Hey, it's Tinisha, Spain, host of Mid American gardener, and we are back at Delight flower farm in Champaign this week, and it looks a little different out here than it did last time.

But that does not mean that the crew is not hard at work here on the farm, getting ready for next spring and also making some beautiful seasonal arrangements.

And Maggie is going to show us how to do that.

So let's go find her and make some holiday wreaths.

So this is where the summer there were all the beautiful flowers that you saw when you came in August, and now it's just food for the birds and cover crop.

We are headed to collect some evergreens.

We're going to forage from a wind break on the farm.

So these trees ahead are white pines, which smell really fragrant and have a lot of SAP, can be nice in wreaths.

Hello again.

Much different weather than the last time we were here.

We're dressed different and everything.

Okay, so we are making wreaths today, yeah, what a change of season.

So what sorts of things do we need?

I love that you're just out here gathering what you've got on the farm.

So what do we what are we looking for?

Yeah, so you want fresh greens.

This is a white pine.

And you know if, if folks at home watching have trees in their landscape or bushes, a lot of times, there's an evergreen that's suitable for wreath making, so I just look for branches that might be in the way.

So you can kind of do two things, two things at work.

Yeah, you're harvesting for your wreath making, but you're pruning your trees, which is good time of year to do that, because they're kind of dormant, so it doesn't stress them too much.

So we'll take a big branch like this, and just cut a section of it off.

Gotcha.

And then when we go into the workshop, I'll show you how we can cut it down.

Now, how many wreaths will you crank out from the farm here?

Close to 200 Oh, wow.

Okay, yeah.

And a lot of the greens that we cut actually go to wreath workshops that we teach around town.

So sometimes the Greens aren't for wreaths that we're selling.

Sometimes they're fur wreaths that other folks in the community are making at one of our workshops.

Gotcha and Taylor, one of our crew members, took advantage of one of your workshops not too long ago, so we'll have to show off her work a little bit later too.

Yeah, yeah.

She made a dried wreath with some of our dried flowers.

So that's very nice.

Okay, what else do we need?

Well, let's get a couple different kinds of greens.

Okay, this is a blue spruce, so I would definitely recommend wearing gloves if you're going to harvest a spruce, because it's super well, not just sticky, but it's like, Pokey, like, kind of mean to you.

So you know, you can cut it.

You can cut it back in an area where there's less of that pokey evergreen.

This is a younger tree, so I probably wouldn't harvest too much off of it, but it adds a nice like color contrast, definitely.

And then over here is some Arborvitae.

This isn't a lot of landscaping.

You're probably familiar with this.

It's also sometimes called, it's a variety the eastern red cedar, I think, is what it's called.

But it's really nice and green and bright adds a really nice color, nice seasonal.

I'll be your assistant.

Okay, to the point these trees were put on this property to be a wind break, I'd say they're doing their jobs out here.

We like to keep the greens here, but for us, they also work as something that we can sell in the winter time from our flower farm.

It's locally harvested.

Most evergreen wreaths that you get, like at the grocery store this time of year, those greens are either coming from Canada or the Pacific Northwest, so we like using the relief.

Yes, that's one of the goals here.

Yeah.

So this is arborvitae, and it is a nice, bright green, but it's also one that you probably want to wear gloves when you're harvesting very, pretty, very seasonal.

I can already see the vision coming together, great.

So I remember in the summertime seeing a lot of these beautiful flowers in the ground, and now they've been harvested, and we're in the drying room.

Yeah, that's what we call it.

Tell us a little bit about this is really dedicated to preserve the harvest, kind of out of season.

So dried flowers are having a bit of a resurgence.

Moment right now, popular in weddings, popular for florists.

We call them everlasting flowers, because if you take care of them, they actually can last years, and their color and their fragrance will.

Uh, stay preserved.

So this space is dedicated just for drying things.

We do a little storage in here, but we've strung these wires that is like a really thick, high strength wire, and we rubber band these when they're fresh and it's dark in here, we run a dehumidifier so everything is getting the moisture pulled out of it, and then we have fans circulating so there's no mold or mildew happening.

The smell in here is absolutely lovely, too.

How long does it take?

How do you know when something is ready to be used in an arrangement?

How do you know when it's reached its peak dryness?

Yeah, you can usually tell by feel that it's it doesn't have the kind of flexibility anymore.

It's a bit more brittle.

And when things have reached their peak dryness, just to preserve them, we put them in cardboard boxes and label them.

We move them to our barn and inventory them.

And the cardboard, as opposed to like a plastic tub or something, allows it to continue to kind of breathe and moisture to come and go from it.

It won't get trapped in there, and it's still protected from the sun feeding it and things like that.

So interesting.

So these you'll pull from, like you said, for wreaths, for other winter arrangements, dried arrangements.

It all comes from here.

Yeah, we make some dried bouquets, and so we sell those dried bouquets at the farmers markets as well.

Yeah, nice.

Okay, so which ones do you think we are going to use for our wreath that we're going to make today?

Yeah?

So I think we're going to use some of this, which is a flamingo feather celosia.

And this is another variety of celicia.

I'll try to put it.

I remember those from the summer.

They were so brilliant the color.

Yeah, they really hold their color.

You know, marigolds really nice pop of orange.

But it doesn't always go with the holiday, you know, vibes.

Sometimes that's more of like a late winter, early spring wreath that we might make excellent.

Okay, I'm excited, so let's, let's make our wreath.

Okay?

Do Okay, so we've got all of our supplies, dried flowers from the drying room.

We've got our fresh greens from the farm.

And then remind me, what is this?

It's just just a frame.

Yeah, we just call it A Wreath Frame.

It's kind of like it's called a clamp frame because it it has these little pre made, pre fabricated clamps or spots that you could clamp.

And I will say, the first year of being a flower farmer and making wreaths, I didn't have one of these machines and I used pliers.

Oh, my God, that's not the way these are meant to be used.

Certainly working smarter now, yeah, so now it has this foot pedal operated way of clamping.

It just makes it a lot easier on your wrist.

But there are ways that people can make wreaths at home.

If you get a wire frame from a craft store, something like that, you could just wire the evergreen and dried flowers to it.

That's pretty easy peasy.

Okay, so we're gonna essentially, I like to, I guess, because I'm a flower farmer, I like to think about making these into just miniature bouquets, and that's how we'll assemble.

Oh, very cool way to think about it.

So you've got, like a little evergreen bouquet, and you just lay it in here so that at least a few inches are covered, and these two pieces are right in between here, and then we just use the foot pedal and it clamps it right on there.

Voila.

I'll do a couple, and then I'll give you a chance.

So the real test, yeah, you said you hadn't made one, so you might as well.

These are really pretty.

And you know, when we pick them up from the store or from the florist or wherever we get them from, you don't really realize the work that goes into it, and sort of the intentionality of choosing flowers and choosing greens.

And so this is always really cool to get behind the scenes and and see what goes into it, the work that goes into it, yeah.

So you want to make a little evergreen bouquet.

Okay, here we go.

Well, let me take a let me take a peek at yours.

Okay, so we're just gonna grab some pieces.

I'm not gonna overthink it, yeah, just nice variety.

How's that?

That's great.

Okay, yeah, and just want to put it right in between.

Stems here other way, so we kind of overlap, so we hide our mechanics from before.

Got it?

Yep, you got it.

How's that?

Pretty good.

Maybe tuck this guy in there, and then just make sure these are lined up in the track.

So let's move that a little bit, okay, and then clamp it.

Do I have to really your finger.

No, you don't have to drive it too hard.

I get it.

Oh, shoot, I don't think so.

Okay, let me see.

Let's get that.

There we go.

Yeah, okay, you got it.

Not too bad, not too bad.

Now I'm sticky.

Yeah, it's good to wear gloves for this rookie move, rookie move.

And just do that all the way around.

Yeah, you just do that all the way around.

Let's add a little dried flowers to it so you get a sense of how that looks.

So.

Because dried flowers can be kind of brittle, like they will break easily.

One of the tricks we do, I know it sounds weird, but we dried all these then we actually bring them out of the drying room for a day or two.

Sometimes we put them in our cooler.

Sometimes we just bring them in here, if it's humid enough, and it softens them just a little bit pliable and, yeah, less prone to breaking and so I usually sandwich it between, so it's like, got a little cushion of greenery, and then we'll just put it as the next little section on here.

Wow.

Now, how do you know which the color scheme and the way these are going to take shape.

I guess it's probably just as you're going along.

But do you ever go into it thinking, all right, I would like to make this one for I'm envisioning a Thanksgiving, you know, area, or Christmas area.

How do you how do you decide what colors to use and what textures?

Yeah, well, because we're making so many, we've kind of found over the years, customers tend to have a preference of either a very traditional wreath, which is, you know, either just greens and pine cones and a red ribbon, or, like, maybe a little gold or ornaments on it, something like very traditional Christmas, or something that's a little bit more botanical and highlights different colors and different flowers that we have around the farm.

I always try to remind myself this time of year that the history and tradition of reeds is very old.

It's pre Christian actually, so at a time when people lived much closer to the land and spent a lot of time outside.

The dark days of winter were hard, so traditions like Christmas trees and having light and candles around was a way to bring light and bring greenery and a sense of hope to the winter, because in the name it's evergreen, so it's green all year when the deciduous trees that are so beautiful drop their leaves and become bare, we have this symbol of life.

We have this green, fresh thing that doesn't fade in winter, and so putting it on the door of your house can be a reminder, you know, of the hope that spring is coming.

And the circle shape specifically is kind of a it.

It symbolizes what's called the Wheel of the Year, so spring, summer, fall, winter.

So it continues again and again.

And I think even in modern times, it's so helpful to be reminded of Hope return and that the light will return and sunny afternoons will come.

Yes, well, we didn't know we were going to get a history lesson with our wreath making today.

That's awesome.

I did not know that, but all of that makes sense, the circle, the greenery, the hoping and wishing for warmer days.

Yeah.

So I think some people, whether they know that story, that tradition, they might want to, you know, they might not necessarily be religious or celebrate Christmas, but they may want a symbol of nature in the winter.

And so we do try to make some some reads that are more just botanical and kind of wild and look a little bit more like something, you know, someone, a customer a few years ago, sent me a photo in like January, of her wreath on her door and a Robin had built a nest in it.

So really, now, is there any care that, once folks purchase these and they get them home, do you need to spritz them?

Spray them?

Do you need to do anything as far as maintenance goes the entire winter season that you have it?

Yeah, I would say if they're outside, probably no, because the elements will keep it.

It's basically a refrigerator outside of winter.

So it'll keep things like a floral cooler, really fresh.

And if it rains, that's totally fine.

But if people are displaying their wreath indoors, which some people do, it's going to dry out a lot faster with the heat of your house, so it'll probably maintain its color, but if you touch it'll just crumble and needles will fall everywhere.

So I do suggest, if people are going to put it inside, don't put it on a door, because it's going to be moving all the time and shedding, put it on a wall, a stationary place, and you can do like what you were just saying.

You can spray it with, like a plant, water or mister.

You can if it doesn't have a lot of dried flowers on it, if it's just evergreen and pine cones or something, you can actually fill up your bathtub and completely submerge it for like, you know, 20 minutes or something, and then take it out, let it drip dry in the shower and hang it back up.

Now that's like real commitment, and it is, but you know, it's not terrible.

I mean, we do that with our air plants and other things.

Sometimes you just have to soak them.

And real plant people don't mind filling up the bathtub.

That's true.

So we're getting near.

To the end of this one.

So I have actually one little spot left.

And I always think of like I used to have long hair, but you know, when you pull your hair back in a ponytail, and you kind of pull it up to pull it out of your turtleneck or whatever, that's kind of what we do at the very end that first piece that I put down, I treat like a ponytail that we're just pulling up out of the way, so that when we get this last little bouquet, let me grab it, it will be hidden, and you can't really see our previous clamping.

You know, my my wheels are turning, and so now i I'm picturing a candle in the center.

It's a centerpiece.

Now in my absolutely in my mind, it's versatile.

It looks like, I mean, you can do so much with this, yeah, and especially, I mean, this time of year, there's all sorts of parties and gatherings and things.

So you could put a candle in the center of it, and then when the party's over, you get to hang it on your wall or your door.

Let's bling it out a little bit, though.

Let's add, like, a little extra.

Yeah, definitely, you.

Final step, the bling bar, yeah, okay, so this is where we kind of deck it out with adornments.

It could be something like shiny, like this wreath over here starting to get, like, bobbles and ornaments on it, or this one, since we did use some of that.

Celosia, I was thinking maybe just more of a simple, complimentary Red Ribbon could go on there.

And I usually try to find a spot that like looks maybe a little sparse.

And I'm, for some reason, drawn to this little spot here.

And you can make ribbons and bows all different sorts of ways.

I always think of Martha Stewart this time of year when I when I was a kid, I used to watch Martha Stewart, and she has all different ways that you can tie ribbons or bows, but this simple one, and then we could add, like, just some natural bits.

These are pine cones, and you can add them, just gives it a nice little pop, and kind of keeps that original theme, that natural nature, sort of very pretty.

Yeah, and I brought a few others to show you this.

So this one's kind of probably done, maybe another pine cone if we feel like we need it.

It's gorgeous.

But, yeah, this one here has, so this has, like, some juniper berries on it, and more of, like a I said, when we made this one yesterday, I'm like, this is, like a country woman's the Pioneer Woman wretah.

this one's really cool, yeah, very non traditional.

It has the sunflowers in it from the drying room.

Very pretty.

And this one really was striking too, because you use materials that a lot of I'd never seen someone decorate with these before.

Yes, gorgeous are the milkweed pods that are just kind of hanging on fence lines around here all the time.

And they're already durable in the winter so they can hold up.

And we just, yeah, we just add what we want to to make it look a little bit more unique.

I know you can get a wreath pretty much anywhere this time of year.

Grocery stores carry them and stuff, but it's nice to have something that's a little bit more artistic and handmade, landmade from the area.

And you also do workshops and things with folks tell us a little bit about that, how you can learn to make your own Yeah, so we are actually, this year, we're offering about 10 wreath workshops.

Some of them are for dried wreaths, specifically so they wouldn't have evergreen, they would just have dried flowers.

And most of them are evergreen.

People do it as we do some private parties for like teens and offices, and then we do, I think we're doing sleepy Creek Riggs brewery, Prairie fruits farm and Creamery, a few different locations around town.

And it's just a good way to make a memory and do something with a friend or a family member.

Very nice.

And if folks were interested, how do they get in touch with you?

How?

What's the best way to find out about how to get themselves to a workshop.

Yeah.

So all of the registration, although there's not a lot of spots left, our Allerton class, I think, has a few, and sleepy Creek has a few, but they're all on our website.

Delightflowerfarm.com, and we are going to be at some of the mistletoe markets this year selling our wreaths and some of the indoor markets.

So information about that is on our newsletter, which people can sign up for on the on the website as well.

You guys are keeping busy.

And speaking of keeping busy, there's still business to take care of here on the farm.

You know, a lot of people think once the growing season is over, it's pitch posh, and you pack it up and go in, but there's still a lot of activity going on out here.

So what are some things that you guys do over the winter time to sort of prepare for that following year.

Yeah.

So since we have had that really nice fall weather, it's been unseasonably warm.

We've been able to do things like dig up our dahlias so we can start dividing those tubers and have Dahlia tubers for next season.

We've also divided some of our more established Peony plants and take those roots up out of the.

Ground, but most of our work is focused in our hoop houses or our greenhouses.

They're insulated, but they're not heated, and that's where we're planting many of the crops that we harvest in spring.

And we'll go check that out in just a few minutes.

But first, we bought our friends, John and Amanda, here with us, and they're going to talk to you a little bit about how you can become a friend to WILL.

Thanks, Tinisha, and we'll be getting back to Tinisha a little bit later.

But right now, we want to take a second to ask you to support great programs like Mid American Gardener right here on WILL TV.

My name is John Steinbacher.

I am the Director of Development.

I'm joined by Amanda Hill, our membership manager.

We're really excited.

We get to they let us out, let us out studio the building.

We got to see some really cool wreath making so fun.

I love going on these type of field trips.

I don't even mind that it's chilly.

I'm getting in the mood for the holidays.

That wreath making was so cool.

This place is amazing.

I wish you could smell the greenery and see all the fun, festive ribbons, and I feel like the holidays are in the air.

So I appreciate that I'm a little chilly.

I'm out here doing it for because we love to have your support today.

us to fundraise.

We raise about 25% of our funding for the year, just in the month of December alone.

We would love to hear from you, if you're a fan of Mid American gardener, if you tune into WILL-TV, for all the shows, all the How to shows, the cooking shows, the travel shows, obviously you got great documentaries and great drama.

This is the time to make a gift.

You can call 217-244-9455, or you can go online to willgive.org It's very easy to do, and when you go to, willgive.org.

Or you can become a sustainer.

Yes, that's our favorite way for people to join.

If you've never made a gift before and you are a fan of Mid American gardener and all the other wonderful things we do at Illinois public media today is a great day to become a member and to become a sustaining member.

You pick a monthly amount that's comfortable for you, $5 a month, $10 a month.

You set it and you forget it.

It's that easy, and it'll keep going until you say stop.

So we'd love to hear from you.

Give us a call.

217-244-9455, you can go online to will give.org We have thank you gifts.

We do.

In just a moment, we're gonna have an interview with Alan Bragnahan.

You're gonna stick around for that.

He's amazing.

It's really exciting.

Yeah.

So he is the author of this book and many others.

And today, we are offering this book with your gift of $10 or more per month, or a one time gift of $120 you'll be able to take this gift.

And then, of course, if you're out on if you're out, I'll have one of these by now, caroling or whatever you are in the winter time.

This is a great mug, yeah, for it just $7 a month, or one time donation of 84 really shows your support to an American gardener.

We see these all over.

We love it.

We know you're supporting the show.

And new we just got these also, $10 a month.

Wonderful for yourself.

The gardener knew or the loved one in your life that gardens.

With the holidays coming up, it's always fun to think outside the box.

Get different gifts for people, hot, mug, book, give us a call.

We'd love to send you something.

217-244-9455, or go online to will give.org We would love to hear from you guys today.

And you know, if you are a fan of NPR or any of the programs we have, obviously have a radio station, w i l am FM, 90.9 we have a brand new station, Illinois soul, which just launched.

But in honor, this is the 50th anniversary of the Friends of w i l, and in honor of that, we recently had Scott Simon, who hosts Morning Edition on NPR every or weekend edition on NPR every Saturday, he came.

Was a delight.

And let me tell you, we offered him one of these mugs, and he he said, I've seen a lot of mugs in my time.

I've been given a lot of mugs, but never one like this.

So he specifically took that home and gave it as a gift to his wife, who was a gardener.

So we felt pretty good about that.

He shows you how cool that mug is.

So you and Scott Simon's wife can enjoy your morning.

Maggie liked it too.

Yeah, we're very cute too.

So yeah, that is a great thank you gift.

But of course, the most important gift is the gift of public media, which you when you make a gift to right now at 217-244-9455, or online at will give.org you are not only supporting this for yourself, but also for the community.

And I think one of the great things Mid American gardener does is go out and provide direct feedback.

You can ask questions online.

You can send them in but also they've this year, in the last few years, they've been doing more remote locations, getting to know the gardeners and the locations in our community, providing really great information and resources.

Yes, and it's really easy.

We try to make it so simple.

You can pay by credit card.

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Information or EFT directly from the bank account.

We really want to make it easy for you, for you to set it and forget it and become a lifelong supporter of Illinois public media.

Give us a call.

217-244-9455, or you can go online to willgive.org we'd love to hear from you, and we're going to send it to Alan right now.

And now we have a very special treat for you.

I am joined by Alan branhagen, and you may not know him, but you know of his books because we have them on the show all the time.

We've got this one today be trying to get out of the glare the native plants of the Midwest book.

We talk about the primer as well.

So this is the man behind the book.

So tell us a little bit about you, introduce yourself, and how did you become a plant person?

Hi, Tinisha, thank you for having me today.

Yeah, I'm the executive director of the natural land institute up in Rockford, Illinois.

And if you didn't know, the natural land institute was the first land trust in Illinois, and our founder was also one of the founders of the natural land, or, excuse me, of the Nature Conservancy, which is, you know, really well known.

Yeah.

How did I get interested in plants?

I think it goes back to my childhood.

My mom took us kids.

I'm, you know, from a family of four on hikes in local parks.

I grew up in decor Iowa, and I remember hiking in this one wooded Park, will Baker Park, and seeing Dutchman's breeches and her showing me that flower.

And, you know, each flower is like a little pants and hanging upside down, and it's just little things like that.

Made me really interested in plants, though, I also love butterflies and birds.

I have to add that butterflies, birds and botany, the 3b the 3b absolutely so that's when he got bit by the bug, right?

That's when I got bit by the botany bug.

Yes, the botany bug.

Now professionally, tell us a little bit about where your career has taken you.

Yeah, I went to undergraduate school in Ames Iowa at Iowa State University, and got a degree in landscape architecture, and had an amazing professor there, Bob Diaz, who really promoted native plants.

After that, I went to get my master's degree at Louisiana State University down in Baton Rouge, I took a detour, really.

I got an amazing assistantship there that covered my cost of living and tuition, so that was really helpful.

And it's one of the top four schools in landscape architecture.

And while at LSU, I knew I wanted to come back to the Midwest.

I just love, you know, grew up here.

I don't know my my inner being is tied to what goes on in the Midwest.

And so I was looking at job opportunities.

And here's this job opportunity in Rockford, Illinois, working for the Winnebago County Forest Preserve District.

And it was doing, you know, preserve development and land management and, you know, all the types of things that I really loved and I applied from, well, actually, first of all, it's like, well, where the heck is Winnebago County, Illinois, and I went into the library at LSU.

I hope this isn't too long of a story, but here in the library is the book, the flora of Winnebago County, Illinois, by Egbert fell and I read that book, and I'm like, wow, that county has a really diverse flora and really unique river systems and all this history of land protection.

I want to go and interview.

And I did, and I got the job, and I accepted it.

I moved back to the Midwest, to Rockford.

The rest is history, yeah, and then I left for 27 years, and now I'm back.

It just keeps calling you back, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about your books.

Because this, this is a book.

This isn't, this isn't, you know, a coffee table paperback.

This is a comprehensive.

What is it?

500 500 species.

How does one go from having this passion about something to creating a giant book?

Because this had to have been a paper, right?

I mean, you really, this is a lot of work.

So how did you What moved you to want to put this out there for people to understand and to know more about native plants.

Well, again, I, I have that passion for the Midwest, and I think, you know, we're kind of fly over country, and we, we don't know the beauty that's in our own backyard.

And you know, I've been gardening ever since I was a wee one.

So in Iowa, and, you know, a little bit in Louisiana, though, as a grad student, and of course, in Rockford, and then Kansas City, and then the Twin Cities and back to Rockford.

So I've been all over the Midwest and always visiting different natural areas, and just inspired by all those things.

And I thought I want to just share.

Are all my experiences with gardening to hopefully inspire people to grow more native plants and understand the importance of growing more native plants.

Now, we hear a lot of people say, I don't really look for natives, or I'm not drawn to natives because they're not as showy, or they're, you know, they're not as bright colored or interesting to look at.

And I'm sure you disagree with that.

So what do you say to people who come up and say, you know, I don't know natives, you know, they're just uninteresting.

I completely hear that a lot.

I think a lot of it also relates back to the Midwest has the smallest amount of natural areas remaining.

Wow.

Most people have never even been to a high quality remnant prairie to see the spectacle that is there right now, with all the sunflowers and blazing stars and all these things blooming, I mean, they can be spectacular, so a lot of people just miss what what they're about, and I hope I brought that back to them.

I think the quote in my book is from Eloise Butler, who was actually one of the first Native Plant people.

In fact, the oldest native plant garden in the whole United States is in Minneapolis, and she was way ahead of her time, and she had traveled even to the tropics, but when she saw the prairies outside Minneapolis, said they are more colorful and beautiful than anything she'd seen in the tropics.

So if people just got out there and saw that, I think they'd be inspired to put these plants in interesting that's a very, very unique perspective.

And you talk about designing with natives in here as well.

We've had some folks on our show that the last few years, that has really been a hot topic is, let's introduce some of these.

Some of these back into our landscape.

Talk a little bit about that.

Well, yeah, some, you know, I, I wrote this from a gardener's perspective.

And, yeah, some of these native plants are, you know, they they kind of run, or we don't know how to use them.

We don't know how to, you know, some of them are more aggressive, or seed in because they're meant to be here.

That's, you know, and gardeners like things to just stay put, you know, where I planted it.

I want to stay there and, and, you know, so, yeah, design is learning how to put these together, and for each section of the book, you know, like the trees, the you know, understory trees, the perennials and so on, I have at the beginning a little, a little piece that talks about maybe the best dozen that are the most garden worthy for our traditional landscape, so that people can know where to start with the ones that are really, really well behaved and act like the traditional perennials, so that they kind of can build off that.

Very nice.

So you even give us the blueprint of where to start?

Yeah, I hope so.

Like that, like that.

And I can't, we can't, not talk about native plants and pollinators without talking about the greater issue of pollinators, the our monarchs, and some of those things that are unique to Illinois and things that we enjoy.

Did you come at this with a environmental sort of perspective as well?

Yeah, I hope, I hope people got that.

I think that's because, you know, I said it's not just botany for me, it's butterflies and birds.

And even as a boy making those connections, I mean, I was writing down the plants that attracted butterflies way before any books really published that.

And, you know, and that's really the part that really inspired me to get this out there, is because these are all the building blocks of nature, you know, these things have co evolved with each other.

They need each other.

And then, of course, we ultimately need them if we want clean air and clean water and and even the a lot of the plants we grow, you know, need pollinators.

Luckily, we don't have to hire someone to pollinate apple trees in the Midwest, for example.

So just hope, hopefully, people make that connection.

And I really try to write about that, if there are specific insects or birds tied to a plant, really try to make those connections Excellent.

Can we expect any future works?

Do you have anything in the pipeline?

Not that you know, this isn't part of me wants to do the rest of the story.

You know, 500 is a lot, right?

And, you know, it was hard for me to will it down.

And sometimes I it might be kind of fun to do, you know, here's, here's some other really good ones that didn't make the the first cut.

And then, of course, you know, we did the the second book was really because the 500 is intimidating for a lot of people, and we did it so that, you know, the Midwest native plant primer, just to really more address the average homeowner, and so it wasn't quite as intimidating.

So Gotcha.

Excellent last question, and then I'll let you go.

What is your favorite native plant?

Right?

He would do that, besides the one, I saved the best one for last.

Yeah, probably, you know, trees are the most important of all the plants, because they have the biggest biomass and can make the biggest in impact on your local environment.

So I would pick Illinois State tree, the white oak.

It just becomes a magnificent, long live tree.

Everyone should plant one somewhere, because it just really is one of the building blocks of nature in the Midwest.

Has more diversity of insects feeding on it than anything else.

And of course, the acorns the mast crop in the fall that it produces, feeds so much that it is and, you know, and of course, it sequesters carbon for a long time, because it can live for 400 years.

So long.

Answer, white oak.

White Oak.

Thank you so much for your time.

I could sit here on this zoom with you for hours because we're speaking the same language.

Thank you so much for your passion and for turning that into these lovely books.

We can't keep them here.

Every time we offer them, they sell out immediately.

So you are doing good work here in central Illinois, and we really thank you so Ellen, we appreciate it.

You are very welcome.

You okay, so we're in the hoop house now, and what are we going to be planning today?

Yeah.

So this is a tray of pre sprouted ranunculus.

These are butterfly ranunculus.

It's a fun word to say.

It is, it is ranunculus.

And what we do is we soak them for about four to six hours in bubbly water, like with aeration bubbler in it, and then we sprout them in these trays.

So this crazy octopus looking thing is actually the butterfly ranunculus corm.

It's like a bulb, but it's called a corm, and you see these little white pieces that's the root starting to form.

And then you can see kind of a little bit of yellow green, that's the sprouts that are starting, and that's the best stage to transplant them for winter.

Okay, okay.

And is this a big job to do when you're putting these in?

I mean, these this, obviously, I feel like goes down, right?

You got it into the soil.

Okay, yeah.

So we have to dig a decent sized hole for these bigger ones.

We also plant some regular ranunculus their corms are a lot smaller.

We just use a screwdriver I can show to plant those.

But we plant about 8000 of them.

Wow.

So it does take a while to get them all in the ground, and you mentioned that you stagger them as your plants.

Yeah, it's called succession planting, because if we plant them all at the same time, like it happens in the home garden with tulips, you plant them, they kind of all bloom that same week.

Yeah.

So we don't want that to happen, especially because we have in spring, a big floral holidays.

We have Easter we have Mother's Day, we have graduation.

So we kind of want to stretch out the harvest as much as possible, so we plant these about two weeks apart, so that you get a little bit more extended harvest out of them.

Okay, well, I'll step out of the way, and we'll watch you get these in the ground and get them ready for next year.

Okay, so we use these little this is kind of our trick.

We use these bamboo stakes to keep our lines straight.

But we have, you can see there's a little bit of masking tape on them, and that tells us our spacing.

We're spacing these a foot apart.

Our other Ranunculus, we space six inches apart, so much closer.

But these plants get pretty big when they're blooming, and so they need a little, just a little bit more spacing.

So what you're planting now, when will you be able to harvest those?

So these should start blooming at the very end of April, and then through the month of May.

Sometimes ranunculus are a Mediterranean plant, so they really like a long cool period.

They don't like it too cold, which is why you can't grow them outside in this growing zone, and they don't like it too hot, so if the soil temps get to about 70, they will go dormant.

So in spring, we have to be, you know, hopeful that it doesn't get too hot, too fast.

In these greenhouses, they hold a lot of heat when the sun, when the sun shines in here.

It heats up the soil, heats up the air, and then it stays kind of warm in here.

What are some of the advantages of having a hoop house for the winter months?

Yeah, the phrase that's used in agriculture is season extension.

So we are kind of with the heirloom moms that we're harvesting now for Thanksgiving time.

And these spring plants, we're getting a jump start on things that will be we can basically grow things earlier in here and have them bloom than things that are outside in the field.

So we get to extend spring a little earlier, and we extend.

A little bit later as well.

Maggie were talking earlier about succession planting.

This is a good example of that.

This is ranunculus as well.

Yep, these are the regular ranunculus and these we planted just a few weeks ago.

Actually, on election day.

It was like something to do to occupy our minds and give us a sense of hope and lots of unknowns at that time.

But I'll definitely remember planting a fabulous on election day.

You will not forget this day for sure.

All right, we're going to take one more break and go to our friends, John and Amanda, to tell us a little bit more about how you can become a friend, to WILL, and support programs like an American gardener.

Thanks.

Tinisha, that was great.

You and Maggie, you're doing such a good job.

This has been such a fun episode.

And what a great interview with Alan too.

He's such a knowledgeable, amazing guy.

It's really great chatting with him.

This book has everything that you ever need, so $10 a month or a one time gift of 120 and you can have all your gardening questions answered and like they were saying, like, the gardening doesn't stop, even though the weather changes, like, there's still stuff to do.

You always have to be planning ahead and really learning a lot out here.

So always happy to be here.

If you are enjoying this show and other programs like it, please give us a call.

217-244-9455, we'd love to hear from you as we ending up our calendar year, always looking for lots of support there towards the end, that's right, the end of the calendar year is such an important time in our fundraising season.

It helps ensure that we can continue to bring programs like Mid American gardener, Prairie Fire, state of change.

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Give us a call, and you can make a large gift if you can afford it, and you're really paying it forward to the community.

217-244-9455, or online at willgive.org and you know, we both know, especially Amanda, because she gets a lot of calls about how many, how many people out there act love the passport member benefit?

Yes, I mean, it's by far most popular benefit.

And lately, we've been getting a lot of donations to gift that membership, passport, membership to somebody else, which I think is such a cool way to kind of pay it forward and pass it on.

So don't forget that gift membership, especially as the holidays are approaching, such a great idea, you know, alternative type gift.

So give us a call.

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You get passport.

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Pick an amount that's comfortable for you and give us a call.

217-244-9455, or go online to willgive.org very impressed with all those numbers in the math you just threw.

But yeah, so, I mean, one of the really things that we've seen is a lot of folks, you know, they joined to get passport or patterns magazine and to give for a while, and perhaps that you you've been giving your $5 a month, but you realize your gift really makes a huge difference.

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I think I've seen them working on the set.

We're gonna have an exciting set for Mid American gardener.

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Right now we're going to give you that phone number, 217-244-9455, online at willgive.org and get your mid American gardener hat limited exclusive.

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So if that's something that you're thinking about, as you mentioned, a holiday gift for this spring.

I know a lot of people this time of year, everyone's kind of asking, Hey, give.

Now.

Give now.

It's that season, but it really is.

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Illinois public media, we do so much for everybody, and it is time.

Sometimes we need to then call on you guys, our listeners, our viewers, our loyal supporters, and say, give us some support.

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Give us a call.

217-244-9455, or you can go online to willgive.org We would love to hear from you.

Thank you, yep, and thanks, Amanda, we knew fun to be out here.

Yeah, send it back to Tinisha and Maggie.

So we talked about how just because it's fall winter does not mean that the farm is not working.

There's a lot of stuff that goes into that.

And one of those things is digging tubers and bulbs and that kind of thing.

So here we have hundreds of dahlias, yes, oh my gosh.

Digging, as you said, is probably one of the most dreaded faults, because typically, it's cold, it's wet, and they're heavy.

It's a lot on your back, a lot on your body.

It's my season of hot baths every day.

Yes, but yeah.

So we dig up our Dahlia tubers.

We planted about 1000 Dahlia tubers this year.

So when we dig them up, they come up as a like a huge clump like this.

And just like a potato plant or some other tuber, they form a lot of the new tubers that you could plant.

And there's a whole process of dividing them to get new ones that you can plant next year.

And this is our method of storing them.

You said you're familiar with how you do it, so we usually put a label of which variety it is.

And this is vermiculite, which just helps moisture be held in there without it getting too wet or moldy.

And we layer them kind of like a lasagna.

So once we've divided them.

This is what the tubers that are divided look like, and the anatomy of a tuber, here's a good example, even though it's small, is that you want the body, the neck, and then you want an intact eye.

So this will make a whole new Dahlia plant next year, and it will be genetically true to this variety, unlike seed that you collect from values, which can be cross pollinated, and you can create whole new breeds of flowers that way.

These are genetically true year after year.

So one of these planted the next fall makes a huge clump like this.

And you can get anywhere from like, some of some varieties make only, like four tubers.

Some we've dug up some clumps that make, like, 20 tubers.

So it's a really good way to multiply.

And diet.

Tubers are expensive.

They go for about and you can buy one for $7 a tuber.

But some of the specialty varieties are like, $30 Wow.

So when you pull that up, fingers crossed that you've got a nice little cluster on there.

Yeah, so you can build up your own stock.

It's a really great way.

The storage is a little tricky.

You do have to try to keep them right in the 40 degree temperature range.

So, you know, you don't want it too cold, you don't want it too warm, or they'll start sprouting in storage.

So we typically keep them in these boxes in this insulated shed, until it starts to get really cold, and by then, our floral cooler is not holding fresh flowers anymore.

We put a little space heater in there, just to keep it right at that like 40 degrees.

Yes, we store them in there through the winter, little musical chairs for storage.

Now, when you pull these up, is there any technique can you pop them off?

Do they need to be cut off?

What is the what is the proper way?

Yeah.

So they're actually pretty fragile.

They look Hardy, but they're pretty fragile.

So typically, we kind of do a surgical, okay, we cut them, cut the top off of them, cut the big tuber in half, but you want to make sure that you don't break the neck on any of these.

Like I mentioned, it has a body.

It has a neck and an eye.

So when we get down to a point of two of them, then I would just use this a little smaller pruner, and cut that, making sure they both have a little of the neck, making sure they both, yeah, have the neck, the eye and the body.

And if you just yank these out of the ground, a lot of times, those necks will break, yes, and then the tuber can't survive next spring.

So it's both like, you know, it's it's cumbersome because they're heavy and it's wet and you're tired and all those things.

But then there's a delicacy to it as well.

So much like so many things in nature, both like fragile and sturdy and resilient at the same time.

Yes, take your time with it.

Gardeners, if you're if one thing you learned during gardening, it's patience, whether you like it or not, absolutely, you can always learn more.

Excellent.

Well, Maggie, thank you so much for letting us come back.

This is our second season out here at delight.

So I'm looking forward to coming back in the spring, when things are waking up.

Thank you so much for teaching us how to make wreaths and just for letting us spend the day here.

We really appreciate it, and thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions for us, you can send them into your garden@gmail.com or you can just search for us on all socials.

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

Good night.

You.