apples on the side of the highway and sweet corn is a big thing in Minnesota!

corn corn corn!

potatoes

I remember that’s what we did, mainly our income on the farm was dairy, but to keep us kids busy we sold vegetables on the side of the road. It’s interesting you know the big rigs blowing past you!

We had a small little table set off the highway by my house. People would stop and they would say let them taste an apple.

We were small children, we didn’t know any better!

We let have them, and they would take it and go

We had a big family

• 6 kids
• big sister
• brother’s stayed home

little things

sell the vegetables

fun experience

grandmother had flowers

learned to love flower gardening

was really fun

Boise gardening was so much different

high desert

• raining today
• not a lot of water
• a lot of heat

things grow different here

You have to do some research if you move out here from other part of the country, it’s different. 

Do you want to talk about where is a successful place to do research because a lot of people have been asking me about moving to a new place. 

well

I when I moved to Idaho more then 20 years ago

I moved here became a volunteer at the botanical garden and I learned a  lot there, and I joined the master gardener program.

very active

took classes every week

do volunteer work

learned an immense about

• what grows well
• why it does

 master gardener program

county extension

through the University of Idaho

continued in that for maybe 4-5 years

• events master gardener
• volunteering for different things
• there’s just so much to learn

When I started when I started going personal gardening

more education on the real side

If you really want to learn how to garden you just got to go do it

• fail
• succeed

Several people, well Patti Armbrister in particular has asked several times, for Mike to create an online organic master gardener program. In Lincoln County where I live the extension program got cut. We’re working on it! A lot of guests have talked about the extension service is. 

How did you learn how to garden organically, was your dad organic?

in some ways yes, no in other ways

I grew up in the 50s and 60s that was the beginning of better gardening with chemicals

no in a lot of crops no my father was not organic fertilizers on the field.

in my vegetable garden we were

• cow manure
• spread it on the field
• chemical companies want everyone to have bigger better corn with fertilizers
• before round up we didn’t really use weed killer

Tell us about something that grew well this year.

My favorite thing that I grow is raspberries and I have a fairly large patch! If you have raspberries and you water them well enough.

water and water

patch gets bigger and bigger!

I try to keep it a certain size. I love to grow them because they’re so expensive in the store! And they’re so easy to grow. 

Raspberries

Right now is time to prune them (Mid March)

If you prune them and keep them fairly well weeded

• bounty
• so many raspberries

freeze them as soon as garden season

nothing better to go outside

throw them in your bowl

I love to grow things in the garden that are expensive in the store but not any more expensive to grow in your garden!

That’s what I use as my guideline for what I’m gonna grow

• What’s super expensive?
• what do I love
• what is a delicacy
• berries are so expensive

Season don’t last very long but if you can have them in your garden! They’re so great to grow! Be able to pick! I have grand children! And they are great to go out and pick!

 Garden Journal and Data Keeper 

I love this for so many reasons. One That’s why I put in the beginning of the garden journal and data keeper a place to write down what do you buy and spend the most money on! And It’s so true berries are soooo expensive! and they’re so healthy for you.

I always say fruit is so messy but berries aren’t messy!

My raspberries never make it to the house because I just eat the whole bowlful down there.

I even wrote a cute little book called In the Raspberry Patch! And of course in the end it’s the grandkids in the raspberry patch!

I have a trail-cam I have it pointed at my compost pile

I know I have had the quail in my raspberry, they lay eggs in there, and the babies hatch, it’s good camouflage.

Boise is a drive, listeners might think we’re neighbors but it’s about 8 hours from here. You have snow right? You said it was time to prune? I did an interview with a woman from Boise who had a sweet little blog called Little Homestead in Boise.

I have a blog

• not active on my blog right
• garden website
• I’m sure I’ll get back to the blog eventually. 

Vicki’s Garden Tips.com

It’s about Boise gardening because Boise gardening is different from your gardening is different from Minnesota garden

everybody has their our own climate and things that grow better.

I started that blog 4-5 years ago

Sort of website

we’re doing a trying to develop a garden website that is local based with all garden providers

To have a listing, Boise is a pretty large, metropolitan area. We call it the Treasure Valley

• Boise
• Nampa
• Meridian
• Twin falls over to Oregon

And so it would be a list of  garden providers

• landscapers
• patios
• stone workers
• waterfalls

have it all listed in one location

Website with those listings plus video

• beautiful gardens
• local gardens
• what they have produced
• what the gardens looks like

aerial photos

drone

I have some videos up now

we haven’t really got it done.

Vimeo called gardenbuzz.com

I think that’s great, it’s always good to test ideas and get some content up there so when Oprah comes it’s full of quality!

• local garden
• website
• videos

goodgardeningvideos.com

is nationwide but if you just write in the city area it will show you if there are videos from your city there. It’s a lot of ideas that they want to show videos of actually have good accurate information

pruning and landscaping for your area and what grows well in your area.

Pruning raspberries

My trick is to go to your state’s master garden site. Every site has an agricultural extension it will tell you about pruning timing. If your state doesn’t have it, your neighboring state may. It will give you accurate info on how to prune. 

Ever bearing vs Summer Bearing

In Idaho, it depends on if you have ever bearing or summer baring

Ever bearing means they will produce lightly through the summer

Summer bearing really produce once crop heavy crop just one time.

• then you prune after that
• if you don’t know
• I didn’t really know what I had
• just experiment with my pruning

one year I pruned all my berries to knee high, that was a mistake!

I pruned half knee high the other half I pruned to almost shoulder height.

I found out that the shoulder height pruning was much more abundant! I had many more berries by not pruning my berries down low

• some older varieties prune almost to the ground
• basically mow them down
• come back to bear
• would go into one year of rest
• I know now! 

I was gonna say about black berries

I have to reread the info every year I always forget about

• thinning them out
• cutting them to a certain height
• so I get some berries but they don’t take over the garden
• grapes

Is there something you would do different next year or want to try/new?

I’ve tried so many things, this year I may be taking a rest. 

I have dug garden tunnels in the past.