[Mid-American Gardener Theme Music] Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of MidAmerican Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and joining me in the studio today are two of my pals who have brought a lot of stuff to talk about.

I'm starting to get really excited because we're turning that corner.

We're getting there.

Okay, so introduce yourselves and tell us about your specialty.

Hi, I'm Jennifer Nelson.

Teach vegetable gardening at University of Illinois, and can talk about lots of different plants.

So give me all your questions.

All right, wonderful.

Ella.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm a horticulturist.

Went to University of Illinois, and I'm also a master gardener.

I live in Tazewell County, and I have a large yard.

I have lots of interests in plants, and I can answer your questions too.

Wonderful.

All right, Ella, we're going to start with you, because you've got lots of cool to show off.

Well, first off, I brought a pretend boxwood.

So this is actually cuttings that I took off of my box woods.

Right now, you're seeing some winter injury.

That's the golden yellow on this foliage.

And also, if we're going to look really closely at this, there is some leaf minor damage.

And this is a small Wasp, like insect that lives it lays eggs on the underside of the leaf, and then that completes its life cycle, feeding between the the individual leaf blade and then emerges in the spring.

So it's important to maybe do some pruning.

And if you do, you want to make sure that you remove this damaged foliage, and you need to destroy it.

So you're either going to bag it up, or you're going to bury it or burn it, or something.

You don't want it to lay there, because the insect itself can complete its life cycle in that leaf and then reinfect the new plant.

So pruning is one way to reduce the population.

These were on some boxwoods that I didn't get pruned last year.

Now, normally I'm in the studio with Karen, because Karen and I are buddies, and Karen is my boxwood pruning person, so I have planted a lot of box woods because deer don't eat them, but they they give lots of great winter interest, but it's, you know, they do need to be pruned, especially now with this insect being found in central Illinois.

So one of the things that Karen did is she made me a giant sheet with a hole in the middle.

So I made a little, you know, baby representation.

And so you can take this sheet and we're going out in my garden.

You put it around at the barber shop.

Yes, exactly.

You put this around your plant, it's laying flat, and then Karen and I both have electric shears that we use the battery one, this is one that attaches to a drill head so what you're going to do then is so Karen and I and you can do this.

Oh, any nice day in March is a good day to do this.

So we're going to be planning to do this soon, and get these box woods.

And with this electric shear, you can remove stems, you know, up to, you know, an eighth of an inch or something.

But that's enough to really take it, take it down, and if you had a severe infection, there are chemical means of kind of controlling it, but it's just fun to trim.

So I'm going to real quick once.

Okay, so just easy, quick, and, and, and kind of fun.

And I, honestly, I have, like, 50 boxwoods.

So it's, you're just gonna make a day of it, yes, yeah, and I have to provide a dessert.

Love it, love it.

So get a friend, plant a bunch of boxwoods and then make a day of it.

Okay, there you go.

Okay, cool.

All right, Jim, we're gonna go to you.

This got me so excited when you came in, because I just this time of year.

I cannot handle it.

I cannot contain my joy.

Oh, yeah, so is it time?

No, okay, not time.

And as I was telling you, I did have somebody asking when we had that fall, spring, yeah, not too long ago, when it was like 60 degrees and sunny, and you can just feel spring in the air, asking if they can put their cannas out yet.

I'm like, Absolutely not.

It's February.

Check the calendar, Canna, cannas.

This is what we call them bulbs.

They're not bulbs.

They're rhizomes, so they're modified roots.

But they are not, not a cool weather plant.

They're Hardy in like zone seven to 10, somewhat warmer than here, yeah.

So these are, these are been laying in my garage in a wheel barrel, but the hort club on campus is going to start some for their plant fair in April.

Would be April 11, so they're going to start them indoors.

So what I told this person was, if you want to start them inside, you could get a little jump if you've got the room, because really out of that, this was part of a much larger clump, and they just they start out with something like this.

So you could start those in a pot, and you don't have to bury them very deep at all, just kind of shallowly, like up to the up to the top of it, just barely covering it, and it, by the end of the season will really you'll have all the cannas that you ever want.

But sometimes, when I'm getting mine started, I don't know which way to lay them.

Does it matter?

I kind of try to look where all the roots are.

This is kind of, I don't know which way this was in the original plan.

Sometimes you can tell if the growing points, there's like a point on it.

Kind of try to face them up, but they'll sort but can you get it wrong?

Like, if you think, I don't think so, they kind of sort themselves out.

They'll be fine, yeah, and honestly, they've laid in my garage all winter, and they're still alive.

I think they're a little durable.

Yeah, I haven't I was noticing, like, I really was in a hurry, and I just kind of stuck them in the garage.

And normally we do a little bit more, like, clean up to them and put them in a crawl space, and I just didn't do it.

But these look better doing great.

These look better than the ones that I fussed over, because I really haven't lost that much to sometimes you lose them to decay, and they dry out, and then they're done for so you got to look for ones that like are nice and firm and not squishy, have good color.

Sometimes you'll start to see some green on them.

Will you leave this in the clump of cluster until, until I'm ready to plant?

Yes, is there?

Is there a benefit to leaving them on there until they're ready to plant?

If I like.

I've been looking at them to see.

Is there any of the Are any of them rotting?

Like if I was seeing something that was going bad.

I would take try to remove that from it.

I really didn't.

So I'm like, wow, this is like, thriving on my neglect this year, and now maybe in maybe next year will be different.

But right now I'm enjoying the fact that I have so many very nice now, Ella, I know maybe, maybe it's not you.

I know Karen.

Karen forces her not forces them.

Karen starts them a little early, right, to get them sort of pre sprouted, so that when they do go out in, they're a little farther ahead.

So you can do that now.

You got to keep them outside, right, right?

I also pre sprout mine, but I do it in a large tray, one of those bulb, big trays.

I line it with newspaper, put a little soil in, lay them all out, cover them up and like Bear, just like getting started, because Hort club will have them be three feet tall for sale.

I just want to see, see them come up, because sometimes mine lose the label, and I got to see what the color of the foliage is so I can match a herb.

Gotcha.

Okay, I'm so excited for these.

So when you do put them out, this is we're talking in the spring.

Yeah, way more planting there.

Yeah, way towards more, like middle of May, for they appreciate warm soils, right?

So that's one reason I kind of pre start mine, especially some of the more special varieties, some with variegated foliages, or some of the new Canova varieties that are dwarf ones and such.

Yeah, these are the old fashioned and they're tall, red, yeah, they're really vigorous.

So I have messed around with some of the specialty ones, and they frustrate me every year, but I will die trying to overwinter those.

Gotcha.

Okay?

Wonderful.

All right, Ella, we're gonna go back to you.

Okay, I just brought in some oddities to talk about.

Who.

So quick.

And the first thing that I found so interesting, that I saved from last year was on a large Arbor vitae, I noticed these dead branches, and so I couldn't figure out why they died, and I followed it back, and what it turned out to be is it was girdled by the silk from the bagworm that hung on the inside.

So here's one that's been cut off of its foliage, but you can see the difference and how the the girdle worked.

It.

It didn't allow the the nutrients and everything to move back and forth between the plant, so it just, it just girdled it and it died and and who to think that the little silk that wrapped around the stem was enough to constrict that I found that fascinating, the things you find when you're just mosing in the yard.

The other thing is that now that spring is coming, or now you're driving by some forested areas, there are certain trees a lot in the red oak family, as well as some of the, I think it's the Oh, corn beams that have what they call marquescent foliage.

So what it is is that usually in the fall, there's an abscission layer that forms and the leaves drop.

So your Maples color, the leaves fall off.

But on some plants, they do not fall they do not have size.

And so that there's a special reason, some kind of evolutionary thing, so so that they're not browsed.

That's one reason they think that they wouldn't be browsed for, you know, different things.

So that's something that you can start looking in your timber, and that's one way to identify different kinds of trees.

And this happened to be a shingle oak in my yard.

I also have some Beech that still have some leaves on it.

So those were two interesting things, the word marquescence, and I didn't write it down to tell you how to spell it.

Have to look it up.

Have to Google it.

Okay, we're gonna go to a question now.

This is from Tim.

He lives in Arcola.

This one's kind of sentimental.

So he's got an indoor tropical that we've decided is a parlor palm, and he received it from his mother in the 90s.

It's not doing great.

Now I'm going to give you some information.

He says, I've repotted it, and I use Miracle Grow on it.

Probably once a month, the lower portion of the plant has stopped producing any branches.

The top part still produces growth.

I feel like it's dying.

And it used to be so beautiful.

Is there any way to save it?

So you ladies were looking at these pictures before.

What are we thinking?

My first impression was that it needed.

There was a lot of dead foliage.

So I would start with taking that dead foliage off to see kind of what you're looking at probably needs more light.

Parlor palms are kind of hard to and you can see here it's lean and it's a tropical plant.

It wants warm, hot, sunny.

It wants a beach.

Me too.

Same parlor palm, right?

So if he has it in the corner of a dark room, it's struggling for light.

And also, I personally think that it might be in a pot that's too large, that's holding too much moisture, and the root system is, is rotting, is maybe, maybe it's being over watered, and especially during the winter, I think they can go, you know, pretty, pretty dry.

I do have several palms and and sometimes they struggle during the winter because they don't have enough light.

But then I do put them outside for the summer, and that might be, if he can get it and it stays alive until he can put it out in May, maybe he'll have the whole summer to rejuvenate it.

Gotcha, that's a good point that loves the humidity.

When I've had palms inside, they tend to get spider mite from the dry air.

He just tends to promote them from infesting the plant.

I don't know from that picture if he's got that, but I think, like Ella said, getting more light a smaller pot, and if he's been fertilizing every month, every month, all winter, that's probably not the best idea.

Usually, kind of let house plants take a rest over the winter time.

Okay?

And then.

Resume fertilizing.

In the spring, when the light's better, might be able to get a light, an indoor plant light, to put on it, to try to perk it up.

That way, when you've got this sort of kind of bending here, is there a way to straighten that out or support it?

What would you do to other than, you know, let the light sort of help it.

But would you do anything to support that?

Yeah, you could.

You could stake it, you know, put a stake in, attach it at the top, attach it at the bottom, and kind of try to straighten it.

But, you know, you want to force it, yeah, the sentimental funeral plants.

And, you know, you just, I had one for 25 years, yeah, and so anytime somebody writes in about, I this was my mom's or something, you know, you always go into help them save this plant.

Yeah, it's not one that I know if you can, you lop that one off.

No, I don't think you can.

Sometimes you can cut stuff back, but, yeah, I don't know you can.

So help it limp along and then get her outside as soon as it'll love the humidity.

Okay, all right, Ella, we are back to you with more oddities.

Well, no, now I'm going to talk a little bit about seeding.

I did some winter sowing, and now I'm going to do some seeding inside, and I just brought some information about hostas, because I just went to a the Midwest Regional Hostas society had a winter meeting in Milwaukee, and I had such a wonderful time, and it was just so interesting.

So I want to talk little bit about growing hosta seeds, because they're very easy to grow from seed.

So the first thing that I do is I have these little meat containers, and I have little fork holes on each corner to allow the moisture to come out, and then I have some moist potting soil in there.

And I wanted to give you some information about collecting hosta seeds for next year.

So Hostas flower on a scape, and they make a pod, and as the pod dries, it splits and opens up.

And so I collect these in the fall, and I just put them in a paper sack, and then the seeds will fall to the bottom of the sack, and that's one way to do it.

So this is what's considered a pod parent.

So we know that this is the female This gives the female genetics.

Now all Hostas are hybrids, so they will not come true from seed.

So if you have a variegated hybrid hosta, and you save the seeds, you probably will not get any variegation in the seedlings, but you can get some wonderful colors and different sizes and everything.

And there are a lot of Hosta hybridizers that will actually make specific crosses.

So what I have collected is what's called open pollinated seed, and it's just a variety of different seeds, but I have also collected seed pods from Hostas that I particularly wanted to save and do that so most Hostas will have a winged seed.

It's a very small seed on one end with a black kind of wing, and that helps it kind of like your maple, little maple float to the ground and then they can grow.

So I have some seeds here, good.

I was hoping we were going to get the seeds.

And the one thing about hosta seeds is they can be germinated immediately.

They do not have a dormancy, so you don't have to do anything special.

You just have to collect them in the fall, and then you can seed them as early as November, December, and you could have potentially a flowering plant by the end of the next season.

So the seeds are black, and I'll put some out out here.

So they're, they're very kind of look like little little wings, but only one end is the seed.

And so these can, you can use a pencil so the audience could see those.

There we go.

So you could make a row, you know, with a pencil and put the seeds there.

But I don't really do that.

I just sprinkle a bunch of seeds.

We love that.

Yeah, you know.

So that's.

Got some seed, and then I will come back with just a little bit of soil, just barely cover that, and then I snap the lid on, and this just sits on my kitchen counter.

And I can stack these up as high as I want, for seven to 10 days because they won't germinate.

But, and I do label them with a little, this is from Tupperware, but, you know, like a little labeler, and I put the date on when I did it, and, you know, that kind of thing, and then once they've germinated, then I will move them down to a lighting setup that I have in my basement, but it's just easy to watch them in the kitchen for a while.

And like I said, they don't need light to germinate, but they need warmth, so that's why they're in my kitchen.

So as soon as they sprout, you transplant them to like your cell packs.

Oh no, as soon as they sprout, then what I'm going to do is I use, you know, a container like this is what they can sit in, and this way I can bottom water them.

You know, I've just saved a bunch of different things, but once they've germinated, then you do need to remove the top here, and I wait till they have, like, two true leaves, and they'll be small.

And the other thing is, is that not all of the seed will germinate, and some of the seeds may germinate.

And you say, it's just a green plant, I really wanted a blue one, or a yellow one, or or something, you know, you could then take a pencil and just, you know, cull, because most of the hosta growers that are looking for specifics are going to cull 90% you know, they're ruthless.

I'm not sure that I am ruthless, but really, two weeks little babies, you can't go wrong with hosta.

And the cool thing is, is that there's groups that exchange seeds online and and you can think about saving seed for next year.

And this is the way I start a lot of different kinds of seed that do not require a cold treatment, so the ones that need to be chilled.

That's what I'm going to winter.

So the ones that are just going to germinate, your tomatoes, your peppers, your marigolds, your whatever it might be, I can do it this way.

Gotcha great presentation.

Thank you very much.

And like I said, you can't go wrong with hosta.

They look great anywhere.

I wanted to ask about clean up.

So we've had a couple of nice days here and there, and I've seen people outside with their rakes, and I've seen them with their leaf blowers, and I just sort of cringe, because I've been taught by you guys to leave it be.

So if you you know, then I've heard, well, if you want to gently remove some things, Pile it and not disturb it so it, what is the rule on clean up this time of year?

You know, people are antsy if something is unsightly, what are some good information?

What's What are some good tips?

I mean, is it okay to do a little bit?

Is it, oh, you know, should you leave all of it?

Well, I cut back my ornamental grasses that that fall, spring, couple of days because they were starting to break up, and that's something that the foliage really needs to be removed, because it's, I don't think it's ecologically adding anything so that I've cut back Some a number of almost all my ornamental grasses already, but I haven't removed any leaf litter on my flower beds yet.

Okay, yeah, I haven't done anything yet.

I will tell you that with our ornamental grasses, we were waiting because we were trying to, you know, go with the new recommendation kind of thing, and we didn't get it done.

So then I had a big mess of new growing in the middle of the old.

Do have to know whether they're a cool season ornamental grass or a warm season ornamental grass?

So the warm season ornamental grasses are all the maiden grass, the big, tall Pampas grass type and those, maybe you don't have to be in a hurry, but they're also the biggest ones that fall over and look kind of Ratty.

But the one to do clean up early would be something like the.

Karl Forrester, feather Reed grass, because that is a cool weather grass, and initiates new growth rather quickly in the spring as it warms up.

And there's some stuff that I feel like it depends on, like, what's going on with you.

Like, there would be like, windows of time that I really could have done a little bit.

And yes, because what happened to us is like, you wait, and then all of a sudden everything is going so I've been weighing this too, like, Well, gosh, I don't want to wreck the the native stuff and all the things and but one suggestion I had heard was leaving some bigger stubble, like maybe cut it back, but don't cut it back clear to the ground.

Maybe leave 18 inches, 24 Right for stem-nesting bees... ...and for and to maybe look at what's like, kind of front and center around your house differently than stuff that's in the back 40.

So maybe... I actually do rake, do rake along the edges of my garden, because, and that's where, if I'm going to do any kind of weed suppression, I might do it there.

But for things that are in the background where there's larger, taller material, I don't really remove anything.

Okay.

Wow.

Great show.

We are out of time.

Thank you, ladies, it's always fun when you're in the building.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, or look for us on socials.

Just search MidAmerican Gardener.

It's almost time.

Hang on people, and we will see you next time.

Good night.