- [Announcer] Lifestyle Gardening is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Lifestyle Gardening I'm Kim Todd.

And today we'll be taking a look at getting kids interested in gardening, sharpening those pruning skills and see what happens when you leave plants for winter interest in your landscape.

But first, let's help you keep that garden itch scratched during the winter months with a few houseplants suggestions.

These selections will do well inside your house.

They can also add that extra touch of design to your interior.

Here's Scott Evans to tell us more.

(upbeat music) - Today we're gonna talk about house plant selection because when you walk into your favorite garden center, you're blown away by the selection that you can choose from.

A lot of times we buy a plant just purely on the appearance without knowing much about it.

So when we take it home, we put it at the wrong window or in the wrong space and that plant slowly starts to decline.

We wanna take the same principles that we use for outdoor gardening for our indoor gardening.

We wanna put the right place at the right place.

And that holds true for house plants.

We wanna make sure that we're putting the right plant at the right spot so it's happy and healthy.

Typically, there are three limiting factors when it comes to house plants indoors that's temperature, humidity and light.

Temperature and humidity is usually managed by our heating and air conditioning system, but light is our most limiting factor.

When we look at plants, we can divide them into three groups.

We can put them into a bright light group, medium or a low light.

Bright light is going to be at that Southwest-facing side of the house and those floor to ceiling windows.

The medium light group is gonna be plants that are going to get between four and six hours of good bright light, not necessarily direct sun but this is gonna be a room that you're gonna be easily able to read a book by without using a lamp.

And then when we move to the low-light plants these are going to be the group of plants that like two to four hours of good, bright light.

But then the rest of the day, that room is fairly dim.

This is going to be a room that you're gonna need a lamp to read by.

So hopefully that will help distinguish between the different type of light values.

But now we're going to start talking about the plants.

The first plant I want to talk about is here.

This is the anthurium.

Anthuriums are a popular plant but some of the new cultivars on the market have a lot of pizzazz to them.

They like good bright light.

So they want that six to eight hours of good bright light.

But they also like water.

So if you're kind of heavy on the watering can, this is a plant that you might want to choose from.

And then we also have the tried and true favorite, the rubber plant.

This plant is pretty popular and some of the new cultivars on the market can give us some really great variegation.

Likes a lot of good bright light.

It's an easy plants to take care of.

So it's a good plant that you might wanna try.

Before we go on to the medium light plants, let's talk about herbs.

We often forget about herbs as a possible houseplant.

They provide us form and function and we can cook with them.

And some of those are herbs are mint.

Mint is a really easy plant to grow.

Likes good bright light, a lot of great fragrance and you can cook with it.

Rosemary, you can't beat Rosemary.

Rosemary has a lot of great culinary uses and a lot of great fragrance.

And then we can't forget our parsley.

Just a fun plant to have.

Now all of our herbs kind of are on the dryer side when it comes to moisture but they want that good, bright light.

So they might not be in the kitchen but you can always bring them into the kitchen when you need to cook.

Medium light plants are gonna be more of plants that want that four to six hours of good, bright light.

Something that you may have not heard of is called the sinnigia.

Great plant, gorgeous orange flowers, a lot of fun to play with.

Our ferns are a medium light plant.

They like high humidity.

So we're gonna talk about humidity in a later episode but you wanna group these together because they like those really moist locations.

And then we can't forget about the spider plant.

Tried and true, it's a traditional plant, not in a lot of pizzaz to it, but you can't kill it.

This is one of those medium light plants that you might wanna try.

And then to wrap some things up, low-light plants, such as the Zee Zee plant does really great in those dark corners of the homes that might get two to four hours of good, bright light but the rest of the day, it's kind of dim.

The Zee Zee plant is a really nice one to play with.

And then we have the over popular philodendrons and pothos.

There are so many new cultivars coming onto the market.

You can have a lot of fun with it.

This particular one is called birkin where it has a nice variegation as those new leaves start to come out and then they fade to green.

So just a lot of fun to go with.

Like I said, this is a lower light plant.

So it wants that two to four hours a good bright light and then a dim location for the rest of the day.

I can't tell you everything about all these plants but hopefully this will give you some good tips for new plants to try.

And don't be afraid to do some research before you buy.

- Houseplants, have some of the exact same issues that your outdoor ornamentals have.

Things like insect, pest, disease problems and the watering schedule can all affect the health of your plants.

Look for future episodes of Lifestyle Gardening when Scott returns to talk about simple care tips for house plants.

Let's switch gears a bit and talk about pruning.

It might be a mystery to some, but good pruning will help your tree or shrub shape and take care of anything broken or diseased.

But because of some late fall warm weather, some of us may have pruned a little too much.

For this week's landscape lesson we talk about the do's and don'ts of late fall pruning.

(upbeat music) The warm open fall let people work in their landscapes way into November and even into the early parts of December when we set some record temperatures.

That also meant that people kind of ran out of things to do and probably did a little bit of activity in the landscape that shouldn't happen late in the fall.

That of course is pruning.

We don't want to prune late in the fall because you open those wounds, essentially in the tree or in the shrub, then we get those temperatures that abruptly drop 50 or 60 degrees, we get desiccating or drying winds, we don't get enough moisture, and you do get a lot of dieback or you can get a lot of dieback in the twigs or in the shrubs or the trees themselves.

A couple of examples that I've seen already this winter are boxwoods.

We have people that have done a lot of pruning or the rounding over, shearing them into those forms, which, of course, boxwood will actually tolerate quite well.

You can already see that the tips of the very new growth that maybe initiated even as late as September are dead as a doornail.

They are crispy, they're brown, that is not going to be live tissue come spring of the year.

We saw a lot of pruning that was reducing the height or taking out a very large piece of shrubs, leaving not much for canes for the spring season.

That occurred a lot also on lilacs and some of those early spring flowering shrubs which, of course, again, is not the time we prune because all of those flower buds have now been removed.

Another thing that did happen, and we saw a lot of this, was, shrubs that had been pruned or had really attempted to go dormant re-leafed or started flowering again pretty late this year.

Sometimes that happens rather naturally in August or early September, but not into November.

So the long and the short of it is what you need to do with if you did do a lot of that pruning and did so much of that pruning that perhaps you shouldn't have, paid good attention to the quality of the care that you're giving those shrubs and trees going through the winter months.

If we get into a situation where you are able to water, go ahead and water those trees and shrubs.

Don't start pruning again, and certainly, do not prune until we are a little bit closer to the break of dormancy in the spring.

Make sure you remember that rule that we don't want to take off 1/2 the plant or 3/4 of the plant.

And this is particularly true with trees.

We wanna make sure that we keep those ratios of live tissue to remove tissue really, really strong so the trees and shrubs can recover from the activity that we've done with those pruning shears and saws.

What you can prune just about any time of the year is anything that is broken or rubbing or possibly to take care of plants blocking a sidewalk or a driveway.

Do be careful though, about pruning too much at the wrong time of the year.

It seems like kids these days have so many more options for entertainment than we did back in the day.

Getting them outdoors and creating some exposure to gardening, growing their own food or the beauty of plants can be a little difficult.

We brought in Miki Montgomery from the Malone Center here in Lincoln to talk about some great ideas to help your kids get digging.

(upbeat music) We're focusing this year on getting children outside as well as the rest of us since we've been trapped indoors.

And, of course, in the winter months, when you're trapped in doors, you can sort of go at each other.

It's really my pleasure to be talking to Miki Montgomery who is with the Malone Center now as director.

And Miki is going to be talking to us about everything important about youth, children outside, connecting to landscape gardening, all those good things.

So, take it away and tell people why you went to Malone and what you're doing.

- Okay, well, as you know, I used to be a lecturer lead teacher at the Ruth Staples Child Development Lab here on East Campus.

And our main focus for early childhood was outdoor learning.

All of those learning experiences, knowing the benefits and the research of children being outdoors more often than not, and getting those natural experiences and getting to know nature.

And so, naturally, when I transferred to the Malone, which I decided to do this past August after the Black Lives Matter movement, movement not the organization, there is a difference.

I just felt really led to...

I felt led to be there, not just for the opportunity to create interest in outdoor experiences for underserved families, but also because I can relate to families of color in a way that I felt they needed somebody who could bring the program to fruition in a way that it hasn't been before.

That was the hopes anyway.

So, I'm at the Malone right now as the director of youth programs for both the afterschool program and the preschool program.

And we've had a lot of focus on outdoor experiences and just trying to create those interests right now.

- So, what are the age groups, Miki?

And talk a little bit, again, because this has such application to other families whose children are not...

They're not accustomed to the outdoor environment.

- Right.

The age groups that we have in the preschool are three to five.

It's the Early Achievers Academy.

And then the age groups that we have in the afterschool program is five to... Oh, I wanna say 12, 13.

So, kindergarten through eighth grade.

So we serve elementary schools and middle schools.

And just like what you said, there's different family dynamics in different cultures where some families are used to being outdoors a lot, whether it's biking or going to the park quite frequently, the interest has already been there for them.

And it's always been something that maybe their parents and their grandparents have done with them, so they just create that as part of their family dynamic.

But then there are some families that, they don't have that opportunity as much, maybe they're working two or three jobs, literally two or three jobs.

Children are in either care facilities or older siblings are caring for younger siblings at home.

And a lot of times what happens is, there's a lot of technology involved, TV, iPhones, everything's about social media now, and there's really not a big push or a big interest to get outside.

So, just even creating these interests or even showing the possibility of what there could be out there for these youth to explore, that's what we're doing right now so that they wanna get outside.

- So, let's build on that a little bit or talk about, what are some of the ways that you're able to engage those children?

Because, again, this is so applicable across our country right now.

- Right.

- And, especially, since you have all these different age groups.

- Oh my goodness, yes.

Well, right now with the wintry weather, we don't have as much of an opportunity to get outside.

But the first thing that we started doing was just making sure that our out-of-school children got outside every single day.

So, the preschool gets outside very often.

They partner with Ruth Staples and they understand the importance of outdoor environmental education and the preschool youths get outside very often.

However, when you think about our school-age kids and how much time they don't have outside with the lack of recess and the lack of time, basically, I mean you get 15 minutes for lunch, maybe 10 minutes for recess for those who do get recess, and then our middle school youths don't get that at all.

We've made it a point now that in our schedule, anytime after four o'clock, we get outside when the weather is nice and it's just an everyday thing.

We bring out the balls and we even bring out craftivities out there, whether it's painting, or whether they're making something.

We even bring out Connect 4 games, just anything to let them know that you can do anything outside and being outside, it's uplifting.

(laughs) It's really uplifting.

- So, it is of course, because I do that with my students as you well know, and live outside whenever I can.

How do you foresee connecting getting students outside to growing food, gardening, landscape, sort of the love of that and the skill set to be able to take that on for the rest of their lives?

- Yeah, well, we have partnered, the Malone has partnered with a program called Beyond School Bells who is helping provide materials that we need for those types of experiences.

And one of the things that we've talked about with this partnership is the tower gardens that we have which is indoor aeroponic gardening.

So our plan is to just create that interest with the kids learning how to grow vegetables and leafy vegetables and stuff on that tower garden inside during these winter months.

And then as spring approaches, we've got, I think about four or five garden plots in the back.

We're creating an outdoor classroom at the Malone.

I don't know if you've known that, we've got our fence up and everything.

- Great.

- And then we're gonna transfer that knowledge to traditional gardening, which is gonna be either transferring the seedlings to our garden plots and really creating an outdoor space where they can learn about just the growth of plants and their nutrition as well.

- What do you see as the biggest challenge in doing that, to get your children engaged in that?

- I would say that the younger group is much more excited about this kind of stuff than the older group.

The challenge is, we have some middle schoolers that it's just not cool to garden.

It's just not cool to be outside.

And really, again, their focus is, their interests have to do with social media influences not experiences outside.

The other thing is culturally, some families have been like, "Oh, don't get dirty."

- [Kim] Oh, sure.

- "Or don't touch that bug, stay away from that bug.

Don't get your clothes dirty, don't get your shoes dirty."

So kind of just creating a safe place for them to experience what they can to whatever level they can before they move on.

I think it's the older kids.

Yeah.

- Well, I love that thought because of course, one of the things that we will, of course want to do is work with you, help you connect our students who, darn well better get dirty or they're not gonna pass the class.

- Yeah, being okay with getting dirty too.

- Right, right, right.

- Yeah.

And that was a little bit of a challenge when we started some of it, when we were doing some outdoor scavenger hunts and kids were like, "Oh, bugs, oh."

And I mean, we all have to get over that hump.

But if parents have been that way too or families have been like, "Don't touch that bug.

", because they don't know about it-- - Right.

- Instead of pulling all families in and being like, "Hey, let's check that bug out."

- Exactly - "Let's put it in the bug finder, let's look it up on our bug app or..." - Do something like that.

- Yeah.

- Well Miki I really appreciate it.

And of course, as always, we will get back to you because you are fabulous in whatever position you have, you are energetic.

I can't imagine a better person to help get that generation of young people to understand the beauty of the world.

- Thank you, I appreciate it Kim.

- We want kids to get a headstart on gardening and landscape.

With the crazy world we live in, it's going to be more and more important to know how to grow your own food.

With programs like they have at the Malone Center and other schools around the city and state, we should be having plenty of new gardeners from the next generation.

And you know we do like to answer a few of those questions on our show.

So we've asked our backyard farmer panelists to help you with some of the more common questions.

Let's take a few minutes to hear from those familiar faces.

(upbeat music) - Okay, so I know that we had a lot of problems with squash bugs and squash vine borers.

And this happened every year because we plant squash every year.

So it's a good time to think about it now, what we're gonna plant, what varieties and where we're gonna plant it.

We wanna practice crop rotation.

So we don't wanna put our squash in the same place that it was last year or even the year before.

If your garden's big enough move it somewhere else that could minimize the chances of the population just coming alive because a lot of them will, over winter either in their soil or in the leaf litter.

So you wanna move that a little bit away.

Also think about those varieties that you're planting.

There are some that are more resistant to both of these critters.

You can also consider planting a trap crop.

Research has shown that blue hubbard squash is highly attractive to both of these bugs.

And so if you plant that on the outside of your garden or around the perimeter, maybe those bugs will go to that trap crop and not go to your most valuable harvest in crop.

And those blue hubbard squash, if they do get trapped there you may wanna treat those plants only.

Another thing you can do is install row covers.

So row covers are just fabric that go over top of those plants and they will protect from insects flying in.

The problem with that is that squash plants do need pollinators to pollinate those flowers.

So what you may have to do for that is hand pollinate by using a Q tip or a brush and taking the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers or you can just remove those row covers during the day when those plants are blooming.

So that is something to think about in a way that you can protect your plants.

Another thing you wanna think about is when these plants are growing, you wanna check on them.

You wanna monitor and scout for these critters.

The squash bugs over winter is adults.

And so check under those planters and in those hiding spots when you see them, hand-pick them off or vacuum them up, or just take them out.

Squash vine borer is a moth.

It starts flying around and feeding on flowers.

It's actually a pollinator as an adult.

When you start to see them, that's when you wanna go and check your plants.

You wanna look for those eggs at least once a week and remove them.

Pick them off, scratch them off, cut them out.

And that includes for the squash bugs and the squash vine bores.

Squash bugs they lay their red color eggs in clusters.

So pick those off.

Do that once a week because both of these pests, their eggs hatch every 10 days.

So if you can keep on top of that you can keep those populations down, and hopefully you'll have a really great year of squash.

- If you're a faithful viewer of Backyard Farmer during the spring and summer, you know we take a visit to the Backyard Farmer garden each week to look at new ornamentals and check up on our vegetables.

A lot of that garden gets a thorough cleanup during the fall but we do leave some of it for winter interest.

Let's round up our program by taking a stroll through the garden to see what these beautiful plants look like in the fall.

(upbeat music) Winter can be an incredibly beautiful time in the landscape and in the garden, especially if you plan for it and then you are ready for all those unexpected surprises.

So if you have combined perennials with some annuals because of course the annuals give you that color during the summer months, and shrubs, and some evergreens, and perhaps a tree or two, you can create this beautiful subtlety in the landscape, pops of color, differences with seed heads, differences with form in particular.

And it's a great time of year also to look at exactly what is the form of the plants you've used your landscapes.

If you look at this grass as an example it looks like this giant rounded mass but it also has a great, fine texture to it.

This is Blonde Ambition, which is one of our Blue Gramas.

You can get sort of a subtle film or a fuzz out of Russian Sage.

You get chunky clunky sorts of things out of the sedums.

And many of the sedums especially the ground cover sedums are going to go into these gorgeous really interesting winter color.

Everything from sort of a chartreuse color to deep burgundy, to a very orangy kind of a color.

We have a lot of shrubs that give us beautiful seed heads.

Viburnums are one of the great examples.

If you're lucky enough to have one of the shrub roses that puts on good hips you might have great hips in the landscape as well.

Then we look at some of the ground covers that might stay ever gray or ever silver.

We look at evergreens that are either the great big ones that give us the structure behind the landscape or behind the garden, and then sort of their counterpart that might be a weeper or a creeper.

They give that solidarity and that structure to the landscape so that you can observe and see all those other beautiful things in front of it, or even behind it.

It's a great example also of deciding what you want to allow to stand.

We talk a lot about cutting back or cleaning up the plants that really are going to seed themselves with abandon all over the place.

And that's great if you want your garden or your landscape to become pretty wild and crazy.

But if you look right now at what is still standing and sort of doing what you want it to you can then selectively in the spring or next summer, remove, or even relocate plants that really have decided they want to be comfortable someplace else.

If you look also at how the plants change over time that's one of the beautiful things about looking at the landscape in the winter.

And we have allowed everything to stand.

As the shrubs get larger, as the evergreens get larger, we're going to have to do some selective removal or relocation.

That's a good thing.

So you look at the sweeps and the masses.

You look then at the fine, fine detail of some of our wonderful grasses in particular or the seed heads of the asters.

Or anything that is fruit-like or berry-like.

Or the big clunky seed heads, or flower heads of hydrangea that give you all that intrigue and beauty in the landscape in the winter months.

We love it when our audience visits our garden during the growing season.

But when things fade and go dormant for winter, there's still plenty to see.

You might want to wait for a nice day to come by the garden again, and perhaps pick up a few ideas for winter interest in your own landscape.

Thank you so much for joining us again for Lifestyle Gardening.

Next time, we'll take a look at insect eggs and how to recognize them.

And we'll talk to an industry expert on how their landscapes supply business thrive during the pandemic.

So good afternoon, good gardening.

Thanks for watching.

And we'll see you all next time on Lifestyle Garden.

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