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

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me in studio today, our two guests, which I'm sure you recognize two of our panelists, Chuck and Martie are here.

Let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their speciality.

So Marty, we'll start with you.

Oh, good to go first.

I'm Martie Alanga.

And I am almost retired sort of, kind of, well, I don't know.

That's, you know, I'm a landscaper, and I was a private landscaper pretty much and I still know a lot of stuff.

digging holes hurts my back.

But you know, I still have a lot of stuff going on up here.

That's where you hire an assistant.

That's right.

Someone else can dig the holes.

And you can just kind of say yes, no, no, no.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I have minions.

There you go.

All right.

So yes, I'm Chuck voigt.

I'm retired from the Department of Crop sciences, formerly known as horticulture.

vegetable and herb specialist.

I work there for over 27 years.

And I've been retired for several years and still seem to be busy and busier maybe?

Well, at some things.

Yes, yes.

Yes.

Excellent.

Okay, so we've got to jack of all trades on the set today.

And we're going to talk about a whole host of things.

Chuck already alluded to his expertise in vegetables.

So let's jump in.

First, let's talk about the growing season for you with the weather, you know, how did things go out at the farm?

Well, it was a late start.

I think it was kind of damp, and it was cold.

And it was it was odd.

And so I kind of missed out on on those early cool season crops that have that very narrow window window in the in the early spring.

And so then when things finally started to happen, you know, I was doing you know, the tail end of some of those things.

Like I can't go without potatoes, you know, me.

I was doing that.

But then it was biting tomatoes and peppers, almost, you know, like the next week it was it was all compressed into that.

That early window, then, almost immediately we went to hot.

Yes, that day.

And then a while after hot came dry.

Yeah.

And we skirted right on the edge of disaster the rest of the season up there in Kankakee County.

And for some things, I was carrying water especially to get some things established.

But it's really not set up where I can even get there with a hose.

So it's it's all based on back labor.

And and so you had to need it really badly if you were a plant or was survived.

Fortunately, maybe because of the late start, the soil was in great condition.

And it held moisture.

super well.

I mean, the tilth was good.

And I got by with way less rain than I would have expected I could have.

Excellent.

Now did you say it was this the first year that you condensed a little bit?

Yes.

If you remember the video we did, I was I was promising that next year, I'm going to be in this footprint here.

Which is probably like 40 by 80, which to a lot of people would be a huge garden.

But if you've done acreage 40 by 80 is like postage stamp.

You can't you can't hardly turn around.

And so I and I actually managed to stay within that that promise to myself.

Partly because I didn't didn't have a lot of space taken up with those early spring things.

But we're gonna take credit for it because it worked out.

Okay.

Okay.

Now let's take a look at this first picture here.

Okay, now tell us what we're seeing.

Okay, on on the right.

The sweet potatoes.

If you recall, I had 100 foot row last year why I don't know.

I was able to let her Matthews YaSM this year and and was around 40 feet, which is probably in terms of what I can consume within my family group.

Still is plenty but and I had some friends who wanted some slips.

I ended up growing nine varieties, which I had meant to I had meant while I lost one because they'd been carrying 10 And so I ended up having like three plants, each of most of them.

And then the two that I really wanted.

I had I had more.

So they did well certainly not like the once in a lifetime crop in 2021 with the seven pounders and the Oh yes.

I remember like I had a bite of that one didn't I?

Did you bring me that purple?

Yeah, yes, it was delicious, by the way.

Yeah.

Just just full of phytonutrients and then kind of in the center there are the tomatoes in their cages.

And at this point, I think we're in September, and we're finally starting to see a little leaf disease.

But unlike a lot of the previous years when you get those brainy human things going on, leaf disease really stayed away.

I had relatively perfect tomatoes.

Well into September.

It was, in fact, my sister was bragging to her friend in Oregon, Washington.

Sorry.

And so we took some pictures of some of the best things in the box.

proud papa right there.

Well.

Yes, sir.

All right.

I think that some of the other shots are proud.

There.

That's that's probably a better more indicative shot.

And those I mean, nothing terribly special.

I've kind of landed on early girl and Big Beef.

I was gonna say those early girls, the smaller ones early girls, the bigger ones are big beef.

Both did exceptionally well this year for a long time.

Nope.

No cracking at the at the stem end.

Just Just amazing.

And of course, because they weren't overcome with water.

The flavor was really concentrated the best tomatoes I've had.

Maybe since the drought of 1988.

Oh my god, I got a year for tomatoes.

Well, I was watering like crazy back then.

So so that the tomatoes worked out?

Well, I ended up with with twice as many pepper plants as I really wanted to have because I didn't find what I wanted at the first place where I went.

And the second place I went had what I wanted.

So I ended up with 16 instead of eight.

So we ended up with like bushels of peppers.

But we got them dried and parceled out and we had a great prep for your great great tomato year.

Some other things maybe not as wonderful, but we're gonna check, check back in with you in a bit and look at some of your flower.

Okay, because those reports all right, mystery woman.

This is your and everybody knows and Marty starts talking about pruning, listen up.

Or she'll threaten you.

Let's get to one show without a third of violence.

Okay, fine, whatever.

So what we got was the season.

Okay, I'm talking about I've got a picture that we'll look at later, a golden mops candy Cypress that I pruned of my own, because it was a little bit hairy, it was going over which way and now it's got a bit more of a refined shape to it.

So I was gonna, I went around my yard and my neighbor's yard.

And I know they love me so they don't mind if I snipped something off their lilacs.

And I wanted to show you people get crazy about clean stuff off in the winter.

Oh, we got to cut all that down and get ready for spring.

Now you don't know you don't.

And there are some things you just should not prune in spring because if you do, you're going to short yourself on the spring bloom.

So here I'm not sure how good a picture we can get on here.

But this is a this is a Carly sci fi Burnham little clipping I took off now you can see trying to look and see see how they get those little, those little wings on there.

Okay, that's a that's a blossom.

When you look inside here, if you can look closely, but we we kind of can't we just can't get close enough this time.

But these all have a little pin cushiony kind of a look to Him.

And they've always got those, those two little wings and they're gonna bloom, okay, so this is why burnin they bloom on the terminal and of the of the stick of the you know the brand.

Thank you twigs.

Good points again, thank you, um, like, I should know this.

Okay.

And you see how these other ones, these are not blossoms.

These are just going to be leaves.

Right here.

Those are just going to be leaves.

But the blossoms come here a little round guy that kind of look like a dogwood blossom earlier this year.

And that's if you go out and you're like, Well, I'm just gonna shape that up.

Well, you're gonna cut yourself short.

And then you'll be calling us and going to do blue news here because you're an idiot.

Okay?

Watch the show.

All right, all right.

I can almost smell those.

Oh, they're wonderful, spicy.

They're wonderful.

My neighbors have farmhouse lilacs.

I'm on the east side of me.

And I've got this car Lisa Anna and a little.

A little Miss Kim.

Why, like on the west side of the house and everybody blooms at one time and it's just like when the winds blow.

Yeah, breeze comes through.

Remember that cartoon dog that would that would float on the smell of food.

Yes.

And there's little lambs that yeah, that's that's Oh my god.

It's delicious out here.

Okay, so we're done with Cibona I'm sorry.

And now we're going to do Do this little.

This little bitty star magnolia.

Same thing, same thing.

This is a little star magnolia.

And these are the blossoms.

They're fuzzy little cat kins there.

This is a saucer magnolia.

So with Ableton, you see the similarities just like that, they were the same candidate.

Well, that's why you attend here.

So So that's right, there's gonna be a quiz later.

So this is a but also in this about and this and this, but those are going to be leaves.

So the flowers bloom at the end.

So if you, if you prune for shape, you're gonna lose some of your flowers.

I got a couple more.

And then we're done with the Tweety things.

Okay, this is a Miss Kim Lai lick.

See how tiny these little buds are, I don't know how close we can get.

But these are at Biddy.

But I'm not sure you can tell.

But they have a sort of a purplish hue.

And they come out two at a time.

So all of these are going to be flowers, like back away from the stem to and honest to god, you're never going to make that small anyway, what you should do, if it's too big where it is, is bite the bullet dig it up and move it somewhere where it has room to stretch because it will not stay small.

It won't.

And it's it's advertised as a miniature lilac somewhat.

Well, that grows in a ball.

And it doesn't grow like an old standard farmhouse, like with the with the suckers at the bottom and you know, taller than it is why doesn't grow innovation if it goes into ball, and I defy you to print it into a tree and leave it like that.

Now these are regular lilacs, very similar except they're just much much much bigger.

So okay, there's the Miss Kim.

Over here.

And this is the regular the lilac we're all used to seeing you know, the farmhouse lilacs.

Tall big panicles of dark purple, or almost red or white flowers.

This, we're gonna get this one guy here.

This is faded flower from this lilac, this farmhouse lilac.

So even if you have these big lilacs, and you're going along, you're like, oh, that's going to be a flute.

No, it's not.

No, no, that's done these little round guys at the end of the stems.

So you can get rid of these.

If you're wanting to shape up certainly catch up.

You can cut those off and no one will care.

However, if you cut these off, then you're low was the bare spot on that because you Okay, yeah.

So don't do that.

There are things when things bloom in the spring, whether they're trees or shrubs or whatever they are, whatever form they take.

don't prune them anything woody at all, you know, a shrub or like I said a tree.

prune those right after they bloom when the last petal falls, get out there and shape them up.

Get them off the sidewalk.

move them to a better spot.

But not now.

Don't put it off.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Because once the bud start to set up for the next year, yeah, yeah, these are these are plants that bloom on old wood.

So this is the wood that grew all summer, this year.

And it puts on these buds for next spring.

But if you wait until November to prune that thing up while you're at it, yeah, you're not gonna get any flowers.

So be sure when like viburnum ly lick for Scythia all of these guys, if you want to prove them, prove them right after they flower, that last petal falls, get out there and be sure and do it before July 1, June 15 is better.

But you know, okay before July 1, and then you'll have enough time enough time to grow new wood with blossoms on it that you can't see until next year.

All right.

Speaking of flowers, we're going back out to the farm.

How about that?

Yes.

That is one of my my all time favorite sets the an Amish Cox calm and get that from seed savers.

I think some other places probably have it.

If I'm not mistaken.

It came from from the Amish community here in Illinois, originally, but it got into seed savers and they offer it through their catalog.

It's a crested type but the crest tend to stay fairly small so you don't have like a basketball size crested What do you do with other than be amazed by it, so it makes it much better cutting one I have a tendency to solid and flatten and not really not really thin it out too much.

So I have maybe 234 plants in a hill and so that keeps them even smaller.

but but, but but it's a really nice when there's two kinds of Cosmas.

And I've always called him Cosmas since Carl Sagan, I think a lot of people call them Cosmos because of because of his program, but they've always been cosmos to me the two types, the the orange, yellow ones that I think are called Klondike types, or at least were back in the day, 50 years ago when I was learning, right materials.

And then the other ones that we'll see later are the sensation types for clocks.

I have have a wonderful, wonderful history with these.

These are all things that I've that I've grown for years and years.

And my aunt had they they built a new house, their house burned down and had built a new house and she had like a planter bed between the sidewalk and the house.

Grew four o'clock there while they seated themselves up against the foundation.

Yeah, they do.

And she so she had four o'clock the rest of her life.

Yes.

And so she wasn't really a swear.

But I think she came close to saying bad things about him.

But but it wasn't because four clocks are bad.

It's just it's just that they do get kind of Vic routes that will winter over.

You can actually buy roots to start them from someplace.

I had a client who loves for clocks.

And there was a small raised bed right out side of her garage door, put a little stone wall and there was I believe there was a tree form hydrangea there.

And she said we'll move in for class local.

Yeah.

They're going to receive themselves like insanely.

She says, Oh, I know.

But I had when I was a kid and I loved him.

So she's got four o'clock every night when she doesn't know what you're getting into.

Yeah, she didn't do anything.

She she cuts off the top ones and the seeds go.

Yeah, I mean, they fill in a great.

Yeah, and the reason they're called Four o'clock is the flowers come out in late afternoon.

And then they're pollinated by nightflyers Like MAs and have a wonderful fragrance.

It's through the night and if you get out there early in the morning.

It's a very distinctive fragrance.

It really makes me smile when I get there.

Globe amaranth Gomphrena I was disappointed because my favorites are the are the purplish ones.

Yeah.

And so I had mostly white and pink ones.

But again, we've had these for years.

We call them Clover straw flowers, because as they grow the Brax on the on those flowers are already pretty papery and dry.

They dry very well.

They're great for dry arrangements.

I had two kinds of this kind of Cosmas this is the the older type the the bright lights, which get for four feet or more tall.

The first one we saw was a more dwarf one it's probably under two feet.

But that same bright lights is more orange in in in the back color in the back.

Yeah, the the the color range was better on on the smaller ones.

That's just another shot of those with.

These are Bush Balsam.

It's a relative of impatience.

So I guess the the seedpods that when you touch on the sides out squiggle back and the shoots the seeds all over the place.

Boys and girls, okay, they explode.

They're pretty interesting.

And then seniors I had both the State Fair big ones and then the the little puppets the small flowered ones.

And to the right, you can kind of see the nasturtiums and the story I tell about nasturtiums.

It's one of the first two things I grew when I was three years old.

I planted assertions they planted radishes.

I have a vivid memory of coming into the first radish so they pulled that wasn't a spectacular looking radish because it was was sparkler the red one with the white tip Gotcha.

And I've never had as good luck with with that as with cherry Bell and some of that some of the red ones but, but there they are, this is the door one and somehow I got a package of the dividing ones mixed in because I planted all these flower seeds when I saw that I was going to have this space available and put them on my plant stand with my things that are outside summering.

And over the first night.

Some critter got in there and dug up each cell and so I had to replant and somewhere along the line I got I got some long ones but they don't seem to show in this picture but I got the ones that go six or more feet long but still was good.

Yeah, for traders.

Oh my Wait, I'm being threatening again.

Yes.

And this is is Cleome spider flower.

The packet that I had this year was mostly purples although there was one pink one and a couple of white ones.

How tall does that get?

That gets taller than me eventually starts flowering and then you can see its starts down at the bottom, it just keeps flowering up at the tip until it freezes.

And then you get nice seedpods at the bottom that you can kind of pull off and you get whole bunches of seeds.

There.

There's one and they just looked like the queen of the garden, you know, very round like, here we are this this is I was renewing the seed of I have to heirloom broom corns.

This is the Hungarian red.

I like it.

I got these originally from a lady in Essex, Illinois.

She was Mrs. Louis, I think G Arcos.

But it could be key Arcos I'm not sure.

But they had been back to visit Mr.

Gross's brother in Hungary.

And he gave him a seat of have a red and a black broomcorn.

And so I've been keeping them separate.

And I wanted to show the close up, because there it is, it's very ornamental.

And, you know, if Diane came up with with, if you break that into smaller pieces and put it in like a tie together, somehow, you can use it in arrangements a lot better than using that flower arrangement, or one single flap, yeah, if you're gonna use it in a in a razor, it kind of needs to be half as big as the house and like an umbrella stand more than we've got about five minutes left.

And speaking of arrangements, I want to jump to some pictures that Marty sent really quickly.

This was my this was my golden mops, Cami Cypress.

They tend to be like four feet tall and as wide at maturity, but they grow pretty slowly.

So this one has not been pruned.

For two years, I've had kind of a tough two years, the last last couple.

So the garden just it just did what it wanted to.

So that little foof noodle there at the time at the time, come off.

So here's after the aircraft's like you pull your hat off when you're wearing a stocking cap and yeah, okay, we got to get rid of that.

Okay, so it got a little a little prune in there.

And from that, I have these two cool wrought iron planters that I inherited my, my, my sister's mother in law had them.

And then she passed away and my mom wound up with them.

And then when my mom moved out of where she could use them, I felt my sister would want them because they were her mother.

Yeah.

And they came to me and I love them.

I love the way they look on my wooden steps.

Those are painted white wrought iron.

And they're plenty big enough to slip a very large pot down inside of and you just don't even see him there.

Excellent.

So those clippings went in the pot.

I always do this in the fall and where and then the pink stuff in the middle is see them.

And then there's also if you can use Zoom at all on that.

There you go.

There's some blue spruce down at the bottom, right there.

And then up higher to the left a little.

There's some dry hydrangea, I had some panicum grass, and I do like that I kind of clump off.

You gotta have like, you know, so you can stick it down in there.

Otherwise, it'll just go that route corn would look pretty good.

I should work this out.

Next year and the fan travels.

I love it.

I love it.

Very pretty.

And you said you were going to add some ornaments to that.

And just Yeah, yeah, that's those are pretty like this is a pot that's probably 14 inches across, you know, at least a foot probably a little bit more.

So round.

And I just, I just started jamming stuff in there.

And usually those are annual pots this year.

I didn't get them planted.

So they're just sitting there in their dirt, but they're not frozen.

So I get stem stuff in there.

Let's get ornaments in there.

Awesome.

They look really great.

I can take those out and those those things that I chose dry well and the Evergreen stays well.

So those are good until spring.

You know I did that now and those are great until April and you'll just leave them now did you say I checked out for a second do you water them the water the arrangements?

Do you miss them?

Do you know because Ella made one last year from my porch and she said to go ahead and just kind of missed it or water it a little bit just to kind of those are all those are all things that most people would just deadhead.

I chose those things like the grass that came like off the last foot or foot and a half and then the seed them I took that out because it had already been crushed.

I think the dog ran through it chasing a rabbit.

But ordinarily I leave all that stuff up because it's good for the crown of the plants.

It's good for beneficial insects to to overwinter in and you can cut them then in the spring, you're dying to get out there anyway.

Yeah.

Okay.

Just leave that up.

And it's so much better for the crown of your plants so much better for beneficials that you're going to wish you had to Harvard because the enemy is ever vigilant.

And you got a whole army helpers out in your garden.

If you just feed them a little bit, give them some couple of tents real quick.

We've got one minute left.

Let's see if we can get this answered in one minute.

This is a question about a weed in the garden.

We've got a photo.

The past couple of years I've had this weed growing in my weed slash vine in my rock garden.

I pulled them out, they come back.

This person needs help up in Tinley Park.

So what do you think this is?

And what is the best course of action quickly?

I think it's a brilliant read.

Seems reasonable.

And unfortunately, they get they go into nurseries and that actually gets sold with plants, which is a terrible thing.

Yes, it is.

And it's hard to control because it has very nice fleshy roots that it does deep.

It's not if if you can isolate it somehow and maybe do a spot treatment on its foliage so it doesn't get on the plant that it's trying to grow on.

You might be able to get enough down there with multiple applications to eventually discourage it.

But it's it's a tough time for the clamber for five feet tall and just inundate everything.

Okay, climbed up over my bird.

I like to usually end on a good note but this is what we got this time.

So hopefully you can take care of that we get it thanks to chuck and Marty for coming in.

And thanks to you for watching, and we will see you next time.

Good night.