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 are three of our friends here to talk to us today about all things green and growing.

So before we get started, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about them, and then off we go.

So John, we'll start with you down there.

Hey.

I am John Bowden Center.

I'm a vermin County Master Gardener, and I enjoy just about all different types of plants and gardening.

I like to teach.

I volunteer at one of the local high schools and managed the greenhouse there, and I keep busy.

All right, okay, I'm Kay Carnes, and I'm a Champaign County Master Gardener.

My area is herbs and some perennials.

I volunteer out at Allerton park, so you can find me there a lot of times to my own garden.

Yeah, we visited you at the air garden.

Yes, we did, all right.

And last but not least, I'm Phil Dixon.

I'm a retired extension entomologist with the University of Illinois.

Entomologist means insects.

So I do insect questions, that type of thing, wonderful.

Okay, let's jump in.

You guys all brought things to share.

So John, we'll start down there with you.

Okay, the first thing I'm going to do is this little guy, this is a cloche.

And I start a lot of cuttings and things at this time of the year.

You know, we have things that we brought in from the yard and and there may be too big and but you want to maybe have some more of them for next year.

So this is just a little plastic cover that goes on top of the pot and really helps keep the transpiration down, because it increases the the humidity in here.

There are little holes up here to help with the the humidity a little bit if it gets too high.

But I found that I can increase my success rate with this by by 50% I get almost 100% success rate using this.

What?

This is a cloche, and they come in different sizes.

So this is a big one that I can put on a larger pot if I want multiple cuttings or something like that.

And this one here is fancier.

It's got actually a little, a little swivel thing where it actually closes and and shuts or opens, so that I can do that.

But again, it's, it fits these pots, and you just set it on there and and you can take them off real easily.

They just come off very easily.

You can check, you know, to see if your plant is rooted.

If it hasn't, you just turn it back on.

And I have that larger one.

I have an alocasia that is very fickle, and so I keep that on all the time, because anytime I take it off, it just immediately shows signs of not available online.

You can find them, and if you want to go antiquing, you can find ones that are about three foot tall and take me out of glass and take like two people to move, speaking from experience, oh, I've tried to I've been to places to tip it.

I can't even carry it.

Thank you.

John, all right.

Kay, where do you Well, this is a fake laurel tree, not a actual tree.

I had it.

I got it in May, and it was quite a bit smaller than this.

I put it out in the south bed, and it really likes the sun, and it's it's done really well.

It's starting, it's branching out down here, and it's also starting to form some other branches up here.

It they are prone to powdery mildew, so you kind of have to watch it, but all I do is take a damp cloth and wipe it off.

And it seems to take care of it really well.

So it's doing well.

It's not a plant, it's a tree, it's a tree.

Now, do you put that actually, in the ground, in your bed?

You said you put it in a bed?

I did.

We have a raised bed in our front yard, which faces the south.

So I had it initially in there, but now, when it got cold, I moved it to a pot, then brought it in the house.

And it's in a south window, so it kind of likes a little bit of sun sign.

Now, will you put it.

In the ground again.

I'll probably next spring, when it warms up enough, we'll see what happens.

Eventually, it's going to get too big.

Do you think you'll be able to do that before?

Yeah, I don't know.

Too big, it depends.

And of course, to these the leaves, you can just cut them off and dry them.

I was going to ask if they needed to be dried before you use them.

Well, you probably could use them fresh.

Also, they have a different taste, though, different taste of dried and fresh, a nice taste, but a different taste.

Yes, interesting, and it's great for soups and stews and things like that.

Yeah, throw a few leaves.

And so it's been kind of fun.

I it's done really well.

And those are pretty slow growers.

I remember because I don't know if you brought that exact one in, but you brought one in before, and we were talking about how long it takes for them to put on growth.

Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure I remember.

It wasn't, maybe this tall.

No, it was.

It was really small last time.

Yeah, so it's, it did really well over the summer.

Yeah, it did.

And then as far as drying goes, do you do it naturally, like just laying things out, or do you do it on a sheet pan and put them in the oven?

What's your method?

I just let them dry out.

Let them dry out.

Yeah, put them on a sheet and let them, let them dry.

Okay?

Because you can, you know they're good, both dried and not dry fresh.

So now, if you wanted to to put these up and save them, could you pluck every leaf off of that and set it in the south window and just kind of let it recuperate?

Or would you want to harvest everything at once.

No, I would just kick off a few, because it's pretty potent.

You don't need many for whatever you're putting it in.

So I would, I would just cut a few off and dry them and let it go, because it seems to be, you know, it's starting to put out more.

Yes, and John, you made a simple syrup on the show, not on the show.

But from that, it's funny to me that the same thing that can make your pastas and your soup taste good, can produce this yummy syrup that can go on ice cream, mommy type thing, where you don't know what it is, but you know it's there.

Yeah, that's a perfect way to describe it.

Okay, Phil, we are to you.

I might mention one thing about the about the bay tree too, yet, is that in the bonsai title type of thing, it's one thing.

One thing that we do is we try to get smaller leaves by cutting all the leaves off.

And to do that, you were taking quite a risk, because you have to be sure that the tree is in real good shape and healthy before you do that, or else, that is one of the best ways to kill your tree but, but you have to make sure it's in very good health.

When you do, you will get smaller leaves, which if you're trying to produce bay leaves for cooking, that automatically reduces your leaf size, reduces the amount of herb that you have.

So it's probably not a good thing to cut them all off, but just to kind of cut a few like you, like you suggested, good to know, good to know.

Back to bugs.

Back to bugs.

One thing that I like to kind of come up with is, you know what's happened now that things are no longer in the news.

And you may remember that several years ago we had, we had a thing about the, quote, murder Hornets.

And actually, it's the, it's the northern giant Hornet, which is the one over here in the plastic that's over on the side, since it's not known to be occur in Illinois, except for some or what is probably an erroneous newspaper article from about 10 or 15 years ago in the Chicago area.

But it's really not known from Illinois, but did get into the very northwestern part of Washington State, and in and in southeastern Southwestern British Columbia.

And that was several years ago.

They had made the news big time.

At that time, it was called the Asian giant Hornet, but it's now been renamed to the northern giant Hornet the etymological Society of America is working hard to be a little more people friendly, and so we don't want anybody that's from Asia getting upset because they have a hornet named after him.

So at any rate, the Gypsy Moth now is called the spongy moth for that same reason.

But, but the but, what they have found is, is that, is that you can see that we have several of the ever larger losses associated that many times people can fuse with it in the southern third of the state, the one over two.

To the to your left is the is the European Hornet and and that one is found fairly commonly in the southern third of the stages, also an invasive, exotic but.

And an interesting picture about those is they like to fly at night and will fly at lights.

And so if you're walking around carrying a flashlight, to actually hit your flashlight limbs, harvesting, find them out, hitting their their tractor, lenses on their on their lights on their tractors and their combines.

The one, the one next to it is the in the second one over is a cicada killer, which is fairly common around here, particularly the middle part of the summer.

And we look at that as being a very huge wasp.

It's usually about an inch and a half long.

And next to it is the pigeon horn tail, or and which the horn tails are, are burrowers into into rotten wood.

But you can see that the although the the worker, Norman giant hornets are going to get probably about as big as those individuals, the Queen, which is what's in what's in plastic all the way to the to the right on your screen, is, is actually a is actually very much larger and very much huskier than the others, and in fact, not to be confused with it, they have been working very heavily, very hard on this.

The United States Department of Agriculture, animal Plant Health Inspection Service, along with primarily being led by by the Washington State Department of Agriculture and their environmental groups, have been working very hard to eradicate eradicate this insect, and have not found any in 2002 or 2003 and are not released data yet in 2004 so it appears that we, if you keep your fingers crossed and and all this sort of thing, maybe that has been eliminated, but, but it is something that is not a real threat to people.

They live in forested areas where most people are going to go.

They live in down in their colonies or inside trees, and are in or in soil the base of trees, old stumps and so on.

And they're really not much of a threat to harm people, although their biggest problem is is their name murder Hornet comes from them, literally murdering honey bee colonies.

They will sit outside the colony and pick them all off until they could go in and clean out their brood.

So they are, they are a horrendous thing to the beekeeping industry that would get going, and so that would be the biggest problem associated with them getting established the United States and working very hard to keep that from happening.

Thank you very much.

All right, fingers crossed.

We don't see them, John, we're back to you.

Okay, we had a question on feeding birds.

Yes.

Dilla writes in Is It a Good Idea to pack lard or fat into pine cones to feed birds, not squirrels?

Right?

And it is not, unless you have suet.

If you have actual suet, I guess you can do it with that.

Suet is made from a specialized area of fat, usually groin or organ fat.

It's a lot drier fat, if once it melts, can be very toxic to birds, in that it gets on their feathers.

It stops the their ability to shed water.

And so the oil is melt.

One People asked also about peanut butter.

And if you make your own peanut butter, or you find some that has no other oil added to the peanut butter.

You can do that.

But if, if you, if you do use the regular lard, or something like Crisco or things like that, yes, it has a lot of energy, but it can be deadly to birds.

So I would say, don't do that, because they just can't Preen.

They can preen and and, and they just can't get rid of the fat.

If it gets to their tissue, they get wet and then they get cold and probably won't survive.

So stick to sue it and keep it in the cage.

You want it in the cage so that their feathers don't rub up against it too.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you, John, okay.

We've got a question from you for you.

This is from Mary Beth, and this is about sweet potatoes.

She grew them for the first time this year, and they were planted June 27 her growing time was 120 days, and this was sent in about two weeks ago, but she's wondering when she should bring them in if she.

Just cut the tops back of these, and kind of just how to harvest sweet potatoes.

So what advice do you have for Mary?

Well, I would suggest digging up being one.

Try to dig up one potato and see how it looks the size.

If you know, she can let it go, or she can cut off of one's top parts, but just dig one up and see what it looks like, see if it's ready be harvested or not.

Okay?

And now that we've had those hard frosts, and it's gotten really cold, probably wherever she's at in the state, those tops have gotten frozen.

So Phil, I know you and John both talked about growing sweet potatoes.

Any other advice there?

Now that we're beyond just the initial Well, I do know that once it frosts and you see the damage to the leaves, you want to cut it off.

Get rid of all those tops.

Usually we dug them up right away.

Phil and I were talking, and it's, you want to make sure that you get rid of the tops right at the ground level, so that the SAP doesn't go back down into the into the potatoes.

So, yes, cut them off and then dig them up as as soon as you want.

You want to get every ounce of growth out of those that you can.

So, you know, a lot of times you may get a hear of a frost, but then it doesn't well, then it's another 30 days before the frost comes.

Well, you got 30 more days of growing and so.

But the main thing is getting them out of the ground before the ground freezes.

We're not talking just a frost, right?

And getting the tops cut off, right, right?

The next that next morning before the sun hits them, get it, get those, all those tops off, so that it's kind of like rhubarb, you know, if you get something on the leaves, and and, and the leaves get damaged the the SAP goes down into the socks.

Well, that makes the stocks now unedible too.

So, and it it, I don't know that it makes the the potatoes unedible if the sack gets in there, but it does something that that is not desirable, all right, anything to add there?

Phil, yeah, my understanding is, is, what it does is make the makes the potatoes bitter, bitter.

Okay, probably an ox or, in fact, we had a case.

You know, sometimes you'll get a partial freeze, and the edges of the some of the leaves will go a little bit, we'll get a little bit of die back.

And we left, we left them out after that, and then then got out early in the morning after the first heavy freeze, and cut off the top, and you could and occasionally we pick up.

We needed to make a potato, and later that had didn't taste very good, and we kind of felt that maybe it was from that edge, as we didn't know for sure, but yeah, probably Gotcha.

Okay, so if they're still in the ground, get them up.

Because, like I said, this was sent in about two weeks ago, so hopefully you've already gotten them, but if not, head on out there.

All right, Phil, we've got a question for you.

This is from Jen Baker.

She says that she's got tiny little insects in the bottom saucer underneath her Boston fern.

She said there are several of them.

Is there an entomologist in the house that can tell me what they are?

These are probably spring tales, in all likelihood.

She indicated they were about the size of a comma on an imprint and and so these are, these are going to be various colored spring tones are considered to be one of the most common insects in the world, that and particularly the most common And nobody knows about more or less.

It's thought that for every cubic foot of soil in the world, there are approximately 50,000 springtails.

And so that's very common.

And interestingly enough, they're named springtails because they have a forked structure at the end of their abdomen that that causes that they will release it quickly, and it will throw their bodies up into the air.

Now spring tails, a huge one is is pushing 316, of an inch long.

And so these are small creatures, and most of them are about about an eighth of an inch long, size of a common track and and they tend to be a little bit on the curved side.

And typically these will throw them the spring tail will throw them up into the air two to three inches high, which is impressive, huge amount of space for something that small.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, that's like a Superman thing.

Interestingly enough, the ones that live, there are lots of different species, and the ones that live towards the surface have large spring tails, and the ones that live deeper down into the soil, and they do live so.

Roll feet down into the soil.

So we're not just talking about surface cubic feet.

We're talking about down, way down, with these 50,000 per cubic feet and and those don't have any fur coulis at all, or no springing mechanism, or it's very small, and they really don't use it, because you're living down the middle of the soil.

Where are you going to spring to where you going to hit your head on this one the other side?

So so they really don't do that.

And usually where people with potted plants notice them the most is on the surface, because as you water, you see these things jumping up and down.

And people think, I've had numerous calls.

People say I got fleas on my trials plants.

And I go, No, you don't have, but very unlikely.

But at any rate, these will when they're irritated, they will jump up, and people will see this happening.

They will also have, and probably the part of the road in has ones that are living down deeper in the pot.

They probably do not have the spring tails as much.

There are different species and are coming out the bottom as a few of them, and they range from being light colored with and some have stripes.

Some are dark, some are black.

And the writer talked about it being dark, they're feeding on dead organic matter and molds and mildews.

And the way we normally tell people to reduce them is to reduce their watering.

Most people over water their house plants anyway.

And so if my old rule of thumb is, if you stick your finger in and it's still still damp up to the first joint, you don't need to water it if it's still if it's dry, and you do need to water it, and you water it good enough so it comes out the bottom of a pot, and you always have all in the bottom of a pot, or you're going to drown your plant on all likelihood and so little topic.

And so this will normally take care of the problem for a Boston Fern, which you try to keep moist all the time.

Anyway, that's somewhat of a problem.

You're not going to eliminate the string pills that way.

My suggestion to the collar would be that you just live with them.

But if it really bothers you, you could after you water, you could water with insecticidal soap that will kill these insects.

They're not really insects.

They're real close related to them, and eliminate them and make you feel better, but in reality, you've reduced the ability of nature to break down dead organic matter and release nutrients to your plant.

Gotcha.

So you would actually look at them being in a house plant as being a beneficial insect in one way or another, because they're actually helping reduce nutrients reduce so Jen falls in your court.

Can you live with them or No, at the end of the day, chill out.

All right, John, we're back.

I've got just a few minutes left.

I had to bring this in, something we made at school and and I knew Phil was going to be here.

And I know he's, he's the leader of our local bonsai, bonsai, bonsai, okay, somebody else be president.

So I just had to do this.

This is, this is just, I trimmed the lower leaves off and put some moss around just to make a little scene.

And this would be, you know, we have them on our desks and things like that.

It's just fun to watch a live little plant.

Also, right now we have Christmas cactus and Thanksgiving cactus, and I want to show these.

This is a true Christmas cactus.

You can see the type of flower, and it's got these little horns on it, where the this is a Thanksgiving cactus.

This one here without the horns, that is your true Christmas cactus.

Thanksgiving cactus, Christmas cactus.

There is another one that's and I don't have it with me, but it's called Easter it's an Easter cactus.

And it's a whole different family, but it has trumpet flowers and kind of star shape, and it, to me, is the best flowering of all three as to what is the Easter cactus?

So tell us more about your bonsai garden.

What was your you just wanted to replicate.

I just wanted to make it look I didn't have time.

You know, it takes years and years and years to develop a true, you know, scene.

This I did within in about an hour or half hour.

And it's, it has that, that era or Aurora, of being a bonsai.

Very nice.

I love it, but it's not.

It's this is not I probably would get thrown out of the building.

We're pretty lightly.

People really, get really excited about being purists.

Would be upset about that, and we don't have a single purist in our little so you're all right.

Yeah.

So I just thought it was be, especially being Phil was here.

I had to bring that today.

So very nice.

Well, thank you guys.

We've got about a minute and a half left.

You want me to talk about the amaryllis?

Oh my gosh, yes.

Can you do it in one minute?

Yes, okay, real quickly.

All right, let's go for it.

Steven wants to know how to get it to bloom.

Okay, you're a little late for Christmas, but two to three months of dormancy, the way you do that, no water, no light, cool temperatures below 60, lay it on its side.

Sometimes that, some people say that helps let the leaves leave the leaves on, and they will grow brown.

Once they turn brown, they will fall off.

Don't cut them off, because that's putting nutrients back in.

Then once 50 to 60 days before you want it to bloom, you bring them up, set them up, water them, and start to water, change the pot if you need, put good fertilize, good soil in there and well drained, lots of sun.

And after they bloom, you just start the process all over, and they'll have maybe you'll see little pups, let them grow for a couple years, and that gets you a whole new plant.

Okay, wow.

We packed it all in the show.

Thank you guys, so much for coming.

Thank you so much for watching.

We will see you next time.

And if you've got questions, send them into us at your garden@gmail.com, or search first on socials, just look for Mid American gardener.

Good night.

You.