Unknown: Hello, and thanks for joining us for another edition of mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha Spain.

And, as always Joining me are three panelists who are here to answer your questions, show you some of their show and tells and tell you a little bit more about where you can find them in the garden.

So we'll have them introduce themselves.

Ella, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Ella Maxwell.

I live in Taswell County.

I'm a Taswell County, Master Gardener and a horticulturist at a local nursery.

I really like trees and shrubs.

And those are the kinds of questions I'm going to answer today.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much.

All right, john.

And John Bodensteiner.

I'm a Vermillion county master gardener.

I live up by Bismarck and I like hostas, shade plants, and just about just about anything.

I have a sampling of almost everything.

Fine.

And we're gonna see one of those a little bit later in the show.

Right.

All right, and Jen.

I am Jen Nelson.

You can find me online at grounded and growing dot com.

I'm a horticulturalist that likes just about anything plant related.

But my favorite things are vegetable gardening and houseplants little bit of everything.

A little bit of everything.

a generalist i think is what you call yourself, right?

All right.

So as usual, we're going to start with showing tails and ello, we're going to start with you, this one might give you the creeps at home.

But we've been talking about this in the last couple of shows.

So you found something kind of creepy outside.

So this is a very real possibility that it could be something we've been talking about.

So share with us what you found and kind of what the status is.

Okay, um, I am concerned about jumping worms and I live in tasmac County.

And right now, we don't have any confirmed cases, but counties surrounding us do.

And we are now trying to get the message out that jumping worms can be a problem in the home landscape.

And so today, I was waiting this morning, and I came across in the upper surface right under some turf next to my flower garden, about 10 little small worms.

And they were thrashing and I thought my heart just dropped.

And so I grabbed them all up and I carried them and got a Ziploc bag because if you do find jumping worms, you can just put them in a Ziploc bag and leave them in the sun and the ultraviolet light will kill them.

Jumping worms do not overwinter as adults.

And they start out in early spring, there's a cocoon what these little like egg cells.

Jumping worms don't have to mate.

And they I've had some conflicting information, but they could they are sexually mature or could in 60 days.

So it's really quick.

And they grow voraciously.

And they can get big.

So anyway, I have these little inch and a half worms that I put in a plastic bag and we're going to look and let's see if I can make them.

Well, they flop before they there may be they're kind of Oh yeah, there we go.

Ooh, oh, boy.

And that is literally the behavior that we were told to look out for the sort of normal moving the thrashing.

So that's Was that your first clue?

Was there, the white band tell us with the worms, they have what's called the satella them and it's part of the reproductive part for all earthworms.

And it's on the 14th segment.

That's what makes it different than some other worms.

But I heard or I read that there's like 2500 different species of worms and no worms are supposedly native to North America, or at least to our part because of the glaciation.

I believe I'm not sure but anyway, these jumping worms now have been confirmed in 14 or 15 counties in Illinois, and in some other states as well, or maybe it's 14 or 15 other states.

Anyway, I've got this picture.

And I'm I sent it off to the extension to one of the extension specialists and and I don't know if I'm going to look at them closer after they Die or whatever, but I'm just hard sick.

So do on the lookout.

And it really is that little wiggling that.

But then I was reading about red wigglers.

And I don't ever those are so much smaller that I don't see where you would confuse those with an earthworm that, okay?

Well, I'm not a fishing girl.

So I don't know anything about a culture where you raise worms to eat your landscape or your home, you know, waste food vegetable waste, but anyway, jumping worms are out there be on the lookout.

And the best thing to do is just scoop them up and put them in a bag and throw them away and get them to your nearest extension office so you can get confirmation.

So if it is Ella, is there anything that you need to do in that spot, what what will be the next steps if they are also someone said that jumping worms can be irritated by powder mustard mixed with some water and that regular earthworms are not so the next thing I'm going to try is putting dunking them in some mustard water.

That's true or not, but I have got to continue to do some research about them.

And, and and find out and again, I hope that it isn't the case.

And and and i don't believe unfortunately that this would be an isolated incident in my yard.

So I guess it's something that you know if the invasive qualities of them and they can only move about 40 yards.

So the way that they moved into my garden is that I brought in a plant that must have had them on it.

Okay, we will definitely from anywhere.

We can only follow that and see check back in with you next time you're on the show to find out how things are going with that john, go ahead sorry, at our at our plants, we tested every plant anybody brought in with the yellow mustard, water mix, you pour it you know and it wouldn't be a big good idea for any homework.

Now they do not like the soilless mix but if somebody did something up in your in their yard and brings it to you get a little bit of white or the yellow mustard powder, mix it with water and just pull it up, immediately jump out.

And we've tested every plant at our plant sale in vermillion county for that we found none.

So that was the good news.

Okay, we'll have to get a lot of extra work but fingers crossed for lspr Okay, john, we're gonna go to you for a show item.

This or are these are my favorite flowers.

This is circle flower.

It's Liz makia and our yellow stripe, and they the you can see one of them is there is variegated.

This one here has got very nice variegated leaves and it doesn't get as many flowers but just for the very very variegation of the least.

It is really really nice.

And then the other one it'll bloom like this for a month and a half.

Wow that is beautiful that variegation with the colors Now how did you say I may have missed it the perennial how to get to about 24 to 30 inches tall and it is a perennial it will spread out I have heard some people have trouble with it getting very aggressive.

But I have had it in my yard for I got it from one of our other Master Gardeners about 10 years ago and it has grown it's probably tripled in size.

But it's still you know, I suppose a circle like this, which really is nice and and i'm about to share with to the point where I haven't been willing to share because but it's getting to that point where I will be able to share this coming spring when I when we have our plant sale.

Fantastic.

Put me on the list.

It is very very nice.

It is pretty it looks gorgeous.

Okay Jen, where do you now Well, I've brought an accidental show and tell this is meant that I had cut from my garden to use for a sauce I was making and I stuck it in a glass of water when I was done because I thought we'll all might have something else to use it for cuz I didn't want to throw a perfectly good plant piece away right.

So I've been we've been putting it in our water.

We've been grabbing pieces for this and that but then I looked the other day I want to change the water and there are roots growing at the ends of the cuttings and I thought well that's really great if you wanted to propagate mint most people are trying to tear mint out of their garden.

But it's a good demonstration of why Mint is so difficult to control in the garden because if those stems are growing along the ground and they just touch the moist soil they're going to start to root wherever they're touching and wherever the moisture is right so even on my kitchen counter where it's not in front of a window or anything it's it's fight its will to live as strong.

Awesome.

Okay, thank you and who doesn't like a little mint in their water especially this time of year so might not be my daughter says it's fancy.

Yeah, it is fancy.

Yes, Margaret.

I agree with you very fancy.

Fancy water like you mommy.

Got plenty of mint.

It doesn't stop.

Yes, we can do fancy water all summer long.

Okay.

Ella we are going to you is from Tony.

It says hi I recently purchased several hydrangeas, the Endless Summer original variety to use as a hedge in a partially sunny area.

purchase them both for their height and width as well as their abundant flowers.

Now I'm being told the others in my zone which is five a don't have luck with this variety.

They say they tend to stay small and rarely flower.

Do you have any experience with this plant or suggestions as to how I can make it perform better in my zone.

I'm afraid that I just wasted hundreds of dollars on a plant I'm going to end up removing in a couple of years.

So Ella, what are your thoughts here?

Unfortunately, Tony, I believe that it was not a good purchase there.

If you do want to share yourself up some flowers, you're going to have to mulch the plants in the fall once they've dropped their leaves and this would be with some loose shredded bark mounded up around the plant.

The Macrophylla hydrangea or the large leaf hydrangea here is a wonderful plant.

And they did develop it to have some reblooming characteristics.

But the first blooms that you see come off of old wood so you can tell that this is the old wood right here.

And these would be the ones that would flower first now in June, and the Endless Summer was the very first one released commercially, but there have been many improvements.

And for my personal experience, I found bloom struck as being one that has hardy your buds and has a better reblooming characteristic.

So if they are not mulched, what happens is the buds that come from the base of the plant will not have a terminal flower bud in June, which you would be seeing right now.

So Tony, you need to check your plants to find out how many flowers you really have, because you'll see them.

These will have side shoots later in September, that will flower but it's a long time to wait for flowers.

And I do have a friend who calls them endless bummers and I think I've said so what you can do is a high phosphorus fertilizer does encourage bloom, the blooms can have a color change dependent on the aluminum in the soil, so you can use aluminum sulfate to keep them blue.

In more alkaline soils, they'll bloom pink.

There's a whole lot of different reblooming hydrangeas out there.

They do require some part shade, because these large leaves will scorch easily and I think we're going to see some pictures of that later in the show maybe or on the next show.

But fertilizing, protecting them from the winter.

That's the best thing but I think you'll find that you might want to switch to a different plant.

Alright, Jen and john, you were both nodding anything else you would want to add there.

I would add that we for hedge purposes we're using a Hydrangea paniculata so panicle hydrangea and they get a lot bigger and they don't have this problem of only blooming or blooming better or earlier on old wood.

I have some endless summers do and they look great where they're at but we've got some that spots that we want them to be a little bigger, a little more of a focal point.

And so the panicle hydrangea is already setting flowers out right now.

So we've got really good luck with that.

And also with hopefully hydrangea, okay, I've got hopefully hydrangea in it's the one I have is right at six foot and it's getting the nice Pentacles on it right now.

The the the, the one that Allah has is, is always probably here going to die back to the to the ground.

And you're going to get very, very few side shoots.

We had a mild technically a mild winter last year and it you know, they would be nice if if we were in zone six or zone seven.

But here it's your right on the edge.

And it's probably never going to be the big hedge that you want.

I have seen them do well in in certain locations.

I go to a bank that has them on the north side of their building and they are flowering now.

I have seen them.

I went to St. Louis and I took pictures of them at the the St. Louis botanical garden, and they were doing quite well.

So there's a lot out there.

When you see them in the stores at this time of year they have been forced.

And that flowering potential is not really realized, especially in zone five, a wonderful, thank you.

Okay, john, we're back around to you for another shutdown.

Um, I'm going to do the toothache plant now.

This is a new plant that I got from Baker's Creek.

So they have unusual plants and flowers, they used to have one half brown and half yellow.

This one, as you can see is all yellow and is much more showy.

And this is just starting this is just I mean put it in the ground yet.

And it will get to be about 202 feet tall and about two feet wide eventually.

And it's a native of Brazil.

But if you chew on the flower it it will numb your if you have a toothache if you chew on it and and and put that right next to your toothache it'll numb it.

Is that when tell me the name of it again, is it the toothache plant?

plant and it is slow, slow and acmella interesting.

And native to Brazil.

You said it for Brazil.

But Mary.

We've grown it out at the VA for a number of years.

But that was the brown and yellow one.

Now you can see that they've they've got a new color bar, and it's all yellow.

And so it's going to be much show here and does very well here.

It will reseed itself.

And it is a tender, it is not it's an annual, but it will receive itself.

It's not hard to hear.

And which would stand for Reason being it's from Brazil, but just you know, very nice and it's also good for if you have dermatitis or a mosquito bite, you take and and and mulch this this flower up and then smear it on kind of on where the mosquito bite is.

It'll numb that to take the inflammation out.

Perfect advice for this time of year.

All right.

Thanks, john.

JOHN, we're back to you for another show in tow.

Well, I'm going to show my sister went to Hawaii in March and she brought me back this plant that was just a cutting but also the card that came with it.

It's called a Plumeria that's what they make lays out.

And this came to me It looked like a big stock of asparagus in a plastic bag.

And other people watching me want to grow at home.

It's super easy.

All I did was put in its cactus soil and I did try to help it along by putting some rooting gel along the sides of it took about a month before it started showing signs of life.

And so now we'll hopefully maybe get some flowers this year, if not this year, probably next year.

I've grown them before and I was trying to remember earlier what killed killed off my plants that I had before probably just playing on neglect knowing myself but they're not hard to hear at all.

They're totally a tropical plant.

So you do have to remember to bring them in and they do go dormant over the winter.

So all these leaves will fall off and they'll just look like a bear stock of asparagus in a pot and people will wonder if you've lost all your marbles.

Right and what you're doing but there Fun plant if you have some bigger space like a sunroom, they can get quite large.

It can be really fun to have inside, and they smell really amazing.

And that's why most people grow them.

They do have an amazing smell.

If you keep it indoors, will it still go dormant?

In the winter, it will, I found that it will just because even our indoor temperatures in the winter are not warm enough for it.

It really loves the summer and it is always lost its leaves for me inside.

Now I don't keep it I don't keep my inside temperature super warm in the summer or in the winter.

I mean, it's I'm not one that cranks the thermostat up.

But even so it's it does need that that dormant period or in order to set flowers the following year.

We had one at the VA greenhouse for many years and it was about six seven feet tall.

And it would go dormant in the wintertime.

The nice thing was it would split and put up shoots and if somebody wanted one, you could do like a corn plant you just cut off a piece and unleaded callus over and then like Jan did planted and or put it in water and it'll Rutan, you've got a home.

Wherever it flowers it will start to branch from that point.

Gotcha.

All right.

Thank you for sharing.

Okay, now we've got some questions that viewers have sent in.

Ella, we're going to go to you and john for this one.

This is question number 50.

Bear with it's another long one.

How do we know when it's time to give up on our autumn purple ash trees, we are in a rural area between Seymour and Muhammad and persevered our 20 I'm sorry preserved our 20 plus year old ash trees with bear topical treatment.

So far, we noticed the top canopy thinning somewhat last year, there are spots where it's bare this year, but the trees filled out very nicely overall, is there any way you can tell how it's doing without seeing the tree in person or looking at a picture?

And is there a tree doctor or a surgeon that you can recommend to help give us advice.

So they are really desperate to save this tree?

and john and Ella are going to tackle this question together.

So guys, what do you think?

Okay, well, the first thing that I want to bring to your attention is the emerald ash borer has been in the state for I think now almost 20 years, and it is moving.

And unfortunately, it can be fatal if the tree has not been treated.

So to protect the tree, it does have to be treated yearly.

As a homeowner product.

There are tree care companies certified arborist that can inject a different type of chemical that can last for maybe two seasons, but this is going to require ongoing treatment.

And as the tree becomes larger, the dosage has to increase in wealth, as well.

So there comes a point where you have to make a hard decision on whether or not you want to continue this, because untreated, the tree will probably circum and the tree has probably been fending off attacks for the last number of years.

That's why they've seen some of this thinning and some die back, it flushes back out again, it makes plenty of leaves to store carbohydrates to continue this growth.

But as the tree declines, an untreated tree dies from the top down, and you get all this epicormic or these shoots coming out of the trunk of the tree kind of the last ditch effort for it to manufacture food.

I do have a couple Ash on my property, which I am at this point trying to remove over a period of time because it can be expensive to take down trees.

And it is not a good idea to leave them standing because you don't want to have any storm damage or branches fall out.

So again, if you can't do the work yourself, you do have to pay someone to do it.

So you can continue to treat trees and high valuable tree or high value trees in the right location.

I know of a number of businesses, communities, homeowners that are doing treatments, but it's a lifelong obligation and I am not committed to that.

Okay, fair enough, john, but yeah, I think Urbana has a a arborist and I think he was even one of our panelists for what I think he's retired so just give the city a call or ban and see if they do have an arborist.

I have about seven or eight ash trees and I had treated them and treated them When treated them, I had a losing battle.

And I gave up and I have now four left to cut down.

And this was the first year that I got no growth, nothing, you know, each year, like I was saying, you get these few branches coming off that growing up.

And after that, this year, I have had nothing, I've got to hire someone to cut because they're very large trees.

And it's a shame.

But even with the professional, it's, it can be a losing battle.

And it you know, if they said 20 years, from the time that it's infected in your area, before the ash bores get to the point where there's not enough ash trees for them to survive, and then they'll succumb then they'll die out and your ash tree will be the only ash tree within miles, then you may be able to keep it but as long as there's an ash borer in the area, you have to keep treating that ash tree.

So you know, like Ella said, as they get bigger, you have to add more and more and more chemicals each year.

Wow.

And like she said, also it's a it's an obligation that you have to keep up with.

So Well guys, thank you.

Our time is up.

That always goes so fast.

Thank you so much for coming and sharing your time and talents.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you have a question for our panelists, please send it in.

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

Good night.