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

I'm Tinisha Spain, your host.

And as you can tell, we're in the studio with our guest who No, he needs no introduction, but introduce himself and tell you a little bit about him before we get started.

So, all right, well, I'm still Chuck Voigt, and I'm still retired from University of Illinois.

My last department was crop sciences.

Horticulture was my field vegetable crops and herbs specifically.

And my actual undergraduate degree was in was a nursery crop management or something.

So you remember, we visited chuck in the summer at his house at his family farm, actually.

And he walked us through his garden.

And so today is kind of an extension of that this also comes from the family farm, right?

It does.

So tell everybody what we're going to be doing.

And I love that this is woven into some family history for Chuck as well.

So I'll let you share what we're going to be okay.

Well, we're gonna try to try to talk about it.

And we're gonna talk about black walnuts, the Eastern Black Walnut, Juglans Niagra, J, ug, la ns, and IGA array, okay.

It's a tree that kind of invades abandoned fields.

Oh, you know, like a lot of things like wild cherries and mulberries get planted by the birds because the demand goes through them and the seeds remain.

Well, squirrels bury lots and lots and lots of walnuts and acorns and never remember them all.

So they pop up and pop up.

Yeah, they pop up in a in a field.

And it you know, if the field is plowed regularly, they don't have much of a chance.

But once you abandon that field, walnuts are one of the first trees that come in and probably one of the hardest wooded trees that come in fast.

Because a lot of the other things come in a very soft, and don't end Don't live for long periods of time.

I just know that the fruits, my boys love throwing these all day, all night because we have a walnut tree on our property and I just see the boys chucking them so it's the squirrels and the children at my house that keep these babies.

Well, yeah, hopefully they don't throw him hard enough to bury him.

But yeah, yeah.

So yeah, yeah.

And then I think it was last fall.

Ella, who's on the show a lot from from Tazwell County, brought in a walnut was big honkin thing.

I was I was amazed.

Yeah.

No, but part of it might have been Allah has smaller hands than I do.

But it I mean, it was it was huge.

Because once we have with the farmer, not super huge.

And I don't know why, exactly why that is.

But over the years, do you guys have several of these?

You have?

Yes.

Well, in my youth, there was a line of 10 of them, most of which were evenly spaced.

So there was a little competition between him and a couple that were set off to the side and then one that's over by where grandma was planting trees.

So I'm not sure that there was one Baroque and one walnuts that she planted.

And then they would use the walnuts from that, that original tree to plant the row of them.

Because there's space to evenly to have been, like squirrel planted in an oak fence row.

Got it?

Got it.

And these go back in your family for how long that you've traced back the trees and the farm.

Because I think that's fascinating.

Well, the grandma was planting these trees.

According to the story, I was told when she was 12.

And she was born at 53.

So that would have been 1865.

This Baroque, and maybe a walnut maybe a second Baroque.

I'm not I'm not completely sure was planted then.

And then the first part of the house was built in 1868.

So What month is it that we see those that green?

Would you call that a fruit?

The entire entire thing?

What's that called?

Yeah, I would say it's a it's a fruit.

It's okay.

What month usually do we see those ripening and starting to fall?

Well, they might start to fall in late August through September.

Okay.

And then by October there, the tree is pretty much shedding them and and you want to pick them up off the ground?

Or do you want to pull them off the trees?

When you well?

Unless you have very young trees?

Oh, yeah, I guess you won't be able to get a cherry picker, a helicopter.

No picking them up off the ground.

Because it's it's a better indicator of when they're actually mature when they when they fall off the tree.

So these that you brought in today to demonstrate you've had since the fall?

Yes.

Okay.

And then do you peel, like walk us through step by step get that coding.

Okay.

Well here historically, when I was a kid, we would pick them up in five gallon pails, bushel baskets, whatever.

And dad had a big pair of leather mittens.

So because if you, especially when they start to get blackened entirely and soupy, they'll stain you're saying your fingers.

And so we didn't want to do that we had that we also had like an old pair of tongs, like you'd take sweet corn out of the water with or whatever.

And so pick them up with one of those things and put them in it.

And we had a wooden hand corn sheller, okay.

stood about yay high, and has a crank on one side and a heavy steel flywheel on the other side, so you keep momentum going.

So when you have corn or a bunch of walnuts hits the the mechanism, it doesn't slow it down start.

So no child labor, it was a different time.

To get get that going, we took turns that night.

And I'm sure you thought it was fun.

Yeah, and then you'd feed him in.

And then there's like a plate rubbing against a stationary plate.

And the plate has like, like fingers but like little projections on it.

So grabs them and and the diameter of a walnut and the diameter of a corncob are similar.

So instead of stripping off the corn kernels, which you would do with an ear of corn is stripped off the whole from the from the walnuts.

And so you get theoretically, you get just walnuts coming out where the corn cobs, wood and then the husks fall out the bottom.

Well, they're so sticky and gooey.

You get a lot of husks coming out with walnuts and then you have to pick them out again with the tongs or whatever it was, but it got the job done.

Then we put it back in a five gallon pail covered with water, switch that around, get dumped that off keeping the walnuts in the water again, at least two rinses to get as much of that the tare stuff off of me as you can.

And then we lay them out in the sunshine the rest of the day or overnight maybe it's hard to trust squirrels overnight but but to get them just kind of air dry quickly, and then put them in shallow boxes or something and bring them into somewhere indoors that squirrel proof to dry out for a while.

And that's kind of where we are now.

Right?

That's where we are now.

Okay, the process has changed a little bit.

Because it's hard to get that old corn sheller out and it's a little rickety, and it's old age and it's really a two man job.

And yeah, there's sometimes my sister counts as the second man and sometimes not.

So dragon heavy things show probably not.

So we have just adapted the system to wear rubber boots, and just kind of rub them with our toe out of the out of the husk.

Okay.

And then we both have stick pickers, you know, for picking up sticks.

So we just pick them up with and put them in the pail and then and then and then do the two rinses.

It's like every step of this process is kind of tedious, but but there's an astrology in it for us that we've got the jars and we can put up a picture of those, the ones that you've already gotten.

Yeah, from last year.

That's the one thing I forgot to bring today was the results of this because we got the picture because we're storing we're gonna crack a few but not enough to make a real show.

And so it's better to see a couple of peanut butter jars full of them from last year.

Because I told you, I I probably too much peanut butter.

A lot of this has probably been about it.

So I ended up with a lot of empty peanut butter jars.

I'm excited.

Let's go let's crack so I'm okay.

All right, well, just for the benefit of the viewing public.

We are going to this is what I found.

Works out pretty well.

Okay, cuz you need you need dexterity.

In this hand, if you're left handed, it would work the other way.

Just just kind of remember that.

So, but just to do this just just just this kind of glove on both hands is gonna work if okay, I bought these.

I got three pairs for not too much.

And I've done I don't know 1500 walnuts or something with it.

And it's only just now starting to wear out a little bit where so I'm going to end up with they come in a three pack so I'm gonna end up with with three right gloves that are that are pristine, and three left gloves that are a little warm.

And just because we're on TV, yeah, and subject to liability, we're gonna wear eye protection, which is funny.

Chuck says bring some safety goggles course I couldn't find any when I do have two sons who like Nerf guns.

And so these are Nerf gun goggles.

Here we go.

So anyway.

All right.

And you see sometimes some of that doesn't, doesn't necessarily get off of them.

But that's that's probably all right.

If they go in drought, now a technique that I read about probably in the 70s.

And I don't know if it was in Foxfire, or Mother Earth News somewhere, they were talking about how to how to get the biggest pieces out of cracking a walnut because Because dad just used to smash them and then put them in a in a, you know, Pan might go into mom, she had she had nut packs.

And I don't know, do you remember the the this like a section of a log?

That came with mixed nuts in it?

That I don't you?

It's still at the bark on the outside.

And it was hollowed out inside with like a little wooden Island left in the middle.

And that's where the tools would get a little Yeah, that had holes in the tools.

And then you had you had like pecans and walnuts, usually around Christmas time.

Exactly.

Yes, exactly.

And so then you would have the just that little the crunchy cracker.

Well that I think one walnut, would send that to the junkyard.

And there are wonderful mechanical crackers.

And if you're ever ever at a loss for something to do and are on online anyway, look up walnut crackers, and watch a couple of the videos, there's a couple of them, they're just sweat this specific one that you told me to look at?

Well, okay, it's grandpa's good together, grandpa's good together.

And it's great, because you can see him, he's got a long lever arm pushing it down, there's like a cup on the bottom and a cup that comes down from the top.

And that that exerts pressure kind of more on the output or part of the shell more so the one I beat on it with a hammer.

It's specifically on the top.

So what typically happens is it's going to break into four pieces, because it's got a suture around it.

And it would naturally break into two halves as it starts to grow.

But here's the technique is the end that's attached to the tree is this one is kind of a bigger bump.

This end where the blast where the pistillate file flower was, there's a little point, okay, you standard on the point.

And I'm not sure if you hold it by the sutures or opposite the sutures.

I haven't figured that out yet.

Okay, here we go.

But then the magic okay.

And there's a connective part.

This sort of shaped like, like the spade on a on a playing card.

And that bracket on this way, you never see that intact or very seldom.

But that's that's the start of what what you're looking to write.

And I keep a pail handy.

When I'm doing this, I'm sitting down, that the anvil is on a, like a piece of log, that gets it up.

I need a taller log because my neck gets different bending over.

And then periodically, I'll wipe it off.

And you can see that this one is split out and a half.

This one has split a little a little better, because one of the one of the quarters looks like it's ready to pop out.

This is a lot of work.

Chuck, I told you.

You got to really one piece there has to be there has to be some nostalgia involved.

Yes.

Because I look online and and the crack nuts are selling for like $17 a pound.

And having done this now for some 1500 walnuts.

That's a pretty good deal.

And what I what I'm not sure is it's only it's it's $8 for the uncracked walnuts in the shell.

And I think that's not as good a deal because very little of the weight is going to be sure that's so don't balk at paying what they're asking because even with even even with machines, okay, and then you go back through and take each one of these the remaining quarters or halves or whatever.

And try to get try to get the tap just right.

Oh my gosh, to get at it.

And then if you start to get frustrated, you can go in with an excellent, I did break it.

There you go.

And then you just continue that one, that one's coming apart.

So you get that one.

That's your scrap bucket.

Right.

What do you do with your scraps?

I mostly just put them on a bonfire and get rid of them.

Yeah, they're used industrially as like in sandblasting and cleaning up other things.

Because they are incredibly hard and sharp.

Yes, because when I started doing it this year, I was doing it on the back step at the farm.

And inevitably someone would get No brought in with my shoes.

And so when I take a shower as far as I'm stepping on walnuts Gosselin and saying things I probably shouldn't say, Okay.

This is I mean, this is serious work if you're gonna just be doing it manually, right.

And And the nice part about what Right, right, okay.

And this particular batch of walnuts doesn't have the most wonderful nut meats in the in the world, but it's the ones I was.

So ones I was working on.

And I timed myself and doing it so that I'm doing all the retrieval as opposed to the way mom and dad used to do.

Or he would just break them into pieces, send them into her.

She'd pick out what she could get, send out what she couldn't, he would crack them again.

And do it that way.

Doing this.

I'm doing the whole thing when I'm done.

They're picked out.

My sister goes through and make sure there aren't any little tiny shards of Shell because we all know that's one of the downfalls of nuts is if you bite into a piece of shell you kind of lose interest in it later.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Oh, delicious.

Much more intense flavor than than the English English version.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Well, now wait a second.

Oh, I didn't get out of this.

Not at all.

That's that was that was the joy of me doing this.

Okay, here we go.

pointy side down.

I don't like that you're backing up?

Yeah, um, you have to, you have to really trust your hammer skills, which I don't.

Alright, gang, we'll be here all day.

Thanks, Chuck for coming.

And I actually was not able to crack one of those walnuts.

So I'm gonna keep practicing.

And maybe this fall, I will be a better walnut cracker on the show.

So moving on to houseplants.

Now we've got one of our newer panelists joining us today, Lauren Quinn is here via Skype.

So Lauren, if you could introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about you.

Before we get into today's discussion?

Sure.

Yep.

I'm Lauren Quinn, and I am the founder of the local cu plant people group here in town, which is a Facebook group.

For those of you who don't know, we have about 4000 members in the group right now.

And people join to talk about plants, both house plants and gardening.

And it's a great community.

And I hope everybody joins, it really is a great community.

And that's kind of how we got to know each other through the plant swaps and some of the events that you've had.

So today, we're going to talk about house plants.

And I know you have a favourite toys.

Those are, those are your jam.

So talk a little bit about why you like them.

And then you brought several varieties to share.

So I'm excited to see what you've got.

Yeah, um, so toilets, a lot of people think of these as kind of your grandmother's house plant, they, for a long time weren't particularly popular.

But recently, in the last year or so they've really picked up in popularity, and people are understanding that there's a huge amount of variety in the genus.

A lot of them will flower regularly in in a home environment, which is exciting.

Not very many houseplants do that.

So they offer a whole lot of different forms and shapes and colors.

And, and they've become kind of a hot ticket item where people are spending quite a lot of money for like, a single, you know, a little tiny stem or cutting to be sent through the mail.

That kind of thing.

And I have caught the bug.

Definitely have.

Oh god, how many if you had to put a number on it?

Because I had to ask how many would you guess?

I think I have about 50 varieties unless you weren't trying to dig it bit by the bug.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot more than that out there.

You know, so I actually have what's considered nowadays a relatively small collection, but I'm very excited about the ones I Okay, let's see what you brought.

Okay, so this is a very small, small example of your basic Hoya carnosa.

I've got a much bigger one and another part of my house that I inherited from a family member and it's like 25 years old, this huge variety, but I took a little cutting of it and you can just see it's, it's, they're called wax plants.

And they're very stiff leaves generally, kind of succulent almost.

So people think that they're relatively easy care because they're, you know, like succulents.

You can kind of forget them for a while and they'll be fine.

But any case I'll get back to that in a minute, this is the general sort of Hoya carnosa that a lot of people grew up with, with their in their grandmother's kitchen.

But there's been a lot of different types of Hoya carnosa varieties that have been developed.

This one is at a Chelsea.

So it's got sort of heart shaped leaves that have little kind of dimples in them almost, that's really pretty.

And you could see it's so shiny, you can tell it's really waxy, and the leaves look really thick.

Yeah, they're very thick.

And they're stiff, like, you can't really bend them very well.

And you can see this one's starting to grow a new vine and new leaves, and it's reverting back to a plain carnosa because it's no longer looking kind of heart shaped here.

So this stem I'd probably cut off and to encourage it to continue being, you know, more heart shaped, instead of growing back out that that way.

And then there's a whole bunch of variegated carnosa varieties, excuse me, getting very close to the camera.

Sorry.

This is a hard way a carnosa crimson Princess, that one's really paid to that one reminds me when you talk about Hoyas at Grandma's house, that one really reminds me of a plant that you would see at grandma's it's got some if it's in highlight, the the white part can kind of turn pink, or can come in pink and then go back to the white.

The stem, new stems are kind of a pinkish reddish color, which is really pretty.

And then here's another carnosa variety, which is really fun.

I think people might not like this, but I do.

It's a quiet carnosa compacta and you can see all the leaves are really curled up on themselves.

Which is kind of strange.

This one's a very gated version, but it also comes into plain green.

And this one hangs down nicely kind of looks like Medusa is hair to me, you know, those are fun, really wild looking variety.

So even in just the carnosa species, there's a lot of variety.

But then there's, you know, numbers and numbers of other species as well.

Now I have to ask, last time we had you on the show we got a lot of feedback about your cabinet behind you people were very curious about what it is what you've got growing in there.

So if you could because you know you caught people's eye caught my eye.

So what is that?

Is it an indoor greenhouse?

Is it a cabinet?

Tell us about it?

Yeah, sure.

This is one of my in one of my role like cabinets, I would call that this one happens to be made by IKEA.

So it's a Millsboro cabinet from IKEA.

And the craze right now again is taking several of the types of glass cabinets from IKEA and outfitting them with grow lights to create sort of an indoor greenhouse.

So if you look on Instagram or Facebook, you'll see hashtag IKEA greenhouse cabinet.

So that's kind of what this is.

And you'll see it's very, it's a tall, three, three shelf system.

And I have this is weather stripping on the on the door.

So it keeps the humidity inside.

I've got a couple of trays down at the bottom which maybe you can see yes because wow, they are filled with lightweight expanded clay aggregate balls also known as Leca and water so that could be any kind of Pebble tray that you might have filling it with water to keep the humidity inside the cabinet.

I also have a small fountain going in the back so it kind of you know keeps the water moisture in the air.

A couple of fans are important to keep things the air moving about so it's not going to get too stagnant in there.

And then of course I've got to grow light on every level and I've got pretty high power grow lights that keep my boys very happy and almost everything in here for now is a Hoya and yeah, in some of the boys, the nice people think something people really like about boys is that some of them become Sun stressed and they get this really kind of reddish that's pretty very pretty.

So this is a boy a mare really I very nicely Sun stressed that is a really neat setup.

And I I'm kind of eyeballing it thinking Where could I put one of those and they've got different styles and sizes of so they come in a skinnier, taller upright kind and There's a variety of them, but they are very hard to come by because people have caught on to this.

And they fell out very easily and quickly.

So I wonder if people could get creative and sort of maybe make their own.

And you know, I'm not quite so I actually did that on my other cabinet over here.

Oh, this is just a Oh, much basically, that I found, or that I inherited from a family member actually.

And you can see i It doesn't have the humidity in it.

But I did have I did set up grow lights, got the lights in there.

And it's always a good time when you can stuff more plants in going up, right, that's the name of the game to get more so awesome.

Although both of your setups are definitely goals.

Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

And we're gonna definitely have you back here soon because I know that there are a couple other topics that we didn't get to talk about today with like root rot and just some common things people run into at home with their houseplants.

So we're gonna bookmark there, and we're gonna bring you back to talk about that on another show.

But thank you so much, Lauren.

Always a pleasure.

Okay.

All right.

And thank you so much for watching.

We're out of time.

It goes so fast.

If you have any questions, you can send us an email to your garden@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook.

Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.

Good night.