Hello and thanks for joining us for another episode of MidAmerican Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and joining me in the studio today is my pal Chuck, and we have got a lot to talk about today.

So why don't you introduce yourself, and I'm going to snack on these cookies while you do it sounds like a plan.

I am Chuck Voigt for a little over 27 years.

I was a vegetable and herb specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign been retired now almost Wait a second, we're past the first of the year.

I've been a tribe for 10 years.

Holy cow, how fast it how fast it moves as you're moving away from something.

But hopefully I've still got it, and we'll, we'll see I tell you what your your planting guide is in hot demand, so at least in that area, you still got it, because the people love Chuck's Planting Guide.

Well, I have a great idea, but I don't know if I will ever execute it.

And we talked about it a little bit just a minute ago.

What I would like to do is write a theoretical season in the garden with everything I, I should or could be doing today, and just, and just go through 12 months that way, with filling it out, I think, given the popularity of the schedule, that might be on to something, but it's just, it's just kicking myself and doing and getting it done, but Well, now that you've said it on the show, yeah, tell us.

Tell us if that's a good idea, yeah, send in some.

Send in your feedback if you want to a year of Chuck's planting journal.

And we are you talking about, like, through cleanup, through 365 days, right?

You know, today's January 1, and I like that.

I'm, I'm looking at the catalogs today or or the sun is shining and I'm out.

I like it.

You're onto something.

Okay, well, so it's, it's almost time.

It's so close, we're on the cusp of all the things that we're just dying to do.

So you brought in some branches from your peach tree, right?

And they're not, you know, they're not a commercial variety of peaches.

They're the ones that that sort of self sow themselves, maybe with a little help from squirrels.

So there always seem to be some around the farm somewhere.

But I thought it was a good, good time to talk about peaches and how to prune them, and when to prune them, and those kinds of things.

Then we can talk about hardiness as well as we get going.

Now, when you're does this apply to fruit trees?

What you're about to tell us?

Or is this specifically for peaches?

It's fairly specifically peaches, like we've we've talked before about my personal opinion of peaches is wait and prune them last maybe when the vegetative buds are starting to break.

So at that point you can tell if the flower buds have survived the winter, what's alive and what's dead.

But first, let's talk about, how do you prune a peach to you know, you have a baby peach tree.

You plant it, and maybe it's three feet tall.

You can let it grow a year, and you top it at two to three feet.

Branches break.

You probably get three to five.

They grow away from that, that that point where you cut them, and then you have an open center, or a vase shape tree.

And that's really good for peaches, because the best peaches get to see the sunshine, and if the if the tree closes in, so you kind of if you can establish that that original framework, and then just kind of work with that through the years.

That's, that's how you start.

And then in any given year, I would probably wait at least until late March, you know, depending on how the season is going, and wait to see just the start of the vegetative bud.

The flower buds are like little, round guys, and on a big, healthy branch, there might be one on either side of a little pointier vegetative bud.

Gotcha.

Okay, and the vegetative buds are way more winter hardy than are the flower buds.

So that's that's one of the banes of peach growing in in Central or Northern Illinois.

The other thing that can happen is if they get coaxed out too early and then.

Get, they get frozen while they're out.

So you get the 63-65 little streak there, and then it tanks again, right, right?

They're, they're, you know, they're right there with those early magnolias that are gorgeous one day and brown and stinky the next.

So those are some of the heartbreaks of peaches.

They're the shortest live of all the fruit trees that I can think of.

They get borers.

Those are hard to control.

We had one in it only made it three years we had a rough winter.

This was six or seven years ago, when we were having all that ice gone, took it out.

Gone or, and I haven't replanted another one, because it's, it is hard to get them to, yeah, so that's at least where I'm from.

And I'm from, I guess, what's technically, Northeastern Illinois, 60 miles away from from the heart of Chicago.

Thank goodness, but, but, you know, you anywhere but deep southern Illinois.

People, you know Chicago is what they think of anyway.

Peaches are the Heartbreakers of the fruit group.

That's, that's, that's that part of the message, assuming you get them through, first thing you want to do is establish what's alive and what's dead.

I purposely chose this one because it's mostly dead.

Now I'm just get looking at the coloration.

Yeah, the live wood is red.

If you don't mind nicking it just a little, it'll show green under the bark.

Okay, give it a little scratch, right there.

And then at that point you're looking at all of this.

And the other thing that peaches do is they are way too optimistic about how many fruit they can, they can they can grow.

So if, assuming you get them through the winter and in the fall spring and the flower buds are alive, you want to cut them back at least half.

Might want to sharpen your pruners at least half, and maybe even a little more than half.

And then, for the just depending on if there's a direction you would like it, if you'd like say, for instance, we wanted to straighten this one out, we would choose a bud that's pointing back to my left, which we sort of have there, okay, and then cut it back.

Cut it back to that.

And then hopefully that would keep it from from being a problem, that whole thing is dead.

And so remind me again, date wise, is this something that we can be doing now?

Or you said, wait until about mid to late, I would, I would be pruning my apples and some other things now, and leave the leave the peaches until, until buds start to break, which could happen in late March or maybe not until gotcha early April.

It just, it just depends.

And so, you know, you would, and one like that.

You would do the same thing to all those side branches, you know, and if some of them are growing back into the center of the tree, you would just take them out all together, and then eventually you'd have a nice open center and short bearing little branches.

And before the show we were talking about, you know, we like to go to the cherry blossom.

Oh, where is that?

Japan house, yeah, Japan house.

I've drawn a blank.

And there were years where I was learning about these.

And if you get that warm spell, and then it goes cold again, all the blossoms fall off and you don't get to enjoy them that year.

Is that sort of the same principle with the fruit trees, if it gets too warm and then cools off really quickly, especially with with peaches and apricots, apricots bloom even earlier than than peaches.

So it's it's not uncommon for apricot blossoms to get, to get frozen because, you know, they get, they get misled by 65 degrees in February, yes, and that's the other thing with with winter cold, it's much less damaging earlier, because the dormancy is is, is as deep as it can be, and so they're there that their internal plant antifreeze is at its peak.

So if you're going to have marginal cold weather, it's much better to have it.

Earlier, you know, late, late fall or early winter, than you know, from mid February on, because that dormancy is starting to, you know, the chill requirement is has been met, and they're ready to jump the gun and take off so and that's that's why scheduling like a cherry blossom festival is almost impossible, because if it warms up early, it may happen on the Ides of March, or it Could happen.

We had to abandon the whole story, because it was like, there were like, onesie twosie blooms, and they all fell to the ground, and we didn't get to enjoy them that year.

So they the trees had other plans.

Yeah, but you mentioned these are the Heartbreakers of the fruit tree family.

They are.

Do you get to enjoy the fruits every year, or are there years where you don't get any up in northeastern Illinois, you know, pre the change of zone maps and whatever, I was happy if we got a good crop every third year, one in three.

And as I was down here, and as things have started to warm up a little bit.

And champagne, I think peach or might do as well as every other year, okay, but to expect to have them every year, you need to go to deep, deep southern Illinois or up in the lake shadow in southwest Michigan, somewhere like that, peaches.

The tree is tree is pretty hardy, but the fruit blossoms have all kinds of ways to disappoint you.

And then about the time you get them going, I had two Reliance trees started.

I think they're in there coming into their third year, and they got big snow, and I hadn't wrapped them.

Snow goes away.

They were both girdled.

I was just going to ask you, is there anything you can do if you have and obviously, if this is a giant tree, no.

But if it's a smaller tree, a newer tree.

Is there anything you can do?

Can you bag it?

Can you wrap it?

Let's talk a little bit about that.

Okay, I think it's, it's.

First of all, I would put an unused tomato cage, maybe around them.

Okay, but then we used to always just take, you know, bags left over, fertilizer, bags, whatever, and wrap them right down to the ground, so that those voles and things can't get to them.

And then go up high enough, because you get snow and rabbits are going to, are going to be after them, although rabbits are more likely to to snip back the branches, rather than, rather than doing a complete girdling, the best girdlers are the are the voles under the snow.

Gotcha.

Okay, all right, let's move on to, is there anything else you wanted to cover on fruit trees that we didn't get to?

Or do you want to?

No, we, we we can talk about apples and other kinds of fruits at some other time, but, but definitely start pruning apples early because of fire blights.

You don't want to prune pear trees too much early on, if you can get their their basic structure down, then you don't have to do too much.

And then once they start bearing that kind of slows down their growth rate, and that that's good for pears.

Okay, all right, so the planting guide we talked about that a little bit ago, let's, let's give us a where we are now.

So in the March 1 to 15th range, tell us what we should be doing.

Well, we're getting to that point where some of the faster growing seedlings could be started, and you have to kind of look at at where we are with the weather, and listen to some degree to long range projections of the meteorologists, And figure out when you might need these cool season things going, but, but the whole cabbage family, you can get them, get them going, and then if, because they'll under, under good conditions, two or three weeks, the cabbage can be pretty much ready to Go outside.

You know, it might take them a week to germinate, and then two or three weeks beyond that, you can pretty much start to get them ready to go outside.

So I think we could start any of those things now.

Okay, and then we had a question come in.

Let's see.

Karen Benner writes, I. Well, there's several questions in here, so we'll break this down.

What is the best way to start onion seeds?

And then she says, I thought about putting them outside in a milk jug winter sowing.

We talk about that a lot, or should I plant them straight in the garden or in seed trays?

So let's back all the way up.

You know, seeds are sets because let's talk about how to grow onions.

I This.

Traditionally, I was a transplant guy, you know, buy transplants.

Transplants have gotten so expensive in the last five or 10 years that I have for the small amount of onions that I need, have gone to sets, just because they're so much cheaper.

You can go to a big box farm store and get them for not very much a pound and and since you want smaller, smallish ones, because if onion sets are too big, you'll get a seed stock, and that kind of messes up the whole onion process.

So you want to stay maybe three eighths of an inch.

And what I do is 25 red, 25 white and 25 yellow, and you can hardly feel that weight in the bag.

So that works.

Okay.

The problem with sets is that they keep really well.

And the best keepers are also the most pungent.

So onions from sets are going to be fairly pungent.

So if you want to cook with onions, sets are pretty good.

If you want to eat one, like an apple, either either have a really strong constitution or or go with something else.

So to get some of the sweet onions, you'd have to start those.

And I would, you know, when I had access to greenhouse space, I would, I would start things like Ailsa Craig, which is the one that gets in the pictures, they show it as big as a soccer ball.

But that's personal marketing that's pushing it a little.

But one and a half to two pounds is not impossible, but they're the other end of the spectrum from from onion set onions have very low pungency, so they're extremely sweet.

You know, that would be the candy onion that you might want to eat out of your hand, but they don't keep Okay, so there's pros and cons.

So that's why, like the Vidalia sweets are are seasonal, and they've done some work with storage and some other things.

But they're still pretty seasonal, because they all to be a Vidalia onion.

You have to be in, I think it's 15 county area of Georgia.

It's like champagne has to come from a certain area of France.

Vidalia Onions have to come from there.

The other thing there is that their soils are low in in sulfur, which also keeps the the pungency down.

And so I did not know that, especially in, yeah, in the modern gasoline, when you don't get sulfur dioxide, you know, making sulfuric acid in the air, that helps.

So these are interesting.

The other thing is, direct sowing can work pretty well.

They may not get as big, but when would you time that?

I would time that the first, the first time that the soil is workable in the spring when it's not ridiculous.

So if it's 65 on February 15, maybe don't, don't worry about it.

Then if it's if it's if it's 65 May, 10 or 15th.

May, March.

March, okay.

March, 10 or 15th, then you can think about it, because they can go out pretty early, as long as they're not up and growing to where they can they can get vernalized.

I think people up in the Chicago area who used to grow onions, I think they tried to get them, get them sown in that time period.

Certainly the set growers would try to get them in then too.

Okay, and then, you know, if you can start some in a flat, that's great, because transplants are good.

You can get, you can get a much better variety choice if you if you're buying seeds and sowing them.

But she mentioned winter sowing.

Is it too late for that?

And do onions do well as a winter so I don't actually know.

Winter sowing is, is kind of a recent thing that I really haven't had a hands on experience with.

Okay, well, give it a shot.

What I know about it?

I've heard you talking you would somebody else on the show talking about it Gotcha?

Okay, sure.

Well, she mentioned those, so maybe give it a shot.

So we talked about direct sow.

We talked about starting them in trays, seeds, sets.

You've got options there.

You still do.

You know we're getting past, I would think the winter soap portion of that.

But who knows.

What else can we start or begin thinking about we talked a little bit about spinach.

Would that be the next candidate?

Spinach is interesting because it will sprout and germinate, grow and stand, probably as cool a temperature as any of the crops that we grow.

So if I were going to risk anything out in a really early sowing, it would probably be onions and spinach, because it the critical temperature for spinach to keep growing is relatively low.

Gotcha and kale?

Would kale fall into that?

Or does kale kale a little bit warmer?

Kale is probably the most cold tolerant of the cabbage family, but I don't know if I would necessarily start him out quite this early.

Okay, all right, now, you talked about cleaning up your asparagus patch.

I did.

Let's discuss, because I have a few little sprigs.

You guys know my asparagus journey.

So is that needed to rejuvenate?

Why do you clean up your asparagus patch?

Well, number one, so you can find the spears when you're when you're when you're ready to pick it, although I think you don't, you don't pick yet this year.

Thanks for reminding me.

And depending if you've seen any disease on the asparagus when it turns yellow in the fall, it's perfectly fine to get rid of it.

Then if it's been healthy, doesn't show any signs of any problems.

I like to leave it there.

It's kind of a snow fence in the garden.

And then on a Sunday and spring, when I'm looking for something to do, I'll go in and mow it off and and and do that, or do it by hand, depending, but it's just something to do if you get a warm spring day and you don't want to get into trouble by doing things that maybe it's too soon to do.

Yes, that's a little something you can do to hold you over, right?

Gotcha, and I was out there anyway, mowing down the grass that grows up on my naturalized daffodils that you've seen in bloom.

So, oh, those are gorgeous.

It kind of gorgeous.

Kind of grows up.

And I got most of it mowed off earlier, but some of it wasn't.

So I was doing that as well.

In the spirit of cleanup, we've got one more question.

We've got a few minutes left here.

Kathleen Kilmartin, this is a lot of cuh.

Kathleen Kilmartin writes in she wants to clean up her clematis, not just any clematis, the autumn clematis.

And you asked me about that specifically, because it matters.

So is it too early for her to clean up that debris?

Right?

The different types of clematis bloom on new wood, old wood, whatever.

Since autumn, clematis doesn't bloom until the fall.

I have to I'm pretty sure it blooms on new wood.

So I think cutting it back would probably start to be appropriate from now forward.

And I don't know how much you want to, you want to cut it back.

It's a pretty voracious grower.

So it doesn't, I don't believe it dies back, like, like some of the, you know, some of the colored flowering ones.

So I would say maybe now, certainly within a couple of weeks, it would be fine to clean that up.

Okay?

And I was asking you about this, so we didn't want to run a foul with the entomologists and the folks who are concerned about beneficial insects and pollinators.

And the difference there is, well, the clematis has such a, such a such a tiny, narrow stem that I don't believe it has enough pith space for anything but just a really microscopic insect to be in there, and maybe there's something that would be but I would say probably not.

Might want to keep your eyes peeled, say for something obvious, like a praying mantis nest.

It looks kind of like yellowed Styrofoam stuck onto things, so be mindful.

Just be mindful if you're out there piddling around, and before we go, thank you so much Donna for these lovely little butter cookies.

They are so good.

I was telling Chuck I just wanted to pour some milk in there and eat them like a bowl of cereal.

So delicious.

As always, She spoils us.

But Thank you Chuck.

So much for coming in.

We learned a lot today, and we're getting there.

Folks, spring is coming, so thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions, send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, or just search for us on socials, look for MidAmerican Gardener, And we will see you next time.

Good night.