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 three of my faves, three of your faves.

Our panelists here, a lot of them introduce themselves tell you a little bit about their specialty and then we're taking off So Jim, we'll start with you on Jim Appleby.

I'm a retired entomologist from the Illinois natural history survey.

So I deal with the insects and mites attacking trees and shrubs.

Okay.

dang near everything else really.

I'm Marty Alagna, I specialize in yard small small landscapes for you know, private yards, perennials and shrubs and trees, a generalist if you will.

Alright, Miss Kay, I'm Kay Carnes.

I'm the Champaign County Master Gardener.

And my interest is herbs and gardening in general.

And I know you d o some volunteering at Allerton, I do.

I work with the garden, they have an herb garden Allerton, that's kind of my baby.

So with that I see their calendar starting to get filled again, with spring events.

There's a fee event in early April that we're going to try to make it to.

So I love to see those spring events popping back up on the calendar.

So great events, and all something for everybody.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Okay, well, you know, we'll start with you.

Tell us about your show in town.

What do you bring today?

Well, I brought a strawberry plant.

Because this is a good time to get them in.

And I thought I'd talk a little bit about planting them.

As you can see, they have these, I bought these local nursery and it was a bag of them supposed to be 25 by and planted 33 plants.

They never skimp Yeah.

They're doing really well.

But you want to dig a really deep hole, loose dirt not have mine in a brace bed.

So integrity of friable.

And when you so you want to dig pretty deep hole, probably six to eight inches deep.

And then you just put the plant in.

And you want to leave this part out because that's where the leaves and stems come from.

So you want to cover it with dirt up to about here right up to that point and you want to plant them about eight to 12 inches apart.

In the rose orbs, they can be scattered but they need eight to 10 inches apart.

And I I planted these before we had that cold spell and they're growing like awesome being me special care when you're planting them.

And I know that some people fan out roots or you know, do you have to do anything like that when you're really just want to make sure that the roots are covered.

You can little bit.

But it's as long as your dirt your soil is really loose.

It's not as quite so important.

Gotcha.

Now, will you be able to harvest from those the first year?

No, these are every book ever bearing which means they we produce fruit all season long, as opposed to a June dairy plant that just bears in June, but they have usually larger and more strawberries.

So there's kind of a trade off there.

Yeah.

Any special care anything that you do during the growing season?

Do you fertilize, do you well, a little compost I usually put compost on just on top around them.

But they're pretty hard and they're really pretty carefree once you get established.

Yeah, once they're established there.

Can you get a close up shot of the routes on this side?

And and how far above the route Do you want to plan and where are you wanna This is the crown and you want to plant it just you can see that?

It's coming out here.

So you want that completely covered.

But you don't want to go too high.

No deeper.

Yeah, there's a lot of controversy about how carefully you have to plant strawberries or they'll die or something that you can see the roots.

It's like a little hook skirt on there.

I mean, it's pretty easy to define where the roots, stop tops.

Some of them weren't quite as easy as this one.

Because they were a little bit smaller.

Yeah, that but you can really tell the crowd it is I've had people asked me that before it's it's not that complicated.

No, it's not.

If you throw the ones away that you think are gonna die on the compost pile they'll grow.

To divide strawberries, can they get too crowded in one area, and if you do divide them, when is a good time to do that?

Well, if you space them far enough apart when you plant them, that's not really going to be a problem.

Okay, good to know.

But like I said, they're pretty hardy you can take if they do get too close together, you can take them out and just gently pull them apart.

And we plan on replanting, okay.

And when the strawberry plant makes a runner, which they will, and they you'll see him kind of grow to be along stem, and then they'll be another little plant.

What do you do with those later?

Yeah, let's leave them just if they're outside the bed, you just put them back and poke your finger and put them there where where you want them to grow in a little bear spot and they go, they'll take right that's why you want to plant them fairly far apart.

So you have room for that.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

We've got a question about linden trees suckers for Marty the tree lady, Donna Blackmore writes in I have a linden tree, it's about 25 years old.

I have a problem with suckers coming up around the base.

And it's getting worse every year.

Is there something that I can put on the suckers to kill them, but not hurt the tree?

So what do you do about the suckers?

No, there's nothing you can kill the sucker so that they won't damage the tree because the suckers are growing out of the tree.

Most likely the tree is under some stress.

Or it got planted too deeply or too shallowly.

And since it's big, it might have settled in the ground.

But it might just be under stress, because it's we've had some odd weather patterns for last couple summers.

Maybe it got a little bit too dry for too long.

So it's just trying to live.

That's all it's an insurance policy.

Right?

It is like if I go down.

I've got to continue the job.

Right.

There's an analogy I will steal but I hadn't had to cut to the right away, I think like very childlike.

Yeah, that's breaking things down.

But I like it's trying to live it's just an insurance policy.

Yeah, it is.

And crab apples to do that.

Animal anchor will do that.

I mean, I have both of those trees in my yard.

I hate that they sucker.

But so you just never just cut them off, cut them as closely as you can.

And mulching the tree, feeding the tree a little bit might not be a bad idea.

Because the tree wants to live.

So if you can encourage growth up there, instead of down at the bottom, that'd be that'd be your best opens up another can of worms.

So when you are feeding or watering a tree?

Do you do it at the base?

Or are you supposed to step back and look at the canopy, how does one properly feed and water a tree.

Usually, you can look you sit back from the tree and you can see where the ends of the branches go.

And that's called the drip line.

Because when it rains, that's the last place out where the where the rain falls off at the drip line where as far out as the as the branches will go.

So inside there, the tree is almost a mirror image underground.

So it's like this on the top, but it's like that on the bottom underneath the ground.

So wherever the drip line is you want to fertilize out to there.

Especially on a tree as big as yours, it's not going to do any good to feed it by the trunk.

It's all the roots are just like the branches, they're big at first, they get bigger and bigger.

But as they grow out, they get smaller and smaller and the tips of the roots are the ones that take up the moisture and the nutrients of tree has to have.

So I would do this all by the drip line.

You don't have to mulch it clear out to the drip line.

But it wouldn't hurt to mulch it a little bit to hold some moisture especially if it's kind of a dry spot.

And when you water when I water a tree I do start at the trunk because I prop it up on the trunk a little bit and the water side and I put it out a trickle no bigger than your pinky finger or pencil.

And I'll put it there and I'll let it run for a couple hours.

There's no water bill be damned.

Shave the tree you don't yet.

So it'll run, you know, and it'll just trickle out.

And it'll keep turning pretty soon the soil all underneath that tree is going to be all soggy and about an hour's worth.

I'll move around the other side of the tree to make sure that all of it all those little roots out by the drip line, get water, but real slowly, it soaks in real slowly.

So that's a good drink for a tree when it storms real badly and everything's all watery.

And it's messy to walk in the yard.

That's the best kind of weather for trees.

A good day for your tree.

That's right.

So awesome.

Okay.

All right, Jim.

So we've gotten a lot of questions.

And we've all been talking about the cicadas that are coming.

Soon, okay.

I'm not real thrilled about it.

Like I've been talking about for entomologists, I'm sure this is like Christmas a lot.

So Jim is going to walk us through what we're going to be seeing.

And then there's a plot twist at the end, which I'm not going to share, because I don't want to give it away.

So we'll start with this guy.

Well, before I say anything about the cicada, let me say this, that I'm not the cicada expert in the Midwest.

There are several entomologists that are dedicated specifically Stacia.

And one is Dr. Jean Christie.

He's a faculty person at Mount St. Joseph University.

That establishment is near Cincinnati, Ohio.

He's been working on cicadas for many, many years.

So he's really the expert.

And when you have another one at the Natural History survey that just became a staff member there, her name is Dr. Katherine Dana.

And so those people are the specialist.

I simply took these photographs 13 years ago, when they had the emergence.

So let's just go through and look at some.

So this is what we'll be saying, well, this is, you know, they spent 13 or 17 years on your ground, and then when they are about to emerge, and that's generally in late May, when the soil temperature is about 64 degrees, they will emerge generally, that's about 64 degrees of soil temperature Fahrenheit, and they will merge in tremendous numbers.

Now, if they're in a server, what area it will look like what we see here, you see, they make a little chimney, and they emerge if it's real dry, it was simply just a hole in the ground.

Now this next photograph is a picture of the newly emerged cicada, this is one that just emerged from their shell when that when that nymphal skin splits down the back, then the adult emerges from that cat skin.

And so the photograph here shows the adult emerging from the cat skin.

And the the, the you know, these names will climb up any vertical surface.

And sometimes it's a tree trunk like we see here, or it could be a fence post.

And they'll they'll change into the adult stage here.

This, this slide shows a topical view of what was an insect looks like just and underneath that is the old cat skin.

Now, if you're wanting to eat cicadas, you want to get their state hair in a state, you know, because they're nice and tender.

I'll talk about them a little bit later.

Oh, good.

They emerge in tremendous numbers.

And here we see a huge number of them.

And, you know, when they emerge the, the females the males are the only ones that saying they have a Aragon on the side of their abdomen, they vibrate, and it can be extremely loud, but it's only the males that sang.

But when they sing, they attract the females and the females will come over to that area and a female at once be made it will flick their wings a little bit.

Here we see a pair mating and they mate with the tip of one abdomen connecting to the tip of the other abdomen.

No kissing, no kissing, okay.

And anyway, after about a couple of days and the female starts laying her eggs.

This is what injures the trees when they a glance.

If you look closely at this photograph, you see at the very front of the insect you see that little black tube so it's actually feeding on this plan.

And so they do a certain amount of feeding but that's insignificant injury from their feeding is insignificant, but look further back on the abdomen.

You see that?

That other?

Black looks like a little black.

Tick?

Yeah, that was a little that's where they eggs to go into that and go into the tissue itself, so that's when they're egg laying, they stick that over, it's called overpowers or in the stem and lay their eggs in that area.

So that's what causes the injury.

And then when it looks, this is a branch of oak tree, a white oak tree.

Here you can see the injury on that.

Now genuinely, they'd like to lay their eggs in a tree branches that are about the size of your little finger.

They're not going to lay eggs in great big branches, but finger size branches they like to lay their eggs in.

Cicadas live only about three to four weeks, at the most.

But here's the slow Russia in the hole is tiny little eggs in here.

Now the eggs take quite a long time to hatch, generally about six weeks before the eggs hatch.

And here we see a photograph of the young, very young naps, very tiny, most people don't see them.

And then these little names will drop to the ground and burrow in.

And at first they probably feed on on grass roots.

But then later as they keep burrowing, they'll feed on the stems of roots of trees, and really don't cause that much damage at when they're really young.

Now, if you if your plants are within, say 1000 feet of a forested area, you may have some trouble with the cicadas laying their eggs and the branches.

If it's farther than that, they really don't cause any harm.

I mean, they'll be around but they like to lay their eggs in trees where they fed as as nymphs.

So it really should not be concerned about controlling this.

A long time ago, Dr. Fred Miller did some tests up at Morton Arboretum that's near Chicago.

And any of the insecticides that he applied were not effective anyway.

So if you do have a, say a small ornamental tree, near forested area you want to protect, you probably want to go and just put netting over that.

You talked about that a couple of weeks ago, getting the big netting, yeah, the bags to put over.

There's several different companies that make netting, you can go to the internet and put search for insect netting.

And there's several companies, I would call a company before you purchase it because you can describe how big the tree is and why it cetera, et cetera.

So smaller, newer, more tender trees are the ones that are most at risk not being clustered near the like I said they like to lay their eggs in branches that are both the size of your little guy.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, here's the part that I alluded to earlier.

They can be eight and you know, we probably should be eating and six are very high in protein.

And all that, you know, when you think about people throughout the world, they consume and sucks because of that because they don't have chicken that might be out of necessity.

You're right, you're right.

Traditionally, it's all cultural.

Why Yeah, what do we look we oysters on that it would say oysters and shrimp and shrimp and a lot from process.

So anyway, where are these?

At the White tender stage?

They were at the White tender stage, you could fry him I guess a little bit later and I pried him in olive oil and brought him in served him like this.

I mean, look how fancy they were.

But I was Mike Bronk, he was a former city forester here, he Mike and I were the only ones that consumed Well, I can't say I'm surprised Have you ever eaten cicada i and with any luck I will not know I hate what seems to me when I was at school we had so many years well if you're brave enough, Jim says bring him on in and I throw in a little garlic when you fry herb lady said I don't think there'll be an any grow army.

Now strengths if I asked you off camera but you couldn't even put a word to the flavor.

They just you know it's hard to describe a flavor they're just sort of law Yeah, the sort of blood if you know if you put them in a batter and maybe are now we're talking That's America airfryer Yeah, that's right.

Better fried when we talk about batter and and frying.

That's where I could get behind it because there's nothing like a play to sigkdd gravy.

Well, so this year, are you planning on making another bears and to impress the last 13 years ago?

I just feel like maybe if you brought them in And we could have DJ and Taylor and you know, some of our crew members excluding myself.

We may we should do that.

Yeah.

So keep us posted.

We've got about five minutes or these busy that day.

A couple questions in.

Yes.

Also, he froze them.

Oh, yes.

Before he cooked him ice just throw them in their lab put a lid on like a lobster.

No, not I froze them first frozen.

First, while we're talking about cicadas, Pam wants to know she's surrounded by farmland and has mostly pine wood does she have will she have to worry about any issues?

I don't think so.

Okay, unless it was pine trees are 1000 feet from a forest that was had a heavy infestation 13 years ago.

There's no need to control.

Okay.

All right.

Let's see, we've got this picture.

This is from Lorraine her fourth.

She says that she paused or pulled some moms into the garage to overwinter and watered them a bit in February.

They're still hanging on.

They're still green in there.

She's asking when to put these in the ground.

What do you think?

I'd wait until you were going to plant anything else this year, like after frost date, May 15.

True, they're perennials and they're Hardy.

And but even when you plant other perennials that still wait until it's kind of past frost.

They don't they don't need that extra additional strain when they're trying to get established.

But now, yes, in the spring is when you plant moms, because you plant them on the fall because they're so pretty nearby, and they're really crispy and they break off.

Yeah, and you can't get them in there good.

And you don't do the things you should and even if you do, it's really unlikely that they'll live over the winter.

So plant them now and look like a genius.

make your neighbors jealous.

How come yours always come back?

Because I'm smart.

Yeah, Martin told me how to do it.

Let's see Lorraine Nemo writes, I love Mid American gardener.

Thank you.

And I've learned a lot.

I've heard that it's best to trim shrub roses when the forsythia bloom.

However, this year has been unusually warm in February and in March, and the forsythia bloomed in early March.

Should we trim now?

Or should we wait?

I like to trim roses when they start leafing out.

I like to see I mean, not the full leaf that doesn't have to have buds on it.

But you know, a mouse here sized leaf when you see him coming on both sides of your fingernail, then you're like, oh, okay, because he had a lot of die back on on roses in the winter, don't you?

I do.

So you know, where the green spot is.

Please don't share them.

Just don't.

Don't do that.

But you know, put them back.

Take the larger pieces out, you know, the typical pruning, but you can still see what the structure of the plan is.

But you can also tell which branches are not leaving out.

So you know, it's like, Oh, that'll leave out later.

No long, big stick.

And so where do they start to leave a little bit, you'll see some more growth from the ground.

You know, I don't know how you're talking about pruning roses.

But I usually wait until they leaf out a little bit.

We've got two minutes left.

Let's see.

Robert says I seem to have a lot of Rolie polies.

Under my plants in my garden beds.

They are helpful by eating decay.

But sometimes I see a lot in one place.

Is there such a thing as too many wood lice, so I don't think so the more the merrier more the more.

We were talking about these before the show.

They're really beneficial.

Right?

So they are they're kind of fun.

Now.

That's one insect I'm not afraid of.

And they're just kind of rolling.

They're insane.

Oh, I tried one of those trial of one of the trial of baits or some of those old trial ancient Oh, yeah, trial bites.

Yeah.

I didn't know if I had same or not.

I've learned something new every time you're on the show.

All right, folks.

Well, we are out of time.

Thank you to all three of you for coming in.

And if you're going to cook up some cicadas, make sure you send us pictures and any of your questions with the pictures to your garden@gmail.com we'll have several more shows before they actually our buddies arrive but if you do plan on eating some we would love to see so videos and their opinions on what table their opinion of what they taste like video because I can't put a word to the taste where they crunchy all the way through.

Oh no, these were so off because I collected them you know just when they emerge.

So they were oh they were soft.

Okay.

Oh my.

I'm interested to see what happens.

So really practically.

Deep fried sauteed whatever you'd like to do.

So we would love to work with love to see you eating those but thank you guys for coming in.

Thank you so much for watching and again if you want to ask any questions or send us your picture, that's yourgarden@gmail.com and we will see you next time.

Goodnight