(upbeat music) - Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinicia Spain, and thanks for coming back to our e-edition, stay home edition, I don't know, of Mid American Gardener.

Thanks for hanging in with us.

We couldn't be in the studio, but we really wanted to make sure that we were still bringing you your garden news.

So, this is our improv.

Joining me of course, our expert panelists who are here to tell you everything about gardening.

I'm have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialties.

So John, we'll start with you.

- Okay, I'm a Vermilion County Master Gardener.

I live up by just North of Bismarck and my specialties are perennials hostas, especially, vegetables.

I'm working in a greenhouse now, so I'm getting to know the ins and outs of some of the problems with growing a greenhouse.

- Okay, awesome, Ella.

- I'm Ella Maxwell, I'm a Master Gardener in Tazewell County, a horticulturist and I also work at here nursery, and my specialty is trees and shrubs and I pretty much like lots of flowers and lots of other things too.

- All right, thank you very much, and Karen.

- Hi, I'm Karen Rocco, and I live outside of the Peoria area, and I just really enjoy perennials, shrubs, gardening in general.

- Awesome, all right, so now we're gonna work backwards.

Karen, we'll start with you.

Let's do our show-and-tell, so what did you bring us today?

- Well, what I want to talk about, is I know all of us are looking ways to save money, and this year, let me move the dead leaf out of my face, this year came out with a new variety of caladiums that are sun-tolerant.

I was pretty excited about these because I don't have a lot of state areas that I wanted to put caladiums, and they were pretty expensive.

And then Lowe's, this late fall as houseplants, and I thought that not obviously Lowe's didn't do too well with them as a house plant.

So, what they don't think they realize is that buying it discounted I'm gonna then overwinter the tubers to then plant next year thereby saving.

The tuber is when you take it out of the soil, is just this little dry little structure, (mumbles) with my plant is take, let it die down, and then over winter these tubers inside the house for next year.

- And so when you put them out, are you gonna put them in the ground?

Are you gonna put them in a pot?

What are your plans for them?

- I'm hoping that enough of them will make it, that I can do two different things, so that, in the ground and in a couple places cause this last summer I did mail order some expensive ones, and I did find that some areas of the yard, they did better than others and I don't really know why.

So, you know, still trying to experiment what's the better soil drainage than, and then I'll do a couple in the pots, just so I don't lose track of them.

- Okay, thank you, all right, Ella, we're gonna go to you.

What show-and-tell item did you bring for us today?

Ooh, it's festive.

- Yes, this is a little rosemary, and of course rosemary is a culinary herb, it's a very aromatic herb, it's a mediterranean herb.

So it does not winter outdoors, but it's grown very well in containers and can be overwintered, and a lot of times you'll see them available at the holiday season to use because it is a herb that you would use with maybe meat roasting, vegetables or something like that, but the most important thing for overwintering your rosemary is to not let it get too wet or you wanna make sure that if you are watering it, that it doesn't stand or sit in water that you empty your little saucer underneath it, let it go dry, maybe not water except for every 10 days or so, you wanna have it in a bright spot, and of course you can go ahead and utilize the little cuttings, and this also works real well in a mortar and pestle, you grind it up, you add it with a little brown sugar and you can make a sugar scrub that you can have at your sink if you're working with evergreen vows or something, you know, you can scrub scrub off the dirt, the grime and it's wonderful.

- Rosemary smells so good just by itself.

I'll just walk by and grab some and just kind of sniff it a little bit.

As far as keeping it inside, I may have missed this, but what are the light requirements?

- It likes bright light.

- Bright light, okay, bright light, and about every 10 days you said it likes to dry out?

- Right.

- Okay, all right, thank you very much.

Okay, John, as you're coughing, I'm gonna go to you, what have you got?

- I brought today some Jerusalem artichokes, that's why I just picked these.

You can pick them all winter if you, you know, if you have an area that you can mulch heavy and the soil doesn't freeze, they store wonderfully in the ground.

Now, Jerusalem artichokes are also called sunchokes or earth Apple, and they're species of sunflower and of central America, and they grow pretty tall, mine grew up to over 10 feet tall this year, and they had little tiny sunflowers, all about like what three inch sunflowers on them.

And one of the interesting things on, you know, you usually on identifying a plant, you usually look at, are they opposite or are they alternate leaves?

Well, this plant, if you look at the upper part of the plant, they are opposite, but on the lower part of the plant, they' re alternate.

So you have to kind of be aware of where you're looking at at the plant and the time of the year.

The lower leaves can get up to 12 inches in size, so they get to be pretty big.

Now, the white, you know, usually, I'll wash these up real good and slice them and that you can eat them raw, and it's kind of a white, nutty sweet, almost crunchy, almost like a... - Like a water chestnut.

- A water chestnut, yeah, and if you cook them they're like a potato and they're really, really good in soups.

They're a good source of potassium and iron, and fiber and oxidants.

So I enjoy eating because I can go out there, you know, anytime of the year and dig them, and one thing, once you have artichokes, you usually have artichokes... (Tinicia laughs) Unless you go through with a sieve and get every little, every little node, you can see have even some little ones on them.

If I would break one of those off and leave it there, I would end up with another artichoke plant, and by the winter, they'd be pretty big.

I store them unwashed in the refrigerator, I put them into Ziploc, they don't dehydrate that way, and like I said, I prefer to leave them outside, but I keep some in the refrigerator in case it gets real cold and the ground is frozen, but I mulch it pretty heavy.

So usually I can dig down and find them.

- John, you gave me a couple of those, I think it was last year, maybe the year before, and I have, from those little pieces that you gave me, created a giant row and they grow all the way in the back of the yard because I knew that they would take off, but it's a dabble do you with a Jerusalem artichoke.

(John and Tinicia laughing) - And they just keep coming and coming and coming, but usually you plant them in the spring about four to six inches feet deep, the only place they don't like is if it's real wet for a long period of time, like soft, wet soggy soil, they don't like that.

And there are some new varieties that don't get all these little knobs on them, but these are here, are pretty good size and they are delicious to me.

One of the French White Mammoth and the Golden Nugget are two new varieties and you can buy them, you know, these are available in the grocery store and you can, you know, you may have to wash them off.

because I think a lot of the times it's like the, a lot of the bulbs that they plant, they put anti growth hormone on them so that they don't sprout, but if you wash them real good, you can get them to grow.

So it's just one of those things I'd really, really enjoy, and it's something different.

I just thought I'd share them and, you know, put them someplace in the back cause like I said, they get very, very tall.

- They do, thank you, when I like to pan fry, I cut them real thin and just pan fry them, and they're delicious, so thank you.

All right, we're gonna go to 946, this is Karen's question.

This is from Carol Bauer, and this is when she was harvesting her tomatoes.

Hi, I have just started to harvest my roma tomatoes and while the fruit looks perfect on the outside, the center is rotten.

These were Burpee romas, no other specific names started from seed.

They were listed as compact and determinate but they have grown over five feet requiring a trellis.

I've pruned the side shoots, but they are massive, but the plants are massive, they have a lot of fruit, that she's fought with the chipmunks over, but the majority will be inedible.

So Karen, what are you thinking happened here?

- Well, there's unfortunately a couple of different things that can cause this, it is an internal black mold and how that mold got into the middle of the tomato is possibly three different ways.

One being cracking, or there was a wound on the tomatoes, but typically if there's a lot of them on the plant cracking and it entered that way, blossom end rot can sometimes introduce mold into the tomato or there's a disease, however, that also can cause this internal black spot, but I think all of them, other than blossom end rot, blossom end rot, you keep a better even moisture with your tomato plant so that the calcium is available, for blossom end rot, that could help with that.

Now, if it's the other disease, anthracnose or a mold entering the tomato, the best thing is practices in your garden to keep the plant as safe as possible, and when I'm planting my tomato plants, I mulch them even before I water them in because you're trying to minimize the amount of splashing that happens on the soil, splashing up onto your new leaves that then can transfer the diseases that were around last year, back up onto the plant.

And we can do for the cloudy after time, after time, that causes issues with the tomato plants, but you certainly can do a lot with a good mulch.

I love using newspaper, it's getting harder to get.

And then straw on top of that, just to keep it clean, yeah, you do get some sprouting of the grain seed, but I find that that keeps the plants very clean and you minimize some of those disease problems.

Then on the flip side, don't leave all of that garbage in the garden for the winter, you know, clean out your plants, especially those tomato plants, all the foliage, get it out, destroy it because you don't wanna leave it there to then fester and re-introduce for next year.

- Gotcha, and you cut out on one part, when you said anthracnose, just wanna make sure folks got that little piece of information, so that they could look it up.

But good information to have.

So when you say the cracking, and I know we've talked before about sometimes when you, when the tomatoes get a lot of water intake at once and they can crack a little bit, is that what you were talking about or what else could make the skin crack?

- Is the heat, is it too much moisture?

So yes, that can cause that cracking.

Once again, a mulch to help mitigate that fluctuations with that fill-ability to the plant.

- Okay, thank you very much.

All right, we are going to go to Ella now with question 976.

Dear Mid American gardeners, can you please identify the lawn plant and the attached photo?

It emerges each year in my lawn in late August and early September.

It has prickly pods that love to attach to shoes and socks and travel into the house.

I would like to know how to eradicate it.

So let's see what we're talking about, oh, yes.

My dog comes in with those in her tail all the time.

- The picture, I hope that we're gonna be able to see, is actually a Sandberg, and it is an annual type of grass, and the way that the seed had forms, that has those little recurve spines that then attach to like the caller had said, and they can stick to anything, and they're also uncomfortable to step on.

They do like well drained soils and you can see them a lot in more of like a sandy type soil, but because they're an annual, they're a warm season annual and they germinate late in the spring.

So some of the crab grass control products let the pre-emergence may be applied too early.

So she might find a good control with applying a second application of pre-emergent herbicide a little bit, maybe like four weeks later to prevent new plants from germinating.

- Okay, thank you very much ma'am.

All right, John, we're back to you, you got another show-and-tell for us?

- Yes, I do have a show-and-tell.

- I've been waiting for this one.

- This is my bay tree, it's Bay laurel, and again, this is one of those that you have to grow inside, I grow it outside during the summer, it loves to be outside in our huts, summers and does wonderfully.

I like growing this because I use a ton of this in my soups, and if you just can't make a soup without a bay leaf, and there you never find real good bay leaves at the store.

One thing that I wanted to make sure, that if you do grow these, you get a completely different taste of the bay leaf if you pick it from the tree as compared to drying them, it's much stronger to me, almost overwhelming if you put it in cooking from the tree, so I like to dry mine.

The other one that I'd like to talk about is this one, this is cardoon, and I think if you can see, it's just a goddess nice silver, and this is also a vegetable, and I like to grow it in amongst my flowers, in that it some of these stems will get up to six feet, I didn't bring one of those in, but they'll get up to six feet, and... - Now, John, what does that taste like?

- You just use the stems, and it's kind of like an artichoke, almost, and you know, you cook it yet and they go good with tomatoes, it's in the artichoke or thristle family.

So I grow it because I want it to flower next year, I brought it into the greenhouse because it is again, it's tender.

So next year I'll let the flower come up and has a nice big purple flower, and if you can find some unpasteurized goat milk, and from what I understand, you have to rent a goat to get that.

(Tinicia laughs) But then you pick the statements off of the flower, you put that into the fresh unpasteurized goat milk, and it will use it as a rennet, and then it makes cheese, and the Portuguese and the Spanish use this almost all entirely for their special cheeses over, over, and across the ocean, so... - Well, you need to rent a goat and go through the process, and let us know how the cheese taste, (mumbles) - I buy these cheese all the time, but I wanna make my own, and I have made some of it, I have done it a couple of times, right.

It's kind of difficult to get it to overwinter, but I've got two beautiful plants in the greenhouse this year, one from Kennecott, which I'm overwintering for them, and then one from my garden, I dug it up and brought it to the greenhouse.

So they are looking beautiful right now.

So hopefully we're will to get some flowers and have some cheese, I'll share some cheese with you.

- Please do, I love cheese, thank you.

Okay, Karen, we are back around to you, question 989.

I successfully started a serviceberry cutting in a pot, I don't know how to keep it over the winter.

I have very little sunlight in my house.

Can I plant it in the ground outside now and mulch it and expect it to survive the winter?

It stands about five inches above the ground, from Mary.

- Yes, with that cutting, she will not want to keep it in the house because it's a plant that's gonna want a dormancy period.

So she will need to either put it in an unheated garage, unheated shed or outside.

Now, the thing is I'm imagining if she has a small plant, it's a small pot.

There when you've got a small pot, it's not going to do too well for overwintering because of the size of the roots, though if she's got a garden area that's kind of protected, she could dig a hole and go ahead and sink the pot down in, and then add some mulch on top, and the other thing I would say is that she might want to put a little chicken wire around it because of critters, you know, (mumbles) destructive in my yard, where they can get at stuff so that her cutting is still there in the spring, but if she's really worried about rabbits, under unheated shed would be a good spot or garage, and she might have to water once or twice winter, but definitely let it go dormant and it should be fine in the spring.

- Okay, wonderful, all right, Ella, we're back to you, 972.

Are these slugs?

Do they have any redeeming qualities?

They are the biggest ones I've ever seen.

I unearthed them when I was digging up a rotted stump.

Thanks, Sue from Inverness.

So what are they?

And do they have any redeeming qualities?

- Well, I don't know that I can identify, the larva is a grub and it comes from a beetle, it is a true bug, and that is their larval stage, and then they metamorphosize into a beetle, and if it's really large, there are some large beetles out, there are green, I think a green plant bug or beetle, the June bug, even the Japanese beetle larva are very similar to that, so you would have to really be an entomologist to be able to identify that one.

They're great for fishing bait, they don't really do anything in the soil to add a benefit there, and the beetle itself, again, mind of just laid its eggs there, because the larva can use the composting material of that old stump.

So she can put them back and see, or she can go fishing or she can, you know, smush them.

- Okay, thank you.

All right, John, we're gonna end with you, we've got a few minutes left, question 986.

I successfully transplanted a redbud tree a few years ago.

It's at the edge of a shaded area and is growing somewhat sideways toward the light.

There is a tree nearby, I could tie it to straighten it.

Would that work?

And is it worth doing?

- She can't do with any of that or what I would suggest maybe is to cut or to let some light filter through, trim the tree that's causing all the shade and just not cut it down, but just cause some filtration to come through.

I have one other thing that I have some questions on, is that redbud tree does tend to, after it gets, it'll be many years for her at first if she just planted, but the bark likes to slough off.

So that's another thing that's not to worry about, but she could tie, but when she does tie it, she needs to be very careful that she doesn't girdle or cause damage to that cambium layer on the redbud, because if she does, she's going to end up with some scarring and the tree never will be the way it should be.

They do tend to be edge plants, so they do tend to grow out a little bit, which is it's nature.

If she do the trimming on the other tree, she'll probably see some branching that heads off to the other area and it'll leave even itself out probably.

- All right, well, I have a show-and-tell too, I've got this baby, baby Palia, that I've had for a while.

My question to you guys is, when does this guy get new shoes?

When does he move out of this pot and into something a little bit bigger?

How will I know it's time.

- When it starts to decline.

- No, okay.

- Really, you don't really want to do anything during the winter because there's just so much low light, next spring, you'll wanna knock it out of the pot, look at the root system, determine if it's pot bound and then that would tell you whether you want to up-size it or not.

- Okay, all right.

- It is upsize or one size?

- Just one size, don't go to a huge pot.

There's a little pulp down in there.

I don't know if you can see it, but got a little baby in there so I know it's doing okay, it's happy, but we'll let that plant stay put until spring.

- Yup, yup.

- I wanted to see we've got a minute or so left, I wanted to talk about Christmas trees.

When we, if people go out and get a real tree, is there anything that they need to do from a pest standpoint before you bring it into your home?

Any advice there?

- Well, the Rockefeller tree had a baby owl in it, so (mumbles) (Tinicia, John, laughing) - So a little surprise in there?

- Yeah, I very rarely have people ever had real problems.

Sometimes there may be a case from a praying mantis that might've had enough cold chilling, I've heard that, I don't really know anyone personally that's had a whole bunch of little baby praying mantises emerge.

Karen, have you ever heard anything else?

- Five years, though usually what I would do when I used to get trees is, when you have it still in the garage or outside, lift the tree up and let it slam down on the trunk on a concrete surface.

So you're trying to shake out extra stuff and knock out kind of some of the extra dry needles anyway, and then maybe, you know, a bite or a case or something like that.

- Okay, and then we are, oh, go ahead, John.

- The main thing to do is when you get at home, is to make a fresh cut and stick it, stick your tree into a five gallon bucket of water and make sure that you get that tree rehydrated as well as you can, and then do not let it ever dry out because if you do, the sap is going to seal that off as a protective mechanism for the tree and it won't absorb any more water and stuff.

You don't have to make much of a cut, a quarter inch or anything like we're happy edge is all you have to do, but get it immediately into water and then never let it dry out.

Where the worst thing that you can have is a fire and a Christmas tree in the house, so... - Definitely just to be safe, keep that tree in some water.

Well, thank you guys so much for your time and talents, I really appreciate it, and looking forward to the day that we can get back in the studio and hang out again so, but thank you for your time and thank you so much for watching and hanging in with us this year, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music)