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 are two faces, you will surely recognize two of our regulars.

We've got Chuck and Phil here today.

Introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about you.

And then we're gonna jump right in.

I'm Phil Nixon.

I'm a retired extension entomologist from the University of Illinois.

So I cover essentially anything that crawls or flies that has at least six legs, the Bug Guy.

All right, Chuck.

Hi, I'm Chuck Voight.

And I'm also retired from the University of Illinois.

I was a vegetable and herb specialist there.

Also, as an undergraduate, I took the pretty much the gamut of horticulture courses so you can probably stop us but not easily between the two of you.

Perfect.

Okay, let's jump in because you guys brought a lot of stuff to talk about.

And Phil, you're starting with insects?

Well, one thing that we look at as as gardeners is, how you can can pollinate various pollinators that you may have, and so on that are out there in the garden.

And we tend to get really excited about butterflies which are decent pollinators, but not near in the same areas.

As bees are they've kind of developed themselves to do be very efficient at collecting pollen and nectar and so, on the process, they spread it very well from plant to plant, one that we tend to overlook one major group that is very important are wasps and there are although wasps do not have near as many hairs to collect pollen, as bees have and they are and their hairs are single whereas whereas bees have branched hairs, which actually collect pollen and very, very efficiently, you will find find loss that or loss are effective in in because as adults they feed on on flour and nectar, they are there and they are picking up the pollen.

And they are moving it to to other sites.

And so, you know, the first picture that we've got is like paper wasp, which is feeding on goldenrod.

And, and so it's and you can see that it's got the yellow pollen that is just essentially enclosing its end of its abdomen and stop on the wings.

It's on its face, it's on its legs, it's everywhere.

And when it goes to another plant, it's going to bring that pollen with it and and go along and transfer it.

And for those of you who still think that Goldenrod is associated with hay fever, notice that it is sticky and hanging on to the wasp.

And even though that's a that's a bare surface that says it brushes against the pollen against the flowers, it's picking up for pollen, and it's sticking to them.

Pollen that bothers us hay fever wise is smaller, it is not sticky, it moves in the air.

And unfortunately ragweed tends to bloom at the same time as goldenrod.

And with green flowers on the grog rag, we ragweed, which are not really obvious at all, if you're not in this a little bit about me you don't even know that they're blooming until you come back and your pants are just covered with yellow pollen they've been walking through it.

But at any rate, the they are a source of another plant service source of of hay fever in the fall of the year late summer, rather than goldenrod.

And so Goldenrod really isn't a problem.

Number wasps that I've got pictured as a friend wasted wasps.

They are they're going to go into feed primarily feed on on a lot of pollen and nectar for as adults.

And if you look really close you can see that there are a few white specks of the pollen here on the side of the thorax area just below the middle leg above the middle leg right there you can see some some pollen grains you can see some towards the back leg.

See a few spots on the wings.

This was not near as as as it's on a flower which is not picking up near as much as happens to be a carrot that that survived to the second year and is in bloom.

And so it's pollen is not near as heavy as as the golden rod but still it's going to move.

Move pollen from one flower to another.

The next photo is that of a parasitic wasp.

They're not really efficient at pollinating like bees are, but they do get around to do it.

One advantage that that's many of the, of the loss are, is that they tend to fly at lower temperatures and some of the bees do.

And so maybe out there on cooler days in the fall, or in the early spring, early spring, remember, that's when your fruit trees are blooming.

And so they're efficient, helpful there.

The parasitic wasps are very small, as you can see, in the in the final photo, and that is showing that on this blossom of St. John's wort, that it's a, that it's relatively small insect, but still very effective at moving it around, you don't have to be big to carry something as small as pollen.

And so think in terms of your, of your last as well as your bees when you're looking at, at things that are going to be beneficial in, in spreading pollen to to other plants, both wild and and domestic.

Okay, did you want to talk about your book now are on the next one.

All right, Chuck, we're gonna go to you with tells I have a do as I say not as I do moment.

I brought in in various tender bulbs, some of which I've talked about before others not so much.

And now in the winters would be a perfect time to be down in the basement or somewhere and be dividing these and getting them cleaned up and ready to play at.

I usually find myself sitting in the grass, doing it wasting time when I you know when I should be hitting the winter and getting them planted that day.

But But should you choose to take my advice, this is this is not a bad time to be doing this.

This is the two bros the polyantha subrosa.

And they spread out each year.

And so ideally, when they get to maybe my fist size, or even your fist size, they should be divided.

The problem with that is they're very prolific, and very soon, you'll be you'll be inundated with them and need to pass them around to your friends, which I plan to do with this one today, if anybody's interested here.

Oh, of course.

Now, the interesting thing is there's last year's foliage, it just happened that they got a little frosted.

And then I went out with a mower and tried to cut off the bulk of the foliage because there's a ton of it.

As it happened, it was dry, dry, dry, dry all season.

And right before I needed to dig, it rained.

So so there's a good fair amount of mud and stuff sticking on him here.

But you can see that some of these are loose, just kind of sitting around the outside and those would come off very easily.

Others, you can just grasp it firmly.

I have a knife here if I need to.

So we're not just setting the entire clump.

We're going to space these out.

Yes.

And that might be a good sized division tip to be using.

The thing is also the ones that bloom this year, that bulb is done.

But it already has a row of pups around its around its base, you know, so I don't I don't feel that that has that.

Okay, but you can see that there's lots of lots of offsets coming there.

And so from this, you can get a ton of things.

I was just looking at it online today, right there.

And if you price these things, some of the more exotic ones are like almost $10 for one that would be for that.

Oh my gosh.

So my advice is she got a friend who has the training, right?

And when they're doing this division, you can I mean, there's just a ton and unlike other perennial kinds of things that they start to suffer when they get too, too thick, and so but then they don't come about far too hard.

schedule wise.

Let's talk about that.

When do they bloom?

When do they start to come up?

Well plant them probably just before the last frost, you can probably get by with it or you can do it through may probably.

They're frost sensitive, so you don't want that so be sure.

I'm not sure how much further south you have to go.

I had a friend in the Louisville, Kentucky area for whom he could leave them in the garden.

He could also leave Gladiolus in the garden.

and they would overwinter.

Interesting.

So just It depends where you are in mid Mid America, okay?

Whether or not you can do that they come up.

I'm trying to remember the sequence.

It was, I didn't get them in especially early last year, I think the that first one that I brought on was maybe July.

That was a single one.

And that was the first one that came out, and then some of the doubles and some of the colors came in after that.

Gotcha.

I may have misspoken with that one that I broke it brought in, because I called it pink because the buds were pink.

And the ones I remember had had green buds.

So it came in a mixture.

So I don't know really what gotcha what its provenance is, I'm glad to have a single one, because I bought singles twice, and then all of those turned out to be double.

And then when you are planting these were in the bed would would we put them as a boarder?

Is it going to grow, it's going to be it's going to be a rosette of foliage that doesn't get under a foot high, okay.

And then the flower shot stocks shoot up, maybe 18 to 24.

Okay.

So be mindful of that when you're and then what's the flower stalks?

What's the Bloom is done, you can cut off the flower stalks.

And then it's just, it's just foliage that kind of is a nice background for something else that might you know, chrysanthemums or something that are blooming in the fall.

From certainly from here, north, you need that you need to dig him every year.

So all right.

All right, that's the that's the polyantha is Tuberosa.

Now, part two, I've got to you've heard me talk about these tulip bulbs, all year on the show last year, guess what, they did not go on the ground, and I found them in the basement, and they are beginning to sprout.

So I brought them in today to bear my shame and get advice for all of us, because I can't be the only one that didn't get their tulips in when they were supposed to.

So we'll give you some sackcloth and ashes.

Now, we kind of talked about this a little bit before the show, but we're leaning toward I'm probably going to have to grow these in a pot this year, perhaps you both had different tastes.

So the pot would be would be the simplest at this point, I think.

Then I'm forcing them in a pot is never the best thing for long term survival.

Because the ones that they forced in greenhouses and these buy at the store.

Don't really come back all that well.

But that would be that would be more dependably going and going to happen.

On the other hand, if if we do get thought out again, which after the zero below zero temperatures we've had, I don't know.

Right now it looks favorable for warming up quite a bit.

Phil, make sure that you didn't really want to mud them in well, when it's been for what I guess, but it's probably not every choice but what you're faced with.

If the frost goes out, and you can dig holes, go ahead and do it that way.

Otherwise, I would get him started in a pot, water water man, put him somewhere cool, so that they can develop roots first.

And then when spring happens, take those pots outside and let them do their thing out in the sunshine.

Now if I do put them in pots, once they are spent once the blooms are spent, do I leave them in the pot until the end of the season?

Or can I then immediately put them in the ground where I want them for the long haul?

You could probably plant them go and plant them.

I'm gonna Okay.

See if that's that timeline works better because it's just not so cold.

And if you let them go ahead and go through the whole series and the leaves die in the pot, chances are we'll be having this discussion next time.

Yeah, yes, we will.

So I knew I was going to be shamed, but I had to do it for the viewers.

Well, the other side of that coin is Lehman in the pot.

You have to remember to water them.

That's true.

In the middle of the summer, if you put them out in the ground you don't that's true.

That's true.

There's a situation there that fits into my mode of operation that you're heading to get a plan if you can, yeah.

Sure.

Interesting.

Also in that once they die down, they would prefer to as sorry, prefer my major professor would slay me.

They do better if they're not wet.

Because because they come from Middle Eastern and so it's okay to think well I'm going to put annuals there to cut in half come in and have summer color.

But those annuals are going to want to be watered and that is not in the best interest of the tulips so just be aware of that.

That's that's one of the reasons why tulips are not a long lived perennial in most of our situations.

Okay.

All right, thank you very much.

Gentlemen, we've got about 10 minutes left, I want to get back to both of you for one more round.

Phil, were we going to look at the last pictures again, and talk about a little thing differently associated with that.

And that is that, that the difference between bees and wasps is is that is that wasps are as as larvae are predatory.

And, and of course, the larvae of both bees and wasps are our white looking grubs with no legs.

And so, and so they, the larval wasps are fed in the nest by, by the by the mother or if it's a colonial loss by by her sisters, as well.

And, and the.

And so where do these things come from?

Well, they come from, from the adults catching them.

And when we look at paper wasps and yellow jackets, and those these are primarily Caterpillar hunters, or other larval hunters, and so they will go out and they will, they will capture caterpillars, which unless you're trying to raise a bunch of butterflies, we tend to think of caterpillars as being the larvae of MAs and they feed on our plants, and probably not a good thing to have.

And so they're helping the gardener in not only pollinating plants, to a lesser extent than bees, but, but they are getting rid of caterpillars in the process to the end.

So the difference is, is that the is at the loss are, are an older group, they actually first show up in the fossil record at the same time as the earliest dinosaurs in the middle of the Triassic period.

And so they predate flowering plants.

And so they figured out a weight and you can see this in adult yellow jackets or paper wasps or various other things.

You know, they'll feed on insects, but if you happen to have a dead mouse in the yard, you'll see yellow jackets all over eaten that too, they're going to take advantage of any high protein meat product they can find.

And and utilize it so it doesn't move too fast.

They'll eat it.

So essentially, or if it moves very fast, because many of our Hornets actually catch house flies on the wings.

So they will that's where they will feed on.

So how much danger Am I in now that I've slowed down?

Oh, well, you know, it's, I think as long as you're moving faster than a maggot with no legs.

That's the benchmark maggot with no legs.

So, the other wasa we show a diff second biggest ever big one is a Fred wasted wass and they're going to be feeding on on spiders, which are definitely considered to be beneficial to the gardener.

And they feed the various other insects, various insects, they're not insects themselves.

But, but they will.

But these will all these are all captured and put in the colonies to feed the very young.

The parasitic wasps will live inside other insects and kill them have a variety of different types of things from scale insects all the way up to caterpillars.

And so whilst we've got this two side thing, and both the adult which runs which will move pollen around, as well as capture larvae capture insects to feed its larvae are looked at as being beneficial to the gardener.

The honeybees came along back in the Cretaceous, with the older diet with with more younger dinosaurs, like triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus Rex, when when actually the flowering plants were out.

And so they assumed to have kind of CO developed along with the development of angiosperms or flowering plants, the things that have pretty flowers, and they have pretty flowers, so that they can bring in these to help with their reproduction.

So, so this is all put some in context into how bees and wasps are kind of different and how they function differently as well as being different in their anatomy.

Excellent.

You've got a whole book that Yeah, and you have a book.

And if you're interested in in figuring out what kind of washed you have in your garden, this is a great book put out last couple of years by Heather home.

She did a very good a good job with a bit of a B book that I have.

This one's again, half again, bigger than the vendor B book gives you an idea of the diversity of wasps that are out there, but it's very well written you'll learn a lot about biology as Well as nice pictures to identify the insects with and, and the and so and so they are.

It's a, it's a very useful book in order to figure out what you have what you're doing, and learn a little bit about what's going on in your garden.

Excellent.

Thank you, Phil.

All right, Chuck, we're back to you with Okay, well, I've got a few other things that won't get as in depth about them.

A lot of people probably recognize Gladiolus corms, quorum is just a shortened stem.

Gladiolus and and croakers are the the two most common columns that you'll encounter.

This one last year had apparently had two buds.

So because it ended up making two new corms, and the first thing you would do is take those apart, they do make little bulblets, which, if you have good weeding skills you can grow up into into more bulbs.

But they do come up with just like one leaf, and crabgrass and foxtail.

And those kinds of things can overtake them if you're not a really persistent leader.

And the other thing I would do is, is just take off last year stem because it can kind of interfere with with the new buds that are going to that are going to come out this is Axcelis chatter Fila, which just means it has four leaflets.

So it's a four leaf clover, sort of this one is the Iron Cross, because it has the tips of the of the leaflets or green.

Back in the center, it's purple and it sort of makes like a purple Iron Cross in the center of this very prolific, they get small pink flowers, lots and lots of little bugs around the base.

And if you if you if you insist on planning all of those again, you're going to be overcome in a hurry.

I tend to go through and pick out the biggest, nicest, fattest ones, because then I can place them and have them three or four inches apart.

So it makes it easier to for weed good drawl and those kinds of things.

Sadly, some of the little ones tend to go by the wayside in that process.

Also.

This is one it's a Peruvian Daffodil Himeno Palace fest Dallas.

And here's here's the thing I found I bought these kind of at a half price sale at a big box store late in the season got put them out that year.

They grew but they were not super happy.

And but then I dug them up and what they had done as they'd split into like four or five.

And so not wanting to waste space, I planted a mess four or five, while those turned into 16 or something and never got big enough to flower.

So this this past spring, I gritted my teeth, I picked out the ones that were going to survive and the ones that were not.

And I just planted a single that's a nice size one and it got fat.

I'm pretty confident that is going to going to flower they have kind of long narrow petals is sometimes called Spider flower among cars in addition to improving daffodil.

But we'll see.

I love that it's time to check on the bulbs and see what's going on.

Karen always talks about that with her cannas going down about this time of year just seeing making sure everything's okay throwing out the ones that perhaps are a little rotten and not looking too hot.

So quickly.

Before we go.

I've been seeing a lot about cicadas all over social media and on the news I hear there's about to be like a convergence.

In Illinois there is and we have the Northern Illinois cicadas, which occur from about Lincoln or Illinois or the embro River, north and southern brood which which goes from there on south through us.

The southern brood is a 13 year cicada lifecycle.

The northern brood is from that barn Norfair all 17 year broods and we're going to have those two coinciding in their emergency this year, in which the Northern Illinois brood and the southern gray southern brood will come out to same time.

So in Illinois, we will have cicadas coming out around Memorial Day weekend a little bit after that from the northern edge of the state all the way through to probably Louisiana.

So essentially all of Illinois has cicadas whereas normally we have the northern half only or the southern half only, and there are few other little spots that will not have cicadas because they have different routes than the time but these cover for the most part to host date.

Okay, so, all right, let's get prepared for that mentally noise In the daytime and the every time you walk through the grass up they spring.

Oh my gosh.

So get prepared.

Anyway, gentleman, it's a great biological experience.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

Thank you for joining us.

If you have any questions, you can send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com and we will see you next time.

Good night.