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

I'm your host, tinisha Spain, and we are out of the studio, as you can tell, at Prairie fruits farms and Creamery in Champaign, and I'll have my pals introduce themselves, and then off we go with questions and show and tell.

So Chuck.

All right, I am Chuck Voigt and I retired from the Department of Crop sciences almost 10 years ago.

I was a vegetable and herb specialist there.

So we'll try to address some of those things as we go into the beginning of winter here today.

Excellent.

All right, Shane and I'm Shane cultura.

I also am retired.

Been three years now from the family that owns country arborist nursery, where my brother Joe culture is doing an amazing job while I come here and play and talk about plants all day.

And I'm not retired.

Still got a long ways to go before I get there.

So, all right, well, you guys brought chantels.

I know everybody at home is looking at this guy, so let's start there.

Okay, just for you, I grew dinosaur gourds this year.

It's also called maranka, M, A, R, A, N, K, A, it's called Swan Gourd.

You can kind of see where it gets at Yes, and if you grow them on a trellis or something, the neck gets really straight, and then it becomes a caveman's club.

It's got all kinds of, all kinds of names like that.

It's a legendaria.

There's the genus.

It's has white flowers that bloom mainly at night, so it's pollinated by by moths.

Now, you talked about these on the show earlier in the spring and summer months.

How did they do as a crop for you?

Well, they took off like they were going to conquer the world.

They grew out of the where they were planted, and were headed for the bean field, but then the drought kind of caught up with them, and I didn't do a stupendous job of weed control, and so I only got six of them, but I promised you that I'd have Well, the first problem I had was I planted a bunch of seeds, And only two plants came up so that, apparently it was time to renew the seed, because what I had was not, not overly vigorous and germinating.

And I asked you already off camera about eating this, right?

There are some legendary type gourds that they eat as like summer squash when they're small and soft.

This has a when this dries out and you're shaking the seeds and you get them out the pulp in there is very accurate, and the dust gets in your mouth and you have this nasty, accurate taste.

So plus it, you know, when it's dried out, it's just like thin plywood.

So that's you wouldn't want to try that.

Here we talked before, when I was doing this, that it's hard for me to believe that some makeup person somewhere didn't look at this and designed the forehead design for the modern Klingons, and, yeah, Star Trek universe, because that's exactly what they look like.

So I think I can see somebody, you know, making a latex cast do that, and then, and then making, making the makeup, very cool, right?

It's a neat little broom coins need to look at.

And as it as it starts to dry which, which could take most of the winter, it could stay green for a long time.

As it starts to dry out, you may start to see a little bit of surface molds and whatever going on.

But as it starts to get lighter, if you start shaking it so the seeds get loose, it's easier to get them out.

And then if you drill about a quarter sized hole, you can, you can shake it, shake them right out.

And then you can hang this somewhere.

And it's a perfect size for for rents.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

I turn it into a bird.

I hung one when I planted them this year.

I hung, I hung that one with its hole on the on the swing where I rest, yes, yes.

And within days, the wrens had colonized it.

Very nice.

They just love them.

So, okay, it's, it's, it's just all kinds of fun and, and that one is yours.

Oh, thank you.

See, I love myself.

Now you'll have seeds and, but in a rinse.

But be aware if it's if, if the plant is happy, it may grow 30 feet in all directions.

Okay, noted, this is going to be my paperweight for today.

Thank you, Chuck.

Okay.

All right, Shane, we are to you want to talk about your tray, or you want to talk about the cactus, because this is a real timely with Christmas lap, the Thanksgiving cactus.

Christmas Jack, yes, it was a question that came in.

Yes.

Let me exact question.

So Mary says, How do you tell the difference between a Christmas Thanksgiving and an Easter cactus?

Do they all naturally bloom on their respective holidays?

Or is that marketing hype?

Well, I think they got the names because they do come pretty close to those days.

So this is a Thanksgiving cactus, and it is starting to bloom just about ready.

And we are shooting this real close to Thanksgiving.

They're very easy to tell.

If you look at them once, you know what to look for when they're have very serrated leaves like this.

It is a Thanksgiving cactus.

So obviously, the bloom time makes it pretty obvious as well.

But a Christmas cactus will be more rounded, so you'll have some serration, but you'll have more rounded.

And an Easter will be all rounded, so it'll be smooth around each leaf.

So when you look at it, you're just looking for the serration so heavy, serrated Thanksgiving, you know, smooth at the bottom of the ulceration at top, Christmas, smooth all the way around, is going to be Easter.

And you made a video about, made a video of exactly that, yeah, for folks, so that they can know the difference.

Yeah, it's probably other than, how do I get my hydrangeas to turn blue, or when to trim my hydrangeas?

Probably the most often asked question is, how do I tell the difference in which one is which?

And they don't ever tell you, right?

You see it in stores, and it's just sitting there and blooming, and you just buy it, then you just pick it up and grab Yeah.

Care wise, do they need a lot of light?

Yeah?

So this was, this one is five years old, made from a cutting which this one is going to be now that I broke it off, you we really have it in a low light, northern facing room, and it does just fine.

We don't over water it, which is one of the things people do.

People tend to really over care for it, so we just keep it regularly, you know, like you almost do all house plants, good watering, let it dry out all the way through, and then re water, and keep that cycle.

Never going too hard, either way, really low maintenance if my wife takes care of this, and nothing against my wife, but she is not a strong house plant person, and she does a great job with this one.

It's always looked good.

It's never looked poor at all noted and for the piece that snapped off.

If that happens to folks at home, do they root best in soil or water?

We do it in soil, soil, so little small tip like right here will do really well in soil.

Matter of fact, that's how we grow them all with the nurseries, through cuttings.

Wonderful.

It's a great plant, yeah.

And the the response is kind of hardwired into them, yeah, exactly.

It's a day it's a day length response, yeah.

And, and where they came from and how it worked out.

It just happens to work out as, yeah, that's a good three different things.

Why do they bloom?

How do they know when Thanksgiving is like, are they do they have a calendar, it's daylight, and you can trick them into blooming earlier or shorter by, you know, right, adjusting your daylight.

Yeah.

And it's amazing to see these grown I've seen like, acres and acres and acres of them in Holland, where they're like, on a mechanical thing, where they like, they start here, and they kind of mechanically go through this giant greenhouse, and by the time they reach The Other Side, they get packed and shipped, yeah, and go through that time to greenhouse, go go through the flower market there, and all smear and and are all over the world in just a matter of hours.

Interesting, interesting.

Well, there's a question that came in about grass seed, and now we're in the holidays.

It's not something that we're really thinking about.

But Lisa wants to know if it's too late or maybe too early, depending on what you how you think about it to plant grass seed for next year.

I I would worry that it's just going to be bird feed if you, if you, if you put it out there.

Now, the ideal time is around Labor Day in the fall for cool season grasses.

And I think as you get toward December, not much good is going to happen.

Best case, it would just lie there through the winter and then, and then get spring rains.

And maybe, maybe come out in the spring.

That spring is not, is not as as good a time to sow grass seed as as as early fall, but it's acceptable.

So I would, I would say, probably save the money because, because you want to start with with a fairly high quality seed, you know, not, not the quick greening.

I call them junk blends, that that, you know, they green up fast, but then they never make really good turf.

So I would save your money on that and maybe do it as early in the spring as possible, knowing that that's.

Not not ideal, either.

But you can also cheat in the early spring, when you know you get those last snows that melt really quickly.

You you can throw it on top of the snow, and if you know that the snow is going to melt that day, the ground's already starting to open up, so the snow will go in, bringing the seed into the cracks.

And so it kind of self sows and gets in there before the birds figure it out.

So I just love, you know those heavy, wet snow we call them heart attack snows at the end of the year.

Heart attack snows are really good for seeding, too good for killing and good for seeding the soil.

Yeah, if you survive nature, take it away, right?

If you also have the your soil worked up, you can do that same thing with lettuce seeds.

And we used to do that with, like, clover seed on a wheat field.

It would be honey combed, and you'd spread it over there late winter.

Easy to see the thickness of seed that you put down when it's on the snow.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

Okay, all right.

Another question for let's see we've got, oh, let's go to your tray, because I want to, yeah.

So one of the things that I'm not really allowed to do is get any water on the floor.

So we redid our basement.

Beautiful floor.

Our kitchen's got a nice wood floor.

And every time I start bringing in the plants, my wife, I can just see in her face, like do not.

So you know those, those plastic, clear trays you see everywhere we put those down, they're pretty bad.

They leave.

They get old the daylight, or the sunlight breaks them down.

So I found these on this site.

You might have heard of.

It's a new one called Amazon, and I hate shopping there, but I hadn't really seen anything like these before.

And they are thick, plastic, really large.

Will take all my lime trees, my all my plants will fit on.

I can even put three different ones.

They never get on the floor.

They never leak.

I never get in trouble.

All the things I'm looking for a plant that doesn't you know, that can get watered.

And if I water too much, it stays in here and feeds it.

So if I'm going on vacation for a week, I just fill this up over water.

And yeah, so it's really, it's the best tray I've ever found.

We love practicality.

Imagine that.

So on previous shows, this might be our last question.

On previous shows, we talked about soaking tomato seeds to save them to plant for next year.

And we have someone who wants to know.

Terry wants to know why we do that.

And if you can just harvest them, save them, and then just plant them, do you need to soak them?

The answer is, you can.

You can just just clean them up and and and save them.

It's better to ferment them, because it cleans up the seed.

It might, might delay some, some disease issues.

So it's best to follow all the all the instructions to do that and let them, let them ferment, and then the crud comes to the top.

Good seeds go down, then you dry those out.

I have certainly done it the other way.

Just put them on newspaper, let them dry, and then scrape them off the newspaper and plant them that way.

And I've gotten by pretty well with that.

But I think it's there's a reason that they do it the other way.

Eat a much cleaner seed.

That's, that's and of all the seeds that you need to like, you know, you hear about scarifying as well, where you'll take and you'll scratch the seed to help.

You're really trying to help the seed move along a little faster.

Tomato seeds don't need a lot of help.

It's like one of the ones that you don't need as much.

I'm not saying don't do it.

I'm just saying, of all the ones, if you get down to one, that's the one that's probably going to be okay.

All the tomato seed need is to dry out.

Yeah, they're they're programmed not to germinate when they're wet, because otherwise they'd be growing out of the tomato.

Okay.

One last question, Shane, for people who have brought their house plants in, Hallie says they're looking kind of sad.

So what do you do at home to give your house plants a little oomph to get through the winter?

Yeah, I mean grow lights, it's the daylight.

There's they're used to being outside and seeing plenty of daylight.

We're getting it naturally where it's less sunlight, but we're getting even more when you bring it in a house where there's only windows.

So the the Grow lights have gotten really inexpensive now with LED lighting.

So, you know, get the daylight a lot longer using LED lights.

Make sure the watering is okay again, keep it a little dry to start and then kind of introduce it to a little bit more water.

Don't overdo the dry, though, because they are used to being outside.

You bring them in, the house is drier than outside, so it's really about maintenance of water, maintenance of light, and get it away from the window so that cold temperatures don't hit on the leaves.

Got it okay?

Well, thank you guys for coming out.

Really appreciate it.

Excellent segment.

Let's get you guys warm.

Well, look who I ran into here at the farm.

Martie is going to help us create a lovely decoration.

Now, this basket lives on your porch, on my porch.

Now you sent us in a picture of the fall arrangement that you made.

So tell us a little bit about that, and then let's get into what we're going to do today.

And Kate the fall arrangement.

I. I did just like I do the winter arrangement.

I walked around the yard with my handy dandy clippers, and I snipped stuff off that looks suitable.

So there's the weather was so warm that now the colors for autumn are coming into their own, and I've got all kinds of fantastic autumn foliage in my yard that's completely unsuitable for the Christmas season.

So instead, we have to make two.

That's right, I do also have evergreens.

So I got about four different kinds of evergreens here, and I cut some some faded flower heads, and I've got some suggestions for what you can do with those later.

So okay, and this is, this is what I do.

It's so, so easy.

I love this.

And you do this in some sort of form every year on the show for us, usually in the fall.

But I love how you incorporate the dried in the spent blooms.

And it just looks lovely.

It's got that rustic charm to it.

And you can do the word you guys use, oh, winter appeal.

Is it okay or something to look at in the wintertime?

Oh, I appeal.

Yes, yeah, visual, visual appeal.

Okay, so take it away.

Okay, so this is you Texas, and it's very popular.

I have an ever low in my yard.

It's, it's a, it's a U variety that doesn't get very tall.

It'll spread out a little bit, but not too tall.

It's been in the ground probably 20 years, and it is barely as tall as this counter, okay?

And that's the stuff's sticking up pretty high.

So I did bring my hand printers in with me.

I had to go back out to the car and get them, but, um, I did bring them with me.

But a lot of these things, I'm just going to stuff them in for people who are worried.

Am I going to do this right?

Am I going to, is this going to look okay?

Is there a method to the madness, or are you just, I'm kind of doing, you know, some overhang on either side, okay?

This dark green is a wonderful backdrop.

It doesn't have a lot of snap, but it's a great backdrop.

So I'm just kind of lining the basket bottom, okay with these.

And I've got pretty good sticking out here.

Pretty good sticking out there.

It doesn't have to be six on one and six on the I mean, you'll just, you know, yeah, you know, just, you know, loosen from the hip here.

Yeah, loosen your drawstring.

It's good.

You're fine.

Just get twangy way.

Okay.

I also have some boxwood, okay, which is also very pretty, yep.

And all of these are conifers, except the boxwood.

My neighbor down the road has a really nice Holly tree.

And if I had not been running late, as the late Mrs.

Elana always does, I would have stopped and said, Can I clip some of those just Holly?

Yeah, I that's okay.

If you've got Holly, you can incorporate Skippy.

And I'd love to get some with the red berries on it, but I didn't.

So okay, here's the here's the, yeah, you just take these and yeah, you stuff them in there.

So this is just not, you know, it's just not rocket science.

So we're going to pretend that this is going to be the front of the basket and this is going to be against the wall on my porch.

So I'm going to try to play it to the to the camera visual there.

And you could dress, you could do ornaments or garland, depending on how you wanted to do it.

Oh yeah.

It could be something for the holidays or just something for the winter.

Oh yeah.

So I've got some Arbor Vita here.

I've got some green giant in my yard, and some Hicks eye and and that's what these came off of.

You'll notice, I don't know if you can see it or not, but the branch underneath is a little bit lighter and more dull, and the upper side is a little bit brighter.

And I'm putting these in so they kind of, they kind of cup, so the the U is darker, the boxwood is a little lighter, the candy Cyprus is a little bit lighter yet, and it lays flat.

So we're going color depth, we're going 10 different textures, different textures.

You can see, I mean, this is pretty.

It is, right now it is, and it's not doing anything spectacular at all, so I'm gonna clip that off, because it's sticking up.

There was a there was a branch sticking up, and I didn't want him, so I just cut him off and sent him to compost heaven.

So there's this, so it lays flat.

Little bit of, little bit of sticking up here, just a little bit, so folks can kind of see what we please do, what you've created.

Go right ahead.

Okay, let's finish her up.

I also have golden mops candy surface in my yard, and it's just got such a beautiful yellow color.

I don't know if you can catch that on the camera or not, but that goes in toward the middle more because it's so bright.

You want to be able to see that, yeah, and it just really, it really gives some, some visual pop here.

Okay, I think I've got one more.

So you literally just walked around the yard.

It took me 15 minutes.

Yeah, I loved it.

I was thinking not too long ago that every single tree and shrub and plant in my yard has been planted by my hand over the years.

I was kind of little little taken aback to realize that, good God, I'm old now.

Okay, it's been there a little while.

So this when the smell, oh yeah, it's very fragrant, very fragrant.

So this is con color fur, blue fur.

It's not as stickery spruces are spiky and furs are furry.

Yeah, rub that it doesn't bite you.

No, no, not at all, because first is very and it smells.

I feel like I'm just out of so nice.

So this is blue, and you can see how nice the color tips are, yeah.

So I'm going to stick these in front where, you know, people who come up the steps, including me every day, can appreciate them.

I'm going to cut this.

There's a little branch here, and I'm going to cut that right below there, so it still has a little branch sticking up.

I'm going to add a little bit more blue back here.

I'm going to go around the handle, and I have one more nice blue branch to stick over on this side.

Then this finishing touches, yeah.

If I'm not mistaken, I think this is mullion it's a weed like skunk cabbage came up in my flower bed.

It was not welcome to grow in my flower bed.

But does it have some cool seed heads?

Yes, the visual appeal, yeah.

So the next things I'm going to add are some of these.

And this is Pinky Winky hydrangea.

And these are the old standard autumn Joy sedum.

Now this morning was foggy and last night was foggy.

Yes, I was gonna spray paint a couple of these, not heavily, but just a little, you know, just little, yeah, just a little of gold or silver or copper on all of these, all these dried heads.

And you can, you can tuck them in there for a little bit of sparkle.

However, Mother Nature had other ideas.

Everybody was wet and the paint won't stick.

And I thought that's going to be a mess, is what that's going to be.

Okay.

These have multiple stems, and I'm going to stuff this in here deep and see how it spreads itself around here.

This is turning off, and if it doesn't want to, I'll cut some off and move them, because that looks really good.

Let me turn it, yeah, just stuffs on in there.

Turned out really, look at that.

Yep, a weed.

It's a weed.

You can also use foxtail grass.

Really, I love using foxtail in in autumn arrangements.

And that's another thing that you can spray paint.

Gotcha, you can give it a little move, you know, and it's really, they really look cool now.

How will this keep its color all winter?

Or will you get sick of looking at this and say, February and off it goes?

Will it look nice?

I couldn't bring myself to crawl behind the knee wall this morning and dig out my my unbreakable ornaments.

But what I do is I put a bunch of unbreakable ornaments in here with, no, I don't want that there.

I put a bunch of unbreakable ornaments in my in the middle here, and kind of tucked in there and here and there.

And then that's for December.

And when the Christmas season has come and gone, I pull the ornaments back on and put them away.

So the rest of it just sits there for the for the whole winter.

And it's really not now, you see, I'm just, this is not rocket science.

No, I'm just breaking these off, and I'm poking them in where there isn't one.

And Ta da, you know, it's just very nice, just not that hard to do.

And then these, these heads, you know, now you can cut these pretty short stuff, them in there.

Look at those.

They're really, really nice.

And if you had a little kiss of gold or silver or copper on here, you see how nice they would look.

And I did find this rolling around my house.

So yeah, and you got to remember that when you walk up on my porch, this is like sitting on a chair, so you see it from above.

Look how much that dresses that up.

Oh, and I put, like 10 or 12 in there, just tuck them in, yeah.

And this is the easiest thing in the world, and then it goes in the compost pile, about a big Yeah.

So here is the finished product, wow.

And it did not take long to assemble at all, not at all.

So just yeah, go take a walk in your yard and see what you can find.

And, yeah, put and this will sit on the porch until you're ready to switch it out for the spring arrangement, right?

Yeah.

And if you come on the show and do one of these, bring more Christmas ornaments, because, again, we are lazy, yeah, one, but I do like it hanging there.

Thank you so much, Martie.

Always a pleasure hanging out with you.

You Lauren.

That is the show for this week.

Thank you so much for watching, and a big thanks to Lauren and the rest of her team here at Prairie fruits farm and Creamery.

And also a big thank you to the goats, the star of the show, if you've got questions that you want our panelists to answer, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, or you can send us a message on Facebook, and we will See you next time.

Good Night and happy holidays.

Goodnight.

(music) (music)