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 today are two of our panelists, you'll definitely recognize from past shows here to show you some things from their yard and give you some ideas about what you can do in your backyard.

So before we get into the things that they brought to talk about, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about them.

So Jim, we'll start with you.

I'm an entomologist, retired entomologist with the Illinois natural history survey here at the University of Illinois.

So I deal with the insects and mites attacking trees, shrubs and flowers.

Excellent.

All right, okay.

I'm a Champaign County Master Gardener.

And I volunteer out at Allergan, particularly in their herb garden, because that's my area of expertise.

All right, herbs and heirlooms.

Okay, so Jim, you sent in some really awesome pictures of something that you've got at your place.

And I'd love to just have you kind of walk us through that?

Well, you know, one of my hobbies is water gardening.

And people don't realize, but there's above the ground water gardens and in the ground water guards.

So I'd like to show the folks here some above the ground gardens, this one that we're first see is a photograph of a this was taken in the wintertime.

So it's not exactly a beautiful picture of a water garden.

But on the other hand, you can see how it was constructed, it was just like building a log cabin with one with planks.

And in the leaflet I've gotten I describe how that is constructed.

So if people have to want to have more information about water gardening, they could go to that leaflet.

Okay, we'll post that on our website.

And you can find that a little bit later after the show.

Okay, and then the next one is a another water garden, this is above the ground, you can see how that is made, that's a preformed container that they placed and then they put a garden you know, these payment box around it.

And all this was taken in the wintertime was you know, that was really very attractive when the plants are all growing.

And then this is my I have to go water gardens this is the top one is the one that actually that was a cattle water container.

He had a cattle or they so firemen fleet sold that and then just put that on the ground.

I put decorative stones around it and you know, very attractive and very simple to do.

So that's very easy to do.

This one's my favorite.

And this is the one that I had.

I was very fortunate because I have a hill.

And so the contractor put the waterfalls into the hill and then dug had big equipment like a backhoe and dug the hole for the the water you know where it's for the water.

And and then that's got a liner, of course and then you put the liner down and then put the rocks are on and that worked out really well.

Yes, that's gorgeous.

I bet it's really calming to sit next to Oh, it's beautiful.

So this was taken in the summertime when everything was starting to grow.

Now some of the plants that you have, these are hearty water lilies.

In other words, these are lilies that will do well.

You don't have to take them in or anything.

You just let them in the pond all year long.

And this one here is called James Bryden.

And it's just a beautiful Willie that has great big blooms.

The next one is called Chroma tele.

It's a nice small yellow Lily.

And then the next one is Charlene Strong, which is an ice cream colored one.

And then the next one is called a verge analysis, which is a white and that bloom on the left.

You can see that little damselfly Yeah, and damsel flies are exceedingly good mosquito hunters.

Those are dragonflies are both excellent mosquito hunters.

And then the last one is really my favorite.

This is another hearty watercolor that's called Colorado just like the state of Colorado produces a large number of blooms and it's just absolutely beautiful.

Yes.

And then the next one, this was called Panama Pacific.

This is a hot this is a tropical Lily.

So you have to take those in.

Or if you have a greenhouse you can put them in the greenhouse.

I put my note started with a tub near the window in the overwinter that but this is a very nice one and then the last one is a night bloomer.

You don't think about night bloomers, but this is a tropical and people say well why would you want to let Lily at night?

Yeah, but you know when you're in or chaining the with the with the night bloomer they started opening up about four in the afternoon and they will put and then when the guests arrive for dinner at seven or so they're in beautiful blooming with words the others the other hardly listen all closed up.

Very nice that well I have about anyways I have fun hobby and that right up or give me more details about so a question I have is are they I can You can see the stems here.

Are they in pots just sat down into the water?

Yes, there's in pots in the water right now.

And you just leave them there all summer and then fish them out well with their topicals you do?

Yeah.

But the others you just slug in the water?

Just leave them in there.

Do you ever have to report them?

We I do and that was in the write up?

You really need to report them out every two years for sure.

Okay.

If you don't get overcrowded and they don't bloom as much, very nice.

Those are gorgeous.

Jim, thank you so much for sharing those photos.

Appreciate that.

Okay, okay, we're going to you okay, with another lovely, something, I'm going to start with this.

This is a flower from my Hardy hibiscus plant.

And it's actually one of my very favorite plants that I have.

It's quite old, it's probably had 20 or 25 years.

And it's interesting plant because in the winter, everything completely dries back.

And even the end, the stems get Woody and hollow.

And you can just pull them right out of the ground.

And then in spring, I wait.

And I wait and wait and nothing happens.

And every year, you think I'd learned this by now, I think that I've lost, but eventually little green sprouts will start coming out.

And once that happens, they grow like crazy.

And mine the plant I have is probably four or five feet tall and as wide.

And this year, it's really blooming like crazy.

It's just absolutely loaded.

And there's still it's been blooming for three or four weeks and they're still buds.

It's full of buds.

Wow.

So it's really support.

Is it trellis Oh, there's the stocks are quite sturdy.

And it's no maintenance.

I don't water.

Anything.

Totally no maintenance would be you know, something you really had to take care of and do a lot but it's not as far as pruning or dividing.

Do you have to do anything to this?

Nothing at all.

Just forget it.

Oh, we love that.

Yeah, that's great.

Okay.

And the flower that blooms are just Yes, they also come in the white is calm and and also a maroon color that I had liked.

Absolutely gorgeous.

It is gorgeous.

And I also have seen people making hibiscus T shirts.

So I want to try figure out how to steep the the petals.

That was part of it you would use to know well, we'll have to Google it.

Yeah, there you go.

Okay, all right, Jim, we are back to you.

Well, I Brian, branch here have a Bush called button Bush.

And this is a native to the Midwest does very well.

And it has these beautiful blooms on them.

And they're very attractive to butterflies.

Butterflies absolutely like these blooms.

And the foliage is nice.

It's got this nice green foliage.

And it's Japanese beetle resistance.

So that's another thing going for it.

And I have about three of them on my property.

And the the they get about maybe the one is probably about 10 feet in height.

So they do get pretty tall.

But this is an absolutely beautiful plant.

And you can purchase these at different nurseries if you want to find out source you just go to Google and put in buttonbush buttonbush.

Yeah.

Now if you were going to seed save, I'm imagining this is what you keep in those tiny little Yeah, well these will this is what it looks like.

The seeds are inside this.

Inside the green part.

Oh, okay.

This was inside there.

They're inside here.

But it's it dries up.

You could start from seed I think.

I love the foliage.

I like nice, dark.

Pretty good.

Pretty butterflies llama.

Excellent.

Okay, okay.

Well, back to you.

Okay, well, I brought some herbs because this is time to no pun intended.

I was gonna say it's time to harvest your herbs.

And this is Sage.

And there's a couple of ways to preserve them after you dry them and how you dry them.

The same age as and this is some basil are pretty hardy.

And so I just put them in, I cut the leaves off the stem and put them in a layer like a cookie sheet or something and put it in a warm spot and leave it there until the leaves dry.

And when you cut them if you cut at a node like this, then the side shoots will grow out.

And so you'll get a bush your plant Oh.

And this is Basil basil, the same thing.

I also just dry that and warm here.

And one of my other favorite plant herbs that I use a lot is parsley, it's kind of droopy right now.

But this is what they call flat leaf parsley, and that's the one I use to cook with other.

The other variety is called curly parsley.

And this you actually dry it in the refrigerator.

So I cut the leaves off and put them in a pie pan and just settlement in the refrigerator.

Just a drive because if you dry on them and heat, they just get mushy and and yellow and they lose their flavor.

Okay, so and there's a couple other herbs also the cane.

Do you have any caterpillars feeding on your parsley?

Not yet.

Not yet, though.

They haven't they really haven't bloomed yet.

black swallowtail loves parsley.

Yeah.

That's a beautiful panel.

Now, you know, I don't see I don't see.

Well, we see some butterflies.

I see monarchs quite often a lot.

I haven't seen the swallowtails the black swans, particularly they love parsley.

Well, you know the caterpillar stage.

Now how long after they're dried?

How long do Can you keep herbs?

Well, it depends.

Again, it's the parsley, I, once it's dry, I crumble it up and put it in, you know, like the parmesan cheese like a shaker.

And I keep that in the refrigerator.

It keeps much better in the refrigerator than it does out in the air.

The basil and sage and tough ones like that.

I just keep them in jars in the basement.

We have a basement.

Yes, he's told us before.

Don't put your herbs in the cabinet next to everyone at home was probably like that that's true, because it just takes labor, right?

Yes.

So these days, what I do is I have small jars that I do put in the cabinet.

So they're handy to grab.

Yeah, and I and I'm constantly refilling them I don't put a lot in time.

So if they're there for a short, you know, just a couple of weeks or even a month they're okay.

Okay, got it.

So you don't want to it really takes the flavor out of them quickly.

Gotcha.

Okay, now we're going to talk about some harm house and yeah, this, this is a red button, red bud plant or a bush or tree it's a small tree is really sensitive to herbicide injury.

And right here, this little leaf here shows herbicide injury, when it gets it.

It curls up the leaf NetServer, yellowish green, the very leathery late like, and you know, it's very common to see that red bud.

Another indicator plant is a grape grape is very sensitive to herbicide injury.

And again, you can see how startled whether like and curled up in sort of yellowish green.

And tomatoes are also very sensitive.

So the same curves on tomatoes, leaves curl and turns out several out greenish color, like drainage color.

So if somebody in the neighborhood area was using herbicides, and some years it's much worse than others this year, really not that bad.

In terms of travel, how far can that?

You know, I don't really know I'm sure can travel quite a distance.

And unfortunately, you know, when you use herbicides today, you know, air currents or if they will have a strong wind, it can roll around everywhere.

Serious problem interesting.

We've had crop dusters a lot less and that always makes me nervous because you're just waiting.

So far, we haven't had a problem but yeah, wow.

Okay, I'm dying to talk about this leaf here because I think that's so fascinating.

Well, you know, this is a sycamore leaf.

And this is damaged by a Japanese beetle.

And one friend of mine was She did she put it in between the books to get it real flat.

And then she sprayed it with a gold spray and framed it and actually it's really pretty is a you know, yeah.

Even though the Japanese beetle did a lot of damage when you consider, you know, if you spray it with a gold plate and put it in a frame or throw their tracking I agree.

They did major or was that just one way throw the whole tree or?

Well, there are several leaves on the sycamore, small tree and they really did a good job on it.

About how much longer do you think will we be seeing Japanese?

Probably about they generally fade away in in late July or?

Well, yeah, this is about late July has been another two weeks.

I would give a couple more weeks, folks just battled through it for a couple more weeks.

And then we'll we'll be in the clear.

And then you brought one more.

We've got time to talk about that too.

Well this is called a purple bellflower.

This is a native to the Midwest, it's really attractive.

It's called a weed.

But you know, when you consider it's pretty weeds.

I have some of that in my priority garden.

Yeah, I think it's very pretty and very common.

Oh, did you say that one was native as well?

Is that this is an ad.

Yes.

It's called bellflower.

And will that bloom all throughout the summer?

Well, no.

Blooms for about a month.

Okay.

You got some little blooms here.

There were a bunch here to the right of bloom, but and they get told maybe there's some of them or maybe about oh, maybe six or seven feet in in height.

Very nice.

How How are things looking at both of your homes?

How are your gardens looking and faring?

I know it's been wacky weather wise is super dry and and we got some rain.

So how is your garden looking?

Well, it's it's struggling with that now it did like you said it.

After we got the rain.

It really took off.

But like this spring crops, the lettuce and spinach and stuff like that just was non existent this year.

However, the squash, cucumbers hadn't really gone crazy.

My beans are doing great.

And I you know, I picked up a lot and I still got plenty more to pick for about tomatoes.

The tomatoes are doing well.

But I had soaker hoses on the tomatoes and the beans.

And that was the only way I could keep them alive.

I'm reading them again.

I thought I was done with him for a while.

But that's not the steel producing steel producing.

Jim, what about you flowers?

Or?

Well as the animal asked me, we're in the same boat as me and I don't have a garden anymore.

I mean, I used to give up the deer, the deer and the raccoons and the squirrels.

They got it all yes.

You know they should share.

They should.

I don't mind sharing, but they don't really they take everything I've wanted to taste a May Apple for forever.

Can't get one.

They try to get all of the ground cherries.

But I had to put them up on the deck so that they can't reach them.

I mean, they mowed down the lilies down to just we've been we've been in our house over 40 years.

And this is the first year we've had raccoons show up.

No.

And there's a lot to eat at your place.

Yeah, but I was told they like really like mulberries and the mulberry tree was, you know, fruiting time.

They definitely do like, yeah, so and they've left now.

So I guess we'll probably be back.

I hope, some seasonal gifts because they got into our Oriole feeders.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

Okay, well, thank you guys for all of the great things you brought in and the discussion we had.

So as you know, we take the show on the road sometimes.

And we've met some really, really neat people along the way.

We met Tony Becker.

He's no exception to that.

We met Tony Becker at a plant swap way, way, way at the beginning of this year.

And he had an incredible story.

And so we followed him all throughout the garden season.

And he's just overcome so many things, so many obstacles and so tailor DJ and I would like to share his story with you take a look.

But I didn't talk yet I wasn't even talking yet.

One of my my my mom's parents, Eileen, she bent down and she showed me this flower and she goes flower and I said flower back.

That was my very first word.

Everyone was like, wow, you said it.

And and then my very first word is not mama or papa opere anything easy was flower.

Tony Becker has always been fascinated with planting things.

My parents always had a garden, as far as I can remember.

I guess I watched because it was about six or seven.

And I guess I watched him plant.

I went into the freezer, and I grabbed me a bunch of beans.

And I said, These are seeds.

I thought, I guess I thought these are seeds.

I planted them in my mom's house plans.

And then of course, they start growing.

And, and my parents come up to me, and they call me into the into the room where the house plants are, how my mom's going?

What is the santenay But is this because my mom is Hungarian, so she has that accent.

And so I'm like thinking I did something wrong.

This is very good Antony you'd like to plant in the produced several beans.

And I remember my parents, you know, taking them and giving me hear what your ears what you grew.

While other kids to fishing poles or flashlights to summer camp, Tony took seeds.

I was kind of mad that you know, I miss basically eight weeks of plant you know, messing with the garden while at camp.

So I actually took some the early tomatoes and I actually, you know got them to be with a flowering and took them with me to camp plus some radish seeds because I knew they would be done in a month.

And I grew tomatoes and radishes at camp.

His love of gardening grew.

And after serving in the Navy, he enrolled at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to study crop sciences.

Next up grad school at the U of I on my way to my first final exam as a grad student, which is actually the first day I ever missed school, I rolled my truck, and I broke my neck 14 December 98, I was going to go and study for another hour at school.

And there was black ice the ice can't see on the road in front of me.

I couldn't see it because the sun was behind me.

And the next thing I remember is about two weeks later, sort of you're still kind of in the fog about what exactly happened.

Tom Tony was now a quadriplegic.

It was you have weird feelings when you're first aware you're everything's tingling a lot.

It feels like your hands are going to sleep.

Well, I wasn't fully aware that I wasn't going to never move properly again, until the doctor like really put it on the table.

And then I became very depressed I guess.

Because I was no more garden I worked on my own car, I replaced almost everything except for the motor and the transmission.

And I started realized I can't do any of that anymore.

I still love to dance as well.

So that was all gone.

And so I was depressed for quite a while.

After months of therapy, and learning how to live life a different way.

Tony returned to school, earned his PhD in bioinformatics and then got back into the garden.

But now I can take both hands.

And if I'm really getting into I can, I'm leaning down.

And actually this is too short for this.

But I'm leaning down and I'm really working into things.

Most garden tools are made for a standing person.

So for the past several years, Tony has been modifying the tools he buys and making his own.

So some of the tools that they made just just didn't work right weren't very good, too bulky.

The other thing is, is it's not a thing short to us will be better, but they're not there.

It's actually the longer tools that are better.

The longer you can make it, you have to be light of course a bit long.

The the better it is you need to reach at least a meter away from it in order to do any real significant gardening.

So the challenges of using the garden tools gets less and less every year as I learn what works, what doesn't work, as I guess is my strength gets even better.

And it's that same string that helped Tony find his way back to the guard And so who is Tony Becker someone who obviously had to overcome major catastrophe in his life.

But I've gotten much better at gardening.

And even though it's not exactly how I want the landscaping, how I want things, I can still do it, I'm still able to do it with very minimal help from anyone else.

And I'm going to still do it, because keeping me active will also keep you more alive as well.

So it'll always be my enjoyment till I can't pick up a tool anymore.

And we hope you enjoyed watching Tony story.

And if you'd like to learn more about Tony, you can visit our website, we'll dot illinois.edu forward slash Prairie Fire where that story originally aired.

If you've got questions for our panelists, you can send them into us at your garden@gmail.com or just search for us on Facebook under Mid American gardener.

We'll see you next time.

Good night.