Unknown: Hello, and thanks so much for joining us for another edition of MidAmerican gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain.

And joining me today are three of our panelists here to answer your questions and show you some of the things that they brought from their garden.

So having them introduce themselves.

Let's see, we've got the two for one.

So let's start with Ella and Karen, why don't you guys introduce yourselves?

And tell us a little bit more about where we can find you outside?

Okay, I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm up here in Taswell County.

I'm a taswell county master gardener and horticulturist and I enjoy vegetable gardening flower gardening trees and shrubs.

I've got a pretty big garden and I've got some insect problems I'm going to share today.

All right, Karen.

Hi.

And I'm Karen ruckle.

I'm a horticulturist in the Peoria area and I have a small manageable garden.

And I love to do houseplants perennials, lots of perennials.

Awesome.

And Jen.

I am Jen Nelson.

I'm a horticulturalist and you can find me online at grounded and growing calm.

I like a little bit of everything.

But my favorite things are vegetable gardening house plants.

So we've got the big garden lady.

We've got the small garden lady, we've got the container garden lady, we've got a nice mix of just about everybody here on the show today.

Awesome.

Okay, so as normal.

We'll start with our show Intel's so um, Jim, how about we start with you?

What do you bring today?

Okay, my first my examples today.

Sorry.

My examples today are all accidents that happened at my house.

Sometimes the best laid plans go a little bit astray when you get busy.

But this is a plant, mini monstera.

Also, the Latin is refitted for a tetra sperma I bought it last summer and it grew like crazy.

And I even tonisha This is the one I gave you a start of and it was growing so well inside.

And I wanted to make a little poll for it to climb up.

And I said it outside intending to get to it, you know, when I had when I had time, and it got blown around in a storm and it broke out, broke some of these big, long, beautiful stems.

And so instead of just throwing it away, I'm trying to propagate them.

And I learned last summer that these are really a lot easier to propagate in water.

I tried using routing hormone and putting them in damp soil and they just didn't do anything until I just put them in water plain old water for a while and then potted them up once the roots got going.

So that's my first mistake or my first accident of the day.

The one that you gave me is still going strong though.

So just wanted you to know it's hanging on and in good hands.

Now you've talked before about how water roots and soil roots are not the same.

So when you do eventually move that to soil, will you do any pruning root pruning or anything to kind of get that ready for the transition?

Well, I'll try to do it sooner rather than later.

It looks like it's getting close to you don't want it to be like feats of roots, you don't want it to be filling that vase that I have it in with roots, you want just a two to three inches in my in my experience that's been easiest.

And maybe put it in a ziplock and give it some extra humidity until you see some new growth.

Oh, now that I haven't tried before, so you mean put the root end in a Ziploc, put the potted up in soil and it's got to grow some new roots to establish in that soil put that whole pot in a large Ziploc just the kind of baby the band's a little bit, you would probably you would do the same thing with other methods of propagation just to lessen how much it's drying out.

Give it that sort of greenhouse feel within that.

Okay, interesting.

I've never I've never thought it before I've done the moist paper towel but not the entire thing like a small pot.

So yeah, you do need to keep an eye on it.

Make sure it doesn't it's not too wet because too much moisture could be start rot happening, but just keep an eye on it.

You don't want it to dry out at this point.

Okay.

All right.

We'll check back in with you later for your second happy accident.

Okay, on to the dream team here the duo Dynamic Duo, which one of you would like to go first with your show in tow?

Oh, I'll show my insects.

Okay, so if you go out in my garden, this is what some of my cone flowers look like.

There is no flower left.

So I cut these this morning.

I think You can see that there's it's dark.

And that is caused by a little weevil.

So there is a small insect.

And I got him here.

Oh, you brought the inserts on the show.

I yeah, I got them.

But anyway, here's here's the cone flower.

And you can see where it's been.

This little weevil has a snout.

So I got him on a piece of tape.

Okay, right there.

So maybe you can see his little snout.

But actually, it's important to identify the insect.

But what, what they do is they feed on the stem, enough for it to just break off or sometimes just hang over.

And then they come and they mate in the cone, and they lay larva, and those hatch and feed inside this cone head that's fallen over and then they pupate, and they won't emerge until next year again.

So this insect has a single life cycle, one generation per year, the adults will not see the babies.

This is what it looks like inside, it's blackened.

And there'll be a little white grub like larva here, and you can see the I think you can see them on there.

But anyway, they make these little marks, and then it just falls over.

So there are no chemical sprays to control this insect.

Because the time that it would be most vulnerable is also the time that the flowers are open.

And we do not want to contaminate the flowers for other pollinators that are using their resources.

So the best thing that you can do is you can take a little container with some soapy water, you go out early in the morning, and you pick off these broken overheads.

And you can drop them into the soapy water.

And so you control the the adult generation by drowning them.

And then you also dispose of the flowerheads, which would be next year's.

So last year, I had a whole bunch had to find out what it was.

And that's the first important thing is to find out and properly identify the insect and then the control strategies.

And for this one, it's just mechanically picking them off to reduce the population for the flower following season.

I have a question is that specific to cone flowers because I'm seeing some damage like that in my sunflowers?

No, it's not called flower is one of the plants that they will visit, they'll also go to the silphium like the cup plant, they can also do that kind of damage on sunflowers as well.

So what you want to do is check early in the morning when the adult insect is still on the flower or the flower head and you want to look for those little dark dings where their little snout pierces the the stem.

Because this is what you're going to end up with.

And again, I'm not going to spray any insecticide, but I'm going to physically remove and try to reduce the number of adults and the potential for next year's generation.

Interesting and will you see on one plant will you see several of these and infestation of these or is this just maybe one or two that can do this much damage in one area?

It's it's um, that there several larva inside the head so many adults will emerge.

And so it's primarily the female that notches the flower head, but she will mate with the male little weevil to be able to lay a fertilized egg.

So I've caught them in the soapy water where there'll be two of them together.

So I got you know, the the payer, Mom and Dad Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

That's good information because I know a lot of people are probably going out wondering what the heck's going on and why are my flower tops drooping over or falling off?

So great info.

Thank you, ma'am.

Okay, Karen, Ron, do you?

Well, and I wanted to talk today, we're getting to that time period for harvesting garlic and my garlic.

What I did is I don't like, I don't have a lot of room in my garden.

So this year, I did them in an old nursery pot.

So what I did was just took, it's about a 15 inch nursery pot, it was number 10 size, but what they used to call it number 10.

And I put landscape fabric in the bottom of it last fall, filled it with a container soil mixture, because that I'm not going to have it in the ground, it's going to be a container.

And then I planted my garlic cloves into the container.

And but knowing that the garlic, you just can't have this sitting outside and freeze the garlic went like that above ground.

So what I did is in my garden, everything was done in the garden.

So I healed it in and I dug a hole and sunk the pot down into my garden, covered it with a little straw, and then just forgot about it until spring.

Then spring when it was time to actually do stuff in my garden, I yanked the pots up out of the ground, stuck them on a landscape wall in the yard, and just let them go on growing.

So then at least, harvest was easy, because I just dumped about the pots.

So right now I've got out of my two pots.

A good amount.

So now I'll let these dry down completely.

I don't need to leave the roots or the stems, I just, you know, this is the whole plant intact.

So you know, they were kind of tall.

So they took they took up some space.

So at least they weren't space in my garden.

Will those look amazing, Karen, they look very healthy.

Yeah, I'll dry them down.

And so this is one of them that where I've because of I harvested them early enough, I still had the skins completely encompassing the the the cloves, and that's what you want.

Because if you harvest them too late, all of the skin will be down to this point.

And you'll actually then kind of have a dirty garlic cloves.

So one clove that I planted last year then produced a head that has about five decent clothes on them.

So it was a good way for me to have fun with growing garlic, but not letting it take up a lot of space because I don't have a lot of space to give to something like garlic.

Okay, I'm gonna put you on the spot, can you help us understand the difference between Hard and Soft neck and which one is better for our growing zone.

And if you don't know, this could just be a group affair.

But I personally I have trouble knowing the difference.

And so I can't be the only one.

So tell tell us a little bit about garlic and type.

Well, and the thing is, you know, garlic is one of those things.

I don't know how many times through the years I've read about them and read different articles and all the different stuff behind it and then I completely forget it.

But in our area, typically we would we would plant the hard neck and so a hard neck is down through my clove.

This middle stem is very defined and it's it's thick.

This is what's a hard neck and Ella we were talking before we came on today in the grocery store what you get typically is soft neck, this middle area is completely gone and really doesn't have much to it.

So it just seems to be in our area.

The hard neck does better now with with my garlic.

I did not purchase it.

I got it from my friend last fall who gave me some of her grown garlic and then I broke it apart and plant them in my pots.

Awesome.

Alright, anybody else want to chime in anybody else growing garlic or have any tips?

No.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you ladies.

Okay, Jen, we're gonna go back to you with your your your next accident.

My next happy accident that I wasn't so happy when I discovered it was literally the same day I bought a new little succulent that I have in a little rack on my kitchen counter under a girl light.

I noticed some leaves were scattered on the counter and I asked my kids and they just looked at me and said not me.

So when I get my hands on not me he's gonna be in trouble but this is from a succulent called bears pa and I they were just broken leaves.

Turns out somebody in my house might have been climbing on the counter to try to get at the candy that It's in the top of the cabinet.

But we don't have that on video.

So we're not exactly sure I'm just basing it on past activities.

But um, so these broken leaves, instead of throwing them away, I just set them on the counter and let them dry off.

Because being a succulent, you need it to callus over is the term.

So before you can try to propagate it and these actually sort of growing roots as they were sitting on my counter.

So I will get a little small container of soil and just plop those roots into the soil.

And I should get a teeny tiny plant growing right around this area.

But I have three of them that I've all done to differing degrees, the the routing, this one was not really broken off at the base of the leaf, it was broken more in the middle, but it still made the made the little route.

Let's usually you get better routing, if it's if you have the base of the leaf intact.

And this one, this one did too.

So do you use any moisture or anything as you're trying to route those you just kind of about light.

They're just these were sitting under the same girl light that the rest of these little succulents in the kitchen are under, I literally found this happy accident and just set these leaves aside intending to do something with them and forgot about them.

And then I looked at them this morning when I was making breakfast and I said Oh, look, they have roots, and I need to show and talk today.

And it just worked out and the cycle continues right.

And not me makes visits to my home as well.

So I think he makes the rounds, you know and tries to get our kids into trouble.

So thank you, Jen.

All right, we're going back to Karen with another show and tell item.

Well, this, this goes right back with what Jen was saying about you.

This wasn't a happy accident.

But talking about succulents out of my yard, I've got some sort of seed and I have no idea now what variety it was.

But a couple weeks back, the plant was getting quite leggy.

And there's a lot of perennials that benefit from a pinching early in the season, just just nipping out the growth out of the top to help get the little sturdier little fuller.

And and especially if you hadn't done that a lot of these rains, you know, plants have fallen over with the weight.

So I went around to this plant and I nipped off all these long shoots on it to help take it back a little bit in height and sturdy it up.

And I had this pile of number of these.

And I thought boy, it sure would be nice to propagate them.

And oh my god, I'll get to it later.

And so I just left them laying in the yard there by the plant.

Two days later, I came back and I'm like, hey, look, these still look okay, so I went ahead and actually potted them up and didn't throw them with a new landscape.

And because at the once again, a succulent that calcine over helped.

You don't want a lot of moisture, because they have so much with them.

And I am starting a couple of my can tell they have rooted because I am starting to get some new growth but I didn't really do much extra I put them in potting soil, had it lightly moist, lightly watered them afterwards.

And then I've just left them completely alone sitting in a shaded area.

So now I have more of the system to give to somebody else.

No more of the mystery see them.

Now is it good?

Because Ella, you gave me some serum earlier this year.

And I did cut them back just a little bit and boy, have they really flushed out is there any certain time that it's too late to do that in a growing season?

is you know if if someone watching this sees this today, you know, is it okay to do in July or is that something you should do in the fall or in the spring?

Well, it's July is getting a little dicey because it were already to mid July and some of these plants we start seeing that fall blooming even though it's not fall in August.

So it's it's really almost a little too late.

So it's not going to hurt the plant.

If you did that.

The problem is you would delay that growth and that flowering and then if the flowering is delayed too long, and we've got a silly fall that we get an early frost, you might miss out on all that flowering.

Now the thing is, if something happens at the plant gets broken, or or stepped on or crushed or or, you know, somebody came by, you could go ahead and propagate it and it would still survive.

It's just where your blooming would be.

So it's it's more that spring to probably mid June a lot of these perennials and it's it's actually your remembering so remember from last year what was kind of annoying in the yard what got a little too tall or too leggy and then didn't stand up to storms or wind.

And then that's what you need to remember next spring to catch him when they're only about six inches or so.

nip them back That flushing then then the plants sturdier and fuller through the whole growing season.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

So we're gonna go to you question number 48 DJ.

This is regarding hydrangea west or what someone thought was, however dangerous.

They sent in some photos.

This is from Sue Ellen Frederick.

pictures I found on the internet for hydrangea rest don't look like what I found on my leaves.

Is this what it is?

And how do I treat it love the show and have watched it for years?

So we've got a picture.

And so Ella, what are your thoughts there?

Okay, well, when I saw this picture, hydrangea rust is a is not something that I'm very aware of.

And I don't think it's a problem in Central Illinois.

All the rusts have a they have an alternate host.

And so some of the damage will be on one plant, the spores are released, it is a fungus, and then it'll go to another plant.

And I'm not sure of the life cycle.

But I do know that on all of the rusts.

The spores come from the underside of the leaf.

And the reason that it's referred to as rust is because the spores are kind of powdery and orange.

And so to really identify rust as the disease problem, we would want to see a picture of the underside of the leaf.

And I don't think we're going to find that in the picture that she sent in.

But there are a lot of other fungal diseases.

And sometimes on hydrangeas, because they're so dense and full, there may not be good air circulation.

And this could be the result of some other leaf spot disease.

And again, most of the leaf spot diseases aren't that serious.

It's when the the leaf disease then goes down the stem, and then are down the leaf to the stem and causes the stem to die, then it becomes much more serious.

So I would tell her that the best thing to do is she's already picked these leaves off, just remove them, dispose of them and wait to see if any further ones come.

There are different fungicides on the market.

But I doubt that spraying would really be necessary.

But it is important to be able to identify the disease either by the symptom or the sign of have the you know, the rust pustules on the bottom.

And and I don't think it's Russ, and I don't think she has anything to worry about.

And I'm sure her hydrangea is just beginning to bloom and it's going to look beautiful.

Well, and that's another thing to talk about with hydrangeas is that earlier in the summer were so hot is when you water don't get the leaves what the leaves don't need to be washed off water the base of the plant because then you are keeping it dry or not not irritating if there is a problem with with some fungal diseases.

All right, thank you ladies.

We've got about three and a half minutes left, we're going to go to a question 53 This one's virgin.

And this one's a jam packed one here.

So this is a husband and wife debate.

The wife always buys a product that is designed to boost blooms.

Her husband buys a standard product.

And she wants to know if there is a difference.

Will I get better blooms from the bloom product or just the standard?

So let's start there.

What are your thoughts as far as those products go?

My thoughts are they are usually different.

Usually something marketed as a bloom boosting fertilizer.

The three numbers on it are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

Usually on the bloom boosting fertilizers that middle number is higher.

And so it's to enhance blooming phosphorus enhances blooming.

Some in some markets, you can't buy those anymore because phosphorus is also a water pollutant that fosters like algae and other things growing in our waterways.

So they're not as easy to find as they used to be.

But the moral of the story is I think they're both are perfectly acceptable.

And the best fertilizer to use is the one that you will actually use.

And so whichever one is easier to apply and you actually use it with some regularity and it doesn't just sit collecting dust in your garage, I would say is the best one and maybe a marital She got a thumbs up from Ella.

Yes, yes.

The second part of that question was she has a friend who uses Irish spring soap as a pest deterrent.

I have heard this before.

So what are what are your thoughts on this?

We have used it with a lot of success at our house.

We have deer in particular that used to just frequent that sort of the back edge of our yard where we weren't really back there.

But now they've gotten braver and braver and I've seen them right up next to the house, probably because of a lot of construction going on in our area.

But the Irish spring works really well because it's very heavily scented, and it can it the deer can't smell there, they depend on being able to smell predators in danger coming their way.

And if they're just inundated with Irish spring smell is nice as that might be might be.

It makes them nervous because they can't tell if if dangers in the area.

And one way to conserve it.

We use a drill and drill right through the bars of soap and then thread some twine through it and put it on trees and shrubs that they like to destroy they, they for a while we're the seems like when we first plant shrubs, they like to mess with them and eat them but as they grow to a certain size, they leave them alone but the Irish spring works.

Okay.

All right, we're out of time.

Ladies, thank you so much for sharing your time and talents with us today.

And we will see you next time and thank you so much for watching.

Bye bye