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 three of my gardening friends here to talk to you about all things green and growing.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's jump in and have them introduce themselves and get going.

So Phil, we'll start with you.

Yes, I'm Phil Nixon.

I'm a retired extension entomologist with the University of Illinois, and so I cover everything insects.

All right, okay.

I'm Kay Carnes.

I'm a Champaign County Master Gardener.

I'm a volunteer out at Allerton Park, and my specialty is herbs and vegetables.

Excellent.

And John.

I'm John Bodensteiner.

I'm a Vermillion County Master Gardener, and I like to dabble with a little bit of this and a little bit of that, little bit of this and that.

Yes, okay, Phil, let's get started.

So let me just set the stage real quick while he's bringing in our special guest.

Last week, we talked about this pencil cactus that Taylor, one of our production folks, is babysitting for a friend who has a cat.

This plan is not doing well.

We discovered that it was mealy bugs, and Phil has some things to add as the creepy crawly guy, give you some further instructions on how to deal with this in your house.

So you were watching the show last week, you just said, no, no, no, that we could do a little better than that.

All right, what they said was all correct.

Let me put that first, but you can go a little bit farther, okay, and what they were saying last week was on this pencil cactus, which you can see, is starting to die back at the tips and so on, indicating that it's under some stress.

Here's some.

It's kind of in this in the center.

And they noticed last week that down here on the base there are that some, there's some little cotton material that's showing up.

And this is indicative of mealybug attack.

And the mealybugs will will get on to the onto it, and suck out the juices, suck out the sap, and they provide a little cotton area through this, out of the way and and so in a more in a heavier infestation, it will look very similar to this in which you'll and what you really want to look at are some of the areas over here on the sides that are that are not as heavily infested.

That's more what you're likely to see on your on your plants at home.

The situation is that it takes a real human greenhouse and a lot of ignoring to get it to that to that state that's in the center, but over to the side is more likely what you see.

These will suck out sap out of the plant.

And the problem that occurs with cacti, even pencil cactus and African virus as well.

Very commonly, they will get down on the root system.

And Shane culture came about with the idea that, from his understanding associated with them, in a greenhouse situation, you toss the plant as far as possible.

Essentially, your nursery situation does not want to mess with them.

Because with them getting what he doesn't didn't bring out was from getting on a root system.

You'll get rid of a top on the top, but they'll come back on you, and they'll come back on you, and they'll come back on you.

And so to get rid of of them down below, you need to work down below as well.

Now Shane mentioned the idea of using a cotton swab and alcohol.

Essentially, you dip a Q tip cotton swab into alcohol.

I like to use 70% rubbing alcohol and just touch the individual mealy bugs to them.

And you really need to do that on a weekly basis.

I had a plan when I was in graduate school, and I was able to eliminate with that, but there was one day a week.

It was sitting on my office desk, and I did it that same day of the week every week for an entire winter.

And I got rid of a problem.

You are looking at a three to four month process this way.

John indicated he just sprays his with 40% alcohol.

And you have to be careful with that, because some plants are susceptible to the alcohol.

Yes, and usually the fuzzier or thinner the leaves are, the more susceptible they are, because what alcohol will do is it will dry it out.

Okay, there are other chemical methods, and probably the best thing perhaps, to use, or one of the better ones is, is insecticidal soap.

And here's a couple different brands of it that you can not only spray the plant with it and kill the crawlers, the young, mealy bugs you would scrape off the big masses, first with a toothpick or something like that.

Someone's not going to hurt from foliage and and the and you can spray that weekly, again for at least three months.

Three to four months, what you're trying to do is get the young ones that are hatching out.

We call them crawlers, and that's how it's going to work.

Now, what about the ones on the roots?

Well, this will work also on the root system.

Mix it with water.

Is directed water of a plant till the water comes out of the bottom of the plant, and then water the plant with insecticidal soap solution till it comes out of the bottom of a pot, and then you have saturated and you probably only need to do that once every couple weeks for two or three times, and you will knock those out.

Another option is a more chemical option, and oh, by the way, do not decide that you go online and find out that you can use palm olive liquid or dawn or something like this instead of insecticidal soap.

It will tell you that you will, that you can, and you can, but you will kill your plant.

Okay, particularly if you put in a root system that detergent that is not meant to be nice to plants, will take all those waxes off of those roots, and they will dry out and die, and you will lose a plant very, very quickly that way.

So do not, do not, do not.

Go cheap, okay, okay, get insecticidal soap.

It was formulated for that purpose to not kill plants.

Both kill bugs.

The insecticidal soap does not kill the plants near as well.

Okay.

The other third option is, is imato clopid or imminent clopid?

This is, this is one of the new insecticides, fine to use.

It's a concern associated with pollinators, but not associated with plants, no bloom, which are going to be your pencil package for, for probably as long as you own it and and that can be put into the soil.

It's systemic.

It'll go up from the plant kill, the kill the mealy bugs from the inside out, and it will also kill those that are in the soil.

Okay, so, so what's the prognosis on our on our friend?

I mean, if, if three quarters of a plant look like the willie part, then I'd be a little concerned.

But, I mean, it's, it's in good shape, because otherwise, you know, okay, great advice.

Okay, okay, we are to you.

Okay.

Well, I brought a potato.

We're getting into March, and soils getting a little warmer.

And soon will be a good time to plant potatoes.

They like the cooler, but not.

You want to make sure your soil is not frozen, but it's okay if it's cool, you can do cut them, put them in either a bed or a furrow.

You can dig a furrow six inches deep, and you want to cut off the eyes that are growing.

So this one's got a really nice one started.

And then there's some smaller ones, which, if you leave, they'll get bigger.

And this is the part you want.

So any of those dark spots are going to be, and how big of a chunk do you need to cut out usable?

Well, you just want to, like this one I would cut through here, okay, and you want to plant with the potato side down in this side up, and good ideas of trench.

Like I said, you put six or three or three inches of soil, plant this and then fill it till to the top.

Do you call us off?

Let your potatoes after you've cut them.

Do you let them callous off?

Yes, you let it.

Let that area, the cut area, dry so they don't mold.

Now I have a question, and I can't be the only one.

Do you have to get seed potatoes in order to grow potatoes?

Can I walk into the grocery store and plant that's what this is a grocery store.

I've always wanted to know that you had to get seed potatoes or sprout retardant.

If you wash it real good, usually they'll come obviously, this wasn't spray.

You got a good one there, but any potato that sprouts eyes.

You can grow, yes, potatoes, okay.

And, like I said, You could do a trench.

You can do a bed, raised bed.

Some people do buckets.

I've seen structures.

You can build it.

You can keep adding up.

Yes, usually the deep trenches.

The six inch ones, you put them in, cover it with three inches of soil, and then as they sprout and grow, you gradually add back the rest of the soil.

And you can start those when the ground is workable, yes, yes, as soon as it's workable, because they like the cold.

That gives us something.

To do while we're waiting, yeah, for the tomatoes.

Okay, thank you, Kay, John, we are to you.

Okay, so everyone is interested right now about seed starting.

They're trying to get ahead.

I know some people have already started their tomatoes.

I haven't started my tomatoes yet.

I usually wait first weekend in March, 2 week, maybe the last weekend in February.

I've controlled myself this year, so I haven't that was one of our questions.

Kimberly Payne wanted to know when she could start her tomato seeds inside.

And Chuck Boyd had his plant start, or his seed starting, and it said April, one through 15 on tomatoes.

And that's about what I like to do, because normally we don't have enough light in our homes too, and they start to get leggy.

They get too big.

You take them out, you haven't, if you haven't hardened them off, the wind comes.

It snaps them right off.

There's, you know, it's, it's just a little bit too early.

Yet we're getting close, but it's it's still too early.

So okay, when you do get your seeds starting, you want to make sure that you have a nice, clean pot.

Dip it in 10% Clorox and use good, good seed starting mix you follow the package directions on the back if it says it's going to be four to six weeks before you can plant it out in the garden.

Go up there and see is May 15 about four to six weeks?

Or is it six to eight weeks?

Is it 12 weeks?

Start your seeds accordingly.

Look at that back package.

Also, as far as planting depth, there's all kinds of different pots that you can have, and some of them you just barely cover.

Others you have to, you know, the larger the seed, the deeper they usually go.

You know, two to three times the size of the seed is how much soil you put over them.

Some of them are so dusty, I don't know how you could measure such a little, so little soil on top.

I like to use once I have them in the ground, and I usually like to use pre moistened seed starting.

I use warm water.

They have done some studies, and they find that warm when you at least room temperature, not right out of the out of the faucet.

When it's really, really cold, it kind of shocks this, you know, especially if they started to germinate, kind of shocks and sends them back a little bit.

Another one is light.

You need good light.

And I brought this little guy.

This is my little this is my littlest seat starting.

And there's, there's my light.

It's got, you know, you can see, you know, John cannot resist a gadget.

This is, this is one of the little ones.

And the other thing that is, I find, especially in this area.

Here is a warming tray.

This is one of the wonders.

You can grow.

Quite a few starts it, but this is a warming tray, and a lot of people like to put them on top of the refrigerator.

There's no room on top of my refrigerator, so that's not going to work.

So these seeds, they work better.

People use other things that warm things up.

But this is going to be that, to me, is magic, because a lot of seeds need 70 degrees or a little bit above to germinate.

And you know, depending on what you're wanting go to go look at your seed catalogs.

There's all kinds of information.

If you're brand new, there's some really good books out there.

This is the seed starters handbook, and certain seeds need to be moistened before they get it.

Just this has all kinds of information.

It's got the cheat code in there.

It has, it is, it goes over everything, as far as seed starting.

So to me, that's that's magic.

Kind of plan out your garden before you go to the seeds and buy local.

If you can seeds anything, it's a lot cheaper to buy the seeds.

If you if you know it's a lot more time consuming than going.

But don't go.

Don't go to the seat seed area without knowing what you want a plan, because you'll end up you want, you wanted three seeds, and you end up going home with 12 and packets or 20.

I wanted to show this guy off real quick.

So in December, when you were here, it was right before Christmas, I think it was our last show of the year.

You brought in a mother of 1000s.

And at the end of the show, there were all these little plantlets on the table, because if you just touch.

Them, you know, they fall off.

And so I, of course, scooped these into my palm and tossed them in my backpack and took them home.

And this was in December.

And so here is what they've turned into.

So from here, tell me how to thin these out.

Tell me what to do with all of these.

What I would do is I would, I would being that you've got a nice clump here, I would just grab them out and pull the whole thing out.

You might actually put a pencil or something in here and loosen it up just a little bit, pull them out, and then very carefully separate them.

If, if you want to save every one, that's a lot, there's a lot.

You may just want to take a knife and cut down and do six cuttings or six like a pie.

You can do that.

And you're, yeah, you're going to lose some, but there's so many in there.

But you do need to get them to the point where there's only one or two in a, in a in a spot, because ready to be divided now, this is you've got, you've got, you've there.

Okay, all right.

They're fasting.

Yeah, they're getting a little leggy.

That means that they may not be getting as much light as they probably like, but that's okay.

You can plant them deep.

They're succulent, so plant them deep.

And to be continued, on these guys, yes, Okay, wonderful.

All right, Phil, we're back to you.

One of the insects that we're starting to be concerned about is spotted lanternfly.

And this is a new pest.

It's from Asia.

Another, another thing that's that's come in from then let's see we get the light a little better.

There we go.

And and essentially these are going to you hear a lot about them feeding on on Tree of Heaven and and they will do that.

And in fact, that's probably one of their favorite hosts, if not their favorite host.

But they will also feed a lot on grapes and and stone fruits of various types, such as stone fruits include cherries and peaches and and nectarines and things of that nature.

Apricots, they will also feed on many different types of hardwood trees.

So deciduous trees, ones that have have wider leaves associated with them and the the adult lanternfly is about an inch long, a little bit more than that, and they sit on the trees with their front wings, pet like over the top of the of the colorful hind wings that are got red on them, and so and so, if you go by them, one or two of them will flick their wings and You'll see that flash of red they are not in Illinois that we know of.

We do know that they're in Western Michigan and very heavy in Pennsylvania and Jason areas to Transylvania, but they have gotten out in the end of the Mid America area as well, quite a bit in Michigan, some in Ohio, I think a couple in Indiana, perhaps, but, but they are on the way.

Here they are coming.

And unfortunately, once they got into Western Michigan, there are quite a number of people that will camp or have second homes from the Chicago metro area there.

So you can just about that they're due to show up there.

Same thing happened with gypsum off.

Same thing happened with Ron Ashmore showed up in Michigan first.

Then it wasn't more than just a short time in which somebody inadvertently carried it to Illinois.

They didn't get there on their own.

They got carried.

But at any rate, these will start out, as you can see in the diorama up at the top, there's a little black one and a little red one.

These are, these are about the red ones are a little bit larger, but they'll start out being noticed about a quarter inch long.

They're black with white spots, so they show up pretty well on the bark of a tree.

The red ones will be even more obvious, and then the even the adults will see we can get those.

Here's the red and the black starting to show up.

So, so this is these will be out there.

They produce a lot of honeydew, which is a lot of sap coming out from the backseat of their abdomens, and that will coat the leaves underneath on trees and shrubbery and undergrowth below it, turning the kid in a black, sooty mold on it.

It'll be sticky.

You'll get kind of a mess from that, and that's probably a bigger problem there on most trees than anything else.

When you get into grapes, they will be more of an impact on yield, but keep your eye out for it.

If you see them, go online, let the Illinois Department of Agriculture know you found them.

They'll want to come out and look and verify.

But we need to know when this is here.

We know where it is.

So if we can come up with anything to do against it, or at least help reduce its spread, we need to get on as soon as we can.

Okay, so is there much?

Many Tree of Heaven in this area.

I don't notice a lot of tree of heaven, but he can't tend to sneak up on you.

Yeah, I lived my, my brother used to, used to live over the life of area and and I thought, well, you know, they're not around much, and certainly not in a little town like this, where you dig up what happens to sprout up and plant it?

No, their whole side of their yard was full of tree heaven.

I said you might.

And the easiest way to tell if you got true heaven, if you've got lots of shoots coming up in your yard all the time, but you're mowing off and doesn't do it just in the spring when the Silver Maple seeds are coming on all summer long.

If you got that coming up and they're all over the yard, you either have probably a sumac or a Tree of Heaven, and they can be invasive.

And they're quite invasive because of that, they come up from the roots, okay, all right, so keep an eye out for those.

And contact your local extension, local extension or or go online to to Illinois Department of Agriculture.

They'll have a place to do that.

All right, we've got a tree ID.

Question from Jeff.

It reads, can you help me Id this tree that's growing next to where I work, in Champaign.

I've tried using a couple different apps.

He's had no luck.

He's taken pictures of the bark and all sorts of things, but sent in some pictures, and it's got some really characteristic, like drooping seeds, like other seeds.

So those are flowers, all right.

Oh, flowers.

Okay.

So we've, we've looked at these photos here, and we think we have an answer.

So whomever wants to, I think these are Box Elder.

This is a, this is probably the least preferred species of maple.

It is a type of maple, but it has this odor to it.

If you disturb a foliage, it has an odor to it.

It seeds heavily.

It attracts Box Elder bugs, which are quarter inch to half inch long, red, back, flat, back, shield bug type things.

And it's also very weak wooded breaks apart in storms.

Old little town I grew up of diverse south of Springfield.

Some of the best trees in the whole town were Box Elder trees, just simply, because they got past that really weak, wooded stage, they will get a big trunk on them, two or three feet in diameter.

This one obviously has a trunk of getting approaching that and so they're they're not nothing that you necessarily have to get rid of.

However, if it's overhanging your house, you probably need to have an arborist look at, see if it needs to be trimmed back or removed, because it is a tremendous limb breakage problem, and that's probably the biggest problem, I would say, when you say, yeah, that's, that's, you know, you never, you can't tell just by looking at it.

You need an arborist to come in and technically look at, at how the inner part of the the tree is.

Does it make a mess, I'm sure.

And you can see get a maple like seeds being dropped around on around, and, of course, they sprout.

And you get young trees coming up, like you would with silver maple.

So you get a, you get a, you get a mass of those around in the yard many times, but they mow off and don't come back very well.

You do it repeatedly, but they will show up.

You'll find one that somehow got to be a foot and a half tall in the middle your flower bed of things that go on.

I would much rather have a tree if it grows too much, rather than too little.

Personally, fair enough that tree was we have a question for these two guys.

Last year, we have several fruit trees.

We've got apples, pears, peaches, some others.

Not one tree had one blossom on it.

None of them.

If you remember, what was the coldest it got last winter, the winter before last.

Might remember correctly, it was 32 below zero.

Okay.

Think that was that's enough to kill the flower buds, yeah.

And that's they never even got to they never got a chance.

Sometimes we'll have flower buds, and then we'll get a late frost or freeze, and that kills the buds.

But yeah, you if you look to where, well, if you a lot of our fruit trees are from China area, if you look at where their latitude is, and what their growth zones are.

You look over here and you kind of put them on here, it kind of looks like, you know, you do real well growing most of our non Apple fruit trees or stone fruits, anywhere except for cherries, your peaches and plums and all those look real good if you plant them in Kentucky for yourself.

Yeah.

So you know, so they do well up here, they'll do well for many years.

They are shortened in lifespan the farther north you are.

When I live in the Chicago metro area, if you got eight to 10 years out of a peach tree, you were doing well down.

Here at this in central Illinois, we tend to think of it in terms of 17 to 20 years.

Southern Illinois, it's usually 20 years to 30 years, seva pattern.

So, you know, it's a situation where, yeah, they'll survive here.

Are they best here?

No.

And part of that comes out is that late freezes will commonly nip off the buds, and then if you get colder temperatures after it, if you get the guy I used to, used to share an office with, would mention out he was a fruit guy, he would say that anytime peaches got below 28 degrees, they drop all the peaches off the trees.

So there's another one that comes beyond, beyond just the flowering.

So they're a little marginal.

Got about one minute, John, did you ever comment just, just another thing on the peach trees is we get the real wet springs, and then, and peaches do not like wet feet, and that the roots die back, and then it gets all of a sudden, hot, dry.

And that is another determining I've got my peaches on a hillside, and I've got some that are 30 years old so, and I say it's because of the drainage.

So, all right, that goes so fast, and we got a lot covered today.

So thank you all so much for coming in.

Thank you guys so much for watching.

If you've got questions for our panelists, send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, or just, of course, on social search for Mid American Gardener, and we will see you next time.

Thanks so much for watching.

Good night.