Hey, so I'm with Chuck out at Friends Plaza, and we are taking in this lovely weather, and he brought a ton of stuff to talk about.

We've got a pretty packed agenda for this meeting, and we're also going to talk about fall planting schedules, because you're our planting guru.

I guess I have become that we still get requests for Chuck's planting guide.

So back by popular demand.

So let's get started.

What?

Let's talk about some of the stuff you brought.

Okay, well, we're right about at the end of the best planning time for things like rutabagas and Gill feather turnip, which I've brought in in the past.

I had a picture earlier of the last year's Gill feathers blooming nice yellow blossoms.

Was maybe a 12 foot section of row, but because of the snow cover and the, you know, briefness of our actual cold weather, they all came through.

It was like I had picked out everything that had any size to it, you know, and looked edible.

These are just a little scrawny rejects, but, but they grew up, they flowered.

And because I'm a a glutton for punishment, I harvested them all.

Oh my gosh.

And that's a lot.

This is, this is the result.

I could plant a considerable more than I can, more than I can stand to work up and keep weeded.

I could plant till for the turnips.

But these are for you.

Thank you very and you need to go home and get those in right away, immediately.

And because we're getting late, you're gonna have to be extra ruthless with them, okay, and make sure that they're about three inches apart when they come up, okay, thin out those other ones, because otherwise you'll have what I had last year, a bunch of scrawny little scrubs.

Okay, noted, I will clear my evening.

But if you keep them, keep them well watered, which so far this season hasn't seemed to be a huge problem.

Keep the cabbage pests off of them, because they are in the cabbage family.

So you know, European cabbage worm, cabbage looper and Diamondback moth are the three.

So Bacillus thuringiensis still works pretty well on those which is a biological so not, you know, not like a big chemical problem.

So if you can keep them growing fast and keep the foliage on them and not eaten, you should still be able to, although we're right at the end of when, all right, when, when?

That's possible.

Get these in the ground.

What other things do you plant in the fall?

Or can you plant in the fall?

You can plant any number of the cool season crops.

Most of them actually do better in the fall.

Interesting.

I don't mean to interrupt, but I have a question, okay, how do they do better in the fall with waning sunlight?

They do better in the fall because usually the moisture gets better, the temperature gets a little cooler, okay, more temperature and a lot of the cabbage family things, for instance, are, are Biennial, natively, but they don't make it through our winters.

So they're not but they're storing up all that energy in the fall so that they can then bloom and produce as much seed as possible.

And so just conditions are such that that that that works better.

We're a little late if you're going to start from seed, if you can find some sort of a plant purveyor that that has enough caught that start some of those things, you could probably still plant out any of the cabbages, but you'd have to start with plants at this point, because it's way too late for seeds.

The one that that I'll take that back for is kohlrabi.

Okay?

Because they come pretty fast.

So you could, you could direct seed kohlrabi today, and there's no comparison between a spring, Koh Rabb in a fall.

You've said that on a couple different they're sweeter, they're more tender.

They hold much better in the garden.

You can get one in the fall, it's pushing four inches across, and it's still pretty tender, where in the spring, when they get that big, they're starting to get that tough outer coating.

What about peas or lettuce?

Lettuce?

Yes, it probably takes about two months in the fall for lettuce to come from seed, certainly things like radishes, I think you could still get by with the winter radishes that we've had fun with before, the watermelon and some of those others, peas, other people have told me they have success with peas in the fall.

I haven't had so much I've been trying to grow shell peas.

When I tried it, you might be better off with with one of the pod type, these snaps, or the or the or the sugar pieces, the Chinese peas.

So still plenty of things that you can be growing late summer.

Yeah, and I think I've talked about dill, if you plant dill in late summer, it doesn't, it doesn't get the day length Q to flower, so you just get these plumes of foliage.

So if so, if you really want dill weed, as opposed to dill seed, fall is the time to grow it, because it just gets lush interesting.

The flavor profiles being different in the different seasons is much, much, much milder with with the foliage than with with the seeds.

The seeds are pretty, pretty, pretty pungent.

All right, what else Lunaria has, has very pretty you want me to hold it while you talk?

Sure, has naturalized at the farm.

It's in the cabbage family.

So it has little flowers with four petals.

And then it gets these.

It's called Money plants sometimes, because these look sort of like coins.

I don't know.

Everybody here looks young enough that they probably don't remember half dollars and silver dollars, but all of us Grandpas do, and yeah.

And the thing that happens is that the outer coating of these lets loose, and you're left with this translucent inner part, and then these seeds fall and and they reseed each other.

Is this fairly easy to grow and maintain for the at home gardener, once you have it, it tends, yeah, once you have it, it tends to reseed itself, I think, but I'm not 100% sure that it will act like a winter annual, like if it falls to the ground right now and get started, it might get enough growth so that it would flower next year.

If not, it will, it will have a vegetative session next year, then the following year.

Some of these are up, like four feet and, well, branched.

And you know, if you wanted to use that in a dried arrangement, you could just take off the side shoots and do they propagate?

Well, can you share these with friends?

Well, you that's what I'm doing, yeah, giving you the seeds well beyond, not beyond the seeds, it starts.

Is this an easy one to divide and share?

Or no, um, I don't think I've ever seen in the wild, because it's in the because it's in the cabbage family, you might be able to dig up the if you can recognize the seedlings and dig them up when they're small, gotcha, and then either pot them up or get a plant in somewhere.

So if you've got this established look around the base, and maybe you'll have some little ones to Yes, because it's probably yet been at the farm for 50 years, and it just shows up, you know, you, you know, you don't tell it you're going to be there, but it shows up here and there and here, and hasn't gotten, you know, like, oh, the garlic mustard that.

That's, that's the bane of the of the understory in the forest.

You know, it just kind of does itself nicely.

Also, dame's rocket blooms at a similar time, also in the cabbage family.

And that has also, I did not know these were the naturalized there.

That one, I think, can be a little bit more of a of a invasion problem, but it hasn't been, you know, overly aggressive at the farm.

So I don't know this one, I don't believe has as a fragrance that I've ever noticed.

The dame's rocket does have kind of a sweet, spicy, kind of a kind of an aroma to it.

But these are definitely fun to look at.

They are very nice.

All right, what's next?

Well, because they're getting ready to come up, we've got the miracle lilies that we've talked about before.

Lycarus, squamidgera and I dug these Tuesday a couple of days ago, and nothing was showing but this is the season right, right around the first of August, is when they they come up.

And I remember that because the first time I was introduced to them, it was, it was during the Kankakee County Fair, which is always like the first week in August.

So that was your high sign that the fair is nigh, yeah.

And I think maybe even my mother got the first belt.

She got.

She was a superintendent in the in the art department up there and and she got these.

So I've got a bag of them for you again, because a little bird told me that when you moved, you didn't, you didn't dig them up make.

You.

So these need to get in again, okay, get your bulb planter, because these make this long shaft up toward the surface.

You'd probably be all right, if you just get the base down about six inches, and then that gets this up to not that far below the surface, okay?

And for people who may not be familiar with these, explain kind of the draw and well, okay, they come up in the spring and look like Daffodil foliage on steroids.

It gets two or three times as high and wide.

It actually shades out a portion of the ground around it.

It's just so dense and intense.

And then about when daffodils are dying back, they die back.

And then as you get toward the last days of July, early August, the flowers come up naked.

Sometimes they're called naked ladies.

Oh yeah, no leaves, no leaves, just just, just the flower stems.

We've had them on the show before.

At the farm, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of flower stems.

Now, do you cut these back, or do you just kind of let them do their own thing when they're I just let them go, let them go.

Okay?

And you don't have to dig these up either, right?

They can stay in the ground.

They certainly can these.

These have been there for more than 30 years, as I was telling you before we started taping, it started out in a single row that was with space between them.

Now the row is at least a foot wide as as they divided and push themselves out further and further.

So I have to be really careful when I dig them to stay far enough back.

But if I wanted to plant 10s of 1000s of these, I think I would, I could be there in a hurry.

And do they make those little bulblets that you can pop off, or how do you or do they drop seeds?

They just, they just do offsets.

Oh, gotcha.

Okay, okay, yeah, awesome.

I have never noticed that mine makes seeds.

Diane Nolan told me that that hers did reseed themselves, but I have never seen anything that looked resembled a seed pod after they flower.

Pretty quickly, the flower stalks fall over, and not long after that, they dry out.

But they sure are pretty, and they put on a lovely show, shades of pink.

And I don't know if there may be some color variations that are available commercially.

Garlic, yes, I dug up my onions and garlic.

Everyone knows that Chuck is the garlic guy.

Well, people know.

Everyone know different things about me that way.

But this is, this is the the music garlic that we talked about, and I gave you a start of, has large cloves, not too many.

I haven't trimmed one and weighed it to see if it if it made the four ounce barrier, but that's a pretty, pretty nice, pretty nice garlic bulb.

These have been out of the ground three plus weeks now.

They still had three green leaves when I dug them so that that means that the papery coatings down here on the bulb should be fairly intact.

And then once we get dried to that stage, I would come in.

So once everything up top is dried down, that's when you make the cut.

Yeah, it's about a four week process, usually where you want to leave the roots on, because that helps to wick moisture away from the bulb as it's curing.

And then you come in and just and how much longer does this one have to cure before it's ready for pasta?

I think you could probably risk it now, but it usually take.

We just save about four weeks for it, and then I leave the dirt on it while it's while it's curing, and then just kind of cautiously rub the dirt off.

You can pretty, pretty quickly get a looks just like a pretty attractive one looks better than the store.

This is a similar variety, and it seems like no matter how many times you go over and try to cut off the top sets, one or two escape.

And so this is one of the escapes this year.

And it's not a true comparison, but you can see that when all that energy goes into the top sets, there's a big difference in the bow.

This is, this is actually Georgian crystal, which is another porcelain type, but has never gets quite as big as that.

But you can expect, depending on variety, 25 to maybe as much as 35% less in the main bulb, if you let it grow up there you leave that.

The porcelains have the tiniest little bubbles that you've ever seen.

Sometimes they're like little grains of rice.

So to grow new you can plant these and grow them.

But with the porcelains, it, uh.

Yeah, it takes a couple of years to get them up to any size.

Okay, what phase do you take this off?

When it, when it, when it first, when they first show, and hopefully before they do too much curling.

These probably were a little late, because you can still sort of see where, where it curls, and it with different types of garlic.

It, you know, it could be 270 degrees.

It can be a couple of rounds and then, and then, usually it will go ahead and straighten itself out.

Ultimately, very nice.

Like the rock and bowl types have bigger bubbles.

And sometimes those get to be three eighths, almost half an inch in diameter, you can plant those and actually get a bulb that divides into cloves the first year.

It would take at least two years with these to get that, get that accomplished.

And we all know I don't have that kind of patience, but the asparagus is in and the little fuzzy babies are up, and I just keep looking at them and saying, all right, I'll see you in 26 keep them weed free and fertilized and happy.

Water them if it happens to get dry.

And you'll be amazed at how, how much stronger they come next year, and then the following year, you'll be hard pressed to keep yourself from Yes, I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, all right, I was curious about this one because I don't I didn't recognize it.

Yes, it's a native wildflower called Solomon seal and seal, and it's in the lily family.

So it gets this kind of arching stems, usually multiples from a from a clump, and then it flowers at the top nodes, several of them.

And then it gets these little, little fruits, which are just turning color now, so that I think they're almost almost mature and ready to go.

Oh, they won't turn red.

They'll stay green.

They won't turn red, if they may turn like bluish black.

Ah, gotcha.

Now, where is this planted at?

On the is this at your house, or is this at the farm?

It's planted itself all over at the farm.

Since it, you know, more and more of it has grown up.

It has it has come in and planted itself.

There's a, there's a similar looking plant called false Solomon seal, which has the same arching habit, the same look of leaves with the monocot parallel veins.

But all its flowers, it has a terminal in fluorescence.

So all of its all of its floral business happens at the end of the of the stem.

So they're pretty easy to distinguish.

When I look this up, it, it lists it as as multiple species.

So there, there must be lots of types of different areas of the country and whatnot.

Does this patch kind of take care of itself, or is it aggressive or just behaving.

How would you they show up in different places where I have spring bulbs, there's an area with crocus and snow crocus and canadaxes and scylla's, and I don't mow that until those have started to die down snowdrops as well.

And they've kind of come in there.

And even though they get mowed down, then, there seems to be more of them all the time.

And if you happen to get next to like a young apple tree or something where you're watering it, whatever, they come over and say, water me too, you know.

So again, it's certainly not not invasive, and it is native, maybe not totally native, to the prairie where the farm is located, but now that that's turned into more of a savanna, I think that the biosphere there is different.

I can still, I can smell this.

Well, did we go through everything?

Did we go through all of the show and tell items?

I think pretty much that was really fast.

So what, what are you going to do with all these?

Because you're, well, you're a seed saver, and you work with.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Is it?

Seed saver?

Yes.

Okay, yeah.

I've been involved with seed savers exchange since the early 1980s I read about them in one of the gardening magazines, and got hooked up with them somehow and and started going to their summer camp out conventions.

I stayed in a motel.

I'm not really camping out friendly, but nature, but not that much.

Yeah, there are some decent motels in Decorah, Iowa, and which is where their home base is located.

And started out we were at like a.

4h camp.

But then Kent Whaley, who started it with his wife, was awarded a MacArthur grant, and so they bought a farm in northeast Iowa, Decorah, and that has since, through donations, whenever has expanded, and they have it's a beautiful place.

It's in the unglaciated part of Northeastern Iowa.

They actually have ice caves there, where, supposedly they haven't thawed since the since the Ice Age.

And you get cool drafts out of there, and you get plant material that has retreated like up to Hudson's Bay, naturally, but still can, still can exist by these ice caves, because this cold air comes out of them.

But anyway, seed savers, it was actually Kent Willie's wife's grandfather gave them starts of three things, a morning glory, a bean, and I forget what else.

And then shortly thereafter, died.

And so it it dawned on them that if they were to keep this family heirloom going, they had to keep it going.

And then suddenly they started thinking about, you know, are there other like minded people with with similar types of things?

They had little exchange going.

I think they were in northern Missouri at that point.

And then it kind of the idea really hit, because at that point, all the major seed companies had gone mainly to hybrids, and we're mainly getting rid of anything that didn't sell.

And you send seeds to this group every year out of your garden.

I have offered seeds in the past.

It's gotten a little more complicated because it's so expensive to send even a padded envelope.

Now, you know, back in the day, you just, you just put an extra stamp on a padded envelope, and it went like mail today.

They turned into a package.

Yes, I just did that.

And that was, that was kind of a rude awakening, but I, you know, I'm certainly willing to share these.

The Gill feather, turnip I just found out today is the state vegetable of Vermont well.

And there was a time when I called this Vermont heirloom, because there was a story going around up somebody was trying to register as a trademark the name Gill feather Turner.

And I thought that was unfair for an heirloom that had been around for 200 years or whatever, and but it seems to be everywhere as Gill feather now, and nobody seems to be too excited about it, but it really is a prolific seed here.

All right, Chuck, well, thank you so much for bringing in your bucket of surprises today.

And yeah, it's always a fun time when you stop by.

So thank you.

Okay, you're welcome, and that is the show.

If you've got questions, send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com and we'll get them answered on an upcoming Show.

Thanks for watching, and Have a Good Night.

You.