[Music] hello and thanks so much for joining us for another edition of mid-american gardener i'm your host tanisha spain and always we've got a lot to cover today so let's jump in and have our panelists introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialty so we've got karen and ella in one so why don't you guys start go ahead okay well i'm ella maxwell i'm a tassel county master gardener and in my garden right now i am trying to uh move some of my perennials that are um doing very well into some other areas kind of organizing and and with that organization i'm um replacing some plant tags and uh doing some basic cleanup okay all right and karen tell us a little bit about you and what you are doing in the garden right now hi i'm karen ruckel and i'm a horticulturist here in central illinois area and i love perennials and shrubs and in my yard right now i'm tackling my annual issue in my yard i have a flame am your maple and that tree sends out gazillions and thousands of little seedlings so right now i am weeding out of these out of all my flower beds uh in the lawn it's not a problem they get mowed off but in the um mulch beds i've gotta hand weed them out thanks so that sounds like a full-time job but it's it's kind of just a the flush of spring a whole bunch of them come up um and then the rush is kind of over just a few here and there later on gotcha okay and as you've noticed we've got a new face on the show today so sarah introduce yourselves yourself and tell us a little bit about where we can find you outside hi i'm sarah vogel i'm the horticulture educator for illinois extension i covered dewitt macon and piott counties um and so right now in my professional position i'm answering all the questions that gardeners have coming in and in my own garden i've i've already put out my cool season crops i'm going to wait until after that mother's day last possible frost to put out my tender vegetables and annuals and things and you know just the regular cutting back perennials i've done a little planting of some trees and shrubs in my yard and generally just trying to enjoy the sunshine wonderful well welcome aboard we are so glad to have you a new new information new skills so thank you very much for sharing your time and talents with us a pleasure yes so as always first round always goes to show and tells so we'll go to the ladies the two-in-one duo to start ella what did you bring today well actually this morning i was uh i took a drive down to bloomington and on the way back we pulled over because everyone always wants to know what is that purple flower that's blooming in those fields so these are fallow fields before the corn and beans go in and this is hen bit and it's a winter annual so it probably germinated late last fall and then goes through the winter and then when the conditions are right it really begins to grow rather quickly and it's flowering now because it has to complete its life cycle it's an annual and it'll make more seed and reseed itself and so these little purple flowers it's just a carpet of purple and it's so pretty um you'll find it in the home garden and it's um pretty easy to just uh pull up i mean uh again hand weeding is is difficult in a mowing situation it's going to disappear by the middle of summer so i don't know that you would have to really treat it with any type of uh herbicide another winter annual that we see too is the little chickweed and this one we're going to see for sure in the flower garden uh it has little white flowers and it's a prolific cedar so again you can prevent this in the flower garden with a fall application of a pre-emergent but again the pollinators especially honeybees will uh get the uh pollen it's a really pretty purple colored pollen that you can see on their legs as they go into the hive if they've been foraging on henbin and so these are you pulled those out of like a farm field is that where you're saying or next to the side of the road i found the ditch and said oh i have to have something for show and share this afternoon your dedication to mid-american gardener is just incredible thank you okay karen what'd you bring well we talked a couple months ago about you know making sure that through the winter months you check any of your cannas or dahlias or or bulbs that you're storing for the next year and so now we're getting to that point where probably everybody's itching to put them out but i think the soil is still going to stay pretty cold but i would start going and getting them out right now and this is a good time to start checking this guy didn't make it he's dead it's all black it shriveled um so that rhizome didn't make it what's really something that's good is this one does have a plumpness by an eye and there's actually a little sprout of growth here coming up so that rhizome is healthy um and then here's another one that you can see more the the thickness of like when you dug it up last fall and so what i like to do right now is to go through them and then i'll take a um just an old flower box the the skinny ones that are horrible for using outside because everything dries out in them really quickly and i'll put my cannas in that with some soil and start to to kind of pre-germinate them or get them to flush to growth with rooting because that way if it gets too cold i can move them in i can put them in the warmer area of the yard you can quickly you'll put them where you need to put them as as weather changes and then when the soil is warmed up nicely then they're already sprouted and you can plunk them out now i wanted to ask and i think i asked this last year when we were putting everything away i keep my cannas in big pots so is it okay to or do you need to dig them up when you have them in the pot to check for their health in the spring i moved them in um but if they're in containers do you still need to check them out and kind of make sure everything is looking good well the thing i would be worried about is that is there too much already in your pot because typically your can is very prolific in how it grows and and the rhizomes and little side plants it'll put off so that your plant by you know may 30th you're overcrowded already in your pot that's my main concern with how you overwintered yours okay so if you were having trouble keeping it watered by the end of last summer you'd probably be if if all your rhizomes overwintered you're not going to make it easily through this next year because you're just not going to have enough soil to support all that growth okay okay so i need to get in there and see what's going on and maybe do some dividing it sounds like probably because like i said if it's probably full enough as it is right now okay thank you very much all right moving on to sarah uh what show and tells do you have today so with the uh enormous increase in house plant owners and plant lovers all across the board last year i thought uh bringing a house plant would be kind of fun i know we have some photos too but this is a silver squill or some people call it leopard spots ledeboria socialis is the scientific name and it's got really great spotted foliage and on the underneath it's kind of a purplish burgundy color um it's native to south africa so it wouldn't survive our winters here in illinois but it does make a really good house plant and that they're relatively easy to maintain they do as you can see from this uh the pictures um we it doesn't bloom so there is some kind of reproduction going on there but it can also be uh asexually reproduced by the bulb-like structures in there and they're pretty easy to divide as well it's a a plant in the uh hyacinth and grape hyacinth family um and so when you if you notice the flowers on them it is kind of reminiscent of a grey piosin very cool so i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt you can you can you uh plant those little tiny blooms uh yeah you can take one of the bulbs and plant them you would treat them like an annual here if you wanted to plant them in ground i've typically kept mine in a container um and you know if you're going to keep them as a house plant that's fine they do really well with bright indirect light and i'll just typically what i do with mine as a house plant is take it in the kitchen a clean kitchen sink and spray it with a sprayer knock all the dust off so i can photosynthesize but then in the summertime yeah i'll take it outside and keep it on my porch where it'll get maybe a couple hours of direct sunlight at most but it usually likes bright in direct sunlight okay so um you know from snake plant to something really complex i guess where does this fall um in the maintenance department is this something for beginners or is this something you know for your more seasoned plant owner i have not found it to be finicky in fact i have i'll show you i have two of them here you can see one is a little bit fuller but these both were split from it was one plant that was actually very very pop bound in a little three and a half inch round and so they kind of like to be pop bound they'll take a little neglect i use the the drenches between droughts method of watering so they don't like to sit in water they like to dry out completely so that makes it pretty easy it'll it'll show you quickly if it's getting too much sun by brown spots and a little sun scald on there and they don't take a lot of fertilizer in fact they don't like a lot of fertilizer so in the maintenance department it's a relatively easy one okay that's what we like to hear especially the new folks starting out um you know you don't want to get discouraged too easily so that's right okay thank you karen you have another show-and-tell is that correct yes okay what'd you bring us well i just you know and talking about what we're doing right now is um i've been starting a few seeds which i am really not a seed starting person i'm just too impatient um but i did decide to do some parsley because why not and like a silly nut the package of seeds was probably about 10 years old so i thought oh these man you know seed germination decreases as time goes on it's not the seed goes bad but i thought oh these really probably won't germinate so i just threw a whole bunch and it just there's way too many plants in here so these are not going to probably wait until time to plant them out from the cell packs so what i'll do is i'll go ahead and i'll divide these now and give them a little bit more space to grow them before planting them out in the yard and i'll probably give half of them to ella because i've grown too much she already knew it was coming she was pointing like you were talking you love when your friends over plant or over buy because you know it's coming your way too so we get to benefit from that so when you're doing that karen when you're dividing those you're not going to put them straight outside right you're going to another pot before they go outside yes and just because i'm a little bit leery looking at the extended forecast that that those 40 degree nights i'm just not so sure you know a lot of these young little seedlings and especially if you've torn them apart and and they've got a re-root don't want a lot of adversity with weather so yes if if i kept these whole maybe i'd put them outside and they'd probably do okay um once i acclimated so acclamation that would be going outside in a shady location on warm days coming in in the cold night going back out coming in kind of getting them used to the wind higher light um but like i said because these are so pop bound already in the cell pack i'll divide them and then you know have them ready then to hopefully start transitioning maybe about two weeks starting to to get them used to outside okay and i think you brought up a really great point karen if we could take a moment to talk about these temperatures this week um you know by the time this airs will will have been passed the really really couple of cold nights that we're having but um and feel free ladies just kind of to throw out some ideas but for those of us who maybe have put some things outside this shouldn't have been what advice do you have to get through this week and these last couple of weeks you know and i didn't plant anything but i did drag out some great big pots of like i had a couple bananas that were starting to um they were in the garage and i thought well let's get them some light so i'm gonna have to put those back i i know so anything else there um help us out with some tips and and feel free to just jump in uh wherever ladies you know most of our perennials are gonna be fine um if you have fruit trees that are blooming that you're concerned about you may consider covering them with row cover bed sheets or something like that i would again wait to plant any of those tender perennial i'm sorry tender annuals uh and even some of our vegetable plants but so a lot of plants are tougher than you think some of the things that are going to be blooming soon like lilac and that will probably be fine okay yeah and i brought home for karen and for myself some black nursery containers but five gallon pots and i do have some hostas that are up pretty high and um with these freezing temperatures there's a good chance that there might be some leaf damage as they unfurl so we're going to put black pots over some of the tallest ones and then i also have some floating row cover and some sheets to use on some others and you can use cardboard or even newspaper you just don't want to use plastic and we'll see the consequences of plastic i think in one of our other questions that we'll get to a little bit later with the moisture underneath of plastic karen anything else that you wanted to add on there well i thought i would add you see this a lot of times with pansies because typically you plant them out early and they get cold snaps and i meant to look it up to refresh my memory but after a cold snap you'll usually see the foliage start to go a little purpley and i always get my peas mixed up phosphorus or potassium i think it's potassium that they're a little deficient in after a cold snap so that the foliage goes a little purpley kind of color so it would be really beneficial if you do see a little odd coloring of of the foliage to just mix up maybe half strength of some fertilizer and give them a little little fertilizer in the next couple weeks as the temperatures warm up is there anything to say about if you've got pots that are close to your home um that can kind of get that i don't want to say like radiant heat from your house but does it matter if you've got things on a porch or that are close to your house um will they fare better or worse or um anything there well that depends how much wind they catch okay how much wind and how much light exposure usually it's it's better but you know better safe than sorry and the ones closest to the house are probably the easiest to um protect even maybe just bringing them up you know from the front porch into the into the garage you know take that extra step okay all right and let's go ahead and uh go to that question that ella referenced it's number 23 dj um this is a question from karen benner and she writes in i have a question regarding my seedlings i planted heirloom cabbage and broccoli they looked fine until i covered them with a plastic bag to keep the moisture in when i was away for a few days when i returned the leaves were wilted and curled at the edges at first i thought they were too wet then i wondered if they were diseased whatever it is that spread to the basil and the hibiscus attached our pictures can anyone tell me what's wrong and if i should destroy these plants because they're diseased so as we're scrolling through there the the ladies have pretty much identified what happened here so um i don't know whoever wants to jump in and kind of share what what karen's seeing well what uh uh what happens sometimes is that moisture accumulated on the top of the plastic bag and it might have actually um you know the bag might have touched the plant most likely and so what we're seeing is really not a disease problem at all it's a a a scorch or um kind of uh the heat um the greenhouse reflective energy you know might have just uh uh scorched the top of the plants and so as it continues to grow we can see the new growth is coming on they'll be just fine no reason to destroy them but that's one of the downsides sometimes of of uh having that plastic on there that's not maybe firm enough and tall enough above held above the plant material and that when you're doing the hot caps or or covering or something um is that something that you should leave on during the day is that something that you should put on at night um any technique there you know that we should know about to prevent the scorching well i think the most important thing is is that that yes if you can remove it during the day that's good if the weather conditions warrant it and that's why those floating row covers they breathe they don't trap as much moisture newspaper of course would absorb the moisture but plastic it doesn't it just accumulates and that's where the problem lies okay thank you so much all right sarah we're going to go to you this is question number 26 uh regarding tree bark falling off penny writes in this has been going on for two years now the tree still buds and has lots of leaves last year but the bark is falling off i don't see any bugs on the surface any ideas so she sent in i believe some pictures of the bark there we go so sarah what are your thoughts on this one well it's a it's a little hard to tell what the species is and she didn't make mention of it [Music] and so regardless bark coming off the trees can really be related to several causes it could be um you know animal damage insect damage um a lightning strike occasionally though probably she would have known about that there could have been some frost cracking issues uh going on and though this doesn't look necessarily like a naturally exfoliating tree keep in mind that there are some tree species that do that it looks like she may have some insects going on in there but then in saying that we often find that insects are more of a symptom to a larger problem so the tree could have been stressed over several years maybe drought stress maybe had some pruning done um it may have seen a couple uh non-detrimental diseases like anthracnose come through an effect at year after year you know when we have those cool wet springs we often see anthracnose or tar spot different kinds of fungal and bacterial diseases so it may be part of a larger abiotic disorder that's then letting some of these smaller stressors come in and then insects are kind of the last uh culprit that move in too i have seen many trees heal over after they lose bark especially um i've seen sycamore heal over from from losing a large strip of bark on there so again i i couldn't quite tell what the identification of that species was um but just kind of wait and see or look for more um you know cracking oozing or weeping of sap uh look for those insect populations and of course if you do find anything or have more questions you're welcome to reach out to extension we'll try to help you diagnose it further wonderful yeah when you have i know go ahead ella sorry i was going to say just one thing from the picture again it's important for you to be able to identify your trees because in my mind i really believe that that is a green ash or some type of white ash or something and we can see those kind of engraving marks that uh the insect activity and that could be from the emerald ash borer and when they say that their tree is still leafing out many times you get these epicormic chutes are like the it's no law it's kind of dead at the top but down the trunk and the main branches you start to see these leaves and these new branches form but that's the last resort for that tree so if she identifies it as an ash then it probably is severely infested um when you see one from top to bottom that could be even a lightning strike that's you know popped the bark off um that kind of thing but uh yeah they they can seal over but i i think she has an ash okay okay all right one more question somebody gonna say something i don't wanna cut you off all right so we're gonna go to uh karen with this one uh larry wants to know if he can transplant peonies from one place to the other he says he's got three that he would like to move before they get any bigger and enjoys watching the show so i know a lot of you know we're going out and we're finding things that are coming up he wants to know if it's okay to move the peonies right now so is that uh is that a good plan good idea or no well ella and i were discussing that uh before we we came on and and we were feeling that yeah your peonies typically is more are more of a fall transplant perennial so we would just say wait till fall now the thing is if this is a situation where you don't have access to the plant something's being done in addition construction um yes dig up the plant but we feel it's more of a if you can wait till fall okay all right ladies thank you so much we have sort of run out of time we've got about a minute or so left sarah thank you for coming on board uh great to have you and of course uh karen and ella the dream team together we we love having you thank you for sending in your questions and thank you so much for interacting with us on facebook we appreciate all the messages hit us up anytime on our facebook or instagram or you can send us an email to yourgarden at gmail.com make sure you send us lots of pictures so we can get the experts to diagnose what's going on in your garden again thank you so much for watching and we will see you next time [Music] goodbye [Music] you