Unknown: Hello, and welcome to Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha Spain.

And this week we're getting out of the studio, we're gonna take you to the 2020 to see you plant people plant swap.

But first, we visited the Japan house on the U of I campus to get a look at the cherry blossoms that were in bloom this spring.

During our visit former Japan House Director Kimiko Gunji talked about the lifecycle and the popularity of those cherry blossoms.

Cherry Blossom has been admired in Japan's for formation times, Japan and united, elongate Ireland.

So then from the northern northern parts of the southern part, or the part of much studied southern part all the way to the maybe mid April, cherry blossoms are blooming.

And people just love seeing this cherry blossom, because as you can see, it's a pale pink, and the nature of the cherry blossoms point groom so gorgeous.

But once it's bloom, the strong wind rain, and just started falling down just as now.

And but yet, even after on the ground is so gorgeous.

So people loved them just around people around here also acquired that taste.

So that's how kinds of attraction around you know, allows me to say something about the community.

So that become a very important part of the spring activity of Japan house.

Tables and booths so gorgeously, but never stays don't just like our life, right?

So then when it's beautifully blooming, why not enjoy the ephemeral quality that people I think cherish.

You cannot, oh, I can't wait until next week.

No, it's gone.

So it's when it's really blooming, they want to enjoy, just like you know, to the fullest room so so they kind of a super impose our life into troubles.

But maybe, and then sprout, then we have all gone, but how beautifully they live your life just to like a cherry blossom.

It might be short, but enjoy as much as you can.

And if you missed out on seeing them this year, check out our website for a cool 360 tour of the cherry trees.

And the full interview we did with Professor Gunji.

It was my first time visiting and the trees there were absolutely breathtaking.

And now we're gonna go to the spring plant swap at common ground in Urbana are hundreds of eager gardeners came in search of all things green.

Take a look.

As you can see, we are out of the studio and at this year's annual cu plant people plant swap in Urbana.

And judging by the size of the crowd back there, things are going really well.

I've got my buddy Jen here.

And she brought some things to talk about here at the plant, swap some things you'll recognize and some new things.

So before we get into all that gin, introduce yourself, please and tell us where we can find you.

Sure, I'm Jen Nelson.

You can find me online Im a horticulturalist at grounded and growing.com.

You can also find me on campus, teaching Hort 105 vegetable garden.

I'm not going to be squirming in my chair the whole time because I want to get back there and see what's going on.

So what do you want to start?

Because you've got a lot of stuff.

We start with the mushroom?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So if you remember, Jen started these with her class in February, right?

Yeah, about the end of February, they were on a toilet paper roll.

And she's gonna walk you through the the sort of finished products and you guys have been harvesting and eating these.

Like it's a whole thing.

It's a thing.

It's developed quite a following.

So we started out in February, we put the the spawn on toilet paper rolls, and we let it grow kind of onto the toilet paper rolls for about three weeks.

And so post spring break, we took them out of the just regular classroom and put them in a cold room for a couple of days.

And then students started taking them home.

And so then you take them out of the cold room and expose them to air and regular temperatures and they're growing massively fast.

And these are called grade of oyster mushrooms.

These are just starting to get going.

They will get quite big and I know we have some pictures that you guys are going to put up to show some of the stuff that our students have been growing.

We had three different varieties.

So there's three different colors and slightly different shapes, but I've been so loving seeing what they're doing with them like I've seen some deep fried battered mushrooms made into tacos.

All sorts of sounds like a pasta dish.

Yeah.

Okay, yeah.

So I mean there's only Seeing all kinds of creativity here.

So these are supposed to be able to produce for a couple, three months.

Okay, I'm on the same roll on the same roll before it exhausted and you put it, you're supposed to put it back into the fridge for a couple of days to give it a rest and then bring it back out again.

Generally, we don't have the bag folded back like this, but you missed them a couple of times a day to keep them nice and humid.

You don't want them to dry out, and you just like grow really fast once they start showing up like that.

So these right here, this is the part you actually harvest.

Yeah, this not this not that part.

Yeah, not it's how big will these get?

I mean, good size.

I mean, the biggest one I, I harvested was probably like the size of my palm.

Okay.

So once you start to give them air and they start to grow, how long does it take to get to that size?

week or two?

Okay, yeah, it becomes kind of a trick to figure out exactly the right time to harvest them.

But once they stopped growing, definitely, if you notice the edges starting to get dry, it's time to get them harvest.

Wow.

So cool.

And we've already had people stopping by asking what their what's in there, there's been a lot of interest.

So awesome.

Awesome.

Okay, so you said you can harvest these or use these for a few months before they're exhausted.

Now, when you want to start a new batch, do you have to throw this roll out?

Or can you just add more is there's not gonna be any more, because it's digesting the paper?

Oh, God, so there's not going to be anything left to digest.

So they do suggest that you just throw this whole thing in your compost pile.

Got it.

So they will break down the whole roll of toilet paper.

Yeah.

Wow.

I'm curious when mine is done.

Just to cut into it and see why looks like why not?

Yes, yes.

Yeah, that's the scientist.

Right.

Awesome.

Very cool.

Okay.

Moving on to the next thing.

I'll let you choose.

Since I picked the mushrooms, what do you wanna talk about now?

Okay, I'll talk about this crazy contraption.

So I have heard a lot of things about the brand smart pot, and I've never actually bought one.

And I was out at our local thrift thrift store.

And I found one, it was a milk crate liner by smart pot that was never used.

And obviously someone had great gardening aspiration, like we all do.

And sometimes stuff just falls to the garage or whatever.

So it came to my garage, and I decided I'm going to try it.

I thought it was square like what's on the package, but it was a rectangle.

And I was like, Oh, I do have a rectangle crate and it will fit perfectly.

So it's a it's a thicker sort of felt liner, very similar to a reusable shopping bag, but it's going to be more durable.

But I've tried doing container gardens with reusable shopping bags and they break down after about a year this is supposed to be able to be reused to action and you do a lot of container gardening at home.

Yeah, I do.

When we visited in the past, I seem to have a good success rate.

I like doing it.

It's It's simple.

It's easy.

You can move stuff around.

We're doing something like this with the vegetable garden class.

We do this in the greenhouse with a little bit bigger containers.

But the idea that lots of people don't have the room to just fill up the back for me.

Yeah, lots of people have a balcony.

So we're going to do some different greens in here for early spring.

I was just going to ask what gardener is this for the space limited gardener?

The you know, definitely the space limited gardener?

The college gardener?

Yes.

You know, the time limited garden, the balcony garden?

Yeah, the frantically busy gardener all of the above.

Now will the roots permeate through this, you think I think they will I have some containers, those tomato containers that you've seen at my house before have a line are like this and the roots do get into it somewhat.

Once the plant dies off and I kind of rinse it off and then in the spring all those roots have dried out enough I can pull most of them out Gotcha.

But it's not there to worry about what's growing in here.

Right now.

We have a little bit of spinach planted but I don't have the whole thing planted we'll probably do that.

The rest of that today.

I was planning for spinach, lettuce and some radishes, radishes and carrots mixed together because like radishes will be done before the carrots and carrots take forever to to germinate so they do to get some instant feedback.

Well put some radishes that sprout in two days.

Excellent.

Just so you know things are going all right in there.

Okay, so you visited the tables back there and grabbed a restrained myself.

It's hard.

We are trying really hard not to go grab everything that's over there.

Right.

So tell us about this plant and why you picked it to talk about oh, this is a REX begonia and it caught my eye.

Rex begonias are typically grown not for their flowers.

There are begonias that are grown for their beautiful flowers but Rex begonias are planted for their foliage and they usually have interesting patterns or shapes and this one, it was labeled as cargo, which as these leaves mature, this sort of inner edge will grow and kind of curl around so it looks like a snail shell when the leaf is mature.

It looks really cool and I have been too cheap to buy one.

I'll be honest.

I wasn't really excited to see this on the swap table.

It's coming home with me.

Thank you see you plant person who put this on the tables, whoever brought that.

Thank you so much.

I did snag some Mexican sunflowers.

So I the first time I saw them was out at Diane Nolan's house.

Yeah.

And she had this huge patch of them.

And I just fell in love.

Those are so great.

And I really need to get mine going.

So that because are they annual?

Or do they receive the ones that I know are annual, but they kind of take a little bit to get going and mine were starting to look really fabulous.

And then it was like, oh, frost Sarah Oh, man.

Yeah, yeah, there's that.

Well, hopefully things are going to warm up, right.

Hopefully, we hope we hope you've heard rumors have it.

There's a huge box over there of Jade, succulents.

And there's actually there's a ton of succulents over there.

But I just grabbed a few of these petals.

Because I know you love succulents I do.

So if someone was to grab these and want to take these home, what is some good Jen advice to have a happy healthy start, there's two ways for Jade.

So one way would be like if this has some stem with any succulent, if it's a fresh cut like this, you want to let it dry out before you do anything with it because succulents have so much water in them that if it's a fresh cut, and that's an invitation for things like fungus and bacteria to invade and just rot rot it all away.

So let it callus over is the technical term.

So make sure that's dry, and then you could just stick that in a little bit of your cactus mix or succulent mix.

And you don't even necessarily have to do the little greenhouse with a ziploc you probably shouldn't wear the succulent because they you don't want them to be overly what.

You can do the same thing with a leaf.

Just make sure that that leaf cut and is dry like we did with the stem and just kind of put just barely put that end in the soil.

And a new plant will emerge right about there.

Right from that point.

So this the pedal, this won't survive.

This is the sacrificial lamb.

Yeah, that won't survive, but it'll provide some support because it's green and it can photosynthesize.

And roots will start to form and then a new plant will form but eventually this will wither away.

Yeah.

But j is one of the easiest ones.

Sometimes I find mine will lose a couple of leaves, like the kids knock into it or whatever.

And they'll start growing roots just laying Oh, yeah, they're not even on the floor.

Yes, exactly.

They are survivors.

And is this a fave?

I saw you guys do interesting.

I am such a sucker for plants that look unusual.

And it's a speckled lettuce.

There's, you know, there's red lettuce and there's green lettuce.

But this was like both it is pretty Oh, yeah.

And it's funny, we forget that a lot of the things that we plant for eating also have ornamental value.

So I could see that being in like a border.

Flowers or whatever, like mixing landscape, you don't have to have like a dedicated special darkening.

I love when people use kale.

Yeah, and I can't remember the name of it.

But the big, beautiful red ones that you see a lot of times in arrangements.

Yes.

Just like those are totally, they're gonna eat that, right?

Well, as we get to the point where it's time to start transplanting time to start, you know, really well if the weather cooperates.

What what, what tips do you have?

Do you do a lot of like soil amendments in your beds to get things ready?

Or do you just kind of clean them off and go for it, I kind of pay attention to how things have done the previous year.

And I tried to take pictures of what things looked like, at the end of last year to remind myself because this time of year, you go to things like this and you're like, Yeah, give me all the plans.

Yes.

And if you don't have a plan of where they're going to realistically fit, you can get into trouble which I've gotten to trouble we've all been there.

Yeah, I don't know.

As far as amendments go, I don't do soil testing every year but I use like my worm compost.

This will be the time of year that I emptied out and so when I'm planting annuals, I try to mix it in a little worm compost is kind of as you as I go, okay, yeah, definitely.

Like when I do my vegetable garden, I will like incorporate sometimes like granule, granular fertilizer or something like that, or whatever i i have around and readily available.

And then one more question I had is how important is it to rotate in beds or in your garden or wherever?

Is that something that we really should be paying attention to?

Yeah, and why?

Oh, definitely should be paying attention to for a few reasons.

One being diseases there's certain diseases that can build up in soil and it reinfect the plant that plant the next year like tomato There's a number of fungal diseases on the leaves that get onto the plant in the first place by its splashing up from the soil.

So rotating and having something not in the tomato family in that spot the following year can help fix it doesn't necessarily eliminate it, but it can help.

And some crops will be really particularly draining on on like one nutrient like say corn uses up a lot of nitrogen.

So that's why we see corn and soybeans alternated in the fields around here.

So the soybeans will replenish the nitrogen that so things like that.

So not only for disease, but just overall overall soil health soil health.

Excellent.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm ready to go peruse.

Okay, see what's going on back there.

So let's go see what's going on back at the plant swab.

Oh man, this is a yes for me.

Mexican sunflowers.

Are you kidding?

These are the ones that Diane had at her house and they were incredible.

Alright, so we are out perusing the tables at the plant swap and we are stopping here now to talk to Jess from Planify you're gonna get the plants.

You gotta get the stuff right that goes with it.

So tell us a little bit about what you've got here today.

Um, one thing we're emphasizing today is a lot of our locally made items.

We have a lot of macro may here that a local girl makes for us.

Her name is Macy.

She's also doing a workshop sometime in May, I believe, Oh, to teach others yet to teach others how to kind of do what she makes for us here to sell locally.

Yep.

Also, another item is these strong Haven planters.

A local gentleman makes them they're like fiber cement material.

Very cool.

But yeah, they even have a little stamp locally made Champaign, Illinois.

So yeah, we have a couple items here.

It's just kind of a random variety of some items that we have.

But yeah, just do you guys get out often and get to do events like this.

We try?

Yeah, whatever we can kind of get ourselves involved in.

We like to do that just kind of engage with the community, just because we're all plant lovers ourselves who work there.

So yeah, we just kind of like to meet the people that we tend to engage with online with the CU plant people group even.

But yeah, we're just happy to be here and meeting new people especially.

Is this your first time coming to the CU plant swap?

Oh, no.

I went to the first one that we did in February 2020. in Urbana, yeah, whatever.

Yeah, we've done a few since.

So yeah, we did the one in Urbana.

We did a couple at sola gratia, I was there for those.

I'm actually an admin of the CU plant people group as well with Lauren.

So we kind of have been a part of a couple of those events in the past.

But yeah, we get to partner with the common ground this time.

So we're, we're excited to be here.

Like I said with them and just kind of emerged the best of both worlds have planted by common ground and the seed swap and the group sounds right.

When you get the plants.

You gotta have the stuff.

Get all together beautifully.

We got it.

All right, awesome.

Thank you This says, Sky racer ornamental grass.

Oh, okay.

Because my Asian irises crop up the same looking just Yeah.

And they look exactly the same ornamental grasses and we finally were able to catch up with the busiest woman, the busiest plant lady here and see you.

Lauren Quinn is here.

You recognize her from being a panelist on our show, being a guest on our show, but she's also this is her brainchild, these plants Wapsi you plant people?

This is this is her baby.

Right.

So let's talk a little bit about that the history, just brief history and kind of where we are today.

Yeah, so in early 2020, right before the pandemic, I got a wild hair and thought it would be great to kind of share my love of plants, my burgeoning love of indoor house plants with the community and to see if there's anybody else out there who might want to trade plants with me.

So I put up fliers around town and made a Facebook event and invited people out to the Urbana free library basement and we had our first plant swap and it was a big success.

And then after that, we brought the group online on on our Facebook page.

And it's been it's become rolling Don't buy the shirt.

Your passion your you don't have your mind and I don't feel like I needed it.

You're right.

You're right.

You're right.

You're right.

So we I, we've only missed.

We've been in almost every plants while we missed one.

But the number of people that are showing up to these and bringing things to tray Yeah, I mean, would you say it's exponential growth?

I think so.

Yeah, we I can never really estimate the number of people that come because I'm just not good at that sort of thing.

But yeah, I'd say it was very big today, we had a lot of turnout.

And of course, collaborating for the first time with the food Co Op here in town, and classify and kind of bringing all these entities together was really helpful because then we were able to pull from their audiences as well.

So and then being here in the, in the, what do you call this place?

Lincoln Square Mall.

People are just walking through from Marquette and stuff like that.

So there's just a lot of extra foot traffic and start getting some organic people, new people, the regulars Yeah, today just seems like a really big success.

Definitely anything so far that stood out as far as like, plants or things that people brought has anything caught your eye today?

Well, I'm always about the Hoyas as you know, but I didn't.

I didn't actually bring any home.

I brought a couple.

But I traded those out.

I ended up with a very gated African Violet, which I was sort of interested in getting and then a lipstick plants.

The Mona Lisa lipstick plant.

Someone brought that for me specifically.

And I traded her back who is so I'm about to complete my lipstick plant collection.

I think now.

So very excited.

Awesome.

So what's what's in the future?

For see you plant people?

What are you thinking?

Ahead?

We'll probably do another swap in the fall or early fall, late summer.

And yeah, we'll just keep it going online.

So for people who are not familiar with the group, so you plant people, you're on Facebook, right?

And that's, you can just search that.

And Lauren again, she's one of the administrators there.

Yep.

And then for folks who are watching this and haven't been able to come to a swap, if they're preparing or thinking about coming to the one in the fall, what tips do you have for them?

Well, we want to bring, of course healthy plants that are, you know, doing well, or cuttings are perfectly welcome as well.

Something that's not pest, full of pests or diseases or things like that.

Just bring your labelled plants that you want to three, four, and we welcome sort of the common stuff, your posts, your spider plants, but also kind of more interesting, rare things as well that are like treasures that people can really get excited about.

And I've seen trout, I see hoses I've seen people are reading stuff now too, which is great, right?

Because if you get the plants you need the tools to go with it.

So I've been trays and feed liners kinds of stuff.

Absolutely.

Excellent.

Any what feedback have you gotten from folks today?

Oh, just really happy to be among other plant people.

And especially it's since we're all really active in the group, but then to see everybody in person is always really nice.

Yeah.

Even with a mass.

Mass.

Yeah, yes.

All right.

Well, well, I know you're busy and you got a lot to do.

So thank you for stopping in.

And we're going to peruse the tables as your age and find great thank you.

Right, so tell us what brought you out today.

I just like recently, in the last couple months found an interest in plants.

And I have a friend who's with me today who's got me interested in finance as well.

So yeah, I just wanted to see what it was all about and find something.

Awesome.

So this is your first time attending one of their plant swaps.

How'd you hear about it?

Are you a member of the group?

Yeah, I'll see you plant people on Facebook.

I found out about it.

So I thought it'd be fun to see what's in there.

What goodies Do you have?

I picked up a jade Nice.

Yeah.

Can't go wrong with that.

Yeah.

Some golden caucus cuttings, which I'm planning on propagating?

Nice.

Another plant I'm not sure exactly what it is, but it looks sort of like a JD family.

Yeah, I'm not an expert.

I'm just the host.

So you got some good stuff in there.

Are you going back for anything else?

Or is this is this your home?

Might look round some more.

But yeah, we'll see.

So what do you think about events like this where people can come together?

And it's you know, it's it's doesn't cost you anything, and you can sort of feed that plant addiction?

Yeah, I think it's really cool that it's giving people the opportunity to get new plants.

Maybe they don't have enough money or something, but they can trade with other people and find new things.

Yes, yeah.

interact with other people too.

And I also find it fascinating that you're 14 and you're here on a Saturday morning getting plants with old ladies like me.

Plants have now transcended the age right it's for everybody everybody's in the plant so what got you what was your first plant that got you sort of started?

I got a marble Queen Patos from I believe plant mode and his name is Arthur so he's doing really well.

Yeah well good luck with your new plants and so glad you came out and they're going to do another one in the fall so make sure you watch out for that.

Alright thanks for stopping by says my my find of the day well that will do it for us here at the spring 2020 To see you plant people plant swap Say that three times fast.

Thanks to Jim for coming out and hanging out with us today and all the folks that we got to chat with here at the swamp.

As you can see, there's still so much going on behind us lots of plants folks to take home.

If you have any questions for our plant experts, drop us a line at yourgarden@gmail.com or you can search for us on Facebook.

Just look for Mid American gardener and we will see you next time.

Thanks so much for watching.

Good night.