Well hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me in the studio today is the dynamic duo that you know and love.

That's right.

Karen and Ella are both here.

We're going to answer your questions we're going to talk about show and tells we've got a lot to discuss today.

But before we do that, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their specialty.

So, Ella, we'll start with you.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

And I am a horticulturist, kind of semi retired just working in the spring.

I love plants and really enjoy perennials.

I have a large yard.

And so those are the kinds of questions I'd like to answer.

Awesome.

Let's Karen.

Hi, I'm Karen Ruckle, and I live outside of Peoria.

I am an alum of the University of Illinois with a degree in ornamental horticulture.

And I have a manageable size yard.

And it is small.

And I love perennials, houseplants shrubs.

Yes.

And she gifted me the most lovely Cannas last year bloom the first year as promised.

Alright, let's get started.

So we'll start with you, Karen.

We've gotten a lot of questions that we're going to try to knock out today.

This is question number 89.

There are a lot of good deals at the big box stores on bulbs that haven't been sold.

Now that the ground is frozen.

Can I plant these in individual peat pots and then transplant them in the spring?

What is your expert advice?

No, we're done.

Really, yeah, at this point in the season, Ella and I were just at a big box retailer.

Their bulbs may be on clearance.

But they're not most of them aren't viable now.

So back maybe in November or December, if you'd picked up some Sure go ahead if they were really good discounted price.

But if any of them are in the stores now just walk away unless they're free, that it's not worth it.

Bulbs, if they didn't get planted need still a cold period.

So they would have needed most of the time about 10 weeks of cold to produce the blooms for for the spring that you'd want.

Six weeks, maybe minimum.

So if they didn't even get that, it's it's just not worth it.

Right.

And for sure, you can, you know, feel the bulbs.

So if they're mushy or crunchy snack, yeah.

And look for, you know, kind of milk mold, kind of what we see we did see one hyacinth in a bag that had a tip growing, but the thing is because it didn't have a cold period, it may just put green growth and not have produced a flower during that dormancy period.

Gotcha.

So that is that's important to the flowering process.

Yeah, okay.

All right, Ellen, we're gonna go to you.

You had a couple specific questions come in for you.

This one is I was watching Mid American gardener and Ella Maxwell was talking about using Sun Incredibles in planters for the city of Washington.

I was wondering if she could send some other ideas for large city planters are way.

I've been planting the city planters for several years where I live, and I would like some new ideas.

So what are your Okay, excellent.

Well, I sent a picture or two that showed cannas and I really think that Ken is, especially the new canas now are really wonderful to make a focal point in a large pot, because they do need a large soil volume.

To do well, they also have to be heavily watered, so they might not be the best for really dry area.

And that's where that sun believable or incredible was planted.

The other plants that I had also, of course, are sweet potato vines, they can withstand just about anything, and they're very aggressive, but one that gives a lot of color to or the coleus.

And those were both in the two pictures that I showed one was a small leaf Coleus and the other one was a much larger coleus.

But the great thing about those is that they can be vegetatively propagated the Coaly The canvas can be kept over the winter for the following year.

Depending on what your budget is or how frugal you are, you know, these things can be saved.

Even the sweet potatoes, create a tuber that you could start new sweet potatoes from in the spring.

Some other things that I liked that are large, that I think do well are some of the ornamental grasses the papyrus like King Tut, or the purple fountain grass, there's A variety I think it's a proven winners for Tico.

And of course, there are some beautiful cascading very prolific petunias as well.

And Karen's had real good luck with bubblegum pink, I think is one of your favorites.

No, I think it was pink giant.

Oh, well, both of those pink giant bubblegum pink.

Both perform really wonderful and make a nice contrast.

With containers.

I also liked lantana.

Excellent.

You gave her a lot of ideas.

So she she wrote that was Carol from our Kohler wrote that went in and she's got another question.

We'll get to that one.

Next, I forgot to start with your show until item.

So tell us what you got.

And what it does.

Well, I just we talked about this a lot other years for fall.

And this is a windproof.

It's an anti desiccant that we spray on plants for wintertime.

And what it does, it's a pine resin with other things in it that make a coating on the plant to help it from losing so much moisture through those winter months.

You also can use it for summer applications for a new transplant, but we always talk about getting this on around Thanksgiving to help protect those plants.

And I wanted to just say, you know we've we've got really some rough weather ahead of us in the next couple of months.

And that reapplying this is a good idea for plants that you know that have a little bit of trouble, or like my Holly, have evergreen Holly that's on the corner that hit the wind just just hits it all the time.

So by now a lot of this coating has worn off.

And so reapplying it on a day that the temperature is above 30 that you've got a couple hours that it can dry before a rain comes in or mistiness it always seems like when we warm up on a warm day that you can spray this it's kind of a misty, yuck day.

But that really will help you for the next couple of months that we always have these ups and downs with temperature freezing ground.

So is this for outside and inside.

It's an inside outside application.

Okay, gotcha.

And we typically do it on plants that are the broadleaf evergreen, so the holly boxwood rhododendrons, those types of plants that sometimes have a little trouble, especially for us in the pure area, maybe not as much in Champaign for us in Peoria, with exposure.

Okay.

All right.

I've got another question for you, Karen.

This is from Kay Wheatley.

She has several Chinese evergreens in her home, often a leaf will develop brown spots.

She doesn't know what's causing them, whether it's too much water or not enough water or some sort of disease.

She says usually she cuts that leaf off.

But she's not sure what that is and what she should do.

Well, I think I think the best practice is always when you've got a leaf that something's going wrong with it cutting it off, especially if enough of the leaf is affected.

That's fantastic to do that I would recommend on your your Chinese evergreen, which are aglio.

NEMA is that society scientific name is I always best practice have an old milk jug.

And I fill it with water and let it sit at least for a few days.

Water not being extremely cold in the wintertime, especially when you're you're pulling out water from from your tap water, it's it's colder, and that can be dangerous sometimes to the house plants, letting it sit letting some of that chlorine dissipate from the water room temperature.

Also with the Chinese evergreens, they're one of those odd plants that sometimes don't like it too wet or too dry.

So if the soil stay in too wet for too long, you will start getting some leaf issues.

If it's drying down to dry, you also can get leaf issues.

So it's trying to find that medium balance and to keep it happy, not overly wet, not overly dry.

And that usually helps clear up some of those leaf problems.

You know, I bought?

Is it high hydrometer hydro meter anywho one of the things to tell you about the moisture meter.

Yeah, I bought one and you know, I was doing okay, but it does take the guesswork out of a lot of things.

Oh, you're dry.

Excellent.

Here you go.

Oh, not ready yet.

All right, I'll give you another week or so.

So I and then they're not expensive either, I think maybe four or five bucks.

Well, and the thing is that a lot of people will just touch the top of the soil and it's sticking your finger down a good inch.

If you're going to just use the finger method to try to tell how wet or dry that soil is.

Gotcha.

Okay, dealer's choice.

What do you wanna talk about next?

You've got so much Oh, talk about raspberries.

You want to talk about juice as we're all had another question.

I would like to know the best black slash purple raspberry variety to grow.

She's in our Cola, possibly thornless and any other helpful information for starting a couple of bushes.

Okay, so what I know about black raspberries I learned from a friend who grows really excellent black raspberries now, black raspberry is in the wild, you can find it, but it's not really a cultivated variety, the berries can be quite nice.

It's easy to transplant, but your best bet is to start with a proven cultivated variety.

There's one called Alan, and there's one called Bristol.

Both of those are black raspberry varieties.

To my knowledge, I'm not sure that there are any thornless black raspberries, there's some thornless, red raspberries, and blackberries.

But the best thing to do with the black raspberries is to get good stock, create some hills, and then try to keep them upright, they have a tendency to want to come back over.

And then that way you can propagate them and start a new plant with this layering method, but it's better to during the summer tip cut those new shoots back they'll branch and that's where the fruit will be the following year.

Once they fruit it and you've harvested, then you go ahead and you cut that cane off because it will just die back.

So it's just keeping the plant rejuvenated with a nice straw mulch, some fertilizer, a good variety, plenty of moisture in the spring for the berries to really plump up.

That's what happens if you're berry picking in the wild if we have a dry spring, they're not very big, but with irrigation and such.

I mean you can have just your first year.

Um, that cane potentially could have some fruit.

Yeah, depending on what size coming in the mail.

Probably not buying something maybe at a potted could potentially but then you'll get in the cycle of having fruit gotcha wondering your friend he has support put up he's got wire to two lane of wire.

So he his plot always is so tidy looking and doesn't have that far reaching grab you when you're trying to mow the yard.

Right?

Yeah, he he has like a T bar on a tee pose.

And he just runs to like clotheslines.

And then he just sticks the plants up in there.

And they you know, they they're not going.

Yeah, there we go.

This is part of the yoga.

Yeah.

All right.

Question for Karen from a Karen.

Let's see.

This is about orchid care.

So I know you guys are going to kind of tag team this one.

She got an orchid as a gift and wants to know when to replant it.

And should she do that before the petals fall off?

So here we have a sad orchid in the house.

Yeah, well we'll talk about happy orchids first let's talk about happy but fantastic that somebody gave you an orchid as a gift.

What a what a great gift.

We Ellen I love orchids, the filling up sis orchid and finding good deals on them.

So no, you don't want to replant it yet.

Typically the plants you get locally or as gifts are from florists don't need to be replanted right away.

At this point to when it's flowering.

Just leave it alone don't do anything to it.

When the orchids start sending up roots, the aerial roots that they have up and out of the pot and kind of like as a spider coming out of that pot.

Yes, it needs to be moved to a different pot fresh media redone.

So it might be a year or two before her gift would be need to needing to be repotted.

Okay, so you've got some time on that one.

Yes.

Now we're gonna move into sad orchids.

Right sad orchids.

So last year, I had some orchids.

And and I must say if you if you start out with healthy plants, you can keep healthy plants up by discount plants.

Sometimes they continue to go downhill.

But what had happened with this orchid that I have right here is it lost a lot of its roots.

The problem with people is that they overwater them and then the roots begin to die.

And then they begin to slough off.

And you can see here that this has come off and this is the that it's just unfortunate.

So what happens is once they start to lose these roots, then they don't have a really good ability to take up water and then the leaves start to look extremely desiccated and wilted.

So last year I killed my orchids because I had them down in a plant room that was too cold.

This year I killed my orchids because well Act.

The thing about orchids is that yes, they can be, they can be re, revived, revived, we're going to hope that it's revived.

And the way that you do this is you take a tea bag doesn't matter any kind of tea that you like, and you take a warm water into a bowl, and you put the tea bag and you create tea.

And then after it's cooled down room temperature, you can put your orchid in it.

And then what you're going to find is that when it's soaking, you can tell which are the good roots because they'll turn bright green, and which are the bad roots, they'll be brown and and they can slough off here.

So what's going to happen is that these aerial roots are going to help the plant and the tannins in the tea will help send out new aerial route at these leaf axles.

And so what the soaking does is allow the leaf to up for like 24 hours, you soak it for 24 hours, then you take it out and you just lay it on a dish towel or paper towel and let it dry for 24 hours, then you're going to immerse it again so that you can rehydrate these leaves.

And what you're going to try to do is grow some aerial roots.

So for probably the next well until summer for me, so it's going to be what three, four months, I'm I'm going to be soaking these and letting them dry because they're just not really enough root system, I neglected them too long to really be viable and potted.

But once summer comes and you can put them outside, they're so much easier to take care of with the higher light levels and the humidity, right the humidity.

And again, then you can choose either some type of orchid potting bark or some of the other little Clay, Clay, Clay pebbles and such.

So I do have a couple of orchids that are that are going to rebloom that's the one thing, Karen, I think after that first bloom, you can still hope to get a second side shoot come out to create more blooms.

It's so wonderful and surprising.

And again, I am not an expert.

I am not an expert.

I love that.

Yes.

So I'm gonna see what I can do.

All right, we'll let you know.

Keep us posted on the hill of the the orchid.

Did you want to talk about your pot that you brought?

Or does that go with it that goes with question 90.

Let's do that.

Then question 90 It is invasive anemones.

This person bought a house a couple of years ago that is graced with pink anemone I find it to be taking on an invasive nature, but my gardening friends think I don't appreciate them appropriately.

I'd also like to interrupt their spread while maintaining a healthy presence.

What do you recommend?

And this is from Joyce thank you for the email Joyce.

Yeah, well I I have me having a small yard if a plants invasive it gets voted off the island because I just I just don't have enough room and I'm a plant hoarder and I love a lot of plants.

So Ella having a lot of room at her yard.

If they're invasive and they take off she's you know, out there frolicking and saying Yay.

So if if you're not happy with the plant, dig it up and give them to those friends.

That that's that's the way it goes with that.

But there are ways that you can keep the anatomy and there are four blooming flowers most the pink one so it they're so fantastic and beautiful.

So I would recommend if you want to keep it go ahead now and start thinking about the spring a way to redo that bed area and one of those ways is to take a nursery pot, just something that maybe you've saved from a tree tree or large shrub you planted or you can find them used at some of the nurseries but what you'll want to do is sink this completely in the ground first you'll want to cut off all the bottom of the pot and you want to do that because you still want good drainage you don't want to to create a bog Gary which did not mean to do like moist soils that wouldn't be overly bad but some years we get too much moisture for that.

So you would dig up your whole area of anatomies.

Sink this pot down to soil level after you've cut off the bottom and then refill it with just your your natural soil you've got or you can amend it a little bit to make it nicer and then replant a small clump of your anatomies in there and And so then it's going to slow down your spread, they are still going to jump out and escape this, but it's going to be enough that you can chop them off.

still give them to those friends that love them and keep it contained.

The thing is, you do want to do a large pot, this is about almost 13 inches, I would do this or bigger, because over time, it is lovely to have a nice clump of them.

And if you do it too small, it's gonna get root bound.

And then you're gonna have to find that you're doing it like a micromanaging of like a house plant where you're having to dig it out, divide it, put it back every couple of years, so a little bit longer term have a larger pot for it to kind of stay into maybe in about six years, you will find your your that just not as vigorous here.

Well, that's because perennials don't live forever.

And so you will need some of those younger side plants, or ones that have escaped, re restart over your little clump.

And one thing about this pot is that this also works by keeping the plant inside for like mints and the anemone, but also for keeping plant roots from penetrating that soil.

So if you do have an area under a maple tree, where you're having trouble trying to grow certain plants or something, you can cut some of those surface roots out, sink the pot, plant your good plant in there.

It keeps those competitive tree roots out of that too.

So it's good to have a few pots.

Good to have a few pots.

We've got about five minutes left.

And I know we're going to talk about winter sowing.

We've been talking a lot about seeds and seed starting.

And again, you guys know, like Chuck, I'm the trashcan gardener.

So lunch, me containers.

I found these babies at Dollar Tree, the little tiny guys looking at just Yeah, yeah.

So many greenhouse mini greenhouse.

Yeah.

So just look around you.

We've all got this stuff sitting around, you know, the kids eat sandwiches, or maybe you like sandwiches, but it's inexpensive.

And you're going to talk about winter.

So yeah, so winter sowing also utilizes the same process as her her there with the little greenhouse, you're creating a winter greenhouse with a milk jug container.

So we have drainage holes in the bottom.

We also have some ventilation holes here at the top, and of course the top is open, we're going to use black, I mean, we're going to use a duct duct tape duct.

Yeah, duct tape sounds everything.

But you're going to cut this so edge hinged.

And then you're going to have a quality moist potting soil in here.

And winter sowing just means that you're creating an environment that you control that allows you to select the seed that you want to plant, but you're allowing nature to then give the right conditions for that germination and sprouting.

So this doesn't require any lights doesn't require any heating pad.

But the seeds are not going to germinate until the temperatures are right for that particular seed.

So if you did something like radishes, yes, they could be up sometime in March.

But if you could even winter, so tomatoes, you're not really going to see those seeds germinate until the temperatures are much warmer.

But what makes winter sowing so fun and nice is and is the fact that, uh, one of the questions had been about saving native seeds.

And so if you have friends, or in your own garden, so this year, I cut a whole bunch of seed, and I've been storing it in my garage.

And now I'm starting to process it, because I will be winter sowing.

And you can certainly do this in February, it isn't something that you had to have started out back in November.

And so the thing is, is that I've got it labeled, this is the great blue Lobelia.

And I just took out one of these pods today to look at it, and I can see that they've already all opened.

So I'm going to have Lobelia seed loose in the bottom of my sack.

And I'm gonna have to make sure I'm careful about how to clean that.

But sometimes I like to just put the seed heads saved from cut plant or something when I'm processing it in a plastic bag.

So if the seeds pop out or something, I've got everything, you know, contained and I can see it Gotcha.

So once I have the seed that I need, I can go ahead it and sprinkle it on top, again moist soil.

And I add a little bit more soil on top of that.

And then I'm going to duct tape it with a bigger piece all the way around.

And then this is just sat outside, like on the east or south side of your house.

And you just wait for them just wait this route.

Yeah, it's kind of a waiting game, I saw an interesting thing that I want to try and do it a couple of days for my sister in law, she loves sunflowers.

And she always has the problem that she starts from inside because you want to get a head start on getting them good size.

And they stretch a little bit.

So then you put them outside then we get a Spring Storm and then the poor guys get snapped off or bent over the rabbits eat some of them.

And so I think this will be fantastic because you're putting them outside, letting them naturally come up but you are protecting them so that you get a good germination, and then you can plant them out to where you want them.

All right, ladies, we're out of time.

I just I well, we need to talk about making the show just a little bit longer because it goes too fast.

Thank you so much for coming in and sharing your time and talents with us.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you have any questions you can get in touch with us on Facebook, just search mid American gardener or you can email them to us at your gardener.

Wait a minute, your garden, yourgarden@gmail.com Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.

Good night.