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 are two of our panelists that have brought a lot of really cool stuff to talk to you about, and demonstrate.

So we'll have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialty.

So Ella, we'll start with you.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm a master gardener and a horticulturist in the Peoria area.

And I enjoy.

I have a large landscape.

So I enjoy trees and shrubs and perennials, and that's some of the things I brought today.

Excellent.

All right, Shane.

Hi, I'm Shane cultra.

I'm one of the family of owners of country arbors nursery in Urbana I'm officially retired so it means I get to play more in the garden.

I've been on the show now since 1995.

So I've kind of done a little bit everything growing plants of all kinds trees, shrubs, perennials, I love them all.

So I can answer pretty much anything if asked to do with Illinois plants.

All right, and tell us what you're up to now you've got a new hobby.

Yeah, so I mean, I've always had a hobby of honey of I loved honey, I was addicted to honey.

So I figured out I had to come up with a way to get more of it.

And then before you know it, I had I had a business of selling honey so I work with local beekeepers in the area, and we sell the different flavors.

That's one thing I do I can taste all the different flavors of all the different trees and flowers.

And I've gotten to known this one comes from this plant and so I kind of separate them out and I keep them raw and they just had a nice study today about cholesterol levels can be reduced with honey.

I mean who knew that a natural product from nature was good for you?

Oh yeah, so that's kind of been what I've been dealing with Christmas it's been great lots of people it's a perfect gift to give a nice local honey so good stuff when the one that you brought last time that was hot yeah, I infused some some Carolina Reapers in that one.

I like to infuse different flavors.

I mean, honey is good on its own.

But I also like to take like other flavors and kind of let them soak a little bit and take it on.

We did a coffee, honey and some blueberry and I just love experimenting.

I put honey on everything.

I'm really addicted to it.

I'll make it even more fun.

There you go.

There you go.

Okay, so Ella, she's our resident crafter.

Every throughout this time you you make us something lovely on the show.

And then it sparks so much conversation because people want to make what you made you made a living arrangement last year that settle on my porch until spring I missed it.

I took beautiful care of it.

And so now you're going to make what I am going to make a wreath so you can buy the wreath forms.

And this is called paddle wire and I've attached it and it's continuous wire and so we're going to just wrap it around this wreath and the wreath is convex or concave and I use the concave side to help and I brought just greens that came from my yard, boxwood I liked the broadleaf texture of the boxwood.

This is just like a roadside juniper.

And of course, white pine.

Now this was up pretty high had to wait for branch to ball out.

Actually, I picked it up off the side of the road.

But I do have a green giant are providing and I think this just makes a wonderful texture element.

And then of course the wonderful dark green of the regular you that you have.

Whether it's a spreading one or more upright, you can certainly prune this time of year with these kinds of evergreens want to be careful not to take all the new growth off the edges of the plant, but definitely can and I chose these because as they dry, they shrink and they still stay on the reeds.

So this could be used inside for an Advent wreath or to decorate a table for the holidays.

And you can make it in a way says you know some kind of little arrangement too but I've got all the pieces cut anywhere from about six to eight inches.

And then you can just, you know, pick up a few different ones together to make the texture and you're just going to start placing it on the wreath wrap around two to three times and then you add another bunch and so hopefully by the end of the show, we've created an entire wreath okay, it's it's very, very easy.

Once you're done you can use wilt proof I was gonna bring some spray or some people use hairspray.

It just helps to put a waxy coating on it.

So you can see the different textures I really liked that or I don't use spruce because as it dries out, it shatters and and there's enough little needles anyway, so you'll keep that going all that same direction.

Yeah, that's right.

You keep the bundles all going in the same direction.

Okay, so yeah, while you're working on that, okay, I'm gonna visit Shane and see what he brought to talk about.

Yeah.

So today I brought you know, one of the nice things that we don't always realize this technology in plants, it does, it does continue to improve.

And we all would love to have a grow like when we were inside we, we always said, Well, I wish I could just have a nice girl light so we end up getting the kind of the cheap little bulbs.

And because they were inexpensive, and the real growers, the marijuana growers always had the really fancy setups because they were professional growers, or a greenhouse setup where they spent all their money but now LEDs changed everything.

So led full spectrum lights are super cheap.

And that means you can take your house plant doesn't have to suffer you know, we're always talking about the show how just expect it to look for just expected look bad just keep it away.

during that season, that doesn't have to be the case anymore and led this this setup that I have actually is under $40.

It has four full spectrum lights that you can move to all your different plants all around the room, and have this big broad area of of houseplants and it's amazing how much improvement you get.

I have a pepper plant that Carolina Reaper that I made the honey with, it's producing all winter long, I took 20 peppers off of it over the last couple of weeks.

And so it's because of a $40 light to run them their led so that the grow you know if you're growing plants before, a really nice grow light could cost you 30 to $50 a month in extra electricity led that's not the case.

So that means you get cheap, grow lights, you get cheap electricity, and you get plants that look really good.

And you don't have to go into the garden center like we a country offers we stored plants and it became really difficult for people that to bring them to us and to move them out of their house and we were sending trucks used to people we would store people.

And we love doing it.

But the movement and the back in force made it really cost prohibitive, we had to charge so much money.

Well now they don't have to now if you go to Florida, you have that luxury than I don't feel as bad for you.

And if you're at home, as long as you can get it into maybe a warmer area, you don't have to have any light, even a dark garage that keeps a teat will do just fine.

This is the light, you can set the timer on it, I'd have it go for about 10 hours a day.

I just need to keep it warm.

I don't need any light bulbs.

I don't need anything else.

I just need this.

So I have things all over the house.

I don't know if my wife likes it.

I will say that the neighbors maybe don't know that I'm growing houseplants that they do think I'm quite a large cannabis grower, because there's lights glowing in all areas of my home guilty clamp ones that clamp on to things and you can adjust.

I mean, it's changed everything it is in the in the time, sometimes I'll mess the timer's up a little bit.

So at night, the place will be glowing.

But in general, it's really a game changer.

And it's super exciting.

And again, the cost online, there's nothing, it's really you burn leaves, is there anything about distance or for strength of the light with the well I think there are plants that have certain foot candles that they want to see or time of day, you can absolutely do that, just as you would put it in a window.

But there's really not heat coming from this, I don't think that these actual will cause any kind of burn from that standpoint.

But plants that do want less sunlight and shade.

This is sunlight.

So you have to be careful of that if it's a shade plant, you want to reduce the number of hours it's getting or take it off the light a little bit.

But like, again, we're not getting much sunlight.

I have a fruit tree.

I have a lime tree.

And it really struggles in the winter.

And now the leaves are huge and glossy and green.

Because of this and my wife is not she was not believing that she goes What are you doing?

You brought this giant concoction into the guest bedroom.

And now we're starting to get lined and flower.

So she's she's bored with it now?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

When you yield, my plants are in plant prison.

So I need this because because it's lack of light.

Yeah.

And and so my plants kind of have to suffer until you know, the following summer when I can take them back outside.

But you write about the affordability, even just for your own lighting purposes.

Now I put in all led instead of the fluorescent in my garage, and it's twice as bright.

It's yeah.

Oh yeah.

It's lovely.

It's really an amazing.

I don't want to say invention because it's been around but we've really perfected it to be a low cost source.

And again, you don't have to have a window.

That's you're always looking for that window in your house.

It's proper.

I have it in a room in the basement that nobody ever sees.

And now it's a perfect growing area.

Yeah, curling beautiful and just within the last few years.

I bought my first light in 2018 and I spent some money on it.

Yeah, fast forward to my last 130 bucks anyway add that it's been.

It's been 50% reduction every year for the last couple of years and cost of it.

Yeah.

And it makes a huge difference.

Yeah, it's it's, they always look terrible.

My lime tree was just writing a suicide note.

Because it's like, Please take me out of my misery, it looks so bad.

And now the leaves look better than it does outside because outside.

I didn't water it.

I didn't look at it everyday, it'd be in my back porch.

I forgot to water.

But now it's right there.

And I remember all the time, and I check it gives me something over the winter, when this dreary and there's no sunlight.

You go in there and see plants looking healthy.

That's a nice change for the wind.

And like you said, the convenience of the timer, the dimmers that you can adjust the intensity of the lights, think about spraying or we start doing seeds.

Oh, for sure doing all these things and getting a head start.

But like he's got any peppers.

Now I have a I do have I do have some.

But the thing that I do is, again, my plants are in my basement.

And so I have a downstairs fridge there and I do right when I water because I forget I don't go look at these plants.

And sometimes it's Yeah, again, I'm not a very good caretaker.

It's hard over the winter.

No, it is it really is.

It really is.

So there we go.

There it is, well, I left the place kind of ran out at the top here for the bow.

But once you have these in, then you can use some of the other picks and things and you just push them in the direction that these came.

And it's just kind of fun.

And if you get SAP on your hands, you can use a cooking spray and a paper towel or rubbing alcohol, of course would take the SAP off.

Or you can wear a pair of gloves or I really liked disposable gloves.

I should have brought that.

And you know you could do so much with that you can make it Christmassy if you like or different things in there.

But I mean, you really just pulled that together.

We're talking it's pretty impressed.

Yeah, there you go.

And I mean, you can make them in all different kinds of sizes.

And it's a wonderful gift and the fragrant.

Yeah, fragrant.

That's right, that we don't have smellivision yet.

That'll be the next one.

There we go.

LEDs tomorrow, it's smellivision.

All right, we've got a question that came in.

In our email.

This is about a pear tree.

And I'm going to be listening because I have a very messy one.

This is from a net, Brandon and Mohammed.

She has an ornamental pear tree that bears lots of fruit.

The fruit falls from the tree and it splatters on top of the mulch as well as the driveway.

Is there a spray that can be used on this tree to stop fruit growth?

If a spray is able to contain the berries, who can I contact to spray the tree?

So is this a self application?

And does this product exist?

Yes, there is a self application no product exists.

It's a plant growth regulator.

It's called Flora rel.

It uses a chemical that's metabolized by the plant that causes the flowers to abort.

At spraying is is very, you have to get it right at the right time for it to really work.

And I'm not sure what that is without reading the label.

But the products available online.

I don't know if there's any companies that spray specifically.

But Shane and I are going to talk about the fact that you should probably remove this pair because this is exactly why it's becoming problematic in our natural environment is the preponderance of the seeds.

And although they are providing some bird food, they are destroying natural areas because they germinate and start a new tree that has some of the characteristics of the more wild tree that it was cultivated from and so you can have thorns and all kinds of things.

And the other thing is is she probably didn't notice but it does have stinky flowers and stinky flowers.

Hmm.

Yeah, I'm not really familiar with ornamental pears, Chantal.

So you probably are you just don't realize it until you see them.

So they're the white, the very first blooming white in the spring.

It's the first thing to bloom and it does smell a little bit like cat urine if it gets pretty strong smell that I think of when I and pears I switch teams on pair.

So in the 90s pears were everywhere.

We all planned on derful they weren't invasive like they are now they just didn't.

They didn't do what they're doing right now.

So I don't know what the reason is.

Maybe there's more mature pear since that time that we planted them.

But Stone Creek neighborhood alone has 1000s and 1000s of pear trees and all the empty lots.

It's the most invasive thing I've ever seen.

Also pear trees do not provide any value to nature at all.

There are no bugs, and there are no birds that eat they don't like the bears.

Well They're the only tree that we have in Illinois that has zero pest, which is good if you I guess, if you're trying to grow something, but if right, it's nothing for for nature at all, as opposed to an English oak, which has 1000s of different bugs, and all these value for birds.

And in nature, where the parent provides nothing is the only thing is it's fast.

It is and and it has problems because it does have good fall color, but it holds his sleeves very late into the season.

And when we get some ice storms and the brittle wood that it has, and it has a lot of codominant very narrow crotch angles, they break up.

And that was one of the things that they started choosing cultivars that had a more open habit.

But what happened was the first ornamental pears that came out, were not so fruitful.

They wouldn't set fruit.

And that was the selling point until they came up with all these different cultivars that then provided genetic diversity, and pollination and fruit set in the natural environment.

And so that's what we're seeing now.

And there are communities as well as certain states that and the state of Illinois is looking at the calorie pair as a exotic invasive threat.

They haven't outlawed the sale of it.

But most nurseries no longer carry the pears on the problematic list.

Yeah, we avoid it unless somebody absolutely has to have when it comes to you overs, we we it's not something we grow anymore.

It's the allure is it's a fast growing tree.

And it's it flowers, flowers it has, it has three seasons of interest, fall color, a glossy leaf and like we've talked about no real pests, and and you can spray this product, but you're then tied to spraying each and every year and the tree gets larger.

And you know, there's costs involved.

And there's so many other wonderful flowering ornamental trees that that you could take whether it's some of the newer varieties of crap apples, and there are fruitless varieties there.

And then of course, some others may be a flowering dogwood, and there's several different kinds.

Oh, yes, I mentioned in here that it's near the driveway.

So right you thinking compact?

Yeah.

And there's IV sick lilacs which we have around the studio here all the time.

It's a nice white summer blooming.

So and again, it's one of those things you dislike getting a new car, you think nobody has one, then as soon as you get it, you see all the other ones.

Once you see the pears, you realize they're all down.

It's an issue.

And they are it's not when they're going to break.

It's, it's I mean, it's not if they're going to break, it's when they do, how bad is it going to be?

So again, we try and choose it's kind of like a diet eat this.

Not that there's so many other things.

You can choose a pair, but she has it that's not helping her right now is for us to say cut it down.

It's not that simple.

So flow rail is this spray.

The problem is every time I mentioned floor rail, the first question after that is who can I get to do it, I don't want to do it myself.

And it's a timing thing.

It has to be done right when it's flowering, because that's what's going to abort.

If you let it go too far, then it's going to germinate.

So you have to hit it within a certain couple of days, as soon as that flower opens.

And then you have to have somebody else time that people are super busy.

And they're not going to hit that at the same time.

So that's always the difficult part and spraying evenly and doing it Yeah, doing a job I do.

I do riemeck Recommend Evans horticulture.

They're great guys, but they're gonna be the first people to tell you, we're that's the busiest time of year for them to sew.

But there just aren't very many people that are doing those type of things out there.

Because there's so many other things to do that aren't as timely.

Sure.

And it's a lot of work so you can get the spray or you can it's doable.

Yeah.

And there is an injection to but that's even more work for people.

There is an objection of type flow URL type things, but can you're looking at an arborist needs to be doing these kinds of things.

The downside is replacing it is is costly, but in the long run, it'll be much better than having that dropping in your driveway.

less headache for sure.

The trees well.

Yeah.

And you don't even know if you really need the tree there.

Once it's gone.

It's surprising how you thought that you couldn't live without it.

But then once it's gone, it's, you know, I'm okay.

My parents went on a tear last summer and got rid of a lot of trees in their yard.

And I was upset but they were like, Look at this place.

Look at have a look at the landscape.

It's so open and now they're excited about what they're going to put in the spring.

So it's created, you know, tunity for them to sort of there you go opportunities if you if you get a new one.

So there is it just depends on your spacing.

We often over plant on trees.

It's usually they don't have enough or they have too many.

There's not the right.

Okay, we've got another question.

This is from Dan.

Dan wants to know how to overwinter a climbing rosebush.

That's In a container, and both of you have different ideas, so I'll let you guys explain.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, one thing I always wonder is how people have rose bushes, they don't get planted because a rosebush generally is a five minute planting.

So it's, if you if you buy things, you should have an idea where it goes.

But I understand sometimes people just can't make that decision or they're not there.

They can be a little bit tender if you leave them out in the open.

So you don't want to just sit it on your front porch and leave it there.

If you if you can't decide where you want to plant it, but you're able to physically plant I always do the sneaky thing where I'll dig a hole and drop it into the ground and then just kind of mulch it in.

And if I want to change the location, I can do that because I can just pull it out of the ground, and then put it somewhere else.

But it thinks it's planted.

It's the same as planting it, but it's not a permanent home.

And then the last thing that I'll do is I love my window wells.

So if I just drop things into there, like it's things that are a little bit more tender because it's much much warmer down 810 feet, wow, deep your window well is and you can just drop things down there and they they will overwinter fine even I've even had bananas in Canada that have done just fine down there.

And if you get a cover even more turns into a greenhouse, so that's a good place to storms.

Yeah, I have right now in my garage, about 31 gallon pots of perennials that we were going to dispose of.

But I'm have all these plant sales I have to go to so I'm taking a chance on some plant material.

So I overwinter quite a bit cold storage in my garage, it doesn't freeze but it's also not necessarily heated, some people's garages may be too warm.

So there could be an outbuilding, or even up against the North side of your house.

works works well too.

So definitely go ahead and overwinter it with some protection.

Good thing about the north side, people don't realize why you go north side, the sun sits in the south.

So if you look out, you'll see that all winter the sun is very low in the south and it just creeps along.

And if you keep things on the south side, it actually warms it up a little bit.

And then at night, the temperature drops when the sun goes down.

And it plants hate fluctuation.

They don't mind cold.

But it's the fluctuation.

That's right.

That's why and that's why one reason that I brought tree wrap.

Again, for young new trees, especially thin barked trees, that would be Yeah, the maple specifically but anything that does is newly planted or has very smooth, thin bark, we recommend tree wrap and this is a paper tree wrap.

And of course you always start at the bottom and wrap up so that as you go up, it would shed water.

You know, if you start at the top and go down then water can drip down into the seams.

So and this can just be attached with some masking tape or or something.

And again, I I reuse it and roll it back up in the spring but I do some Japanese maples.

And then of course, this I have as a column, it's about three foot and this is more for deer protection.

This will not stop the rubbing on a on bark, but this is a better way to right now protect your trees from the rut when the male deer are marking and such and then I also have some trees in my yard that I just let them mark.

Sometimes you just have to this keeps the rabbit off it too because I do like to chew on fruit trees and a crab tree here is in the fruit family.

And that bark is really sweet cherry trees crab trees, they love it.

So if there's nothing to eat, they're going to eat the bark off the bottom of your tree and wrapping it does a really good job in that South East side.

So when people come in and have cracks on their maple I can I can go draw exactly where it was going to be before I even see the tree it's in the same spot every year for generations because the sun hangs there and warms that bark up and then at night it pops right in the maples are very susceptible because they tend to be thinner, but they also tend to be susceptible to around up so roundup won't kill a maple or a pear if you spray it on the bark, but it makes the bark thin so then it's more susceptible to frost cracking because we've we've had issues in the field where go why are these Maples cracking there?

These are supposed to be the thicker bark maples.

We sprayed them with Roundup and we got a little fast and kind of run the row with Roundup and it touched the bark and it just made it a little bit thinner and I did not know that dog was too late but is it is now a good time if you're gonna wrap your tree.

Oh yeah, yeah, sometimes Is the Christmas usually you know around Thanksgiving is when the weather's still nice to work outside.

But definitely want to make sure that you're protecting the trunk of your trees, whether they're against rodents deer, or just saves you hundreds of dollars in damage right now when do you take that off?

Is there a certain temperature benchmark that you're waiting for?

Or in the spring they start leafing out I tend to take it by April I've you know, gone and collected gotcha them.

Okay.

Well, that is our time.

Thank you guys so much for coming.

Wow, this is absolutely gorgeous.

Can you tell us one more time on the way out what you used just in case when people go outside and look at all right.

So again, the wreath can be made with a single solitary, Evergreen, whatever you'd like.

But I like the combination of the different varieties.

So we have Juniper, common Juniper, this could be a spreading one or more upright one or one on the side of the road.

White Pine again a five needle pine really nice boxwood for textural element and then are providing is very, very common now for the upright varieties.

And then I do have some camera Tsipras here.

So and yeah, and your common you.

Excellent.

So okay, well, thank you.

Wonderful coming in.

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

Good night.