this bee bomb is literally crawling with bees wow i just thought a pink onion why not try it our hostas do well in Minnesota they like our temperatures we have things blooming from early spring to late fall it's fun to imagine what this place will be like in a few years we've just gotten started hello and welcome to Great Gardening i'm your host Sharon Young and as usual we have our experts here with us they are garden professionals Deb Burn and Ericson and horiculturist and educator Bob Olen we want to hear from gardeners across our region who have questions for our experts we have phone volunteers from the St louis County Master Gardeners taking your phone questions this evening call locally at 218788-2844 or simply email us at askpbsnorth.org we're taking questions throughout the show so call or email us now while we begin tonight's show with a look at the weather in our region greener greener every time that's pretty soon we'll be mowing it right yeah right we're half mowing high mo right right no m right yeah this garden is really nice when the kids are walking to school at Congden and it's beautiful yeah we really have to thank a lot of the garden clubs a beautiful job that they do in our beautiful city pise nice they're coming out screams of spring and now every day things emerge very very quickly days are getting obviously a lot longer grass is really greening up there nice looping do you think i think so the middle oh there we go anyone that missed the beautiful dandelions the bee's favorite yeah bees need it the bees need more buds more buds look like maple buds there so uh it was very interesting you know we've had warmer temperatures but we got cold uh cold soils and it's been a little while for these buds to really begin to break throughout the region but they're they're well on their way now they are well and you can see summer is right around the corner next you can see Duthian Elizabeth Donley's beautiful flower garden i'm Elizabeth Donley and these are my gardens i've had pianies in my life my entire life my grandfather was a hybridizer we moved seven times when I was in childhood and the last thing we packed up and put on the moving truck was our peie roots this is Kansas for anybody who grows it it's awesome color sturdy stems tall kansas is a double and Mr ed here is a bomb those are the two of the primary shapes of blooms the difference is is that there's two types of petals and then a double will just look like this same petals all the way through and Scarlet O'Hare who's finished blooming is a single so she has just one row of outer petals golly is pink and yellow so it's a wonderfully joyous bomb pie but it's one of the last ones to bloom this is um Hermione which has a really sweet scent it is um honey gold that's vivid rose smells exactly like a rose they're pretty easy to grow it's a northern plant because it needs 600 hours of below freezing temperature to bloom walter Mains is a very interesting peie if you notice his inside is confetti shaped chocolate soldier is a pretty little red tucked down there dinner plate is opening today which is one of the the last ones and it's so dense that it will when it's fully open it will be the size of a dinner plate this treeini is called the sun prometheus it's amazing tree pini this is Dorine and she's new this year this is Angel Cheeks a good smelling one one of the old varieties that is the only peie that I have in my garden that my grandfather was um involved in the hybridization of it's has lacquered petals you can see how shiny they are helen Matthews her petals are heart-shaped and so we press them and then stick them in Valentine's i'm sure you can agree those pees are incredible now Deb what did you want to share with our viewers this week well I was just going to talk about how everyone's gone to the greenhouse and they've gotten all kinds of things spent a lot of money or they have also been growing things um in their wherever their um production or u propagation area is and so now I want to just talk about how we can make sure that we do the best care for them as we're going to be putting them out so I was talking about hardening off seedlings in seven days now this is just down the road but just to be prepared so you know what undertaking it's going to um be so first it will help with heat stress if you look at that picture of that poor marold on there that one had heat stress it could have also had a wind desiccation um and it it can present the same but it looks like it was really dry but it's really from full sun and full wind going straight out of a greenhouse or straight out of um your own propagation and um it can lead to transplant shock and scorched leaves so hardening off can take up to two weeks if the weather has dramatic temperature swings which we always do we go up and down quite a bit tonight we're going to um have another cold um night and so um so it will take you up to 10 days and to two weeks but um it's a kind of a good plan to have for seven days um and it can be done um with the things you start and the things that are grown in a greenhouse have been protected they've been perfectly cared for and so they are going to need some care when going outside so um how to harden them off in seven days so um you can start when you're um transplants are with true leaves at least a couple inches a little bit taller um is nice to just start this process but we're talking at the end of May this is just to prepare so on day one you can start by setting the seedlings outside in partial sun and that's seedlings or that is anything you've gotten from a greenhouse um and so then it is um for two to three hours outside the first day in partial sun i like the evening because it's warmer and you can get some dappled sun and only two to three hours then day two you can set outside in full sun for two to three hours um just moving it a little bit uh and then day three if you put it out for about four hours with a slight breeze you're getting used to the wind desiccation a little bit of drying because that wind really does dry out things and then day four they go outside for five to six hours of full sun now this is a full-time job right so now you're you're walking your plants in and out all the time but you've paid money for them or you've invested a lot of time in them so you really want to take care of them for this you know time of hardening off and then day five set them out all day and protect from predators because nobody wants a rascally rabbit to eat everything that they have worked so hard on um day six set outside you can leave it out now again we're watching temperatures we're watching the weather forecast and um you and and it's good to if you keep them off the ground overnight because the ground is so cold and it will um get cooler quicker and you if you're going to cover them at night it's good to cover them early don't wait until it is cold because you want to hold that heat that's already there and then day seven you can transplant out um hopefully it'll be a cloudy day because that really helps with the transition and so that it's not quite so um uh wind desiccation not full sun not shock right and then um you can transplant them out best again cloudy weather i like to do it later in the day um again depending on weather just because of if it's cloudy and it's not quite as cold as it is in the morning get them used to that also or you can use a mini greenhouse you can use those um wall of water um to protect your warmer seedlings outside so then um like that picture of that marold that was there um so when you're the I mean these come out of a greenhouse they're um well cared for um and then this is the way they should look and if you harden off then these guys are going to continue to look like this and um you won't be scared and then call your greenhouse and say "I don't know what I did what do I do?"

Well you just need to harden them off a little bit longer and um and yeah they will be much happier with you if you do that for them that's great advice for people who weren't taking notes i think you said uh it's going to take a little bit of time for them to adjust a little bit more sun each day little bit more wind each day and protect from the predators exactly great we've been waiting on winter right protecting them all right well thanks Deb now those of you at home keep emailing and calling in your questions we're going to get to a couple right now chris in Pengilly says "Hi and has an old oak tree pretty much in the sand that needs to come down and they're looking for a replacement tree it's all alone in the backyard and the birds love it they're looking for something that's pretty grows quickly and tolerates the soil do you have any suggestions?"

Sandy soil yeah it's going to be sandy um you know if he wants deciduous he has a lot of different options there i think the drainage I think is is good um he would have his choice really of any number of uh tree species grows oaks so evidently it's uh rather temperate you probably want to look at the maple basswood complex in Pengilly i think you could do well with any number there's a lot of species there he wanted he wanted quick now what they're always going to be trade-offs we got soft maple and hard maple as example all your soft maples are going to grow faster uh they have a part of silver maple as part of the genetics but they're not going to last quite as long they're not going to be as wind hardy and winter they can be a lot of shattering so there is a trade-off if you got a little more time you can get a little better species the hard maples the sugar maples the red maples so you have to think about those options if you got lots of time go with the harder heartier species like the oak that they serve well Julie in Hermantown wants to know if it's safe to plant onions now oh definitely oh yes bob Burns has been out there all day I'll tell and so have you right how many did you put in we put in 6,000 so we've been busy from transplants now is the time to do it plant those onions joy in Two Harbors has lady slippers in her yard that were eaten by deer last fall will they grow back this year oh that's a good question yeah how much how much when were they eaten by the deer and how much root storage did they have yeah that's kind of the question that's the big issue uh I wouldn't be overly optimistic if uh if they took them right down to the ground and if it was earlier in the season i know if it's early if it's like that later October we'd be good yeah but yeah okay daniel from Grand Rapids wants to know which plants were best to plant with banana peels oh well banana peels okay kind of magic little potassium there um I think banana peels they compost real well you can you got your choice there i don't think there's any we have with some things like the uh the walnuts we have an what we call an opathic effect where you can have some negativity i don't think there's any problems really with uh banana pills it's not going to hurt anything take your choice yeah okay rosemary from Babbot is asking when she should fertilize Junebearing strawberries okay okay the June bearing varieties I really think you want to get some nitrogen to them right now at this this time right as they're beginning to emerge when you got a lot of leafy green tissue would you agree yeah absolutely yeah you want to go now rather than later because you want that green tissue there that'll finish off the you're going to get the the flower buds and then the fruit so that fertility should go on especially if they're already starting you know just get let them get growing a little bit before you apply then the other time we tend to renovate uh June bearing beds and then if you're going to cut them back and renovate them then we fertilize at that point to bring the new growth on as well okay lynn from the Iron Age wants to know if you can plant panies by lilacs why not yeah i don't mean not in the shade of them not in the shade of them but if you planted them outside of them they're they're going to coexist very well together sure okay and Laurian Hibbing says "Every year I rake up my flower beds of most of the leaves I've replaced in the fall for winter protection i have so much grass in my perennial flower beds to pull but what am I doing wrong?"

Nothing grass is just so aggressive i think um she's not doing anything wrong there i I think that you just have to stay on top of it and continue to pull it out and pull out that long underground ryome and the stolins that are in there as well all right well thank you for all the questions and next we want to know we want you to know we're looking for more photos of your gardens for the local dirt as you're gardening this season please email your photos to the same email at askpbsnorth.org for a chance to be on a future episode of Great Gardening now we're looking forward to seeing what you've got growing this season so send those photos in we've got a lot more gardening to talk about bob what have you got in store for our viewers well as Deb mentioned uh this time of year we can get a lot of variability it was just a little over a week ago we had snow on the ground and we had uh just over away from the hill and farther north there was we had some snow that actually accumulated now here it's going to be very very warm coming up and frost tonight supposedly again as it was last night in many areas so I I think I wanted to give people the average frost dates if we take a look at the airport temperatures um in Duth at the airport May 19th the average frost in other words last frost comes half the time before that half the time after that at down at the harbor May 22nd over in Superior because they have a little more lake effect that's May 15th and then we get farther north both Hibbing and Elely it's all the way out to June 10th now remember this is the average frost date there's still a 30% probability of frost after that average frost date so you have to be really careful if you want to set things out early you can be tempted but you might want to have some kind of a strategy in mind for covering in the event we get that sudden change in temperature as far as planting things you know we mentioned uh there was it was the soils were cold but the upper 2 three inches now have warmed very dramatically in the last couple of days here you can always plant your salad crops your lettuce your radish onions which we had the question earlier carrots uh beets Swiss chard cabbage broccoli we want to probably stay away from the cauliflower transplants because that head is setting up and that can button off it's if it's exposed to colder temperatures and then uh spinach can certain varieties in particular are vulnerable to frost so you just want to be ready to cover and then of course you're going to avoid planting all your frost sensitive warm season crops from to everything from peppers to m to tomatoes until late May or early to mid Juning depending on where you're located uh a lot of people are going to be planting things i think it's a great time to put trees and shrubs in the ground the earlier in May the better and it just occurred to me that they're really three Ps that you want to think about pruning planting how to plant it and then protecting uh in the case of pruning we'll show you a little schematic of this you want to prune to a central leader we'll show you why and then uh we'll take a look at the proper planting techniques followed up by protecting uh everything that you put in the ground just a a quick little diagram when we talk about pruning to a central leader you want that one main vertical stem you don't want two stems at the top to be fighting otherwise they get a a crotch and they can't support a lot of weight and uh you can break that tree right down the center second year we're going to continue to prune along like this even in the third year you'll notice that we still have that strong central leader so that's the basic concept relatively simple then when we take a look at planting whether you're container growing stock or whether you're planting bare root stock in the case of trees here we're going to take a look at uh what and the depth in particular that these should be planted a lot of people plant these too deep so we'll take a look at the next slide here and all of our apples in particular they are all grafted onto a hardy crab apple rootstock and there's this graft union or junction often times people will put that in the ground or at ground level that is going to be too deep you want to take a look at where the flare roots are and here's an example if you can imagine that handle that uh handle shovel handle there being the soil line you want those flare rits the major roots coming off to be just below uh the soil line and that typically is going to be uh the graph notch is going to be above that so I'd like to show you an example here which I think a homeowner that had a problem tree died on them a relatively young tree and as as Debb's mentioned these are valuable uh investments now that should last 50 years they planted that right at the ground level right here everything below that uh the actual uh bark came off and then there's cell tissue in here that was all damaged and destroyed this should have really been planted at this level here uh where the soil line is just above these major flare rits but you get them in too deep it kills this tissue that kills the entire tree all right thanks so this is where you want to really get when you're pruning this is why you want structural strength you'll see those laterals coming off because you want to support a lot of the fruit and we will show you the potential even a tree this young there's a lot of fruit and then you want to protect real quickly protect that main stem with collars and then obviously from the deer so there's a wellprotected well protruned prune tree for you thank you Bob remember there's still time for you to call or email your questions so let's get to a couple more lean Duth is worried about perennials and the frost tonight should she protect them pianies dillies tulips daffodils iris i don't think so i don't think so they're ready for it they've been They acclimate to it and I don't think it's a problem and it's You're right it's frost and not a heavy freeze if we had 20 degrees it'd be different but we're going to get 30 32 it's fine great diane in Pike Lake has pine trees and apple trees with one square foot of grass between them she wants to know "What type of fertilizer do you use to make the grass grow better?"

Oh the big problem is not fertility i'm I'm concerned about shade that's They're so close how can they be that close so I think she can use just a regular lawn fertilizer that goes on before the next rainer you have to wash it in uh but I think more than anything it's just a lack of sunlight grass needs sun yeah for sure darlene and Iron has a Martha Washington geranium in her house it doesn't bloom and she's thinking of putting it outside this year any other suggestions okay well that's interesting i don't know why it wouldn't bloom i'm going to guess that it probably isn't getting enough sunlight inside it needs to go outside the great thing about Martha Washington um geraniums is they can take a little bit cooler temperatures um and that really helps them they don't like hot blazing sun but they do need full sun they need at least six hours of good sun um on the east side is great for them just because it's a little bit cooler sun before it um comes around to the west side or the south side but at least six hours of sun kathy in International Falls has a garden with a 100x 200 foot chain link fence around the garden she's looking to kill the grass right around the fence on the outside when should she apply the herbicide to the grass the grass type is unknown okay well you know I think for grasses like that if she's careful follows all the label directions but glyphosate would be the active ingredient much more effective in the fall i will mention with the chain link fence however it's corrosive to metal so if that's galvanized she wants to be sure that she protects that with a piece of PL plastic before she makes the application but according to label direct fall it'll be very effective for her okay char from Duth has a question about using wood ashes on her vegetable garden did she get a soil test does she know what she needs that's that's the biggest question does she need it that's it exactly because you could do a lot of damage without a soil test it's a lying agent if your if your soil test recommends a lime application you can actually use a little bit less wood ash because it has a higher calcium carbonate equivalent so it's a a very uh potent lying agent so if you don't need it don't apply it uh Dale in Duth has a large American maple about 20 to 25 years old approximately 30 feet tall it's blocking the view of the lake and they want to cut it back would three feet be okay so they're going for the view corridor that's what Okay i mean you could three feet that'll be fine yeah I think so too yeah depending on how they're going to Right right not but three feet that's not too dramatic especially with a tree that big carolyn Duth has a bed of uh Vinka miner about 5 years old that died this year and wondering why completely died i wonder what was so dry in the fall i've I've heard a lot of this from customers that um some of their stuff Oh I watered it well well I don't think you did i'm sorry um and what I've been telling people to do is to cut back things and see if you get to green now that vinka minor is going to be able easy to see if it's green or not because you're going to pull on it tug on it see if there's any resistance if there's not you're probably going to lose it but I always subscribe to the fact that you should cut it back see if there's any green inside and when you get to the green stop but if it's not then pull it we did have in some ways in some areas a tough winter we had no snow early and we had some cold temperatures so that's probably a contributing factor but sometimes they're very slow to emerge too absolutely so be patient especially if it's gotten shady right in that area because that'll keep the soil temperatures cooler too it does point out a good thing but winter hardiness one of the factors is how well is that plant been grown during the growing season so water throughout the entire season when there's a lot of green tissue there y Rebecca says "I grew my vegetables tomatoes winter and summer squash and cucumbers in hay last year and had a lot of trouble with powdery mildew towards late July and August during a rainy period will those spores affect the new plants sprouting or planted this year in the same hay they can same hay absolutely i'd replace the hay i wouldn't lose the same hay yeah don't take the risk nope all right uh Mary is asking "How soon can we plant a new hydrangeia in zone 4?"

Oh right now yeah get them in the ground all right jenny in International Falls has a lot of deer lives on a lake in a wooded area with a lot of shade i have ferns and shade ground cover but I'm looking for some color can you give me some ideas okay so you could use a sysmapujia uh snake rut that has really nice foliage um a finer foliage they seem not to like as much and they are breeding new hostas that have more corrugation to them and so then they're not supposed to like that either and maybe some Sun King Aurelia just because it it's got some nice texture to it too dave in Carlton wants to know "What's the best option for garden walkways the goal is so you can walk between rows etc."

Oh garden garden garden walkways um kind of like though if he's talking about a perennial garden and we're looking for structure there or if he's just talking about uh you know walking through an annual annuals we like organic mulches because they break down very readily uh but if it's going to be a permanent walkway then they have any number of choices what I was wondering if you meant a garden garden like you know when he's walking the garden you know to keep the weeds down you know like your garden i don't you could do a lot of different things there too could do a number of different things yeah we have time for one more sandy and Hibbing wants to know if you can plant different varieties of strawberries together in the same bed oh you could you can but you want to pick really good varieties that you're putting together not I mean you don't want to put weaker things in with your better um material so you're going to have to watch what is what is the right how good are they are they June bearing are they everbearing yeah that's going to be the distinction is it a June bearing everbearing or day neutral variety and those varieties should all be separate separated so you could plant multiple cultiv cultivars of a June variety multiple cult cultivars of a day neutral but you don't want to mix the day neutrals with the uh Juneberry got it thanks so much for your questions and for joining us this evening on Great Gardening we hope you enjoyed tonight's episode and I'd like to thank our volunteers who answered the phones tonight and of course a special thank you to our gardening experts Deburn and Ericson and Bob Olen for sharing their time and expertise we'll see you next time in June with even more tips to help you grow a beautiful and successful garden this year have a wonderful evening good night