(MUSIC) Hello and thanks for joining us for another episode of MidAmerican Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain and joining me in the studio to talk about all things green and growing.

Are two of our pals here.

We're going to have them quickly introduce themselves, and then off we go, because we've got a lot to cover today.

So Karen, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Karen Ruckel, and I'm a gardener in the Peoria area, and I love house plants, perennials.

And right now it's baking in the house, baking in the house.

Sourdough.

Are you still still doing so baking?

All right, all right.

Ella.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm also from Tazewell County.

I'm a master gardener, a horticulturist.

I like trees and shrubs.

I have a large yard, and Karen and I are very good friends, and she baked for me.

So I can tell you that the sourdough was excellent.

I can chime in there.

I've had one, and it is delish.

So Okay, ladies, Ella, we'll start with you, because you've got a lot of things to cover.

So let's talk about this interesting plant here, because I curious.

All right.

Well, I have always wanted what's termed a climbing onion, so you can see that it has this.

It's a succulent.

It's from South Africa.

That's where it would be natively growing.

And it has kind of a scaly, bulbous appearance.

It likes to be hot pot bound.

And it is not actually an Allium in the onion family.

It just has that appearance.

And it is one that is a no maintenance plant.

It actually goes through a dormant period where all of this dries back, and it would require maybe only monthly watering, and then, usually for me, I've had it for a couple years now, it starts to begin to grow in December.

And so it has eventually it will have some small, little white flowers and some very small leaves.

I bought it at an estate sale.

It's not a plant that you see that's offered very often out there, and when I went to the sale, it was like, Oh, I that's the only thing I wanted no price, you know.

And it's like, well, how much am I going to have to pay?

Aromatically, does it smell?

Now, one word of caution, this is a toxic plant.

It has it is not edible.

It has some, I think they refer to it as some type of glucosides that can cause cardiac arrest.

So this is not something that you would want your pets to come in contact with.

Luckily, I don't have it's well, you know, maybe I should be more careful.

We're always learning something on this show, yes, exactly.

But like I said, infrequent watering above 50 degree temperatures, so I took extra precaution to bring it here today during the winter.

But this is when it shows its active growth, and it can, in a week, it's it's grown, you know, a foot.

It's just really kind of interesting.

And it has some little off shoots.

You can see that each one has sent up a tendril.

And this larger bulb, it's sent up two.

I just find it.

It was actually named botanically.

It is Bowia.

Let's see vol vol Billis, or something like that.

Anyway, it was named after a plant explorer or a plant collector from the Kew Gardens, a Mr.

Bowie.

So I don't know that much about it.

Like I said, it's a neat looking plant.

I've always wanted one, very nice.

It reminds me of Shane Cultra bringing in the Oak seedling.

You know, you either love it or you're not really too into it.

I like it.

It's plain and simple, and I like the minimal design.

Yeah, and I bought it in this pot, and it's, I've had it for a couple of years.

Going strong.

Okay, climbing onion.

All right, Karen, we are to you, and we are talking Valentine's Day.

Yeah, we love flowers.

And, you know, at this time of the year, having flowers in the house.

Else is fun.

And with Valentine's Day coming up, a lot more places have flowers for sale.

So I just wanted to talk about a little bit about care, or maybe picking out something for yourself to treat yourself.

So you know, if you if you are so lucky to get an arrangement from a florist, they've already prepped and done everything for the flowers.

You just care for how their instructions are, but if you're going to the store and buying for yourself, Ella and I always go for clearance flowers.

So that's what I found today.

And I really wanted a lot more flowers, but they're just Tuesday.

Wasn't a good day for flower shopping, but getting those flowers and looking at them, and so when you bring them home, right away.

I always cut the stems for freshness right when you get it home, before you even arrange them or anything, just, you know, cut the stems, set them aside, so that when you have time, like what I picked up for myself, these are lilies.

They are toxic to pets, so they have to, you know, be care about that.

But if I had an arrangement or a bigger bouquet, I would have used one of my bigger vases to arrange it.

But since all I found was this one bunch of lilies, I'm just going to keep them in a narrower, tall vase, just because that's kind of how the flowers are themselves.

So with the lilies, when you get them home, you know, they look a little bit boring all the same height.

So you would trim some of them a little shorter, just to give a little bit of variance.

And these are opening up.

Now with the lilies, One note of caution is they've got the pollen stamens in here.

These will stain anything and everything.

So, and they have stained the, yeah, they've even stained the flower.

So usually, when the flower is just opening up that you can get your fingers in there, I usually use like a tissue or something, because I don't want to get the pollen on me.

I'll just grab one of the the pollen out of the flower, and it just, you know, makes a horrible mess with that, and it will permanently stain clothing.

Noted.

Yeah, it's called pick their noses in a florist trade.

If you're working at a floral shop, they usually do that as well.

Pick their noses.

I like that.

So like I said, You know what, when you get that bunch of flowers, you'll want to cut some of the stems a little bit different lengths to give a little bit of varying height with your arrangement, most of your flowers you get from the store come with a little pack of floral food.

I always, you know, it's there, mix it up, throw it in there.

And then I think it's always nice with flowers to dress it up.

Maybe do a bow on the pot or the vase, just to jazz it up for yourself.

And I think when you get flowers, probably the most persnickety is roses and then the hydrangeas.

So a lot of those, when you're bringing them home, I like to have almost hot, almost boiling water.

And I'll, I'll even just stick their stems right into the boiling water and and well close to boiling, and snip that stem under the water with my pruners.

So that way, then when you've, when you've made that cut, you're immediately able to take water up into the stem.

You're not having air in there.

And I think sometimes that does help those difficult flowers stabilize a little bit better for you.

And another note, if you're like Ella and I are like bargain shoppers, if it's really lousy weather during Valentine's week, some of those places that get in flowers, there'll be more discounted flowers, and that's that's when Ellen I typically shop.

So we have our Valentines the week after.

There you go.

Well, and then also, for Ellen and I, the main thing we love is giving us an orchid plant, and a lot of places will bring in more of them, or special pricing during a holiday like Valentine's Day, and why wait for someone to buy them for you when you can buy them for yourself, right?

Right?

Treat yourself, right?

Sure.

And as you can see, Karen and I both have Felco pruners.

Really nice now is the time, if you're thinking about it, to clean as well as to sharpen your pruners.

And we both use just a little sharpening stone.

And remember that you're only going to sharpen one side of the blade.

The other side of the blade is completely flat, and there's lots of different products you can use to get the resins and things off, and then sometimes you can kind of oil them.

But now is a good time to really be thinking about making sure that your tools, whether it's hand tools, shovels or whatever, are sharp and ready to go for when you want to use them.

Okay, all right, let's talk more winter interest.

So Ella, these are some pictures.

You took from your place.

What are we seeing here?

Okay, so we just had a large snow event.

The good thing was, it was somewhat of a fluffy, dry snow, so although it accumulated on the top of some of the branches, it didn't create the weight that we've had in other storms, where you might have ice and a wetter snow.

So this was back in 2021, and it actually took many of my plant material almost to the ground by the weight that had accumulated over hours of snowfall.

And this is where you can see that actually branches have failed.

This was a red bud outside my patio.

So again, winter, you can see the branch form.

You can make better assessments.

You can take pictures and and sometimes you're going to have some significant clean up that might have to be done if you've had some large branch failures.

The other thing is, is that also some of your evergreens, because they have evergreen needles, they're especially sensitive to snow loading.

And this is a picture of an arbor variety next to a building, and one thing that you can do to protect this kind of splayed open look is to, in the fall, actually, just wrap it with like a jump rope, or, you know, just something that you can spiral up around it to hold the branches together so that it would not open up under that weight, right under the weight.

Now, many of those branches that you saw, if they are broken and failed, you might have to do some remediation with pruning.

Otherwise, if you can shake off some of the snow, you know, not so forcefully as to break branches, but to reduce the weight.

But it was amazing how they all came back up.

And I do have some pictures with some that were really over and and the the problem can be sometimes, you know, if the root system is damaged, maybe you would have to have some kind of staking also in the snow.

I love right now to see who visits my yard, because it's that blank canvas of snow that you see the tracks.

I don't realize how many deer come through my yard and how close to my house they're coming.

Primarily I see deer moving through.

I mean, their tracks.

I don't see them, but they have that, that cloven hoof, and in that one picture, Karen thought it looked like I was visited by a penguin, but that was actually probably a younger deer, just, you know, walking through the snow and, you know, dragging their feet.

Maybe it was a lazy deer, maybe it was a lazy deer that day, but I have rabbits, of course, squirrels, and then sometimes I do have some of the other raccoons and different things like that.

So now is a good time to get out, to learn to start to recognize some of the different tracking patterns.

I mean, I think winter is a wonderful time to explore your landscape.

Very true, and like you said, to see who's visiting and Who's stopping by out there.

All right, Karen, we're going to go back to you with some these are some plants that you're overwintering.

Well, no, actually, not my house.

Guess where this picture was taken?

It's not my house.

Okay?

I was gonna say, No, I don't know.

This was up in Canada, Zone 3A, my gosh.

So I had the pleasure of staying with my niece's new in laws and up in Canada, and she Sylvia was over wintering geraniums for her yard, and she had done cuttings.

And you know, I was just so jealous on how beautiful and great her cuttings are looking, and I haven't even done any of mine yet, and that hers are even flowering.

So it's just, you know, meeting gardeners from from other planting zones, and you know, we, I got to experience a lot on that trip.

So being snowed in with a blizzard, I got to see lots of pictures of her yard because we were sitting there and finding things to do during the day.

But I just, I just think it's really cool, you know, everybody having their own setup down in the basement, a grown light, and utilizing over when.

Entering your plants of an annual and propagating it yourself.

It is, and it's such a great pastime too.

Like, it kind of feeds that need to be getting your hands dirty inside.

So, right?

Excellent.

And it's about, is it time to check our bulbs?

Is it time to kind of get things out and just kind of see how they're looking and, well, you can take peaks.

Well, yes, I mean, like, Karen always talks about maybe, like midway through, just going through and making sure that none of them have rotten or things like that.

So I think, I think, you know, right now, as of today, we're still pretty cold.

So I think waiting till we are more average temperatures would be a good time to take peaks, because, you know, we're wanting to keep things the temperature we wanted today.

Because, like my my cannas are in the garage, and my garage is getting pretty scary cold this winter that I don't want to touch them until we moderate with our temperatures a little bit, gotcha.

And even, even the stuff I was over wintering in my garage.

I got a little bit worried about him, and I wrapped my drop cloths that I use in the garden around my geranium, mounted a pot over it, just did extra protection, even for my plants out there.

Yeah, we had a garage door fail.

Had to get a new, you know, the tracking mechanism and and luckily, we do have a heater in our garage, so it's set at like 30, and like, my plant room is set at like 50, but, oh, it's been a struggle, but I was so worried with them having to fix the garage door.

How long would it be up for the plants that I'm trying to overwinter in my garage?

People just don't know the struggle, do they?

All right?

Ella, you brought some branches in that are, oh sure, some things you wanted to talk to talk through on those again, being outside and beginning to look at your plant material and identifying your plant material, I think is so important.

And so what I did is I brought some plants that are going to bloom.

I feel confident this spring, even though we have this really cold temperatures.

So this is a magnolia, and you can gage the bloom potential, yeah, the potential that this could have by these large, furry buds that this saucer Magnolia is going to have.

So I cut this branch.

And actually this is something that probably later in February, you can actually cut these branches, maybe pound the stem, put them in water, put a plastic kind of sheet over them, and you can force them into bloom.

So many of your spring flowering trees and shrubs can be forced.

Can take a number of weeks, but it can it can happen.

So Karen, we were talking about our witch Hazels, and I have two different kinds of witch Hazels.

And there's a witch hazel that blooms in late fall as the leaves are coloring and dropping, and then there's a witch hazel that blooms starting now, actually, and in through the spring.

So this is the vernal witch hazel that I have that's going, mine isn't blooming, but Karen said mine had started to bloom when we had a little bit of a warm up.

I haven't been out to see the extreme cold.

It's interesting how the petals will come out and elongate with warm weather, and then they kind of roll up on real cold days, and then they'll extend better and warmer.

So again, looking closely, you can look on your red buds.

All of your lilacs have their blooms.

This is just a little shrubby lilac.

And we can see again, too, these larger flower buds are going to be developed.

And so, you know, again, you might maybe want to resist any type of early spring pruning, because you'd be cutting off potential flowers.

And then, this is cornice moss.

This is one of the flowering dogwoods.

It has a very large bud actually, but it's a small, little yellow kind of fluff.

But I do have some beautiful the regular flowering dogwoods, and they are also budded as well.

So I just went out.

It was like, Oh yeah, look at this and again, something that you could try forcing.

I don't know.

I haven't maybe I'll give it a shot.

Most people will do the forsythia right as as a easy to force shrub, sure, and you have to it.

Has to have the bag over it the entire time.

I. Well, that just helps to keep the humidity in and the humidity up and to keep it from drying out, because as those, as they take up the water and begin to expand and push out the floral, you know, petals and things there, they are very sensitive.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Okay, that would be my recommendation, okay.

And Have either of you started to winter sow?

Or do we have any seed starting going on?

Well, personally, I am going to a workshop the Master Gardeners through the extension, and have a lot of different programs each different counties are offering a lot of seed starting as well as winter sowing workshops.

So I am going to do one.

I've done it before.

I've got saved my milk jugs.

I actually did some smaller ones with soda bottles, you know where then this just kind of fits over and again.

It's important to have drainage on the bottom.

So here we go again.

Sometimes I use the drill.

I thought that worked really pretty well.

Sometimes people use, like, a hot screw driver, you know that they've heated up, or I've used a fork for some smaller containers, but the base that's going to hold the soil of several inches does need to be drained, and then the top needs to be able to be covered, but also have ventilation holes for for growth.

And so what winter sewing is, as opposed to what we saw in Karen's the over winter, yeah, the overwintering of the geraniums under lights.

This is something that's going to happen naturally following the warm up of the soils outdoors, and it's especially good for plant material, perennials that need a cold period to germinate.

So as opposed to some of your annuals, like marigolds, that certainly can be started, some of the perennial flowers, here's a silphium cup plant, a sunflower family native that requires some chilling periods, and you can find all this information out in some of the different reference seed catalogs and such.

So I do have seed and I am probably going to be starting in early February.

Now, do you just kind of line yours up outside the front door or on the porch, or I have a large plastic tray that I'm going to set everything in, and or two, I might do 12 or more containers with different kinds of materials, and they just sat outside my garage that faces east, I believe.

Okay, yeah, okay.

I was wondering about the light.

And if you again, a bright light would would probably be good, but you can tape the the the mill.

Milk jugs.

And the other thing is, is that sometimes people leave them hinged, and I have that was my better strategy.

Otherwise, they're really kind of hard to get them to line up and everything.

Do you water these well?

You're going to start with moistened soil and and then you're just going to watch, because probably you're not going to water for a number of weeks until maybe even into March and and then, as it acts as like a mini greenhouse, and you can actually see condensation begin to form.

And of course, you can visually examine the soil, or again, take the lid off, you know, check the soil.

The seeds do have to absorb water to initiate germination, so you can't let it dry out too much.

It's I use, like a little watering can, because I just take off the lid and kind of pour a little water in, and you've done it right?

Oh, yes, yeah.

One more question, because I think I over seed when I went or so, I think I do too much.

So is it best to maybe put one?

Two, three seeds, or thin them out, if too many, like, if you sprinkle some, what's the best strategy?

Because I always feel like I have a little jungle growing in my milk carton.

I I'm a jungle girl.

Okay, good.

I'm not the only one.

So what I've done is then you just take them out and you have clumps of plants.

Rather than trying to tease out all the individual ones, I'm going to then upgrade those smaller seedlings.

Now this is coming down into early April, or something like that, maybe even later, into maybe individual pots to continue to grow on, because these are not going to grow the way that they would under artificial lights.

They are following the outdoor temperatures that naturally occur for germination in your garden.

And the other good thing is, is it's pretty much you do it once, you just leave them there, and by magic, it works.

You have plant-lings all right, that's it.

We're out of time that went really quick.

Thank you guys so much.

It's always a great time when you're here.

We always learn so much.

And if you've got questions, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, and we can get those answered for you on an upcoming show.

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

Good night.