Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of men American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me in the studio today are two of our panelists who you will definitely recognize and they brought in a lot of great stuff to show you guys today.

So before we get into that, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their speciality.

Chuck, we'll start with you.

Okay.

I am Chuck Voight.

And for 27 plus years, I was at the University of Illinois and various department names, but it was all horticulture.

vegetable crops and herbs are my specialty.

But with my undergraduate education, I'm not limited to vegetables and herbs.

But we can talk about lots of things you do just about everything out in the garden.

Speaking of generalists, Ella, that's me, I also went to the University of Illinois as a horticulturist and I worked in retail and now I'm kind of semi retired.

I'm a master gardener.

And I have a large yard.

I'm a plant collector, I really like perennials, and in some shrubs and trees.

I've learned a lot from these two, one has me making syrup.

The other has me growing vegetables and surprise lilies.

I'll be waiting for those this year.

So I learned click time.

Hopefully this surprise happened.

Hopefully that surprise happens.

Alright, so you guys bought a bunch of stuff and to talk about Chuck, we'll start with you.

Okay, well, let's, since my last visit, we were talking about rhubarb and asparagus.

I was out there trying to figure out what to bring in today.

So I thought I would show the male and female plants Oh, at this point, it's pretty easy to tell because the female has had has the berries on it, they haven't turned orangey red yet.

And the male has shed its pollen and its work is over.

And that's that's kind of why the the predominantly male strains can be more productive is because they don't put a lot of energy into making berries.

So they used to call them all male.

And now basically they're calling them predominant, predominantly male.

And probably a good idea because the ones that I have, are probably even less than 75% all male because I have a lot of females, which is a little I guess it shouldn't be too distressing.

But it at any rate, they have been looking fairly productive.

I worry about him because I can't log enough water to him and what the service is finally got around to calling a moderate drought up in Kankakee County.

I could have told them that a lot sooner and I think moderate might be understating the situation.

Because we, we we got three tenths of an inch of rain this morning.

And it seemed like cause for celebration, but he's not going to change anything.

It's all going to be evaporated by the end of the day.

So But anyway, that's that's the the separate sexes of asparagus.

I did not know that.

So can you plant those?

Are you able to plant the berries?

Are there seeds in there that you could use?

Well, that's another good point for that for the males is you don't have a lot of volunteer asparagus showing up in places you don't want it but yes, wow.

Yes.

I've only known them as the bare roots.

But so see, I've got a lot to learn.

And since you have no patience and can't wait and long enough to wait till the third year before you harvest any that may be all you ever know.

Yes, these will turn kind of orangey red and at that point, you could you could get the seeds out of them dry them and and soak them in warm water following spring and plant them.

Grow them that way for a year.

And then dig them up and then you'll recognize that you have that and I have to love the little octopus.

Right?

Well, I never knew that there were males or the nut cup doilies.

I bought so I thought okay, thank you.

Alright, hello.

You talking about seed, I brought a new popular native this is by Julia and it actually comes from the southeastern United States in some of the moist woodlands down there but you can grow it here and it has these pretty red firecracker flowers and you can get some that the native one is more yellow.

And you can get them kind of orange to there's like Little Red Riding Hood.

They do make a capsule and I do save the seeds.

And so here Is my winter sowing.

So I have created from a soda bottle a little greenhouse, I have drainage holes on the bottom, you can see that and then I have some aeration holes in the top here, and I haven't labeled.

So this is by Julia I seated them on March 22.

And well, they're pretty much almost ready to move into a, maybe like a one gallon pot.

And then later this fall, I'll probably plant them in the garden.

I don't think I'm going to divide them I think I'll just plant it kind of as a clump.

But How tall do those get?

It's about 18 to 20 inches tall for part shade.

And it grows really by rhizomes is the way that spreads it rarely itself seeds, but you can grow it from seed.

And so I've been so excited with some of my seedling projects that I've been doing.

And you said that isn't native?

Well, it's native to the southeastern United States.

So Gotcha.

When it's planted in Illinois, it's I don't know it's better than a Eurasian plant.

I don't know is native better.

And so far dependably winter hardy and all those things?

Yes, most definitely.

I have some clumps.

And now they have some named cultivars.

One's called Little Red Riding Hood.

So it's just a different kind of plant that you can put in your house to garden and it's pretty drought tolerant, which it says it likes moist woodlands, but you know, it's we need rain in central Illinois, and it's, it's holding up I've of course been watering.

Okay.

Very pretty.

You hear people say sometimes that native flowers don't have enough color, or they're not bright or whatever.

And that one kind of an attractive to hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds will find it in a shady spot.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, seems like Austin, natives of North America, go to Germany or Holland or somewhere and get developed, come back and do something spectacular.

And then they come back.

And and, and that might be the case.

I'm not sure.

Stay very nice.

Okay.

Check.

We're back to you.

Okay.

Let's get this guy out.

So we're going to talk about sweet peas.

And when we were out there we we we looked at this one.

It's a it's a perennial sweet pea.

Get my cheaters.

This one.

fragrant.

It is not.

Oh, okay.

I think the annual ones are Yes.

Right.

That that was part part of my speech.

Jumping ahead.

So anyway, this is Lazarus, la th YRUS latifolia S, la ti fol au S, which is the perennial sweet pea.

It is a very hardy perennial.

It grows in sandy soil up where I come from, and, and is pretty heat, drought tolerant, obviously drought tolerant, it's doing pretty well this year, which is a real test.

The limiting factor in terms of Sweet Pea lovers is it it doesn't have that wonderful sweet pea fragrance.

But the positive is that the Lathyrus odoratus.

The annual Sweet Pea is not heat tolerant at all.

And it's hard for us here in this part of the Midwest, to get them planted early enough so that they can the annuals can do their full flowering regime, because it gets so hot and usually dry and they don't stand up to that really well at all.

And it really isn't time to start mid season and bloom in the fall.

So there's not we're not really annual Sweet Pea friendly in this part of the world all that much.

But this perennial does well.

I want to say possibly like places like the Pacific Northwest, it can be a little invasive, self seeding.

I have not had that problem.

Okay, I have two plants and how does it grow?

Does it climb?

Does it expand?

What are we Yeah, what kind of space you need for this?

It's sprawls?

Yeah, it's gross.

And if you put like a you know a discarded tomato cage over it, you might be able to to get it into a columnar sort of a shape but it's basically given something to climb.

I can see the little yes, there's a little pea tendrils And unfortunately neither of them the pods are not edible.

So they're not, although they're somehow related to the garden peas.

They're not they're not edible so they're just, they're just pretty and and this one is great at my uncle was bringing in some filled dirt to put at the end of a new culvert and accidentally planted one there and it was there for years and years and years in just at the soil that he brought in with it was just pure blow sand from from one of the one of the dunes up in up in the Kankakee area.

So, but very pretty.

This one has has been has been just persevering.

I probably planted it 25 years ago or something and I have this one I have a white one came in different colors like shades from this dark, dark Pinky mov light pink, white.

I don't know that that at least that I've seen I haven't seen a lot more color variations.

That would be the other thing that the annuals have they have wonderful color saturation and, and combinations.

So I don't necessarily want to discourage trying annual sweet peas.

Because if you can be successful maybe kind of in a location where you can keep them really well watered.

And maybe just just a touch a shade so that they're not baking in the sunshine.

When you can get them they're wonderful.

In in these are these are pretty easy.

Do they bloom all summer?

Or is it pretty much yeah, pretty much this is just as just come out good in the last week or 10 days and will continue to flower although as it as it were, you can see all the all the bugs that are coming in.

Like other things, it's going to start setting up pods and as ripening those pods it might slow down a bit.

This year, it might slow down a lot because having a drought this early is not a good thing because it usually intensifies as we get later.

So yeah.

Hello, we are back to you.

Oh yeah, I'm talking about sir.

I was gonna say everybody's dying to talk about this jar.

Okay.

I did make maple syrup.

And we did a show on that.

And a friend of mine shared a recipe for what is a pine cone syrup.

And so this is m m u GOLIO.

From Muco pine.

It's made with pine cones or spruce cones or juniper berries or are providing or for but it's a it's, I chose spruce cones.

And you could probably still do it.

I started this the beginning of June, I probably could have started it earlier.

So you could use different pine cones or spruce cones and you need to pick the green ones, not the dry ones.

But you just pack cones as many cones in a jar.

And then you add two cups of of a sugar and you don't want to use a white sugar you want to use like a brown sugar or turbinado sugar or a raw sugar, something like that.

And then the liquid here is coming out of the cones.

So it ferments it's a lacto fermentation process.

And it ferment you ferment it for 30 days.

And then you boil it and strain it and then you can bottle it.

And you can once it's open you want to store it in the refrigerator as you're using it.

But it can you know you can put it in a hot water bath.

If you wanted to kind of can it how do you pronounce the syrup again?

Mugolio, Mugolio?

I don't know.

We looked it up and it said that some renowned forage or in Italy developed it or something I don't know.

But on the internet you can see where they've made it with lots and lots of different kinds of cones into so he really liked balsam fir.

But I didn't have any access to that.

And of course the cones are very sticky.

But it's it's I was so I thought you put water in there.

I just I had no idea that the sugar and it just drew out the moisture from the stinky she probably poured vodka.

Oh yeah, right like that with the walnuts and the alcohol, and a lot of these really interesting recipes.

I found Amy Stewart's book, she talks a lot about the different fermentations of plant products that, you know, become some different types of alcohol and that each culture kind of has their own.

So, I think in the future, I'm gonna I've got a couple other kinds of evergreens on my property, I might try it with something else.

But it there was a Romanian recipe that the man shared that you do this, you bury it in the ground for a year and then you take it back out.

So it's like you know, those duck eggs or something that you do sounds like heads that they bury in Alaska.

Okay, so those hours are so disgusting that even Andrew Zimmer was was appalled.

Oh, yeah.

Well, I really have to keep us posted on this flavor.

It's supposed to be that the spruce is a little different.

The pines are resinous kind of more pungent, the spruce are supposed to be more citrus and you can tell that from the the scent of the foliage.

And spruce tips are used the N like in a brewing beer, and there's, you know, some other alcohols that they do, but I think he thought for was the best he thought our providing was really interesting.

And of course, gin, juniper berries, you know, kind of thing.

So I've given it a try or keep us posted, because I'm excited to hear how that turns out.

All right, Jack Welch, back to you.

Okay, we get these guys out.

These are sweet William, okay, which is dantas Barbatus.

Barbados.

And they come in a wide range of colors and color patterns from even darker red than this almost black to white.

And then different combinations.

If you look closely at the flowers, some of these there's a lots of little tiny patterns within some of them.

This one comes out one color and then gradually changes to another.

So you get these strange looking clusters, like it's like it's some Kamera going on.

They start out by annuals.

So I started these last summer, got implanted and established and they come up and flower the second year.

You could call them a biennial, but they do last for several years.

And then they reseed themselves a bit too.

So it's, they tend to be perennial in a in a spot whether or not the plants are perennial, but might have already made lots of side shoots.

So I'm, if they don't die of thirst, they should be fine.

These have already been out for weeks and have are showing promise to stay out for weeks longer.

So it's it's they're just they're just wonderful.

They are really just a little, little bit of that carnation a kind of a spicy clove V club.

Yes, kind of like a cloth pink.

They're in the pinks genus, along with carnations and true pinks and in some of those wonderful little guys.

Do you know why they're called pinks?

I do not.

I don't know you don't.

I don't I would have thought Diane would have would have been all over that with you back in the day.

I must have forgot to fail fail.

If you look at the edge.

It's it's Dante's looks like the edges have been cut with pinking shears.

Oh.

Every time I learned something, that's how they came to be called pinks.

They've been a family favorite.

They make me think of my brother who always had a patch of them.

So they are very pretty, they are wonderful.

And I just got I just went to a big box store last year and they happen to have wasn't even on the on the big name seed rack.

There was a little thing where you could get him for like, two for a quarter or something.

So I got to two packets of these.

And the color the color variation is wonderful.

There's there's some beautiful salmons and and it was it amazed me how well mixed the mix mixture was.

But so I got those going again.

My mother bought one that was basically black, although it's just a deep, deep, deep, deep red.

And those are kind of been overcome by weeds.

So what I'm going to do is go in and harvest some of those seeds and and See if I can get some of the black back into this mixture.

But otherwise it's it's pretty darn nice.

Those are definitely gorgeous, very pretty are and and the second year they was actually the third year when they bloom because because they make a whole cluster then you get, you know, like this year, an individual plant might have three or four, there might be 10 or 12 in the cluster and the whole thing kind of widens out.

So for the first three or four years, they're there.

They're quite nice.

And then, like other things that we'd stand to catch up with him.

But that's dantas Barbados and carnations are Dianthus scary alkalis.

And there's lots of lots of things that are called Pink.

So as they just list those as Diantha species, but got it.

Okay.

All right.

We've got one more from you.

Right, right.

Yeah, the grand finale.

No, it's not a finale, but the show stopper.

It's an amaryllis.

And so I just wanted to share how I do my Amaryllis because I'm a lazy Amaryllis gardener.

And so I grow them in a pot, not in the ground, which you can grow for the summer in the ground.

And then in the fall, usually about the end of September, I just take them into the basement, I stop watering them, I put them in a box, and of course the foliage will all dry up.

And that's where they stay, they stay.

I don't bring them out to force them for Christmas.

I just wait until spring.

And it's usually sometime in May, when I finally bring them out.

But this is one that's you can see it's been in the pot a long time, because there's a lot of offshoots, which I could divide, I do use some soul release fertilizer.

And the trick with the amaryllis is to grow the foliage throughout the summer, so that they will get enough energy in the bulb to rebloom.

I really don't ever report them or anything very low maintenance.

When I see that flower stalk because I usually force mine in the winter.

It's like my hang on to spring, when I see that flower stock come up, and I just get like a baby tear right here.

Because it's just something you know, I'm dying for color in the wintertime.

I know that's very dramatic.

But yeah, very dramatic flower they are.

So we gotta get Okay.

Eric Pope wrote in, he wrote us on Facebook and wants to know, he said, I never did get around to planting peas.

Is it too late?

Generally speaking, yes.

Okay.

I've had fairly modest success trying to do it in the fall.

And this doesn't necessarily feel like a summer that that is going to be real conducive to that.

But if you can find a variety called wondo, which is the most heat tolerant garden pea that I know of.

And it's been around from when I was first learning about garden plants.

So it's been around a long time.

And, you know, look at the days to harvest, and then add maybe a third more, because as we go into fall, things are gonna slow slow down.

Yes, that's true.

So try to get him started.

Whenever that is and allow some time for harvest at the end.

Because if you just get them up to where they freeze when the first pods are on, that's going to be disappointing.

Yeah.

And don't expect wonders, but you might be able to harvest a few if you do it that way.

Okay.

All right.

We've got Oh, I'm sorry, I keep them well watered.

I was just gonna say and maybe plant him in the shade of your tomatoes or something where they're not going to just bake when you get him started in.

Whenever it turns out that to this right to do that.

Probably July, but I'm not.

That's a guess.

Okay.

And you guys have mentioned we've got about two minutes left.

You both talked about it being very dry.

Any survival tips out there for folks other than lugging water and hoses, but any?

What are you guys doing to help your gardens and your lawns limp along?

I'm mainly getting pretty depressed.

But if I had to keep some things going, probably a thick mulch would would would be good although, at this point you're trapping dry soil under mulcher which, which is not ideal.

If you can water and then mulch, you can you can hang on to that water that you're putting on a lot longer.

And then you know, somehow, somehow you're going to have to get water to these things because they are they're hurting already and it's in its it's barely into June it's it's it's probably so far it's been the worst drought year I've seen since 1988.

And that one was colossally bad.

So Ella, what about that one was terrible because because it hadn't rained even in March, and then didn't rain until almost September through that whole season and like the corn plants in the field or look like pineapples, they were it was.

Well, hopefully, that was devastating.

And I'm hoping we get a drought breaker somehow.

I hate to wish for a hurricane.

But if a hurricane would happen to hit the Gulf Coast and and come up the Mississippi, take a swing out come up the Mississippi instead of the Ohio and give us a good soaking rain.

I would not I would not fight with that.

Yeah.

All right, anything for you.

Tips, purchased a bunch of plants.

And right now I'm just holding off watering them.

I've got them together in their pots.

I'm not planting them because, you know, I'll forget one where I put it so it's easier to water this group now and wait for the weather to change before I set out these plants or at least again, I'm I'm hoping for that.

And yeah, we're just hauling water.

Well, thanks, guys.

We're out of time.

I appreciate it and appreciate you so much for watching.

If you have any questions, send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com and we'll see you next time.

Goodnight.