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

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain and joining me in the studio today are two of our panelists who are here to answer all of your gardening questions.

We'll have them quickly introduce themselves before we jump in.

Okay, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Kay Carnes.

I'm a master gardener.

And I specialties.

Okay, all right.

Hey, I'm Shane Cultura.

I'm one of the owners at Country Arbors nursery in Urbana, Illinois.

And I have worked with growing plants and planting plants and maintaining plants for 28 to 30 years, actually, kind of almost my whole life.

I've been on the show for over 20 years.

So I can answer pretty much if it's green, I can at least participate in it.

Every time you say that.

It reminds me we have to find those clips from the 90s.

I know.

And they're videotapes.

And I just we have once I go down that rabbit hole of old videotapes.

I was just talking to guys that Iran who has been on the show for decades, as well, and we were just reminiscing about all the fun times all the time.

So good.

Yeah, yeah.

It's been a lot of fun.

Yes, I started in 95.

Yep, 90 got to too long.

We used to take a camera out and record shows like this old home and we would talk about the projects and we'd be like, cars, and I feel like this would be a great spot for landscaping.

It was just so hokey, but so much fun.

We got we were so yesterday, we looked incredible.

Everything.

You look back at 25 year old video, fresh smile.

All right, well, onto the show.

Like I said, we've got lots to cover today.

The first thing I want to do is I put out on Facebook, if anyone had any questions that they wanted to send in, and we got a plant ID picture.

So I showed you both this photo and we'll put it up here on the screen.

But what do you think this plant is that this person has in their yard?

Yeah, that was definitely Euphorbia.

And it's a perennial here in Illinois.

And it's got there's a lot of great cultivars of Euphorbia out there, there's just a general green, but there's some variation, variegated varieties with white around the outside and yellow around the outside, great grower, super hearty, very easy to maintain.

They all pretty much get a yellow flower.

It's one of my dad's favorite flowers.

He's always talking about how much he loves you for you.

And I think it's a beautiful plant.

It's not something that I think if you walk by you go, Oh, what an amazing flower.

But it is one of those plants, it's always there.

It's got great variegated foliage.

So when it's not in bloom, it looks good, nice.

I'm a big variegated foliage, or at least a good foliage person, because flowers come and go.

But the foliage is there all the time.

So I like I like things that have nice foliage.

And I always remind people during the winter of the colder months, that seasons just as long as spraying.

So when you're planting look for those things with nice foliage or foliage that hangs on a little longer during the colder periods, so that you can get it going into November, December, early January.

Those are in euphorbias, one of those plants, does it stay fairly compact, it doesn't take Robbie, you can tell kind of from the picture.

It has these longer stems, that it can be different sizes, of course, but yeah, it does stay pretty compact, it probably would be depending on the variety.

24 inches by 18 inches tall, but it doesn't spread like wildfire.

And that's the other thing doesn't spread through rhizomes very quickly.

You know, some things you can look at a pot in a nursery and know if the plant is right at the outside of the pot.

That thing's going to run as soon as you get home.

And that's not one of them.

It's a nice clumping for Gotcha.

Okay.

Thank you, Mary Klasky.

Rhodes wrote in since the ground isn't frozen hard yet, is it too late to put bulbs in?

We get this question a lot this time of year.

So what would you say to that one?

I'd say now would be a good time.

The ground is still soft.

With moisture.

I know we had a couple inches of rain recently.

And so I think that would be good.

So got some time left on the clock.

Yeah, but now when you come around, see everybody's flowers and you think I wish I would have today's would uh, yeah, today's I wish I would have and you should right now.

It's a great time.

It's it's never gonna be perfect.

And yeah, this is as good as it gets.

So yeah, take advantage of the weather we're having around the Midwest and get some things done.

I can't remember which panelist but someone said they were so desperate to have two loops that they were outside chipping at it in January, just hoping that a few of them would come up.

So don't put yourself in that.

Yeah, we know in the nursery industry that you're not going to do that a lot of times, so we plant them into pots and sell them for five or $6 per bowl have already grown.

So you can just plant that in the ground.

So instead of spending like 60 cents, you're going to spend $6, because you didn't want to get out when it was 15.

See if that doesn't motivate financially, exactly like that.

Okay, all right, Shane, you've got a couple of short sale items, whichever one you want to start.

Yeah, so I brought in this weird thing.

This is a battery.

And batteries obviously pretty much run the world right now, whether it's cars in your home, but it's really changing landscaping.

So you're seeing now land or lawn mowers that have battery packs.

And they do a great job.

I was really skeptical that we weren't quite there yet.

Obviously cars run fine.

But this was a kind that my wife actually was so tired of at the end of the year taking out the gas or putting in stabilizer, or leaky oil or smelling like gas when she's filling it up to go insane with myself.

You just, it's just a messy process a battery when it's perfect, you literally charges throw it in, it runs great, it can mow my yard, two or three times.

It's quiet, I don't have to disturb my neighbors.

The only sounds it makes are the automatic self propel and maybe the wording of the the propeller or the blade.

But other than that is completely quiet.

It starts every single time and all kinds of weather.

And you're seeing that in the blowers in your weed eaters.

Now these are a little big for the weed eaters.

I think it'd be hard for people to carry.

But you really need something of this size and your lawnmower, you're seeing some law more of my mom bought one that I thought I recommended the right one, but she got the wrong one or I recommended the wrong one.

But it's two or three of those kinds of small ones, you'd find it a drill, and you just kind of stack them it's just not as good.

You want a big battery pack.

And so I highly recommend moving over to an electric lawn mower if you can't they're not that expensive.

They're almost the same price as a regular mower.

Now it's a play devil's advocate.

Yeah.

Do you have a large yard because I know a lot of times people are Yeah, kind of gun shy on on go.

So my mind is not that big a yard.

Mine's probably a 20 minute Mo.

Okay.

I will say they have writing lawnmowers now that have much larger battery packs, similar to a car two big ones and can mow any size property.

You know, if you can drive your Tesla 400 miles, you probably can mow your lawn with some size battery.

So I yeah, you're seeing it all different size things.

And again, we can get into the ecological part or the part about lithium and what do you do with the battery packs?

I've seen a lot of old mowers just thrown around too, and a lot of oil running out of my driveway into the so I think overall, this is still probably a little better move.

Can you recharge that battery chargers?

Yep, you just throw in a little charger and it recharges every time.

And again, when you start you press a button.

No polling, no.

Oh, my carburetors dirty.

And it folds up really nice and just tucks back in there.

I put it in my car and bring it over to my mom's and Mo hers.

And don't worry about the oil and the gas leaking all over the back of my car.

So it's just, it's really nice and convenient.

And people ask me the best thing I bought last year, it's probably the Dyson vacuum.

And this electric future is now if I'm involved in it, I mean it's easy.

All right, thank you Shane.

Okay, we're gonna go to you What do you bring in?

Okay, I brought this is a winter savory plan.

A savory is a herb that used a lot in beans and lagoons and soups and things.

And there's two varieties there's the summer savory and the winter savory.

The summer savory is a tender annual, so it grows up and flowers and then dies off and you want to you can keep it longer by trimming it and keeping flower cut the flowers off when you see the buds that winter savory is a little bit stronger flavor both savories have kind of little flavor like a peppery okay, it's got some spice to it.

Yeah, Allah, like apeppery thyme flavor.

Okay, um, this is a little stronger.

But this is a tender perennial.

So they'll keep going in a pot.

But if you leave it outside, it's gonna die here in other zones in warmer zones that would want to overwinter So, you're cooking with this do you cook with just the leaves or do you use the whole thing?

Would you just cut a sprig off?

Generally you use the leaves.

The really these are the new stamps coming out and they're soft enough.

You could probably use them as well in cooking, and it's they use it a lot in soups and stews, and it's an unusual flavor.

But it's I like it a lot.

Okay.

All right, then you're gonna tell us more about that in just a little bit.

Okay, Shane, we're back to you.

Yeah, we have something a little more flavorful than the battery.

Maybe you've been to the farmers market or somebody's giving you a gift of creamed honey.

And you think, well, I should make some of that.

And it's, it's not difficult, but it's a little bit more difficult than you think.

When it comes to creamed honey, you were you have to take a seed source, meaning crystallized honey, to become the base to set the example for the rest of the honey, because the honey that you add, will only become the same size as the crystal that it is added to.

So if I add it to this, and I add more honey and whip it together, it all becomes this size.

If I take this and I grind it down to super fine crystals, I can then add hot new fresh honey to it and mix it up and it becomes the fine.

And that's what makes it creamed.

So when people say you can't just take normal Honey, that's because it needs to have some crystallization.

But if you just take normal crystallized honey, which we all have, because it normally crystallizes, you need to get it to the level of creaminess that you want.

So I'll take this, put it in there and just grind it down for 10 or 15 minutes, get it really fine.

And then put in new honey and whip it together.

And then I can make it whatever, keep it like that or make it whatever flavor I want.

So that's how you make cream honey.

And this is okay if your honey doesn't do this.

You either have tupelo honey, or you have honey that was in the stores.

It's been cooked when honey is cooked 240 degrees, it no longer crystallizes.

And then stuff you've in that also takes all the good stuff out of it.

So all those natural things that the bees brought back, once you cook it to that level, it really eliminates all that.

So when you hear about raw honey, it means it's not cooked.

Almost every honey you find in the stores is cooked.

And the reason is they don't want it to do this.

Can you see this sitting at Schnucks that's not the best seller.

So they're gonna go ahead and cook it.

So it never does that.

So it always sells well.

But you've lost all the goodness.

So deal with this.

And you can just eat this.

I wouldn't put this in the microwave because of the plastic.

But you can always just put this in some warm water and stir it and it's good to go honey doesn't go bad.

You said this on the show several times.

There's honey just 1000 years old that we still use and is good.

So if you get this make it creamed, honey, if you get this and want regular honey warm it back up, but this is okay.

And this is fine.

And actually great things can come up.

Now I want to I tried that before.

What Why do we cream the honey is it it just makes it easier to it's a little less messy too because it's it's almost like you know like a light.

Nutella.

You know, they do have chocolate the chocolate version of cream is about as good as it gets.

But it spreads on a bagel perfectly on toast and bread.

creamed is a great way to go.

And also you can add more flavors where other Honey, honey and water don't go together very well.

So you can't but I gave you BlackBerry the other day.

Its natural flavor.

There was no BlackBerry added to it, you have to add dried fruit or dried things to honey otherwise the honey in it rot can go bad.

So it has to be dried.

And when you have dry things a flavor sometimes isn't as good.

So if I were to add blackberries to it, it just doesn't take on a really good BlackBerry flavor.

creamed honey is a little different.

You can get a little crazier with your flavors and add some chocolate or strawberry and so you can get some really good flavored with a cream one as well.

So you'll see again I like chocolate somebody gave me some strawberry that was incorrect.

I don't know I'm not supposed to eat too much bread but you give me creamed, honey, I'm eating all the bread throw some in anything Awesome.

Awesome.

Okay, okay, we're back to you.

Well, I'd like to say a few words about keeping plants in pots over the winter.

I'm an expert at killing them.

Know what I'm talking about?

Knowing what not to do and what not to do is to overwater.

And so and I prefer the clay pots because they breathe a little bit and they have a pretty good sized hole on the bottom.

And so you know, you can just feel the top that it's a little bit dry, but further down it's it's wet and that's where you get in trouble because it's dry.

So you think oh boy, it needs more water and you keep watering it and then the roots rot after a while.

So I I just stick my finger in the top.

And then this is the other thing about the clay pots you can stick it in the back Autumn because that's what happens a lot.

You know, the top will be dry but the bottoms wet, so you can kind of tell what needs to be watered or not.

And of course sunshine need to try to get in this funny window.

That's a tough one this time of year.

It is it is and we don't have good south facing windows.

These are all on the east window so it kind of gets sun only about half the day.

But they seem to be doing well.

I've got several plants in that's it's another east window.

They're just kind of limping along they're making it they are one of them that like the tourists like kill every year but haven't noticed yet this year is Rosemary rose.

really finicky.

So so far, so good.

It's hanging in.

And you know, there's something to say about all the drafts, drafts, new the door drafts, the windows, were letting the plants actually the leaves touched the windows.

Well, while we're talking about it, Shane, could you give us some?

Yeah, so the one thing that's been great and I brought it on a show, I think this year, our Grow lights, the LED market has changed everything.

So a grow light now is $20 a fancy one that has five heads on it is $50 There's no reason to not grow plants.

I have a Carolina Reaper one for my honey that I use for the peppers.

I just took off 50 peppers yesterday.

And it's growing in my basement with no light, I just use the LED and I run in about 10 or 12 hours.

And that's the only light it gets.

But it's it's made for that it is better than any light I'm gonna get in my house.

So there are little strips that are quite ornate and beautiful and you don't even know they're led so you can put something like this maybe it's not getting the right light but put it wherever you want.

And it looks just like a normal desk lamp doesn't look like a big grow lamp, it looks like a normal desk lamp and nobody would know that that's actually helping the plant.

And so you can make something like that.

That is just a normal plant into a decoration because you can put it anywhere it can be on a table in a nice pot and growing with the looks like a table lamp, but it's really a grueling so technology has really helped on that quite a bit.

And yeah, people don't think about when they're building houses or buying houses that a south facing house is warm during the you can grow more plants.

You know, we always is plant lovers love south facing.

Yeah.

And so we don't think about when I built my house, I made sure that I had a whole house that was south facing taking on the other side of house that makes a big difference.

Going in with that and saying okay, but now that we have these grow lights, I have like my guest room and my house is now a plant room.

There is no guest staying in there because there's no real fighter.

And the other thing is I'm sure my neighbors just see this room glowing.

You know, we get dark early and so I extend the night so that room is just constantly lit up.

Purple.

Yeah, below.

Right.

Even when we're gone like even when I'm gone that room still lighting up.

So yeah, so there's there's really no excuse at this point.

There's no financial excuse not to grow, because you can buy your way into really good conditions for your plants watering though.

That's the hardest part of nursery, we killed.

I'm not exaggerating, 10 times more plant from over watering than underwater.

It takes a long time to kill a plant from under watering.

But you can kill it over watering very quickly.

That was a big job during the pandemic.

We were all just watering plants every day because you just had nothing else to do.

And so a lot of plants died in that time because they were the office plants died for a different reason.

And then the home plants they were drowned.

Is there anything else that you guys we've got about seven minutes or so left?

That we can talk about preparing folks for seeds, plants for next year?

When do you start shopping for your your upcoming years seeds?

The seed catalogs will be coming in the mail and yes they will large numbers.

Yes.

Usually right after Christmas.

You started getting the catalogs but is that typically right around the time you start planning?

I've usually I usually transition like right now I'm still kind of looking at my yard on these days that we're having.

Because there's still things to do so for instance on certain hydrangeas that are most often asked question is when to trim and what to trim.

You can shape almost anything other than planted or setting up buds and you can see the buds when they're coming out for next year.

You know some of your dog wood some of your rhododendrons, the buds are set, you want to leave those alone, but other things like shrubs like lilacs, you can shape them roses, that's another one you may not want to take them out hard but if you have this big scraggly rose in your front yard, use a day like today while you've already got the bag of leaves, trim that down a little bit shape it so it's a little prettier like we talked about earlier, we have five months probably ahead of us of winter that I'm going to stare at that every time I pull in the driveway.

And I see that ratty rose sitting there, now's the time, I can shape it a little bit.

So when I get the snow, the snow is a nice little dome over plant and not just this crazy plant all over the place.

So it's a really good time to take advantage and clean your yard up a little bit.

If you're gonna go out and rake leaves Anyway, go ahead and add a couple things to the bag.

I think you can put that all in the same bag.

Do you rake your leaves, that is funny that you asked because that was the chore that I was given as I left the door.

In my yard, I write my leaves in my bed, not too much.

I usually just leave them anything to help give a blanket to the plants I leave it in there.

And but the yard I do because I also have a little pond, that's the other thing is I have a little a little pond in my backyard, that the leaves all find it.

That's where it gets a little wet.

Like now it's good to break leaves, it's if you're using a blower and you have the big fancy system, it's not as good.

But if you have a handbrake, they collect very nicely.

And that's what you'll be doing.

That's gonna be my chore of the day.

But yeah, it's it's a good time to get everything cleaned up.

Because as we say, all the times we look out the window all winter, we think of the things that we wanted to do.

And so you have to take advantage of that while you can.

I all oftentimes use this time of year to identify the spots, the empty spots, what could go there, you know who's on either side, what would look nice.

So it's a nice time to go out and kind of started marking where things are so that when you do plant things that have not come up, you can go ahead and plant knowing that there's going to be something there and you don't dig it up.

Yeah, so the foliage on a perennial that dies back to the ground and it got cleaned up.

You're never quite sure where that was.

If you can put something there to remind it you will get if we get a nice early spring and we get a chance to get things planted, then maybe we can come back into Oh, this little rock is a perennial.

I'm going to plant it right over here.

Because we do that all the time, especially on bulbs.

We plant bulbs everywhere, and we can't remember where we planted.

So then when we dig up in the spring, or we plant more bulbs, we dig up the old vaults.

Yeah, because we can't remember where the other ones were before.

So pictures do a great job, too.

We've got we got 5 million pictures on our camera of everything, but the plants where they're at.

So go ahead and take pictures of what it looked like.

So you can always refer back to your camera and say, oh, yeah, I forgot that stuff's all there.

I'm going to fill that in.

So the things that we talked about, that have to be dormant or should be dormant to prune.

Are we there now is are things I think we've had enough hard for yes, we are.

Yeah, once the oak trees have started losing leaves, I feel like it's pretty dormant because they're one of the late last things to lose their leaves.

It takes some good hard, and they're still oak trees with leaves.

But in general, I think yeah, I think we're, I think we're dormant.

It is December, although it doesn't feel like it now, but it sure did a couple of days ago.

Yes, it did.

It was really, really cool.

I think.

I think we're pretty good.

The ground obviously is not frozen, though.

So you can do things in the ground.

Gotcha.

But you can't get out there and get to that pruning, I always thought you were supposed to wait until like January, when it's really that's the ideal time.

The ideal time for me is always like end of February beginning of March.

Because I don't know I always feel like when it gets cold now, it the same temperature now and the same temperature spring feels differently because it's your get to the cold, cold feels colder, but you get a little warmth in the spring, it feels so much better.

Like 45 You're putting on all your jackets, 45 and 50 start putting on shorts.

It's a different.

So that's the time to get out there and everything's definitely dormant.

You can see some things you can do a little trimming.

That's what we always did at the nursery when it came to trees and things like that.

Let them get through the winter.

You don't know what's going to happen during the winter.

But as long as they're protected.

I just like I said, I cleaned them up a little bit.

I don't do anything heavy on my roses in the spring.

As soon as I see a leaf come through.

I'll take it back hard because now I know it's alive.

I know how far it's died back.

And I'll trim it back in and then it'll flush out beautifully.

I don't want to do that until spring.

But I don't want it scraggly so I'll just take it back a little.

And then in the spring is when I really start getting everything going after Yeah.

Are you doing anything out in your yard are everything cleaned up picked up or not much.

We still got a lot of leaves, but we'd like Mother Nature.

We've been doing a pretty good job of that this year.

Exxon.

Excellent.

So I got a composter this year and I've been layering and using that and cranking it and so we'll see how that goes by spring because we had a lot of leaves.

We had a lot of old garden waste, and I just thought why not just try to comp Yeah.

So ideally, that's the way to go.

It works out really nicely.

Don't dump all that in the back of our property and then eventually, you pull it back and there's this great mulch or Yeah.

All right.

Yes.

It's very cool.

Awesome.

Well guys, thank you so much for coming in.

We really appreciate your time and talent.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you have any questions, you can send them into us at your garden@gmail.com or you can just look for us on socials.

Just search for Mid American gardener and we will see you next time.

Thank you so much for watching.

Good night.