Hello and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and joining me in the studio are three of my pals here to talk all things gardening.

Let's do some quick intros, because we've got a lot to cover today.

So Martie, we'll start with you.

Hello out there in TV land.

I'm Martie Alanga.

I have way more experience than I want working in people's yards and digging holes and getting muddy.

I kind of kind of focus on perennials, shrubs and trees for the home garden.

You know, perennials, yay.

One and done.

One and done.

Said it and forget it.

All right, Jim.

I'm Jim Appleby, a retired entomologist from the Illinois natural history survey.

So I deal with the insects and mites attacking trees and shrubs and rusty Hi.

My name is Rusty Maulding.

I'm the site superintendent out at Lake of the Woods, part of the Champaign County Forest Preserve District.

I spent my first 25 plus years as a professional landscape contractor, and have since moved on and more into the public gardening realm, where we take care of acres and acres of beautiful spaces.

Great.

We have a nice cross section of knowledge here at the table today.

So all right, let's jump in and get started.

Marla from Bethany sent in an email saying, a few years ago, I planted a perennial garden with mostly native prairie flowers that she got from the extension.

Good job.

Two summers ago, they were doing great, and now she's got an area where this Primrose seems to be taking over and kind of crowding the bed.

So what are your thoughts here, for control, and do you divide?

Do you?

How do you what a conquer?

No, no, not going to No, not dividing.

Conquer.

This is, this is an othra.

There's a couple different varieties.

This one is pink, and it's about that tall.

There's another one that's got a slightly larger yellow flower, and it's a little more, a little more creepy.

It comes around rocks.

It's only about a foot tall or so.

They're lovely little plants, and they are gangbusters for filling in some place, hot and dry, where nothing else will grow.

However, as you can see in the picture, I guess you can see they're creeping out, but pulling them, I try not to spray stuff, you know, try not to spray anything, if you can possibly help it.

But they are wonderful for creeping around other larger plants.

My sister had a beautiful bed and a hot, sunny clay soil.

She had some knockout roses, some of the sonathra, and she had cat mint, and they just duped it out.

Man, it was great.

It was beautiful, and it was and it's really showy from she's got a long front yard, and you could see it very easily.

It's very striking.

Can that be divided or, Oh yeah, I can.

Okay, you absolutely can.

Yeah, share it with you know, people you love or people you don't like at all much.

Yeah, it's not, I mean, really you it is about that is, this is one of the trouble free plants of the garden.

But as you know, with trouble free plants comes abundance, a ridiculous vigor.

So, yeah, so, but I mean, you know, count your blessings.

If you can't grow this, you should just get pots really.

Okay, so divide it.

Share with friends.

Did you have anything you wanted to add to that?

Well, it's just going to take a lot of pulling of the same piece, because it's going to keep on coming back.

Yeah.

So best to, I guess, buyer beware a little bit.

Put it someplace where you're going to allow it to roam.

Yeah?

So have have a six inch concrete curve on all four sides.

Yeah?

Those heat island type situations perfect for, yeah, yeah.

It's not, it's not as bad as say, Laura happy, but you know, still it's in there.

Gonna take some work, okay, yeah, all right, it does have a delightful way.

So it's pretty, but it's a little much, and it's awesome for putting bulbs under, because when the foliage comes up, it it completely engulfs the foliage from the spring flowers, so you don't have to cut that back, like, blah, blah, blah, sounds like a dream come true.

Yes, yeah, we like low maintenance at your local garden center.

Okay, Jim, we are to you.

You've got some photos here that we're going to talk through.

So this first photograph is my button bush.

Button bush is not very common.

A lot of people don't know button Bush, but it's a native to the Midwest.

Does extremely well in the Midwest, and the blooms are these spherical blooms that are very attractive to moths and butterflies.

This photograph shows my tie.

Swallowtail feeding on the nectar.

So it's a great bush.

I really like it.

It's got dark green foliage.

It's deciduous.

Of course, the leaves fall in the in the autumn months, but it's really a nice plant, and the leaves are resistant to Japanese beetle attack, which is another nice blossom, yeah, if your local garden star does not handle this, you can get it on the line.

So they've come up with some improved varieties recently.

There's one that I tried at my own house called Sugar Shack, which is a more dwarf, compact version, but it still is a little bit open, but it's much smaller than the straight species.

Yeah?

These will actually nine.

One gets about 10 feet tall, yeah, 12 feet tall.

And I think that one was maybe three to four, maybe five, but it's much take pruning very easily.

Yeah, that's, that's one of the drawbacks for for the home garden, if they get too big and rumpy, nobody wants them, you know, but pruning, they take pruning very easily.

So it's a neat it's a nice plant.

Does it have fall color?

No.

Okay, I wasn't.

I remember for sure, very nice, very nice.

Okay, did you want to talk more about insects, or do you want to save that for the next?

Talk a little bit about insects?

Okay, shortly here, here we see the bean leaf beetle.

This is a bad beetle because it attacks anything that's coming up, seedlings, plants.

So if you have bush beans, pole beans, zucchini, squash, pumpkins, melons, it will attack all those little seedlings.

So as soon as these little seedlings come up, this beetle attacks and that will kill the plants I had one year where all the plants, all my seedlings, were killed, every one of them because of the bean leaf beetle.

And you were angry.

I was a little angry.

This is the kind of damage it does on mature leaves.

So you can imagine what it will do on a seedling.

Oh, my the next is another bad Well, this is Shasta Daisy.

I just want to show you a normal Shasta Daisy.

This is, again, a plant that's very hardy in the Midwest does extremely well.

But let's make a look at the next photo.

This is a photograph of the spotted cucumber beetle, and you see it's sort of a olive green with these black dots numerous.

But look at the damage it does to the the petals.

It will do the same damage to seedlings.

So again, the zucchini, the swarsh, the melons, all that.

So you have to be prepared for these insects, these two.

And here's the damage.

Again, you can see the extensive damage it does to the pedal.

So you can imagine, again, what it would do to seedlings.

It would kill them.

So let's say how to control it.

So you can control bean leaves beetle and spotted cucumber beetle by insect nettings.

I sure suggest that if your local store does not have the insect netting, you can easily go to the internet.

They have quite a few companies that will sell insect netting.

If you don't want to go that route, you can dust the plants with seven or permethrin or Spina sad either when any of those.

Now, I like the dust because there's no chance of getting injury.

Some of the sprays you'll get injury to the plant.

If you've been in the past and you have not had any injury, then continue to use that.

But you had to be prepared for these beetles immediately.

When you when you plant the seeding, the seeds, you better be prepared for these beetles immediately, immediately, oh my gosh.

As soon as the little seedlings come up, they're there to you know, they're the overwinters adults, both of them, right out.

They're ready to go as soon as you get those little seedlings.

So if you get the dust, are you?

You need to flip under the leaves, flip it up and get under the just a little bit on that, just a little that's a good thing.

Tenisha, it has to be light.

You don't have to put a half inch of dust, because they can't survive.

I do a little dusting where it looks like they were snowed on, you know, I just want to be sure, you know, same as branded fruit trees dripping down to make sure I got everything saturated.

So, okay, so the you when you plant these, be ready to treat.

Oh yeah, yeah, be ready and have your nets ready.

I'm ready.

I mean, I put the net around the ground area before the seedlings come up, because if you, if you wait, those beetles are right there and they're hungry wait and they're small noted, okay, get through a pretty small hole.

Yep.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Okay, we're going to go back to rusty now.

What are you going to talk about potatoes, Glads, tulips.

Let's talk about tulips.

Tulips, okay, so they're everywhere.

They're in the grocery store.

Now, these adorable little Easter arrangements.

Let's say somebody buys you one.

Is it?

Do you chuck it after it blooms, or can you keep it?

Well, so this is like, this is like, a real problem, right?

Because you got a gift, it's alive.

Somebody had put the thought into it to give you some.

Them pretty, and you're like, oh gosh, I can make that pretty in my landscape too, right?

So what do you do with it?

And nobody, everybody hates to throw out something that's living and it's looking good, and this that and the other.

And so I've gotten this question for probably most of my professional career, and I did a little research, and I may not have always been providing the correct answer.

What?

Learn.

Well, gardening is about trial and error, right?

You learn it.

You live and you learn.

Well, come to find out that really, the tulips in particular, do not have a great survival rate or a reproducing flower rate if they've been forced.

So that pretty little bouquet you get that's in a pot, it has a nice foil around it, and looks fantastic for two, three weeks there in your home, you can plant it, allow it to die back and senesce like you normally would, and then take, you know, sort of take the bulb out of the out of the soil, cut off the stem, and then store it in a cool, dry place over the summer, come back In the fall, and you can plant that, okay, but don't expect to have be wowed by what comes back the next year.

Okay, a lot of sources I looked at said suggested that it may be two years before it flowers again, and others definitely suggested and as I've seen firsthand, the flower decreases each year.

But if you're feeling like, Hey, I got this gift and I want to do something with it, you want to play in the ground.

You got a spot for it.

You got a spot for it.

Knock yourself out.

Just give it a go.

What you got to lose absolutely Now, does this apply to the your hyacinth and all the other that's a great question babies that we're seeing right now.

So a lot of them, yes.

Hyacinth, yes.

Daffodils, apparently are a little more resistant there.

They got a little more vigor in daffodils.

And so if you get a little bouquet of daffodils, that's one that is probably worth trying.

Okay, it's them, the creep and Charlie and the cockroaches.

Now you have tulips we were talking before the show.

You have tulips that you haven't put in yet, or some kind of little a little bit.

Yeah, well, you mine are blooming stuff hat, shut up.

I have other ones that are blooming as well, but they actually got, you know, planted.

But I will say this, we're talking about other bulbs beside tulips.

Yeah, and, like Rusty said, they likely will bloom again, but forcing the bulb takes a lot of juice out of it.

So gotcha, when they're in the ground, if a squirrel doesn't eat them, if the you know, if the sun is in the right court, you know, then maybe, though there's a lot of boxes to check before put them in.

I mean, I hate to throw them away too.

Chunky little hole out, stick them in, it's not hard, and put them in.

And if, if they do great, they do great, but plant something else around them so your little heart isn't broken.

But hyacinths.

My father passed away in 2000 and my friends from church gave me a beautiful figure eight twig basket with a pot of pink and a pot of white hyacinths, and they're blooming right now in my yard.

Hyacinths are wonderful.

They just go and go, Oh, they're beautiful.

Yeah, they're so fragrant I don't even bring them in the house.

Ooh, they're a lot.

But yeah, hyacinths are, they're, they're lovely for they come right back after forcing it's no biggie.

So give them a shot.

Yeah, they're kind of relegated to, like the poinsettia like, Oh, what do I do with this now?

All right, so, Jim, you got some fan mail, and there were a lot of questions on here, but one of them was, someone admired your ring, and we all learned a new word today.

What was it?

Lapierre.

Lapidary.

Lapidary, someone who studies or works with Jim, so he asked about your ring, and asked about the significance of it, and wanted to know what the stone is.

Gosh, I got it short.

You got to show it off.

And that's not the first time we've gotten questions about my father's ring.

You said it was a sapphire.

It's an Amethyst.

Amethyst.

It's his birthstone ring and birthstone for February.

Very nice.

There are some other things in this letter.

It's real deep.

He starts out with, where are all of the insects?

He said, I used to have to clean out the little light fixtures in my garage that used to be full of insects, and now hardly nothing.

So I know that's a big topic to wrap your arms around, but is what he's noticing, what we're all seeing.

Oh yes, birds, spiders, amphibians, he mentioned box turtles in here as well.

Seeing less of those interesting I personally think it's air pollution myself, but because it's over such an extensive area, but, well, people are definitely noticing.

So he thought, I live out in the country like you, and you know, we used to have all kinds of birds and insects, spiders.

You don't see them anymore.

There's a lot of discussion.

And two about invasives playing into that as well, kind of forcing out some of our native species and making it difficult for some of our native insects and birds and things to thrive.

Anything to add on that, either one or two people go crazy about Asian lady beetles being in their homes, but if you crack a little window, they'll go out when it's warm mine, usually they get in.

I live in.

They just get a year old house.

They're gonna get in, but, yeah, crack a little south window.

They cluster around the top of the window like what.

I'm like, go get please leave.

Yeah, and they're not they're not gone.

They're not all gone.

Yet.

Three of them fell in my bathtub this morning.

I'm like, Dude, get out.

It's just for me.

So yeah, we're not out of those yet.

But yeah, I have seen a decline in them, and I never, never get rid of any sort of an egg sac or anything like we'll be addressing here with Mr. Appleby second.

Go ahead.

Rusty, yeah.

And I guess I haven't seen anything definitively to suggest, you know, this is the root cause of all of this.

You know, the native plants being smothered out by some of the invasives that might get a chance to talk about here later.

That certainly is a challenge.

You know, I think that the constant messaging from the landscape industry as a whole, as well as certainly, a lot of the more native based folks is plant natives.

The industry is moving that direction, and it's a healthier thing for our ecology and supporting the wildlife, which is inclusive of the insects, because you got to have the insects to have the birds.

And you know, it's one thing feeds after another, and it's all that web of the food web, and so it's a challenge, because we certainly have seen a significant decrease in insects and other birds and whatnot.

Gotcha.

Actually, I do have one other point.

If you haven't cleaned your garden off yet, stop it.

Stop it.

Yeah, all those stocks that are sticking out that you're tired of looking at a lot of those have beneficial insect larva in them, or even adults, but they're overwintering in those stems in ornamental grasses.

Don't whack them clear down, cut them maybe to six or eight inches, but really, don't clean them off until you see the beautiful introduction.

That's right, all kinds of beneficials that over winter in your yard.

And if you want them to help you, you got to not kill them.

So here we go.

So folks, if you see anything like this.

It looks like brown Styrofoam.

That's the egg case of the praying mantis.

So, you know, this probably has about 15, about maybe 50 or 100 eggs in it.

Those eggs will be hatching, probably in, oh, probably in early May.

And then these are very beneficial.

They'll feed on all kinds of small insects, flies, and I've heard it said that if you find man Manti mantises, I don't know the plural, if you find them in your yard, it's a good sign that things are healthy and thriving, because they they're not just going to hang out any old place.

I would think so.

They're not going to slum it.

They want to Ernie look for that thing that looks like Styrofoam, and don't disturb it.

Don't disturb that.

If you happen to trim one off and you see it in the brush later, even though you're trimming one, I've just told you not to do that.

Just set it someplace warm and protected, like in the corner of a bed somewhere, or stick it down even a dead twig like this, you can just poke it down where it doesn't show in some evergreens, and just leave it sit there and let and the the egg case will hatch, and you'll have a lot of little friendlies running around, eating, let us pray, bean and squash beetles.

You know, the thing is, when they first hatch, they're cannibalistic.

So, oh, when you first hatch on thing you better disperse Quickly, run.

Well, you know the the mating season doesn't end so well for the male either.

No, he's always got they are bad.

I expect them to have little spears.

Well, the only overwinter in the egg stage, both parents died.

Let's talk potatoes, or, I don't know, root vegetables.

So Kay Carnes brought on some seed potato a few weeks ago as we were talking about planting.

And so now, if you get this huge harvest of potatoes, we had Joyce write in and says, Well, if you plan all these and everything goes, well, what the heck do you do with all these potatoes?

So let's talk storage and how to keep these so that you can enjoy them.

Unless you're planting a half acre of potatoes, I don't think storage is going to be a huge issue.

Okay.

We grew potatoes, a lot of potatoes.

When I was a kid, we had roll away bins that were built into the walkout basement.

That was a great idea.

But if you don't have that, someplace cool, dark and dry is ideal.

Also, mouse proof, if that's an issue, and because if you, if you have light on them, they'll sprout.

Don't eat them if they look a little green, or at least cut the green part away, especially, we grew enough potatoes to eat them all winter.

Wow, yeah.

And you can keep them a family of six, seven at the table.

Okay, routinely, we did the same.

So, yeah, so, but it cool, dry and dark and they'll, they'll just keep forever.

I mean, we had enough to we ran out of dog food.

We fed the dogs with potatoes and bacon grease.

They were the happiest.

They were hoping to run out of cheese, run out of Purina.

So, any potato tips?

Yeah, I guess I would say, you know, they're going to get wrinkly towards next up, next planting season, so you can whatever you're not eating you.

That's what you use to cut up and get the right number of eyes and plant them in March or April, or whatever the whatever your myth is going to be on Good Friday or Good Friday after today.

Well, I have potatoes waiting, but my garden is wet and I can't get in it because it rained, and that rained some more, and then it rained, and then it rained, it rained a lot.

They'll get wrinkly, and that's fine, you know, you're probably going to see some sprouts starting, and that's that's not that's going to happen.

Yeah, they're still viable, and that provides next year's crop.

So not like a bucket in the basement.

They do.

They have to be flat, single layer.

Can you pile them?

You can you can stack them, but it just needs to be cool and dry enough that the dry mold doesn't form.

You know, it needs to have a little bit of air circulation.

So, I mean, if nothing else, if you have a big problem with critters, you could hang them in bags, and if you had an attached garage that stayed cool, you could put them in bags and hang them from the ceiling to keep rodents out of them.

Okay, so All right, Rusty, we're gonna close out with you.

Would you like?

Let's do honeysuckle.

Or which one would you like?

Let's do pear.

One.

Do pear.

Okay, let's do it here.

So pair, you've had to have seen these.

They're looking fantastic this time of year, right?

And everyone's like, Oh, that's like eye candy for the soul.

I want to go out and rush the nearest garden center and go pick up a pair to plant in your yard.

Going to encourage you not to.

So this is just showing you that white tree in the background that has the nice, very geometrical shape outline.

Those are pear trees, and they look great, right?

Looks fine.

So what's, what's the problem with them?

Everybody's been talking about this for a number of years.

Like pear, their ornamental pears, yes, ornamental pear.

Thank you, pear the devil, right?

Well, so this is, this is a shot looking at a trail edge that we had cleared the first 10 feet.

And you sort of look in that background and use that's that is thick with ornamental pair, calorie pair.

And the understory, you can see some green that is a little bit of honeysuckle.

We had the trifecta here, Callery pear honeysuckle, as well as autumn olive This is bad.

This is a bad deal.

We had invasives Gone Wild.

No, yeah, if we can go to the next slide, look in just a little closer, and that is sort of looking up through this ornamental pear.

They say that they're seedless.

They're not.

This is absolutely thick with pear, so much so that even honeysuckle was having a hard time growing underneath it.

How does it toss up there?

Yeah, right.

I mean, bottom line is the reason why this is a negative thing.

As you look to the forest floor, there is like, literally zero activity down there.

This is what it should look like.

So this is a healthy, vibrant woodland for forest system.

This picture was taken actually a year ago, but it's, it's, we're about a week out before seeing that in.

That sent in that last picture.

So just juxtapose.

This is that sort of unhealthy environment where everything, all of the diversity that we are hoping to promote that helps the insects that they just they do all the things right.

This type of situation is, is the problem with pear and honeysuckle and some of those types of invasive species.

They they blanket out the sun in the native spaces.

You will see these popping up in roadsides next to all of your what's the right word for it?

Along the interstate, you have the rest areas.

Yeah, they're, they're just, they're literally showing up at any any place that's not mowed regularly.

And this has become a significant problem.

And.

So let's talk briefly.

We've got about a minute or two left about control measures.

So what?

What is the community doing to help get a handle on Sure?

So Well, one thing is, for sure, payers are somewhat short lived, typically 15 to 20, maybe 25 years, and then a third to half of them break out.

So not only is it a threat to your property, but it's also just that's a really negative attribute, sure.

So don't go plant another one.

Cut it down and get something that's that is native, that's going to do a better job in that same space.

There is some great gaining traction, and I anticipate that at some point these will be on the do not plant list.

So at some point they will become unavailable.

I'm not suggesting everybody go run out and buy one.

Not saying that at all, but I think the industry is recognizing that this, this is not just a limited scope problem.

This is a an Illinois problem, Midwest problem.

And I have planted those.

I have to and landscape, but that was before they were waking everybody.

You do better.

Thank you, mom.

Time, I can't believe it.

It goes so fast.

Go so fast.

Thank you guys, so much for coming and sharing your knowledge with us, and thank you so much for watching.

Keep those questions coming into us with the pictures.

You can send them to your garden@gmail.com or you can search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid American gardener.

Thank you so much for watching, and we will see you next time.

Good night.