(upbeat music) - Hey, it's Tinisha Spain, host of Mid American Gardener, and thanks so much for joining us for another episode.

Today we've got show and tells, we've got some of your questions, and of course we got our panelists here to talk to you all about all things, green and gardening.

So let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialty or their area of interest.

So Martie, we'll start with you.

- Hello.

My name is Martie Alagna.

I'm retired from landscaping after, seems like forever.

And I've got a pretty good background in a lot of stuff.

Mostly home gardening, landscape.

The home landscape is usually where I shine.

So, but I also do other stuff.

And then, you know the other two here on the panel, they got, they got you covered.

It's no problem.

- We've got all bases covered right?

- You're not kidding these two are (indistinct).

- Okay.

Let's roll right into John then.

John, tell us about your specialty.

- I'm John Bodensteiner.

I'm a Vermilion County Master Gardener, and I like a variety.

I guess my yard, I like to have a big variety, not a lot of anything.

I've also gotten into some greenhouse work.

I'm, volunteering at one of the local high schools and they have a greenhouse.

So I'm teaching that and it's opening up a whole new thing.

We're even going to do some straw bale gardening this year.

- Interesting.

I want to do look into that.

Kelly, also one of our panelists, does that too.

So I wanted to explore that a little bit more.

So we might bookmark that and make that a whole thing.

So keep that in mind.

Okay.

And last but not least Ella.

- Hi, I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm a horticulturist up in the Peoria area, and also a Tazewell County Master Gardener.

And I enjoy woody shrubs and perennials.

I have a large garden, and I'm going to talk a little bit today about houseplants.

- Awesome.

So we do really have all of our bases covered.

All right.

So Martie, we're going to swing around back to you.

We've got some show and tells we always lead with that.

So what are you, what did you bring and what are you going to show us?

Okie dokie.

I just got the bare minimum basics of how to start seeds, indoors.

Okay?

So you need something that won't leak.

You can buy these.

I've used these for several seasons, and when I hold it up you'll be able to see peat moss stuck in the corners, okay?

So it's a tray that doesn't leak.

All right?

You're going to need something that doesn't leak.

Before I use this, I will wash this out with a mild soap and bleach solution and let it air dry.

Okay?

And then it's disinfected enough to use.

So I won't carry anything over because I don't store these on the dining room table.

They go in the garden shed where lots of other things live as well.

So these also come with a cover, okay?

You buy the whole unit.

There's a little cover, if I turn it around you might be able to read.

It says Jiffy, like the Jiffy potting soil or the little Jiffy pots, the little expandable dudes.

I don't know.

I've used those before, but I've had better luck doing other things.

So anyway, this lid that's on top of that tray just fits right on it, and it's made to do that.

And then they stacked a store which is even better because who has plenty of space.

Ha, ha, not me.

So you can use those.

And you can use these little plastic pots, that you can purchase.

You can also use yogurt cups, either the little six ounce ones that are taller than they are bigger round or the ones that are round.

Just fit them in there.

You can also use this, that, came from some garden center and it was full of pots that I bought plants in.

And then these will fit in here, okay?

They just go in there, and you can fit them in however they go.

This is a three inch, little plastic pot.

You can also use peat, pots.

They're pressed, compressed peat moss.

And you can set this inside the black tray that doesn't leak, which is how you do this in your house.

And then put the, put the lid back on.

Okay.

So you buy a Seed Starting Mix.

The Seed Starting Mix.

Comes in a bag, easy as pie.

All right?

Put it in a large bowl.

- We've got, John's giving us a beautiful demonstration.

- John, yes.

He had a bag and I didn't.

He's doing some more stuff.

- Team work makes the dream work, right?

I know, you're not kidding.

So put that in a large bowl or a container of some kind.

Depending on how much you're mixing up, the top of the cake box works good.

whatever you have, big enough.

So a big pan, whatever.

Outside, I do it on wheelbarrow but it's too cold for that.

Get it moist.

Get it moistened with hot water.

Hot water.

Steaming hot water, okay?

It'll mix up better.

Stir it around with a spoon or a trowel, and let it sit there and soak up really well, because Seed Starting Mix has a lot of peat moss in it.

And it sucks up moisture, really wanting to hold it, but you have to get it moistened first.

Okay.

Once it's moistened, put it in your pots or put in your tray and tamp it down.

Press it down well, because it's full.

And once you start watering, it'll compress a lot.

So tamp it down in your containers, wherever you put them into about a quarter inch from the top.

Stick your seed in there.

I usually do three in a little three inch pot like I had.

Three seeds, and I space them around because, if somebody doesn't make it or they're pitiful, they're going to come out.

Reduce, reuse, recycle.

And then the other ones grow up.

Here's what I do also.

When the plants germinate, when the seeds germinate and the plants come up.

So imagine, you have this little dude here and it's all full of little plants that are sticking up and they get taller than this.

Okay, here's what I do.

Take a skewer, like you put on the grill with shrimp on it, stick it in the corners, tape it if you have to, and set your cover up a little bit higher.

You still hold the moisture but you don't crush your plants, romping around over here because hallelujah, it's February, and you can just raise it up higher.

John is not a penny pinching (indistinct), and he's got a taller.

- Oh.

- I don't get those.

I just stack it up.

And by the time they're this tall, which is like three or four inches.

By the time they're that tall, they don't need to be completely enclosed a little more, or when it's warm in your house, so.

- You know what I find so funny is, I think all gardeners are a combination of Martie and John, right?

I, my kids know not to throw away yogurt cups.

My kids know not to, you know what I'm saying?

- [Martie] Yes So I a lot of " Oo I can plant, oo I can plant in that."

But also like John, I'll go out and get things that make life easier, the latest and greatest.

So everybody falls in that mix.

And I am definitely a mix of both of you, because if I can look at something and think I could grow something in that, It can't go to the trash because I need it.

Last year Martie, you had milk jugs to put over all (indistinct) when we had that really late frost.

I know there are other contraptions.

- [Martie] Yes.

- But I like that, here's a medium in there.

You can use things around the house if you don't want to, or not in a position to go out and buy.

So - Yeah.

I was just going to say right now is when I start saving milk jugs, because I'm (indistict) in April.

So yeah.

- Good advice.I (indistict) that you needed to soak the mix.

So John, as we go into you, I know you've got a show and tells similar to that.

Do you soak your medium?

And tell us a little bit about your method.

- I do, because if you don't, it's going to be hydrophobic.

You can put it into your tray, and put your seeds on it and then put the dry Seed Starting on top of that And then you try water it, it just sheds water.

And a lot of times you'll shed the top layer of Seed Starting, but you also shed a lot of seeds.

So it's very, very important that you pre moisten because it is hydrophobic.

It's like after you wash your car, all those little beads of water sit on there and it just runs right off.

And to do that is so, so very important.

And you do need Seed Starting, like she said, is because otherwise you're going to end up with damping off.

You're going to end up with other diseases.

And so that seed starting is so, so, so very important.

- Okay.

On that same line I'm jumping all over the place but you guys keep giving me these little transitions.

Ella, I want to go to you because we had a question come in, an email.

Someone asks, if they're using plant lights in the house to start their seeds, how many hours a day should they have those lights on?

So while we're in this zone, what's your advice on the lights?

Okay.

As far as the lights go, you don't really need lights until the plants germinate.

Many of the seeds do not require lights for germination.

There are some exceptions.

So you want to be sure to check the seed packet, to know.

And then put your lights on a timer, and that way, you won't have to say, " oh, I forgot."

And they can run anywhere from 12 to 16 hours.

There are certain plants that can be under lights continuously.

Like if you're germinating little hosta seeds, you can have it 24 seven.

But the whole idea is, plants probably won't require that much, but it's the distance between the germinating seeds and the light.

You don't want the lights so high up.

You really want the lights right on top of your little seeds.

That gives you the most lumens, and they can utilize that, the best.

You don't want them to stretch up to the light.

So you want to be able to have your lights adjustable, so you can go ahead and move them up and down.

And to continue on what Martie and John said, I also start seeds at home.

And I do mine in little meat trays.

And I've used a fork to make drainage holes.

And then I had the top.

And the benefits of this is I can put it in my dishwasher, and then I just stack them all up on top of each other, under my under counter lights in the kitchen.

Cause that's a warm spot.

You turn it on, when you make coffee in the morning.

You turn it off at night.

And then a lot of times, I'll have to get it close to the lights.

So I'll have to put it up on something, and here's another little mini greenhouse.

So we're all super savers as far as that goes.

So the lights probably a minimum of 12 hours.

- Great.

Thank you.

Okay, John we're gonna go back to you.

We're bouncing all over the place, but I love it.

We're having good conversation.

So your first show and tell, John.

Okay.

My first show and tell, like I said, I've been working in the greenhouse.

And one of the things I'm teaching right now, is air layering.

And I brought this, this is a hibiscus.

And normally, I wouldn't have cut this off but I couldn't bring the whole plant here.

So normally this would still be on the plant.

And what I did is I took a very sharp knife and I cut around, so that there's about an inch.

And I'll put this up to the camera and you can see.

I took off about an inch worth of bark, all the way down to where it's white.

And what that is going to do, is force the plant to put new roots, right at this end.

And I use what they call, a rooting compound.

I have found that certain plants, schefflera like, we had about the same effect 50, 50.

Actually every one of them rooted, whether I used the compound or not.

Now what you're going to do once you get this to this point, you're going to take one of these, and this is actually made for this.

This is a rooting ball, but I've done it with, like those containers that Ella had.

And I've done that, and just put those around.

What this has got in here is sphagnum moss.

It's very, very wet.

All you do then, once you get your plant like this, you take your little pot and you squeeze it around.

- [Tinisha] Look at that.

- And then leave this on the tent for about six to eight weeks.

After that, you will open it up and you'll be amazed.

All the little roots, this little ball, it's gonna to be filled with roots.

Then you cut it off, and then you plant it into a pot.

- So does your cutting have to have a woody stem for that reason?

- Yeah.

Usually you want a woody stem but I've done it with the scheffleras.

I've done it with just about anything.

I'm trying to think of some of the others that I've done it with.

Like the schefflera, I've done it with, - Can you root like that in water?

Can you do that when you strip it?

- You could but then, I have better luck with it because this is still on the plant.

So it's still getting the nutrients from the plant.

So I have almost a 100%, propagation.

And this is going to be a clone of the original plant.

That's the nice thing.

It's an exact duplicate.

Sometimes like the schefflera, we had somebody bring one in, or a rubber tree plant.

We just did some of those.

And I did the same thing.

It just got too big, but they wanted the plant they wanted.

So I'm putting these little things around the different canes and, like on the rubber tree plant, I'll get 20 new plants off of that one plant, and she'll get a couple of them.

I may keep a couple or the students will keep a couple, but it's so easy and nice.

We did one with a Japanese lilac last fall outside.

You can do this outside and get an exact duplicate of the plant.

It's a clone.

It's really the exact duplicate.

And the nice thing is you get a lot better germination or reproduction of the plant, than doing cuttings.

I'm going to talk more about cuttings, but this is by far the most successful, I would say.

I get almost a 100% with this.

Some of the others we're down to about 50%, but we'll talk more about doing cuttings and grafting and other things like that in the next.

- If I could just mention, for a question that Debbie had written in, emailed in about a corn plant.

So John showing you a way to do this vegetative air layering propagation, and you could do this with this corn plant.

so you can see how tall it really is.

And so where he would maybe attach this and he can start it over.

But another thing that Debbie can do, is you can see that I have started this over once where all I did was cut it off.

And I would wait to do that until spring, And then I would set it outside and there'll be an adventitious bud that'll come for you, Debbie.

And you start over again.

Now this one's gone.

I don't know, umpteen years on this corn plant or dracaena, but it's the same kind of idea.

So there are different ways of vegetatively propagating a plant.

- Okay.

- One thing with this - Go ahead.

John.

- One thing with this ball is, if you use a plastic or clear, you're going to put aluminum foil around it because you don't want light hitting the roots.

So this one here is opaque and it's black.

So this one I wouldn't have to, but I've got some Christmas ornaments that are clear, that have come in two pieces wide.

Burnt a hole on each end and it fit together, But I had to put aluminum foil around it to keep the light from getting to the roots, 'cause that helps the roots.

And they just formed beautiful white, just packed with roots.

- Awesome.

We could have a whole show with John's gadgets, right?

- Martie, do you have another show and tell with you?

Or did you want to do your question and the bugs?

- I don't have another show and tell now.

- Okay.

Let's jump to that.

So this is a question that came in from Susan Chapman.

She says, "I have been planting flowers that are good for hummingbirds, monarchs and bees."

And she's referring to last year.

She saw some small green bugs that have been attacking the coneflowers and sunflowers, and just about every flower.

Doesn't want to spray anything on them because they are for pollinators, but wants to know what they are and she could use some help.

And this is from Crown Point Indiana.

So we don't have a picture of the small green bugs, but what's your hunch?

She said something in her message about being beetles, which is probably what it is.

- [Tinisha] Yes.

- Unless she means Japanese beetles, I don't know.

Because they are greenish, and if you don't know what you're looking at, maybe that's what she means.

I don't know.

But either way, I also think she mentioned that she was using the pesticide called 8, made by bonide.

That is toxic to bees.

So your pollinator garden, you're defeating the purpose there.

You might try just insecticidal soap.

You might try just making sure that the plants are healthy because oddly, the whole system is set up to eliminate the weak.

So the tree that gets the attack, or the plant that gets the attack is the one that's weaker than others.

The bugs always go for those.

I don't know, just perpetuating the species for the strongest.

So that's how the whole system works.

I wanted to also add that persona that Ella showed, probably the lady that had the corn plant question, Thanks, well, that's not my plant.

Yes, it is.

Yes.

Ella is exactly right.

Dracaena is a big family.

And sometimes they're skinny, and sometimes they're fat leaved, but those are all dracaena.

They've got those rings markings all the way up.

Do exactly what they talking about with that because it may look different but it's a cousin and it'll work.

- I wanna read that question then let's go ahead and get to that about the corn plant.

This is from Debbie.

She says I have a corn plant that was given to me for my mom's funeral 13 years ago.

It's gotten very tall and top-heavy.

Is there any way to force it to sprout leaves on the bottom of stock?

One suggestion was to propagate it, but because of its sentiment, I'm afraid of killing it.

So Ella, did you want to expand or anybody want to expand anymore about, what she could do?

- Well, I think the most important thing is how many stocks did it have?

You saw in my pot that there were three.

So I would feel comfortable maybe trying to cut one down and see what happens.

And I do believe that John's way of air layering is very good because the plant is still attached in the pot.

And so it will eventually root.

It takes a lot longer time and you just start over with the top of the plant.

So I think that's the best way.

- Okay.

- And also when you try to air layer that dracaena and it takes, and you cut it off the mother plant, then you will also get sprouts below where you cut off.

So you'll make it shorter.

You'll have a whole nother plants and then that also will encourage more growth from the bottom.

So it won't be so And you can share that baby plant with one of the kids maybe.

- There you go.

All right, John, we're back around you.

We've got about three minutes left.

- Great.

The reason I brought this big tall lid is because I brought all these plants in from the greenhouse at home and I needed something that wouldn't allow them to freeze because today it is cold.

This is one of the seed starting beds.

This is a real small one.

I use a lot of the Omaha meat, styrofoam type containers that we've put in the house, and fill them with sand.

This is filled with sand, and I just stick all these plants in.

Like, this is a Rosemary, so - No soil, that is only play sand in there?

- Just play sand.

And keep it moist, but you want to drained, you don't want it in standing water.

And here's a baby Rosemary that I got just like this one.

There's this cut here, is the Mother-in-law's tongue.

And all I did was cut him off.

The main thing with Mother-in-law tounge is you want to make sure that this is the top of the plant.

If you turn it upside down, you won't get any plants.

- [Tinisha] You'll be mad.

Here's one of the babies from that.

It rooted, and I got a baby plant from that.

And as you can see here, I've got some little spider plants.

Those are so easy.

This is from the mother plant.

All you have to do is pull this off, and stick this in the sand.

And a lot of times - [Tinisha] What?

I'll just stick it in here and it'll grow, because if you look at it they've got little roots on them.

This little guy, this' a schefflera, if you have something like this that you want to have more of, all you do is take one of these bottom little leaves turn it off, - [Tinisha] Ignore their little screams.

- And you can see here is one of them that I've done, And I'll take it out and look at what's happened.

- Hmm.

Now that's over, people can expect this to happen over a couple of weeks, right?

I mean, succulents are slowpokes.

- Anywhere from four to six weeks.

- Gotcha.

- But he's also got Swedish Ivy and coleus in there and they're like weeds you know, bang.

- I also got a cutting of curry and it took.

so we were practicing on, you know, ellos - Little bit of everything, yeah.

Yeah.

Nothing beats free kid labor right?

In the greenhouse, in the greenhouse in the greenhouse.

Final minute, we've got one minute left.

And I, Karen Russell I posted on Facebook about this, but in this cold snap that we're in a really quick, in a minute.

What are some advice or tips for folks who have things in the garage?

We talked about sheets and boxes.

What are you guys doing with your overwintering items in the garage?

Anything, what do you just hope for the best?

I have some perennials that are in pots.

They have died back and they were cut back in the fall.

And I do have a heater in my garage that can kick on but right now I have it set at 20 degrees.

So those pots are really pretty cold but they are meant to stay dormant.

What you and Karen had are some who were tender plants like some of the salvias and things that really don't want to go below 45 degrees.

So when it's really cold, like this maybe cardboard over them until the cold weather has passed because you don't want to accidentally leave the garage door up, because that's when you're going to lose some of those things.

If you know, you forgot to put it down.

All right, guys, we are out of time.

Thank you so much for your time and talents.

Thank you for watching.

And we will see you next time on Mid-American Gardening (upbeat music).