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 one and only John Bowden Steiner.

He's gonna, he's got Shawn tells he's got questions to answer we have a lot to discuss today.

So before we get into that, though, let's have John introduce himself and tell you a little bit about his specialty.

I am John Bodensteiner I'm a vermillion County Master Gardener.

And I think I'm on my 29th year of doing this, and it's it's I enjoy all kinds of plants, there's really nothing that I don't enjoy.

As far as plants.

I, I do volunteer at Sloman High School at the work in the greenhouse.

And so I have access to some things that people may not have.

But over 29 years, has the conversation about gardening changed much are people still asking the same stuff?

Are people still learning?

It's I'm still learning.

Yeah, you'd never stop learning.

So I, you know, I've get ideas from people, we have garden shows.

And I always say if you go to the garden show, the one thing you want to do is take your camera because there's that one idea that you could take a picture of, and take it home and put it in your garden and or adapt it to your garden.

So yeah, the questions are still pretty much the same.

But let me ask you this.

I know that we've just since I've been here in five years, we've talked a lot more about pollinator pocket and native plants, and more people are seems anyway, are wanting to grow food.

Would you agree with that?

Especially since COVID started, you know, we all were locked at home.

And, and yes, gardening became very, you know, the garden center sold out of lots of plants, because everybody was they were they had nothing else to do so they wanted to garden.

And like you say pollinators, bees, butterflies, native plants, that's another thing that people are wanting to plant natives so that, you know if you have a native oak tree compared to a calorie pair, an oak tree will host 400, almost 500 different insects, where a calorie pair will host no insects.

And the reason for it that's important is we have birds and if you don't have insects, you won't have birds.

If you don't have insects, you won't have pollination.

So it's it's that whole system, it's a whole ecosystem in that we've that we've learned to maybe embrace a little bit.

Excellent.

Okay, well, we've got allotted a lot of stuff to get into.

So John had a couple of questions come in specifically for him.

That's when you know, you're a big deal.

questions for John.

We'll start with number 96.

This is from Maryland, she sent in an email that says John Bowden Steiner, said he had a sense of area that blooms often.

My question is, how does that happen?

What conditions need to be present for that to happen?

And where does one get one of those tubular mother in law tongs?

And you just happen to?

Well, I did bring the tubular one.

Did it bring that one?

Does that cylindrica?

This is a different, we'll talk about that.

Just to answer the question, do you most of the time, the mother in law tongue or snake plant, that's the real tall one.

And that's the one I get to bloom maybe twice a year, but I have so many of them, I probably have 100 pots of mother in law, or a snake plant.

So there's always one blooming, and the way that you make it bloom that they they say is to put it under stress.

Now it could be root bound to and that's what most of mine are.

I've had them in pots, and they're actually pushed through a plastic pot, they'll actually bore a hole or put so much pressure the the pot was split in there, they're growing out.

And so I'm sure that that's putting stress on the plant.

Other Other ways that you could stress it is maybe a little bit too much light, you know, and that's one thing you've got to be very cautious with.

They do not like direct sunlight, they are an understory type plant and too much sun will burn them they do burn very easily.

There are a number of different snake plants the sense of area.

The one I brought before was the was the tall the original.

And then there's the cylindrical and that's the one I bought last time was the round one.

This time I brought a different one.

This is called birds nests.

It's it never going to get much taller than this.

And it doesn't just keep going wide, wider and wider.

And as you can see I'm getting a baby right here.

Yeah.

And so this is this is going to split off.

So I will be able to take unpopped this and cut it off.

And then I'll have to, I wouldn't be surprised that once this gets a little bit more root bound that I'll get more of those, the more it gets worked round, the more and I may even get a flower if I would let this grow long enough.

So but that's that's the, I have another one at the greenhouse that I didn't bring, because it's so rare I didn't bring it's kind of cold this morning.

It's called moonshine.

And it kind of looks like the other snake plant.

It's not as tall.

It's kind of a combination of the real tall one and this, and that'll it'll get to be about, I'd say 18 inches, but it's white.

It's, it's, it's kind of like a moonshine, you know, so it's one of these times during the summer, I'll have to bring it or send their pitcher.

So the flowers, once you get them are very, very fragrant.

They will you could tell us in as I go into greenhouse, or in our bedroom, I've got some in the bedroom, that the flowers are very, very fragrant.

So but would you say this one has been in this nursery pot?

I would say that's probably been in there about six months now really?

So not that long?

No, no, I had I had one that probably I probably had 30 plants at it, it was it was a lot bigger pot.

But it probably had 30 and I divided it it was really really crowded.

And it so six months though this plants very happy.

So this one, this is a some people call this mother in law tongue.

And this is not mother in law tongue.

It's not even in the sense of area family.

This is in the guest area of family.

And the common name.

Other common names other than mother in law tongue for this one is Ox Tongue, cow tongue.

And then of course, the mother in law tongue.

It is a relative of the aloe.

And if you push on this, you can kind of feel the spongy dis of it.

And actually what needs bloom, they have hybridized some of you take like a paintbrush, and you take a little pollen from this and you put it over on this flower and then you can get a whole different seed.

And then you may get a whole different plant from from those seeds.

So is this a slow growing?

Yeah, this this is probably this is about as big as this one is going to get I would say.

But this is probably two years old.

Wow.

So it is a slow growing.

Again, the way it it'll put up a a chute on the side and and then kind of like aloe does and then you break it off and plant.

So I have tried taking a leaf and and and doing the cuttings like I do the sense of area.

I have not had any luck with that with this plant.

So but and where are they native to?

They are native to West Africa.

Both of them are from West Africa.

And so they are not native.

But they are carefree.

NASA is actually looking at taking the the snake plant the real tall one.

And maybe this one too, I'm not sure because they are so efficient in absorbing toxins from the air and releasing oxygen at night.

They also are so carefree they take very little water.

If I water that once every month or six weeks, it's happening.

And so they're you know, they are going to need plants up there to produce oxygen.

And that's the only way that you know we're going to get it because there's no natural oxygen that we know of at least that I know.

I learned.

So plants I've got I mean I just sitting and thinking about them.

They're in almost every room in my house.

They're just like you said they're so easy, carefree.

And you know, they do a great thing for us cleaning the air.

Okay, okay, we're gonna move on to the next one.

We got another question for John.

This is number 99.

This is from Joanne Bibb.

She says please send me directions about the leaf casting that you featured on the show.

I would love to make one and with like instructions.

Okay, I think what we need to do is I'm going to make a little a picture or a sequence but I want to break just a real quick synopsis today.

So what I'm going to you know, and if you would like then we can put it on our site.

We can if you do like if you type up a document instructions, like kind of like what we did for Jim's birdfeeder Yeah, Jeff's planting schedule.

We can include some pictures.

Absolutely.

So this is this is one of my elephant ears that I sprayed just to keep it and and as you can see this is the backside of the the leaf and that's What you're going to want, you're going to want to look for a leaf that has good veins on it, you can see how nice those veins pop out.

So what you're going to do first is make a, an I usually use place and any type of sand is going to do and you make a mount.

And depending on if you want your your leaf to maybe hold water, you would have the sand bed mounted.

If you want a flat leaf, like this dish like a dish or if you wanted a stepping stone, you wouldn't want that rounded or you wouldn't want it to hold what you would make your flat bed, your sand flat, and then you would lay your your leaf with the ribs showing up at the bottom side most leaves the ribs are on the backside.

So you're going to put the leaf on the set on a bed of sand.

And then you're going to take and I use I use vinyl repair cement, that's the one I found is most adaptable to what I'm wanting to do here.

And it's it's not as rigid, it's not as fragile as as some of the other cements and it's very fine.

So you can get the really nice smooth finish that you want.

And it comes in 40 pound bags or you can a lot of your your bookstores will have five pound bags.

So depending on how much you're wanting to do, I bite and 40 pound bags, I usually buy two three of them because I do so many of them.

And so then you're going to take that cement, you're going to add just water to it.

And I usually like to make it the consistency of fudge or brownie mix or something like that.

So that it's pliable, but not run a runny, you want it all good and wet, you want to work at work at work at and make sure that there's no no lumps in it or anything like that.

And once you get to that, what you're going to do is I take about a or an apple size handful.

And depending on if you have sensitive skin, you may want to wear rubber gloves.

Because cement is very dehydrating.

So you're going to want to take and and take about an apple size worth of, of cement.

And you're going to want to put it right about in the center here and mount it so that you have depending on how thick you're wanting your leaf, I'd say three quarters of an inch.

And then just go back and take another and this is on the backside when this is on the backside This is sitting on the on the on the sand bed, and you just cover the whole leaf and you try to form it to the leaf.

You just push it down a little bit at a time.

If you have to, you can come in and take your hand and pull it back into you see the till you see the edge of the leaf and then just kind of pat it down.

You want to pad it to get all the oxygen or the little air holes out of it.

And then you what you do as you let it sit there and dry for I'd say a minimum of two days, preferably three days.

So once once you're you come back, this is what you're going to have, you're going to see.

And after about an hour, hour and a half.

I'll go and take a paintbrush and just smooth this backside off.

Just very lightly smooth it off because when you're doing this, it's going to be kind of rough, and I like to make mine a little bit smoother, depending on if you want it to hold water.

You could either take the stem completely off or leave it on and let it protrude.

And then if it protrudes, just leave it on there until after you take the leaf off.

What you're going to do is let this sit for about three days.

And then you're going to very carefully move it on the sand and then pick it up and it's going to be very fragile.

You're going to then tip it upside down and carefully take the leaf off and then you can discard that and this is what you're going to end up with.

You're going to have a cement looking leaf I usually Tao will set this aside in a protected area don't want to let the what rain on it or anything.

And you want it in a nice area, not indirect sun because then it would could crack but in a shady area that's dry and let it set for up to a week.

And then then it's going to be this color.

You can tell when it's when it's dry and it's ready to paint.

What to dry paint pretty.

Then I use there's a couple of different paints that I use.

I use a metallic acrylic paint.

And I've started to I found also one that's called color shifting.

That give it this sort of iridescent the color shifting depending on the angle that you're looking Looking at, you'll get a little bit different color.

Oh, so it's kind of interesting.

And sometimes I'll combine, I'll put this on, on on inside, and then I'll do a and you can kind of see I've done just a little bit on this and I paint this.

And usually I'll give it two coats of paint.

The first is the heavier coat.

And then there's always going to be little indentations that that you miss, and so go back.

And you want to make sure that there's no indentations that aren't painted.

And, and it'll, it'll be nice and shiny.

It won't be quite as shiny, but almost.

And then once I've got this dry, I let it dry for an hour or so because acrylic paints will dry pretty I usually do the back and and paint that wait and then what I do is after the paint is dry, then I'll spray it with a polyurethane polyurethane spray sealer and I have found also the there's a paint a clear paint.

That was really lacquer, lacquer.

Yeah.

And so you end up with with every time you bring those people just love them, we get a lot of emails people wanting to try it.

So so this one here does not have a hole in it.

So I did not want to this one to hold what are you know, I wanted to do not drained.

In other words, I could actually put something on here.

And it's not going to to I could put some little bit of water because as you can see, it's just the butterflies put a little oil there.

But if I become a bees and butterflies will come put a little oil, some salt.

Yeah, and because they need that, see, I didn't know that they needed they like that's why they come in, if you notice puddles in your yard, and the butterflies at the edge, that's because the water is is absorbing some or dissolving the some of the minerals, and they need the minerals.

So always learning.

So it's it's fun to get that but I will I will get this all rolled up.

And we'll we'll okay.

We'll get that information out.

Let's go to the next question.

This one is someone who Dennis wrote in wants to try planting potatoes.

So here's the email.

I've never grown potatoes.

So I would just like a little guidance.

My garden is about 10 by 15 with full Southern Exposure very sunny during the day.

I think this coming spring I would like to try growing potatoes can you give me some guidance on what I should be buying and a little bit of what we should be doing too.

I've never grown potatoes either.

So I'm going to be paying attention it's really not that hard.

You do need some good soil or some good techniques.

I noticed one lady one time she had a no till garden.

She had a lot of composted hay bales of straw bales of hay and and she was old.

So it was wet and, and composted.

And she went out there and took her potatoes she didn't cut them.

She just went out there and flung them, you know, spread them naturally.

And then she took her hay and just laid it on there.

About I'd say six to eight, maybe 10 inches thick so that those potatoes don't dry and she wandered it in.

So you can do that.

I know people that take tires and fill them fill those up.

And what you do is you take one tire and fill it with soil or with compost, you lay your potatoes on and lay about two, three inches of soil on that.

And as once they get to be about six inches or so you add another another tire and you add just a little bit more soil and that's called tilling or healing I'm sorry, healing and you can do this in your garden also.

And what you're doing is killing that that plant up and once it gets to about six inches tall, you want to heal it up to this and be very careful that you don't break those those stems off.

And you want and very fertile loose soil.

So that and water that in and the soil temperature should be between 45 and 55 degrees.

They like full sun and you want to plant him about 12 to 18 inches.

Now some of the ladies where she was throwing him she didn't have that far as types of where do you get your potatoes to start most people say you should get them from a seed catalog or from a seed vendor Surya or a nursery.

Yeah, somebody that is selling seed potatoes and the reason for that is most of your grocery store.

Potatoes are sprayed with a chemical to inhale But the sprouting, or the and I'll say this carefully.

The chitting ch I T, it's what you call, what you're going to do to prepare your, your potatoes for planting is called cit.

And that ch I T, yes, be very careful.

And the reason that you usually and I most the time will kind of scour the grocery stores and look for a certain potato that I really like.

And if I see them sprouting, I will buy a bag or a few of them just for planting in the garden.

The chemical that they spray on, there is CIPC, it's isopropyl N, three chloro phenol carbonate.

So anytime that you're buying potatoes at the grocery store, make sure that you're washing them really well to get that chemical off.

and a Ph for the soil 5.8 to 6.5.

So that's that's important.

The healing thing is, is is very, very good.

You know, some of our panelists, Jen, Nelson is one of them, has had great success doing them in grow bags.

Yes, I know a lot of people who grow them in buckets.

So just you know, some other things to think about, if you don't have that great soil or a lot of space or a lot of space.

Yeah, and if you have, this is a relatively small potato here.

But if it was big, I would probably cut it in half.

And once I cut it, I would let it sit on the counter and callous offer a minimum of two days.

So that when you look at it, and you touch that it's not wet.

And what you're going to do that once you go to plant that, you're going to take that cut side and put that on the bottom side.

And you want to be very careful not to harm any of these little sprouts, because that's where your new potatoes are going to come off of, is it true, like if you're going to cut on let's say, in thirds, or fourths, make sure every section that you cut has an eye you want two or three eyes or three eyes, okay, you know, you could go down to one, but I would I pray, you're gonna get a lot better production.

If you have two or three, gotcha, if they're this size, I probably would plant this.

And I'm sorry, you might want to describe what an eye is.

An eye is where the sprout is going to come out.

This is two different types of, of potatoes here.

But you can see the little eyes that are formed on here.

And wherever wherever you see that little imperfection when you peel it and that little indentation, that's an eye.

So you want to have a minimum of two or three on each plant that you're going to put into the soil.

Depending on what type of potato you like, this is just a this one here is a nice red potato.

This is a Russian fingerling.

And it's a white potato.

And I have had times where I've put this out, and I put it next to a hill where I have a raised bed and put it in there and I'll cover it in the fall or in the winter with a whole bunch of composted leaves.

And I've actually had them survive, I usually will leave the little tiny ones.

And I have come back in the spring and come mid May, here comes my potatoes.

And then I can get a whole freak free harvest.

So excellent.

We've got about three minutes left and I do want to get your take on winter sowing.

Before we have to wrap up the show.

We've had a couple people talk about it, but I just like when a lot of people share so that you can get different perspectives on what people do.

So how do you winter so Okay, winter sowing is a new another new phenomenon that people have started to, I'm going to get to my notes so I don't forget anything.

Every gardener this, this is the container that I use.

It's just a water a water container, and I've cut it to the point where I can fold it back.

I've cut it all except for this little hinge right here.

And I still have the cap on here.

And what I'm going to do is drill holes in the bottom about four or five, six holes because you want it you don't want it to hold a whole bunch of water and you're going to fill it with about three quarters worth of soil and then plant Oh, I like perennials and native perennials cabbage, spinach, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, leafy greens, parsley, bok choy, lettuce, or herbs and you cover it very lightly with a little bit of soil.

You're going to take duct tape once you get it all plant and make sure that you put a label in here so that you know we're on the outside and make sure that because you're going to leave this outside and you're going to take duct tape then and take this all the way around to tape it shut.

Then you're going to before you duct tape, you're going to want to water just so that you it's easier to walk.

Once you get to duct tape, you're going to take it outside, set it up against the building and take the lid off.

And hopefully Mother Nature is going to put enough moisture in that where that lid is off to to have your plants grow, the plants are going to grow according to when Mother Nature says they should.

And no, you're not going to harden them off.

That's the nice thing.

You're not going to harden them up.

And you've already got some this is one that I've got going and I've got some kale growing.

And I will I will retake this and take the lid off again, and duct tape all the way around.

And and then you'll just in the spring, take the seedlings out and then transplant them not recommended at this time of year.

I can start these now.

I've started some of these now.

And so those that you'd want to wait till much, much later, is your tomatoes, your peppers, your squash banquets, something that if it would freeze is going to die.

Yes.

So most of your perennials and herbs and things that like that will take a light frost.

So Gotcha.

All right, John, can you believe I mean, we're out of time.

It goes so fast.

We covered a lot of ground today.

I feel like all right.

Well, thank you so much for watching.

Thank you for coming in and teaching us everything.

If you've got any questions for John or any of our other panelists.

You can send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com Of course you can always find us on Facebook, just search Mid American gardener.

We'll see you next time.

Good night.