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

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me in the studio today are two of our favorites.

Karen and Ella are joining us today.

And we've got lots to talk about usage and some questions they brought into some things to share.

So we've got a lot to cover in this 30 minutes.

But before that, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their specialty.

So Karen, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm KarenRuckle.

And I'm from the Peoria area and I have a degree in ornamental horticulture from the U of I so local with my plant knowledge of perennials, shrubs, I like houseplants.

Excellent.

All right.

Hello.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm a master gardener in Caswell County and a horticulturist and I have a large yard and a big garden.

And I love perennials, too.

Okay.

So I put out a call on Facebook.

I told folks that you guys were going to be here today and boom, the questions started rolling in.

So let's start with some of those.

Margie writes in I have two baby peach trees.

Last year, they sprouted and grew in a pot planted in the ground for fall 2022.

Should I start pruning this year?

Or let them have another year to grow?

Before pruning?

What are your thoughts?

Well, the most important thing is she didn't say how large they were now.

But peaches have an open center.

Isn't that right?

Karen open center kind of branching where you develop the side branches.

And you kind of take the center out.

I believe that's the way that they're supposed to be pruned.

So though those, those side branches are called scaffold branches, and they need to be anywhere from three foot or more off the ground, don't you think?

Yes, yeah.

So if your peach tree has no side branches yet, and it is at it's over three feet tall, then you could just lightly cut the top that would force some side branches.

And that would be all the pruning that she'd need to do.

Simple and easy.

Okay, let's go to the next one.

Let's see.

My mom, my Mom, what are some easy vegetables for first time growers?

Jennifer Joyce Bishop writes, What advice do you have for beginner gardeners?

What are easy veggies to grow?

Well, we were talking about this one of the things that that we first grew when we were younger but just for you know, first beginner gardening is radishes and how often are those because they're so quick and easy.

And you'll want to plant them early.

When the grounds still really cold.

So in them outside, they'll mature pretty quick and then we're talking you know, typically are radishes are red, but as a kid I always loved the Easter egg variety because then those were white and kind of a pinkish and red.

So they were they were fun with the assortment of colors.

Okay, radishes, what would you start with anything different or pretty much the same?

Well, we talked about that because you can start experimenting and create confidence and so radishes and maybe some of the other cool weather crops that you could do with transplants.

Like if you'd like kale or cabbages something like that could be planted out but really, I'm a tomato girl.

So I think that if you have the space in a soil, you know garden in your yard, tomatoes are easy to grow whether or not you cage them.

There's just so many different varieties.

And you know, they they really produce well and we also talked about zucchini.

Zucchini is a fairly easy to grow plant and then it gives you quick rewards once that does start fruiting.

I had really good luck with lettuce when I was first starting.

I don't know if that's sure, you know, normally an easy one because some of the easy ones.

I failed that and let us work really well.

So just some some examples there.

Let's see.

I think there was another question.

Oh, yes.

You posted a picture a lovely picture.

When you went to go pick Ella up.

You posted a picture of some blooms in her yard and immediately people were wondering what these are and you brought some so let's talk about what those are.

Okay, so that is a spring bulb.

It's common name is winter aconite.

And so isn't that a poisonous?

Is aconite.

The one that people use poisonings there is aconite.

That's what is monkshood Okay, so now can I gotcha, but this is different.

This is a re enthesis e r a n th i s, I think, but anyway, it's a small bulb.

So, here here it is, you can see it is technically a quorum.

Okay, a quorum like a crocus, right quorums are krokus.

See, I love how they work together.

But anyway, so this is going to be several inches below the ground.

And it's going to come up and the first thing that it's going to do is flower.

And so here's one that's open.

And this is a good source of pollen for honey bees that might begin foraging on day flights, when they're it's above 50 degrees.

So the bees have been flying.

And I have some videos where you can actually hear the hum, because you saw how many hundreds of these little small bulbs.

And then once the flower is done, it will set seed and that's why I have such a profusion is that it can reseed itself, but it will send up a little bit of foliage, but that usually dies down by June just like to lopud daffodil, and then it disappears for the summer.

So it's just a wonderful spring bulb.

A small little quorum and you can get it to you can meet violent by a mail order.

I don't think you really see him that often in this the store is not ever seen that in a but very pretty well.

And years ago I bought I bought the corms implanted in my yard, you had to soak them overnight because real hard, and it took for years to get a clump.

Then when I moved back to the area, and Ella just took a little shovel full from our yard and gave me this little bit.

And man they just took off from that so much quicker.

And her the picture of her yard this afternoon.

It's going to be wonderful because with the sun today those blooms should all open, wide open.

Wow.

And so it'll it'll just be just magical with with the yellowness out there.

And of course, you know, they're out in the yard.

I was I was laying on the ground, I took that picture.

Yeah, really, really short.

But still, it just is so beautiful.

Color just make me so happy.

And the nice thing about this, I suppose I could do a little bit more research, but the rabbits won't eat it.

So maybe there is some poison factor with it.

You can get the same effect with crocus.

But the bunnies just go right down the line.

And I mean, I saw on Facebook some beautiful hillside of crocus that they had naturalized in the grass and it was like, oh, that's just not gonna work for me.

But these little rant this, you know, can even grow in the grass.

The problem is, is that they don't do as well because that foliage comes up and you need that foliage to be able to feed the the little quorum over the course of that early spring to regenerate itself.

So they are certainly gorgeous.

All right, Karen, you sent in some pictures for us.

Let's walk through those.

Let's see.

Do you want to start with this one?

Or which one?

This one?

Okay.

Sure.

Okay, so for somebody who asked about more talked about natives, so I thought I would talk about some of the sturdy plants that I've found in my yard that are of natives and I'm really not a native gardener.

I just have a few that do well, and they are incidentally, natives.

And this is arrangement I did for a friend.

And it's a rude Baqia.

And it's a selection called Henry Eilers.

And it is a native, it's called a sweet coneflower.

And it is a native flower.

This was a selection though that was found down in Southern Illinois growing by a railroad by this plantsman and so he named the selection so it's it's not a cultivator.

It's, it's a selection that occurred while naturally out in the wild.

But this is a perennial that's been long living in my yard gets three to five foot tall, full sun blooms July to September, I did that flower arrangement for a friend.

Then I've got a picture that shows the blooms and unfortunately in the forefront is an invasive butterfly bush, but I do love butterfly bushes.

And that was at the end of July that picture and then in my front yard.

I have a clump of it.

That shows how it does sprawl a bit.

So I'm going to try to do a little bit of more structure to help it to see if I can support it.

And that's actually in my yard by a vanilla strawberry hydrangea, a Baptisia which is native or more of a gnat.

Joe are native wildflower, but it is a cultivar.

And then I've gotten a big pot Tropicana cannon, because I love Canada's.

And that was picture was taken in September.

So the the you do get a long bloom.

But I what I wanted to talk about too at the perennials is now's a perfect time, if you've got a friend, you can get some or your clump has gotten too big to give it.

Because like this sweet coneflower, it's so huge, you cannot dig it up in the summer and move it.

And so now is a perfect time to get out in the yard when the soil is not too soggy.

And I just used a shovel and just went in, just chopped it.

Because it is a pretty good thick route with this perennial, you get a little bit of the roots.

If this was planted right now, it's going to settle in, we've still got cool weather, a lot of moisture, the slow warming in May, this plant won't even know it's been moved.

And so it's fantastic now and of course, I've tried to get off as much soil as I could, because of the invasive jumping worms with that possibility, but now I've had really good luck at this time of the year with digging up some of these perennials and moving them and the plant doesn't know it's been moved because you don't have the stress from top growth.

And obviously, with how this thing is rooted in you just you just can't get a lot of the roots with it.

What's a good window just for people who are thinking, oh, there are some things I'd like to divide or move or, you know, what's a good window of opportunity that it's ideal, I would say through the end of March when Chu because as of April, we start to get some sprouting.

And so then you know, you just never know in that April time period, when we start heating up that things can start actively growing more.

So you want to already have it where you want it to go.

Okay, this would be dormant, moving it while it's dormant before it's really actively growing.

Yes.

And then when once you transplant, water it in really well and do all the Yeah, you don't you don't really have to do too much too much.

Okay.

Yeah, you know, you know, certainly any plant that's a newly planted plant, whether it be from a pot doing like this from a root kind of thing.

The first year if we go really super dry in the summer, giving good soakings from time to time is always helpful to get a good root system.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Hello.

We're gonna go to you.

What do you wanna talk about syrup you want to talk about as you've got a whole bunch of stuff over there?

Yeah, dealer's choice.

Well, let's let's do the maple syrup.

Because I know you're trying it this year, too.

I am.

Okay, so a number of years ago, I bought from a Vermont company.

Here leader evaporator, I bought some little spouts.

And they were cast aluminum right here.

And I've used them each year.

And I have sugar maples.

So you have to identify your tree.

But I just take a cordless drill with a bit that's about the same diameter as as this.

And I drill in a about an inch and a half.

Because you're only going to put this inch, about an inch in tap it in with a mallet.

And then my collection is really pretty rudimentary, you can share some of your things that you're trying but I use milk jugs that hang on my tree and you start usually around Valentine's Day.

So we've got a picture of that.

And then what it is, is I've got a little V I've cut at the very top of the container.

And then this just goes in and kind of you know hangs on the tree.

It drips out through this.

And right now this this, this is some of the sap that I collected this morning.

And, again, very rudimentary.

I'm boiling it down in a little turkey roaster on my front porch.

It's to concentrate the syrup you need.

It's 40 to one so you have to evaporate a large percentage of this tree sap you have to boil the water out of it.

And of course, commercially This is done in special evaporator kettles and different things that they have.

But for me, it's just out on the front porch.

And then once it starts to thicken and darken it becomes more of a caramel color than I finished boiling it inside till I get a more syrupy kind have consistency.

And it's, it's just so fun.

So for about three weeks, it's really easy to harvest and what you're looking for is on the south side of the tree, and you want the day temperatures to be above freezing, but then you want the night temperatures to drop back down.

And that creates this osmotic pressure that just keeps moving moisture from the soil through the root system up to these expanding buds, that you that you see in the tree, and eventually, the SAP stops really flowing and you remove these taps, and this small hole will see you all over.

So it's really not detrimental to the tree.

And it's, it's so much fun.

It is i She taught me two years ago, one year ago.

And so we do it exactly like that with the roaster pans with the with the milk jugs course we drink a lot, my sons drink a lot of apple juice.

So we've got apple juice jugs, but same thing.

The only thing different is we have some hanging on the tree.

And then some we have I've drilled a hole in the lid, and we've got a spout like a tube that goes from the tap to the jug, and they're sitting on the ground.

But other than that, I do that.

I do it just like Elon does.

And we really enjoy it.

So it's a cool hobby.

Kids are no kids.

Right?

Right.

And so like I said, mid February to about mid March is your is your window of opportunity.

And it's it's just a wonderful gift.

And easy pastime.

You want to be careful, you don't you don't want to leave your roaster on unattended.

I mean, you can usually leave it on during the day.

But if I have it on, I can go turn it off.

And so it doesn't run during the night.

But I have you know, scorched the pan because it's burned down to too low.

And I did try it once cooking it in my house and the windows were running moisture.

I mean, if you want to create humidity in your home, it's I mean, it's just like boiling water on the stove.

Yes.

And even just that final boil puts off a lot of steam through the house.

So I couldn't imagine doing from SAP all the way down.

Right, right.

Anywho we could go on about that forever.

Is this cat grass?

Yes.

Well, we talk all the time, but right now we're getting into that time of the thing that we're all kind of wanting to outdoor that greenness.

And our cats are starting to have that time of the year where they're they're doing a heavier shed from the winter.

And so we talked about hairballs And so giving them cat grass at this time of the year once just enriches for them and then helps with hairball issues.

And then Ella and I just have fun growing it because we like to grow stuff.

But you know this is a cute little tea tea pot and saucer and this is oat assortment has oats wheats, right?

Yeah, you can throw them in that.

And then this is just straight wheat grass.

soaking the seeds overnight seems to help them pop up, then it's out on the internet, everything seems to have been a dark place for them to germinate.

It's like they don't they don't need that and plus grasses like light, then on this one I did it.

Like Ella does get it out of here.

And we've actually used the bags that you get from we usually get these from like buying clearance vegetables and fruits at the grocery store these little onion bags and actually putting it around the pot when when they're just germinating.

Yeah.

And then that way when the cat is nibbling and pulling on this, you don't get as much pulling and dirt and stuff strewn all over the house with rivaling the best guy ever.

So and then I just want to mention, you know, I just put mine in a decorative pot to look pretty, but you would never want to plant it directly in here.

Because if any of you have tried that, there's so many roots that they develop.

You'd have to cut it out of here because it just you can't pop it or pull it out.

So I always do a pot and a pot with something decorative like that right.

And the cool thing about this cat grass is you don't have to grow up for your cats.

You can grow it and use it outside in your pots for spring with some pussy willow branches and for Easter grass and some, you know eggs or whatever, you can grow it for it for an Easter basket.

Look.

It's just so much fun.

When you did that last year it was so cute where she took it in a saucer and germinated them, and then she plunked it into a pot outside, right and then did the arrangement At the end it looked so cool because you guys weren't really growing that much and the grant it just looks so cute.

It was it's so much fun and really for for you can use the whole wheat Berry and you can you can cut this and you can put it in a smoothie I mean people do juice the grass and such well and then like like we've bought the seeds elegant some a lot of times at health food stores a lot cheaper when you go to the store wherever they've got package seeds you you're going to spend at least $3 for just a little tiny package.

So go into a health food store or like impure there's a seed store that I got a pound of of wheat for $1.

So looking at for those places to get your your and they caught wheat berries at the health food stores.

It's we Merricks them.

I see you've got a couple of bags there, do you ever mix them?

Or do you grow them separate?

This one came as a mix with barley and rye and oats.

I think just the plain wheat is the easiest.

Okay.

All right.

And you've got a branch over there with some buds on it.

Sure.

Well, again, like we had said, this was pussy willow.

So now's the time of the year that again, the sap is flowing, and the buds are starting to break.

And you can force branches like forsythia branches, or even puts the willows or different things like that.

So you can cut them now put them in water.

And you can force some flowering or you know the little cat kins to poof out.

And so I brought that and we've had beautiful, some beautiful afternoons, it's been sunny and everything and now's the time to think about maybe some limited spring cleanup.

We're not really talking about raking out your beds and removing that leaf matter because that's a safe place for a lot of butterfly larva that or pupus or chrysalis is and different things that you know you want to save but this is from a hellebore.

And this is the foliage that has gone through the winter there and evergreen and then some of the the one that is green, it was kind of covered up with some leaves but some of the leaves that you know were up standing got really taken down by the freezing cold temperatures and such a now's the time that you might want to remove these and so I go through and cut them because right down at the base is where the new foliage but the flowers come up first.

And so when you have those ugly brown leaves, it just takes so much away from the beautiful flowers.

So when you're talking about doing some limited cleanup, anything that standing is it okay to cut we're not what we're not wanting to remove the leaf matter, right?

But if you've got like ornamental grasses, now's the time to cut those back.

Because they're they're all kind of breaking up you can see that and so like I have some Japanese forest grass, I cut that back I started cutting back the hellebores.

Now certain things like these coneflowers rebecky Is that that Karen has, you want to cut them back maybe leaves six inches or eight inches for solitary bees to use as a tunneling nesting site.

But you know, so I've got some areas I don't even you know do anything with and actually in the fall of once the hostas have kind of moved on on this top of the surface and the leaves are starting to kind of dry out.

I removed those in the fall.

It's just an easy thing for me to do and and a lot less mess in the spring especially those giant leaves.

I forgot we did have one lady that wrote in what is she supposed to do with her Amaryllis when she pulls the bowl about so could you guys maybe explain a little bit about Amaryllis care and then she also asked if she should leave it in the pot or she should take it outside and plant it once it warms up.

So what is what are some Amaryllis tips?

I want to go well i the amaryllis if she's gotten one that it bloomed or not bloomed and now it's just got long leaves, let keep it growing, keep it going with with watering it and happy and then yes, it can be moved outside, I find that the bulb rebuilds itself and has a better chance of doing a bloom the following year.

If I do put it outside, I put it out in a shady spot in my yard just because then I don't have to babysit it for watering as much and you don't have to acclimate it for that higher light and in the pot or out of the pots fine.

I just find that leaving it in the pot is just easier because it's going to have to come back in again.

So why have another chore of digging something up repotting it to bring it back in?

Yeah, I leave all of my Amaryllis in the pots.

And honestly, I mean, you can force them out for Christmas if you give them the six to eight weeks of resting period that they need.

But I never get around to that.

So yeah, minor minor still resting minor ciders and beers blowing my smartphone, I finally cleaned the dead leaves off of mine.

But that's the beauty of it.

You can stage this development.

And you can have them blooming at different times.

And, and I choose this time on purpose because I need to see something happening.

Yeah.

So usually right around a week or two after Thanksgiving is when I get mine out because I want to see something.

We'll see.

There you go.

That's a good way.

I just, they're just sitting down there with the cannas and the palladiums, and the dahlias and everything else.

And I just, you know, spring so I have Amaryllis blooming in June or, you know, or may or I don't know, so, whatever works for you.

Yeah, maybe I'm going home.

And I'm going to dig one out, and I'm going to bring it out and start watering it and see where I go see what happens.

Yeah.

All right.

Ladies, we're out of time.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

Good night.