When Glen Smarada talks about gardening, he doesn’t mean the same thing you or I do. Well, that I do, anyway.
Smarada and his wife Louisette own End Zone Farm at Progress, where they raise a wide range of vegetables — including well over 100 tomato plants — on nine 60-foot rows, much of which they sell at farmers markets.
Smarada, 71, is a Master Gardener, and was a prime choice to speak at a Pike County Master Gardener seminar this past Tuesday.
The problem, if you can call it that, is that Smarada knows way more than the average gardener can take in — or that I can convey in one article.
Accordingly, I am going to boil down his 11⁄2-hour speech into brief points so that you, like I, can glean what we need.
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First, a little background.
Smarada worked as senior technology manager at Capital One in Baton Rouge, refereed football for 41 years and is still a crew chief at Louisiana State University.
He and Louisette, who is an artist, retired to 76 acres in Progress in 2013 and built a house.
Smarada took up gardening to give him something to do during retirement, and he didn’t do it halfway.
He built a deer-proof fence around his garden spot, and uses a tractor and tiller to work it.
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Now for some tips:
• Get a soil test through the Extension Service. “A lot of people will just go out there and throw out triple 13 or put lime out there, but you may not need to,” Smarada said. “With the high cost of fertilizer, it makes sense to get a soil sample.”
• Keep records. Smarada uses a Microsoft OneNote app on his phone which synchs with his laptop. He records everything: cost of seeds, how many years each kind of seed is viable, tilling date, fertilizer type and quantity, planting date, picking date, spraying details and more.
• Store seeds in a cool, dry place. Smarada keeps his in plastic containers in a refrigerator.
• Don’t overdo it. “A lot of people plant too many plants,” he said.
“They’ll plant 20 tomato plants when they’ve got two in the family. That’s overkill.”
• To get his veggies to market early, Smarada starts them in a greenhouse rather than sticking seeds in the ground.
• He has a modest greenhouse, six by eight feet covered with clear plastic. It has a small electric heater which he rarely has to use. In hot weather he raises a roof panel and opens both doors.
• Starting Feb. 1, Smarada plants seeds on staggered weeks so he won’t have everything coming in at once. Each tray has a seed placard and the date planted.
• Clean old seed trays with a mix of one part bleach to nine parts water.
• Use good potting soil, not yard dirt, and keep the soil moist and fertilized with root stimulator mixed at half the recommended amount.
• Prep the garden by removing weeds, debris and dead plants, which can harbor disease.
• A good fertilizer is chicken manure that’s been aged six to nine months to keep it from burning the plants. Also use kitchen compost, including wood ashes.
• Make a furrow down the middle of each row for drip tape. Bury the drip tape to keep mice from chewing it. Smarada has a timer that releases water at 2 a.m. and lets it run 20 to 25 minutes.
• Avoid sprinklers since water on the plants can encourage diseases, especially if sprayed in late afternoon.
• Smarada uses concrete remesh to build cages for tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.
• Set plants out around March 15, give or take a week. “When it starts getting too hot, your vegetables don’t do as well,” Smarada said.
• He made a 10-foot long planting stick marked off in 4, 12, 18 and 24 inch segments to space plants evenly.
• Use a bulb planter, which resembles a short shovel, to dig the holes. Pour in root stimulator and let it settle before placing the plant.
• Place toilet paper rolls around plant stems to prevent cutworms,
• Mulch the rows with pinestraw (which can be raked off roadsides in the winter). Leave the space between the rows bare and shallow-till it to control weeds.
• Check for pests and diseases daily. “I don’t spray a lot for bugs. I wait till I have a big problem,” Smarada said. “I try not to use too many chemicals.”
• Apply one tablespoon of calcium nitrate per plant after the first fruit develops. That’s good fertilizer and also prevents blossom end rot.
• Smarada doesn’t prune suckers on his tomatoes but does remove the lower branches so leaves don’t touch the ground. “When you’ve got 100-something tomatoes, it’s hard to sucker them,” he pointed out.
• Spray eggplants as soon as they’re planted to kill flea beetles. Smarada’s chemical of choice is Ortho Bug-B-Gone, which is 0.12% bifenthrin. He considers organic gardening unrealistic for the Deep South climate, which is rife with bugs and diseases.
• Learn the “pre-harvest interval” for each chemical — the length of time after spraying it’s safe to pick and eat the crop.
