Unknown: Hello, and thanks for joining us for Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha Spain and we are well into the gift giving season.

And that's why today's show is going to be all about what to give the plant person in your life when we've got lots of ideas.

We're going to go out to a local plant store, meet the owner and talk about some of the gifts that he has in his shop.

And we're also going to talk with one of our panelists who's going to show you how to make more of a handmade gift that you can give someone.

But first, we're going to go out to plant mode in Champaign, and hang out with the owner Mathis and he's going to show us all around his shop and tell us about what gifts he's got in store.

Alright, here we are at plant mode in downtown Champaign.

I'm joined by the owner Matthis Helmick.

So first of all, give us a little history because this shop is one of the trendier plant shops in Champaign.

So tell us all about trendy I didn't know I didn't know.

I opened up in late 2013 as a pop up shop in my apartment in downtown Champaign.

By 2014.

I'd moved into the furniture lounge and set up shop inside their shop, which was kind of cool.

I was there for almost five years.

September 2019.

I moved into this location.

Wow.

Yeah.

And you said you were just kind of walking by saw the place was available.

I live in the neighborhood I have a dog walk over to the retention pond park right around there.

It's a nice little addition to town and we just was walking by one of my friends owns the salon next door, ippatsu which is awesome.

And she was like, you should you should look into this.

We could be neighbors, this could work.

I looked into it.

The landlady was awesome.

Got me in here.

The rest is history.

And that is plugged in on it.

Yeah, awesome.

So we're getting into the gift giving time of year, right.

And we've got people I'm sure coming in wanting to buy things for others.

So with our show, we're going to talk all about plants for the plant person in your life.

Now let's start out with some gift ideas for the beginner.

Or maybe the person who kills plants when you give them one.

What sort of things when people come in for the beginners?

What would you recommend as a as a starting player to plants that come into mind when people are like I don't need to give a plant to someone who is not good with plants.

Or maybe they just want to buy it for themselves.

And they're like it's my first plant.

What should I get?

I always kind of walk over to this little section next to the radiator over here in the dark sort of pick up these little Sam's various mother in law's times.

Pretty rad can't go I like to show if they kind of give me a look like that.

So small, I'm usually like they get bigger.

We've got much larger ones.

I just like to show you the small ones first.

And then I love to show people, ZZ plants examI Oh, coca Zemi folio, which is why we just say ZZ plant, because that's much easier.

But you can put both of these in like the closet for a month with no light, no water and they're going to look just like this.

And that's that's not a lot of plants.

That's that can take abuse and that some people really need to start out with a plant like that.

More on you though.

How did you how did you get involved in plants?

Did you come from a horticulture background or not at all?

I mean, my mom, we had plants we used to water stuff on Wednesdays watering Wednesdays.

Yeah.

Luckily her few plants worked out to where watering once a week on that day was fine.

I've learned as a plant shop person that that's not the case all the time.

But I was working at a job in Chicago and just to be super fast.

I was on my lunch break.

I didn't like the job.

I walked by sprout home up in Chicago, modern home and garden shop.

And I was like, that looks really nice.

Someone's out there water and hold no Heineken water and you know, trees and shrubs.

And so I finished my lunch, walked back by and asked for a job.

It was the end of the season.

And they were like you should come back in the winter and see if you can do Christmas trees because we're a Christmas tree lot in the winter.

And then if you are we'll hire you up in the spring.

And that's sort of what we did.

Wow.

So you just took this on and just learned the app, every aspect of it started as like I don't like the job I'm in I need something else.

That looks pretty cool.

And then it turned into something that I love.

Awesome.

Awesome.

So tell us a little bit more about some of the easy's we talked about mother in law's tongue and ZZ sure sure what else I like to point out that boys are pretty cool, pretty unassuming little plant that comes in a lot of different leaf shapes and different colors.

big thick, waxy leaves that don't just dry out on you.

Or if it does dry up in his four or five days pass when it needs water.

It's still going to be here.

It's still gonna look good.

And if you take care of it for quite a while you'll get these amazing flowers.

And that's always a surprise to people.

There's a family of plants called Pepper Romeo's This one's called Eden rasa.

There's a lot of different Peperomia is looks like I didn't bring over any at the moment.

A lot of different leaf shapes.

It's another thick leaf to tropical plant.

To me thick leaves are easy, as long as you just let things dry out between waterings that's The trick, that's the trick, especially this time of year, because we're all moving indoors, and so we're all looking at our plants, and we all think that they need more love than they actually do.

Yeah.

And we overwater.

Yep.

Neglect over nurture, in my opinion, for almost everything, just let things dry out.

And they're going to be a lot easier.

There are people who are like, Hey, what's wrong with this plant about it?

For me, like two weeks ago, I've been watering it about every three days, I put it in the window every day when I go to work.

And then we're like, that's, that plant once watered about every eight to 10 days.

Yeah.

And it's a low to medium light plant, set it on the little label.

And we talked about is cool, though.

So we'll get it worked out of it back.

We can always troubleshoot things.

So I always tell people reach out to me with your plants.

If you have questions about him, okay.

And during the pandemic, I know you've noticed it.

We've already talked about it on the show, but there was an explosion of gardening and plant people during this.

Are you still seeing that momentum with people coming in?

It's slowed down a little bit.

Yet, I mean, I don't see there aren't people who are just walking around being like, there's, there's a plant shop I just learned about I have, you know, Hi, I have 45 plants, and I've only had them for two months, like that whole thing is slowed down.

I think all those people that started to get into plants are just regular plant people now.

So they kind of come in casually every once in a while.

Whereas maybe, I don't know.

910 months ago, I was seeing a once a week.

The height of the pandemic with curbside pickup, it was kind of nutty, how fast things were moving.

But people were home and they could take on either challenging plants that they'd always thought about trying.

Or they could just try out plants for the first time.

Or they realize they worked in like the spare bedroom that it was just skanky and weird and they needed to make it pretty and feel better and kick out some oxygen.

So yeah, yeah.

Okay, now we do have some more challenging plants.

Is there are there any other plants at this table for beginners?

To show right where I'm at, I mean, this little allacasia a lot of different Allah cases, I don't know how much I can swing out to the grass.

This is an allacasia scalprum all these pretty insane, allacasias is just require high humidity.

And definitely some patients with watering.

They're kind of expensive.

They're sought after people go nuts about them.

When I sell them.

I'm like, hey, when you get home, let's watch a couple videos about this.

Not for all the extra care tips but just to get inspired and to understand that you just bought like an expensive plant and that you should you should not just be like I bought this cool plant that I've been looking for check it out and then it's dead and we don't want that we want success.

Yes.

Yeah.

So allacasias Calais.

theas.

Which I don't have any here at them within reach.

There's some here in the shop.

Okay, cool.

calathias generally require water without chlorine.

All the plants don't like chlorine and fluoride all these tropical crap one.

I'll be your faithful assist.

I love it.

We're working together.

This is the one you're talking about.

Yeah, this little buddies a little thirsty, but it's ready for water today.

I let it dry.

Folks.

See how we do it following his own advise Yeah, this this good luck if we grab the smallest one there is but that's okay.

That's okay.

A lot of good assistant.

Yeah, they're just pretty darn finicky.

And a lot of people like them because of all the pretty lean Yes, action that happens they move during the course of the day when it's bright when it's dark, you know, they just require a little something a little love high humidity like where you grab this from sitting in a little tub on top of rocks.

And every night before I leave, I pour a bunch of rocks or a bunch of water on those rocks, just to provide some humidity here.

Okay, let's move into some of the more difficult plants.

I had my eye on this.

I'd still am considering taking one of these babies home but I know I know what the likelihood Yeah.

People want to over love this mostly Yes.

I like to tell folks Hey, you bought this it's kind of heavy soil.

It's pretty wet.

don't water it until the soil superduper dry that's going to be about two weeks.

If it's two and a half suns not super strong this time of year.

It's going to be about every two and a half ish weeks.

And I don't even water these super heavily.

I like to use a spray bottle.

It's just gonna ask me sprayed them I spray I'll do you know 1015 squirts just to where I'm trying to saturate the soil down to about there.

Sometimes people buy these they put them in big beautiful hanging baskets without drainage at all.

No water I'm not really think and then just a lot you know, I'll get a an email like this plant smells funny.

Like something's I'll be like, yeah, like something's rotting.

Well, I saw it wrinkling and I thought because it'll pucker when it's rotting.

And it'll pucker when it needs water.

It's it's a tough one, but it's totally doable, but the soil moisture is the trick right?

That's how you know which one you gotta wait.

Okay, let's check out some of the tough plants.

Okay, so now we're on the other side of the shop and we're going to talk about some plants that may be better for your more experienced plant person and also some desirables that came out of this huge explosion of plant parents during the pandemic.

So take it away.

Give us the tour.

Why do people look and what are they looking for?

Yeah, some people got into plants they got some easy plants.

They got some more difficult plants and Instagram told them they needed certain plants or tried to get certain plants for those type of folks.

Yeah, I don't know.

The Instagram crowd.

Yeah, this is a check it out.

Some leaves are gonna fall off it because it's here.

Ficus trangualarus varagata, fancy angle shaped variegated Ficus plant, I guess are a little fussy.

When they get moved around, they can drop leaves.

But this is gorgeous.

That is gorgeous.

And people who get those generally know what's up about it.

I'm a big fan of these philodendron silver swords.

There's not a lot of silver colored plants out there.

Now let's talk about this because this is people you know, it's pricing.

Yeah.

So what makes this guy so fancy?

Generally availability.

Okay, I mean, there are giant mega growers out there that supply the big box stores and they definitely start like, hey, this plants on the radar as something we need to put into production.

After they do that.

Things that are superduper hard to find become more available so to scaccia guy and then I try to pay attention to that stuff too.

If I have a wholesaler that's like I can get these are really hard to find their this much.

I sort of look around and see who's selling what locally or interesting if the big box stores have them.

There's quite a few plants that a big box store would carry now that I feel like they didn't carry a lot.

This is a begonia Mackie lotta beautiful.

I'm not gonna call this rare anything.

They're also called, like Batwing begonias or angel wing begonias are like little spaceships to be though that is pretty silver.

You have to pay attention to trends.

Try to you know, it's not just these are good plants.

It's what are popular plants in sometimes more than like me Googling, like, what's popular today.

It's based on my clients just kind of being like, Hey, can you get me you know, you got me one of these before, here's my list.

And sometimes I'll be like, those are the five rares plants in the world.

I can't find those.

But this one here was on an availability list.

And then I reached out to my growers, there's a couple of them that will send me some pictures.

We have this it's gonna be about this much.

It's in that size.

It'll be there next week if you want it.

And then so it's pretty cool to make people like real happy when they're Oh, so fast.

They're probably peeking in the Windows on a good day to you know, to come pick up their order for sure.

This is an example of a plant that is it big box stores these days.

So it's you know, it's it's a $26 plants probably $18 at like a Home Depot or something.

But it's a skindapsus moonlight it's called a Sentinel, satin puthos, I just think they're pretty great.

A lot of my clients are like, I'll pay three or four more bucks or 10 more bucks to buy from you instead of a big box shop.

No big deal.

Sure.

supporting small business.

Yes, another kind of silvery plant.

I love the rappa fedora decursiva.

And this is a vine that grows right now.

It's like I'm just doing this, yeah, makes this turn and goes up.

And then the leaves start to split.

So you see it in just sort of different stages of growth, which I think is pretty cool.

And if we were to Google image this and put the word mature in it, they'd be like this tall.

These leaves would be about two and a half feet wide with these big dramatic splits in them.

Wow, this is another spaceship planet.

So as your house and indoor jungle.

It's getting there.

Yeah, I go through phases.

I go through like I want to intake a bunch of plants on into this and then I sort of look around like I want to plant shop.

I'm gonna turn shop.

I'm gonna tell people this was from my house.

It's only this much.

I'll give them away.

But yeah, right now I'm in an intake mode.

So I do occasionally look around.

It's a small apartment I live in so it's pretty easy to jungle up.

Yes, I bet the oxygen is just pristine.

I like to think so.

Yes.

Yeah, I think so.

What else?

What else do we have?

Another philodendron that I like this is called Jungle Boogie narrow from.

This gives me alocasia I look alocasia case.

Yeah, there we go.

No.

One can say things how they say them.

And I don't believe I've ever pronouncing anything 100 It's tricky.

That's Latin names will get you in when people come to the counter and they say blah, blah, blah.

And if I feel like it's in my ear wrong, I don't I'm just like, it's right over there.

Yeah, I'll find all learning stuff every day.

But I love all these like this is a very Jurassic.

Yes.

Yeah, these get really big these leaves can get you know, that big.

This whole plant can be a floor plant that's like, you know, we're gonna have four feet tall.

They're pretty rad.

This is another philodendron I'm a big fan of philodendrons.

They're all either vines are little shrubby bushes.

But I mean we've got tiny little growth, right growth in there.

And I just like how the leaves unfurl.

And they're just always reaching and doing their thing.

So when do you I'm sorry.

interrupting when people come in do you find that they know what they want?

Or did they just kind of stumble in and think I want one of everything do different types you okay people who were lectures maybe so there's a couple really good plant groups here in town hashtag see you plant peoples I'm a member and hashtag to one seven plant gang Okay, okay I feel like I started up and I want everyone to join in yeah I'll do how you do you know it's just it's all friendly.

But yeah, there are people who you know such and such shop has this or plant loads got that and they'll post it and you know people will drive over from Bloomington on a Saturday or on a Wednesday or something Oh wow.

They'll buy from the website because every single items on my website for purchase I throw a lot of things on my socials and I'm really good about being like I got 30 of these y'all kinda like calm down.

I'll see you when you come Yes.

Or hey, I got seven of these.

And that's like get those people tend to a lot of the regular snag a lot of stuff on the new arrival days.

Do you ship or is everything curbside everything you come in the shop for pickup come in the shop and browse like normal times with masks.

We're all vac stuff in here and boosted so that's why we're good like this at the moment.

Yeah, I'm a stickler, you can ask around.

I think all my bad Yelp reviews are like from not opening early when people are trying to pull on the door or from me being like, Yo, no, no, no, no, no.

What are you doing?

Where's your mask?

Yeah.

Um, any other gift ideas?

What do you want people to know, you know, this season, if they're interested in gifting a plant to a friend for sure.

What's a good rule of thumb, any any, any tips there for that I plan on coming in like, you know, four or five days before the holiday, whatever holiday you you do, because you're not going to be able to hide a plant in the closet, unless it's a Sansburia or ZZ plan or something.

But generally I get pretty busy that week.

Gift certificates are a big thing here.

A lot of people hit my website and just hit gift card and buy an E gift certificate, which you can use on the website or here in the shop.

Candles even though I sell these great Kobo candles that have an 80 hour burn time, I send people over to fire doll over on Neil Street as my friend is making really rad candles.

That's right.

I slid that in that's right a little cluttered all studios.

I don't know.

People want plants.

I saw a lot of plants in december two people who like plants.

And then I saw a lot of gift certificates to partners of people who like plants, ah, or I get a lot of phone calls.

My daughter goes to UVA, she won't be back until winter semester starts but I want to get a $50 gift certificate.

Can you leave it in the shop for her to pick up?

Blah, blah, blah, making it work through the pandemic?

Absolutely.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for letting us come in.

Appreciate beautiful place beautiful plants really appreciate it.

And we'll have to come back and visit soon for sure.

All right.

And again, a big thank you to Mathis for letting us come in and hang out with him at plant mode today.

And in keeping with that gift giving theme that we've got going on the show today, we're going to go to Jennifer, one of our panelists that you know from the show.

So before we get into your gift giving idea, Jennifer introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about you.

I'm Jennifer Nelson.

I'm a horticulturalist.

You can find me online at grounding, grounded and growing calm.

You can also find me on campus on the ULI campus here and there.

I teach vegetable gardening and today we are doing a lab on spice mixes and tea mixes.

So I've got those examples to show for you guys today.

Excellent.

And that is so did you guys.

You said the herbs, the tea, the tea mixes, you're actually going to make the tea bag.

Yeah, I can show you a couple of different ways.

We have a way that the students can just make make it up.

The idea is that they make the blend and then taste test it right right there in the lab.

That's a really unique idea.

Okay, show us how it's done.

Okay, so for the tea.

We have different herbs, different dried herbs out in the lab for the students to pick from and some suggested recipes.

And if any of you have done loose tea at home, there's a couple ways to do it.

This is kind of what we use at my house.

It's a little strainer basket and it goes over the top of your mug and you put the loose tea inside.

There's a couple other ways that you might these are all reusable.

This is a little spoon thing that open the shirts.

My son found this one recently it's a little cat with a strainer ball so you would put the loose tea inside.

But another option is you can buy just empty tea bags just like what you would you know a tea bag you would buy already filled but this one is empty and it has a little little drawstring on it and it's just a paper almost like a coffee filter material.

So I made one up before we started here.

This is a recipe we had in our lab manual It's actually dill seed and chamomile flowers.

I'm not sure what it's going to taste like I haven't made it yet.

It smells really good though.

And you don't think of dill being something you would put into tea.

But the idea today is that the students will experiment and try some new things.

We've been talking in the second half of the semester about so you've grown all this stuff now, what are you going to do with it?

So having some sort of a gift idea this time of year would be really handy.

And tea might be one of the things you might want to make up so interesting.

Now, what other what kind of herbs at home?

Could we use to make some tea blends if someone were interested in maybe doing this for gifting idea.

There's lots of different options.

Even things like camera mile comes to mind, lemon balm.

One thing that we're trying is we bought just some basic tea.

So like green tea and black tea, like, you know, like Lipton.

I didn't buy Lipton, but I bought some loose tea.

And you can add different herbs to it.

So things like mint.

People were doing some mixes with lavender flowers.

Mint would be a great one because there's lots of different flavor profiles, and you can get some that are more fruity or more chocolatey.

Also, we have some spearmint so you could blend different mints together.

Interesting.

That's very cool.

So do you know about how much how much are you using?

Is there a particular amount that you guys are measuring?

Are you just kind of a pinch here a pinch here?

Well, we've got some recipes that have some amounts, but generally what you end up when you make the tea is generally about a teaspoon per eight ounce cup.

Okay.

Awesome.

And so what other items in the greenhouse I guess it's kind of an off time a year.

But what other items have you guys been working with in class to sort of take it to that practical application of growing to eating or youth?

Oh, sure.

Well, we started out the first half of the semester, and we just finished it up right before Thanksgiving, we did some outdoor container gardens.

So people grew things like kale and lettuce, some Chinese cabbage, we had kohlrabi and radishes, or beets didn't do very well.

And we're still trying to figure out why that was.

But people were taking home harvests every week.

When they came to lab in I saw a number of people were recording it, one student made a little tic tac movie of her garden from start to finish.

So that was pretty cool.

And then we also did some things in the greenhouse with taking cuttings.

So trying to get some practical working knowledge of things that they could do at home.

Okay, so do you have any of the loose tea with you now, I only have is what I put in the in the packet here, but I have a spice mix.

We're also doing spice mixes.

And so just, I, I can send you this recipe if you want to share it with viewers, but my husband's my husband's mix for like doing ribs or doing smoke stuff on my grill.

And we mixed everything up.

We just we used various spices, you could use some of this stuff you could grow yourself.

That's kind of the whole point is that if you grew all this stuff, what do you do with it.

And we're just mixing it up in baggies today.

But the potential is like you could buy jars like this.

This is actually reused from something I had in my spice cabinet at home and I just washed it up and removed the label and so there's nothing that you know about about it that can't be reused.

But maybe you could take what I would have made today and package it up and give it to friends and family for the holidays.

That's a really like I would have never ever thought to make a spice blend or something like that the one that you have that your husband enjoys.

Tell us a little bit about the ingredients that are in that one.

Okay, so this one has in it brown sugar, kosher salt, chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, oregano, and coffee of all things.

So it makes really good a really good rib rub.

That's what he that's the most popular thing in our house that he uses.

Very cool.

Well we'll have to definitely get those recipes from you because I know folks are going to be interested in though so thank you, Jen so much for flying in with us today being with us on Zoom.

And again we want to thank Matt this again at plant mo Jen, I know you go there often.

So Guilty as charged.

I bought a cup.

It's a great place.

Yes.

And I'm so looking forward to getting out into the community and going to more plant places and more plant shops.

So if you've got a place you think we should shoot, let us know.

But Jen, thank you so much.

Thank you to plant mode and thank you to you for watching, and we will see you next time on an American gardener.

Good night.