Foreign Hello, and thanks so much for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host, Tanisha Spain, and joining me in the studio today are two of my pals to talk about all things green and growing.

But before we get started, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about where you can find them in the garden and what they love.

So Jen, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Jen Nelson.

You can find me in a number of places, some of my writings online@groundedandgrowing.com and I also teach vegetable gardening at University of Illinois, so I'm always tinkering around with vegetables and at the ballpark and at the ballpark, yes, driving kids around, yes, as usual, yes, yes, yes, wearing many hats.

All right, Kay, I'm Kay Carnes, and we have a little couple acres outside of Monticello, and I do a lot of herbs and vegetables and flowers and just about everything.

Just about everything, all right?

And we'll talk a little bit later, because I would love to hear how things are going in your yards, because we've had a wacky weather, but I don't know it's been weird, and everyone's garden is doing different.

So we'll get into that.

So Jen, we'll start with you with your first show, and tell, okay, for my first show and tell I brought not the best example of I swear I cut these right before I came to the show.

They had to be dramatic.

They had to be dramatic divas for the show.

But with the exception of the cosmos, everything else looks a little sad.

These are plants that I don't even plant in my garden.

They just come up from seed from the previous year.

And so I'm all for plants that will kind of plant themselves within reason.

These are these behave themselves.

So we've got Cosmos, this sort of purple Daisy looking flower, these little, tiny flowers, is alyssum.

And so this just, I let it come up every year.

I You can yank out what you don't want in the spring, if you want, I let lots of it go, and it's like a carpet of some of it's purple, but most of it's white.

And then these are four o'clock.

So they're kind of diva, so not a good cut flower, but these are yesterday's flowers that are all wilted up.

And then these are the flowers that would be opening late in the afternoon today.

So hence the name, four o'clock, and they produce like a marble sized black seed.

And there was one in here.

It must have fallen out somewhere on the way into the studio, but you can easily collect them and put them in a jar and throw them out for the next year.

I let them drop lots of seeds, and then again, I pull out what I don't want.

I have, have not had to, like seed it deliberately in the places that I want it.

I have thrown some of the seeds in, like, new spaces in the yard.

But I like having them just fresh flowers blooming when kind of the end of the day you want to sit down and look at something beautiful, there you go.

And then lots of different colors.

I like the pink ones, but there's whites and other shades of pink in there.

You know, I love when you get little.

Are they?

Are they considered volunteer?

If, I guess they're considered volunteer or not?

It's a nice surprise.

Yeah, it is.

And it's like, oh, I didn't have to.

It's one less thing.

You have to last thing, right?

Lazy gardening.

It's like, okay, you can stay there.

Behave yourself.

Get past any if you have any inclination towards, like, wanting everything in nice, straight rows at 90 degree angles, and be okay with kind of that cottage garden look, which some members of my household have had a hard time names, but he's gotten over it, yeah, for the most part, yeah, you just have to let it happen, yeah, because those are the happy accidents that we get.

Oh, I didn't plant those, but, but it looks good there.

Yeah?

So Chris likes everything.

Yes, very much, very he's very organized us lazy garden, yeah, take the seeds and talk the accident.

I like a little chaos gardening in there.

The more natural thing, you need to have a little of both in a garden.

And if you're too formal with it, too many 90 degrees during the degree angles, like, I tried to point out that.

So if you had something like, I want every third thing to you know, this pattern, or everything regimented, if you lose one of those, like, life happens, disease happens, accidents happen, then you've got you're like, having to try to replace that.

So maybe having a little softness and a little more relaxed attitude will help little chaos in the long run.

Wanted to be happy medium there.

I agree.

I agree.

Okay, all right, Kay, we are to you.

Wow, this lovely.

So I brought this.

This is a hearty hibiscus.

And.

On there.

It's a really interesting plant.

The plant I have is well over 20 years old, and in the summer, well in the late spring, you'll see these little green sprouts coming up.

And then you end up with this gigantic plant.

Mine's about seven feet long and probably five feet tall, but it has these beautiful pink, huge flowers on this That's gorgeous.

They only last a day, but you can see there's buds up here, and there's this one will be opening soon.

So you have a constant you know what's shocking to hear that it just barely starts to peak late May, early June, and by July, you said it's seven feet tall, seven feet wide, these gigantic blooms on it.

I mean, that thing is growing gangbusters once it starts.

That's impressive.

It likes the heat, yeah, that's very impressive.

And then they die off in the fall, and there's no foliage at all.

And all you see are, these are the stems from the previous year.

Wow.

So that's all you see.

Yeah, they are.

Most of them are a little bit smaller, but I found this one, and it was pretty big.

And because so every spring, I start worrying and worrying, is it going to come back?

And then all of a sudden, like you said, you see these little green things, and then you get this massive plant, holy smokes.

And they're very like I said, they're very hearty.

Do you do anything to amend that spot?

Do you compost?

I haven't done anything.

We love that.

Just let it go.

Just let it go.

And they do come in some other colors.

There's like a maroon and some whites, but I think this pink is really showy.

Wow, very nice.

Now to be 20 years old, is that typical?

Do these have a long Yeah, I think they do, if they're happy, where you put them, likes me, but wow.

I don't even remember how long I've had it, but I know it's been at least, at least 20 years.

Where does it like to be?

Was it like full sun?

Yeah, yeah, pretty much it's on the east side of our house.

Okay, so it probably gets that morning during the afternoon, but it gets, yeah, it's like full sun Gotcha.

And those blooms are just, is that that dinner plate variety?

Is that what?

Yeah, oh my gosh, so pretty.

Now, if you put that stem in water, will the rest of the buds on there bloom?

I don't know.

I've never tried it.

Well, I'll go home and stick this, yeah, take a picture and let us know, because we just have to know, yeah, very nice.

That's gorgeous.

It is.

They are, I just love it, yes, and it's such a nice, like, it's a quintessential summer flower, like you think of summer and just tropical you think of that.

Very nice.

Okay, all right, Jen, we're back to you with our Okay, our friend, our friend, the purple tomato, but I was noticing some issues with it, and a friend sent me a picture of her tomatoes that I gave her a plant of the purple tomato.

I'm just like, is it supposed to look like this?

So it my daughter Margaret said it looks like stars.

It does kind of look like a galaxy.

It's not a galaxy.

It is feeding from stink bugs.

It's not the end of the world, though.

So stink bug has got kind of a needle, like mouth, so imagine, like a syringe, like, dipping into the tomato, and so he's like, so these little blanched out areas are where they've been feeding.

It can be like, there can be kind of a change in texture.

If it's really a lot of feeding, I don't really notice it if it's just a little bit.

But, like, they should be more or less solid, like this.

But can you still eat them?

Oh, yeah, I would still eat them.

Like I said, if it was really bad, I might cut that part off.

But, I mean, this is we showed this last year.

This is the purple tomato.

I brought some of these to my mom last week, and she was like, where did you get those?

Those are so good I wouldn't you bring me some more.

So they are really tasty.

And you said your plant is, like, massive, tearing cages down.

Tearing cages down.

One of them has completely fallen over.

I'm gonna have to try to work on him throughout.

It's still producing, yeah, but just a massive I'll tell you.

One of them is leaning on our eight foot privacy fence, and it's over like these things are whole.

They've read that they can get 12 to 15 feet tall in the ground.

Mine is in a big pot.

These are seeds I saved from last year.

So years ago.

Company is, I understand the company is going to introduce a full size like slicer tomato next year.

So, boy, I might have to, like, buy the lot next door.

I don't know.

I swear to you, these are the biggest tomato plants I have ever seen in person.

They're impressive.

They are, and they've done so well.

Containers for me, yeah, I made, I shared last year.

I made the pasta sauce last year, the unicorn sauce is what we called it.

And it was really pretty and, like, had almost a shimmer to it, and it tasted really good.

So I was passing them out to everybody on our block, because, you know, once they start coming on, you have to get rid of them somehow.

They're so beautiful.

In a salad, I put them with yellow tomatoes and red cherry tomatoes and fresh mozzarella and basil.

Summer in a bowl.

Speaking of summer in a bowl, I brought some herbs that I grew and dried down, and I knew you were coming today, so it was the perfect day.

I've got some black opal basil and some parsley, and I have, like, a small table top dehydrator with the racks on it, and I just put it in there for a few hours until they were crunchy.

But I thought, Okay, well, now what?

What's the next thing?

So do I how do you store yours?

Should it be in glass?

Do you grind them up?

Kind of like what's the next step after they're dry?

What do you do?

Well, it depends on what you want to do.

I usually keep some parsley like this in just the leaf, but you can if you have a little hand grinder you can put them in and grind them fine, so that it's more like the powder that you buy in stores, like you could use from a shaker or something.

Your basil kept the color really nice.

It did.

It did really well.

And I made a pesto and it passed the vibe check.

So everything was really good, but I just didn't know if I was supposed to shred it or use a mortar and pestle or what was next.

So I knew you'd be able to point me in the right direction.

Well, are you talking about fresh or dried, dried, dried.

Yeah, you could do more of a pestle.

I like, it's easier.

Gotcha put it in the little grinder, okay?

And then as far as store it?

Oh, go ahead.

Just say for storing it.

Kay, would you keep it like it is there?

Just would that, yeah, but in dark, okay, so I could leave it in this.

I don't have to worry about moving it to something glass or like a plastic shaker or something or Mason I'm thinking like, I use mason jars, or not even mason jars, just to get with jars, empty jars from whatever you're buying.

Yes, we've got a lot of those laying around.

They're great for storing herbs.

Yeah, herbs, okay, I might have to do that.

I was telling you before the show, I tried to do chives.

They didn't dry.

Well, yeah, the ones I've bought at the store like they just don't seem to have much flavor to them.

No, no, and it they their color was off, and they just did not look appealing once they were dry.

So I thought, I guess I have to there's some things you just don't want to dry.

That's what we want.

Best thing, if you want to ongoing supply of tribes is just have a positive I can do that and then.

So this is the first year that I've grown nasturtium, which I've fallen in love with.

What a beautiful plant.

I had no idea the beauty like now they're everywhere.

I've got them in boxes and pots all over the place, so they're starting to leave me seeds, and I pulled a couple of these off.

I bet you I have 20 or 30 of them at home that look like this.

So I bring them in, and I say, Jennifer, what's the process for these?

And she was like, did you pull those off the plant, or did they fall off?

So tell me what I did wrong and how to correct it, so that I can save these well, because the seeds for nasturtiums usually are brown to black.

They're dark and dried and like those look a little fresh.

So when you're trying to collect seed, you want to make sure that the the seed is mature, so that it will grow.

And if you're picking it too soon, it hasn't developed enough.

And even if you dried that down, did all the right things, it won't grow because the seed wasn't fully developed.

So that's where I was kind of going with that.

And so if you're doing this at home, like a couple things to make sure you're if you're choosing seed from hybrid plants, hybrid plants aren't necessarily going to come back the same as what you were picking from.

So a lot of nasturtiums are older varieties and open pollinated varieties, so you should be okay there, but if you can, like, leave them on the plant as long as possible.

But you looked up.

And you found there was a really cool application for the green one.

Apparently, you can pickle these and eat them like capers, because the whole NAT nasturtiums are one of those edible flowers.

And I've, I've been involved in a program where we had to order some and they're crazy expensive, so you've got, like, all the gourmet stuff right in your backyard.

Now, nice, very nice.

So I do want to know if those taste like capers, and I have to do enough green ones to do it, because I have been plucking them off, but now I'm going to knock it off and let them dry out a little bit longer.

I've noticed my have your nasturtiums looked really ragged in the heat.

Yes, yeah, the ones in the back that get the more harsh afternoon sun are, they're kind of picked up, yeah, but the ones in the flower box that have a cover from the hangover from the roof, those are spectacular.

But yes, they're taking I've been reading that even if they look like near death, don't yank them out, maybe trim off anything dead.

And once we get a little more moderate temperatures, they should bounce back.

Okay.

Noted, noted, we were going to talk about the weather a little bit because there was a question that came in asking about the weather's effect on someone's peppers.

Let me pull that up.

But we talked about that before we started recording the weather.

Did have it's kind of slowed your garden down.

You said this spring when things were well, it was dry too, so that was a big and I was having water with the hose.

And that's just not like, you know, things were smaller now that it's a little more moist, you know, we're, I'm getting bigger.

Things are catching up.

Yeah, yeah.

What about your yard?

Same thing?

Well, we were kind of late to get in the garden in because we were replacing all our raised beds.

And so it's, like, every home project, right?

You think in January when you're like, oh, it's going to be really, because you get in there and you're like, Oh, God, there's this, there's there.

Like, we had, we had a number of obstacles, but I finally got it all planted.

But I had my tomatoes and peppers in pots.

I was keeping them well watered.

I started seeing like, leaf curling, and some of it was suggesting like herbicide damage and like, we have not sprayed anything in our yard, but weather can do some of that too.

So once I got them and got them planted, the new growth that's coming out looks fine.

And I'm starting, I've I'm starting to get some peppers, and everything looks happy.

It's like finally out of that little, tiny pot stuff that I've been seeing that people are complaining about, like squash vine borers and squash bugs, all of my stuff's late.

So I didn't got my own late I look like I know what I'm doing.

I'm just really, we were just really late getting stuff planted.

So I've got a couple of, like, shorter season, like, a shorter season squash and a shorter season cucumber that I plant it, I just planted it like the seeds just came up.

But it's a 40 day a 40 day cucumbers, pretty quick, and 55 days squash.

So we got that.

We got time.

Yeah, and, like you said, it looks like you just planned it and did it, you know, like that, on purpose.

That is a legit IPM strategy to kind of plan around when the insects normally show up.

And I did it once before, by accident, by accident of lateness, too.

And it can save you from from dealing with that, sure, or like, if you're doing something like a lettuce once that finishes.

If you don't have a lot of room, could you pull the lettuce out and then put in something like that?

Succession plan, yeah?

So it could, yeah, successive Yeah.

Well, when I, when I was really looking at him, like, Hey, I am actually doing a fall garden.

Like, when you go by the time, technically, fall gardening can start as early as late June, depending what you're planting.

You're not starting a fall garden in October.

No, no, yeah.

I mean, I usually think of it as like, late August, but I'm like, Yeah, late July.

I've got green beans.

I've got, yeah, we get it up and growing and it starts to cool off.

You can't really fight the weather once the soil is cooling off.

So you have to have things growing once it starts see it was supposed to happen.

To do that it was supposed to happen.

Well, also it's just part of gardening, you know, you got to kind of go with the flow.

And truly, what role each year is different, and you just have to kind of work with it.

I'm learning that what's a typical year?

I don't think we've had one, but you're right.

We just have to roll with it.

It's like it's going to rain for seven days straight.

Okay, here we go.

No rain for two weeks.

Okay, okay.

Jerlinda Johnson, she writes in last.

Last year was a banner year for peppers, but this year is definitely not.

Our pepper plants are small and the leaves are curling on a lot of the plants, but here at our home garden, they're looking better.

The center is withering.

She says, in spite of that, they are still setting peppers.

We've talked to several people who are experiencing the same sort of issues.

We've also seen plants for sale from nurseries with curled leaves.

What do you think is behind this?

So we kind of talked about it, but it could be any number.

It's like they're just curling.

They're not like turning yellow and falling off.

Nope.

She says they're just kind of just curling the peppers.

They're still setting fruit, though, so I wouldn't really complain.

Then.

That's true.

That's true.

There are things in peppers.

I had a problem where it was the place I was buying the peppers from, I was always having they were losing leaves all the time, and it was some sort of a fungal thing.

When I looked at what was because there were little lesions on the leaves, and I can't remember the name of it, but what I was researching suggested that it could be harbored on the seed and that so that might and then I was like, Well, I was always getting my peppers from one particular supplier, and they were always doing that.

I'm like, Well, next year I'm going to get them from somewhere else.

And I didn't have the problem.

So that told me that it was something like probably in their seed that they got you was my fault.

Score one.

Score one for the home garden.

Here's a question.

This is a good one from Evelyn.

She wants to know how important it is to deadhead plants.

And specifically, she asks about bee balm.

So, you know, we like low maintenance, but we also know that there's a little bit of work involved.

So Are there flowers that you guys absolutely deadhead at home to kind of keep them going, or do you just kind of let nature do it depends how hard it is to dead head it, I guess fair enough, I did some flowers.

Okay, I don't have a ton of flowers, you know, gotcha just a vegetable, but yes, I did head them, and it just makes the plant look better.

And I think it helps, you know, keep away disease.

Are there any that you deadhead at your house?

I deadhead things like daisies and Black Eyed Susans because they they tend to look pretty ratty when they're done.

And I don't get fancy about daisies.

I just like, chop it off and chop it in half.

I was showing my mom how to do this because she's gotten into perennials recently, which is like, wow, really.

I had no idea.

My mom would would decide perennials were a cool thing.

She always been an annual gardener, but this year she's decided to put perennials in so you have to kind of know where what the old flower looks like, because she was petrified to do it, because she's like, I don't know if I'm cutting the right thing, you've got to watch it for, like, from what the the flower bud looks like, to when the flower is kind of spent, and she hadn't been really paying attention so she wasn't sure what she was cutting.

Gotcha, I always dead head Iris.

Yeah, I always you really want to get because those that not only does that look funky, but like you said, with disease, healthier form, yes, and then in the fall, cut the leaves back all the way back to the ground.

Well, no, not to the ground.

A few inches, gotcha, and I cut them at an angle.

Gotcha.

Okay, okay.

Last question, as people are wanting to bring cut flowers in to make arrangements.

Where do you cut the flowers?

Do you cut do you go all the way down to the base?

What is the Do we know the best way to to cut flowers?

Or is there a preferred way?

Do you want to leave some stem?

Because I cut zinnias and bring them in all the time, and I am unsure sometimes where there's like a natural branch, yeah, or something like Zinnias, I would want them to keep making more flowers.

You don't want to cut them all the way down.

I'm having a great year for zinnias.

The Zinnias look incredible, so I've been cutting them and putting fresh ones out every few days and enjoying those too.

So okay, well, any other anything good for the order, anything else we didn't discuss, anything that's growing well in your yard that we didn't talk about weeds are growing exceptionally.

I strawed my garden this year.

I took Marty's advice, because by this time of year, between baseball games and all of the things, I'm overrun and I am actually proud of how it looks.

Yes, it actually helped a ton.

So if you're busy or lazy like me, and have kids and have places to be, I just bought two bales, and I laid it kind of thick, and it really, really helped.

So I use brass clippings we mow to a bag.

Yeah, my husband sometimes lets go, but they let them dry, and that makes great mulch.

Yes, anything you can do to get on top of the weeds.

I know, with raised beds, you don't have to fight with it quite as much, no, but I'm fighting weeds in the rest of the beds.

Yeah, we let it go too long it takes.

I know how many bags of mulch I do.

My mulch in bags.

I've had it delivered as bulk, which is just kind of then I have a giant pile sooner.

But I figured out, like cost wise, the bag mulch is actually a little cheaper than bulk, and I know how many bags fit in my car.

So like, in Champaign Urbana, like, get some mulch.

Like, I can do it when it's like, yes, you know it's like, I've made great progress just doing it nine bags at a time.

Yeah, yeah, whatever works.

Okay.

Thank you so much, ladies.

We are out of time.

I appreciate your time and talent.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you've got any questions for us, you can send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com or you can look us up on socials, just look for Mid American gardener, And we will see you next week.

Good night.

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