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 panelists who are going to be answering your questions.

We've got Jen Nelson in the house, and also a face you haven't seen for a while rusty molding is back.

So before we get into everything, let's have you guys both introduce yourselves.

And I guess reintroduce yourself and tell us what you've been up to.

We haven't seen you in a couple of years.

Sure.

Well, my name is Rusty Maulding.

I'm the new site superintendent at Lake of the Woods, which is part of the Champaign County Forest Preserve District.

So we have gardens and trails that we're maintaining, we have operations that we're maintaining out there.

And so that's been keeping me busy here for about the last year or so.

Now, landscaping, it was your heart, right?

That was your your gig by trade?

Absolutely.

Yes, I'm a horticulturist.

And for the previous 25 years, I've been a landscape professional, mainly working as a landscape contractor.

So how are you liking the change?

What's it like?

What do you Well, I have a bit of a commute now.

It used to be a five minute commute.

Now it's about an hour.

Oh, there's that.

But there's lots of time then to you know, return phone calls.

And, you know, listen to podcasts and things like that in my on my drive.

But you know, it's really great because I have an awesome team I'm working with, you know, as a small business owner, there's a very small sort of group that you get to work with daily.

And this is just nice, because we have a full team to work with.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Well, welcome back.

Thank you.

We're very excited to have you and we posted your photo and told folks that you will be back and we got some some Yay.

So folks are eager to know, no frowny face.

Yeah, do today.

You better behave and keep it together.

All right.

Hi, I'm Jen Nelson.

I'm horticulturalist and I am also an adjunct instructor at U of I and I wrote a blog grounded growing, groundedandgrowing.com.

I like to answer all sorts of horticulture questions, especially veggies and houseplants and it's about that time it is Ooh, I've got the itch.

Let's see last week or a couple of weeks ago when it was really warm.

And we had the started the week with tornado warnings.

And they ended it with Freeze warnings, right?

And it's just back and forth.

And I'm just ready.

I'm ready to settle in the spring.

So alright, let's get into some of our demonstrations and things.

Rusty, you brought some branches in.

I did not mistaken I brought in some all kinds of things.

Because it's time to start pruning it is I brought in a thorny subject to start with.

All right.

No gloves, no gloves.

Bear handing it so we'll see if there's anything left.

So rose bushes, right.

It's that time of year or whatever you're going to do dormant pruning for rose bushes.

We're we're hitting right the sweet spot right now.

And so one of the things I just wanted to talk about, you know, people kind of have a maybe sometimes some concern and you know, caution, it's a rosebush, what am I going to do wrong.

Most of the rose bushes these days are shrub roses, and are pretty indestructible when it comes right down to it.

A lot of knockouts and some other things out there that have taken over the market.

And so but we do need to do some care to them.

So dormant pruning, you're basically looking at doing about three things.

Okay, remove any dead, you're going to remove weak or crossing rubbing branches, and then sort of reduce the height and sort of open up the interior so that you get good airflow in the summer.

What I like to do is sort of looking at this, um, this is it this was a an actual rosebush.

You can think of it being in the ground, you pull out my pruners, because, you know, I knew they were coming.

I'm seeing like, there's a lot of masks up in here, and I want to create space.

And so I would actually go through, and I'm going to cut this piece out right down in here.

And loppers can sometimes be a very good thing.

I didn't think you were going for that one.

I was going for that I did not expect Oh yeah, go go brutal and go harsh or go home.

Kind of see where you're going with that.

Yeah.

And so now I'm kind of left with these with these other two branches.

And if this is, you know, this is what, six eight inches right here.

I'm going to reduce most roses back to about it and eight to 12 inch height.

It seems to be a good height.

And I'm looking for if you can kind of see you've got buds that's right here but my finger there's a little red bud that's starting to come out.

I'm going to look for buds towards the exterior.

And I'm just going to make a cut and see right above that on both sides, and so I'd make the other cut over here on this side to this one.

Kind of have there's a butt here.

That's close.

After the outside, we'll make it there as well.

And I'm just a little bit above where that buddies at.

So you got just a little bit of what it's going to heal over in those spaces.

Exterior facing, you really send it out.

There are multiple buds down, these, the stems are gonna break.

And so you'll actually wind up with a nice flush of growth in about a month.

That's going to come up and fill in and believe me, it will grow back.

It absolutely does.

But it'll look just like what you prune by the end of the season.

Yes.

And by doing it now, you're not really interfering with the new floral set.

If you if you wait until June, you're like, oh my gosh is too big.

By then you're starting to maybe detract from some of the flowers that are coming up yet this season.

I truly did not anticipate that.

I really didn't like that was a shock vicious.

That was a shock.

Some clients of mine are like, what did you do?

You're like, Just trust me.

Later, they had me come back.

So it works.

Now when you're talking about the blooms bee or the buds being on the outside?

What is the advantage of that?

Or why are we looking for that?

Well, I'd like to have the first leader coming off and you can kind of see like this guy here is pointing up from the outside.

So that first initial shoot is going to come this way you have here's an interior, but here it's gonna it's gonna wind up breaking, but then your first leader is coming up into the interior that's going to interfere with like some airflow in that space.

It's going to also be more problematic for crossing branches, which are weak points and potentially can be a spot for infection to take off.

And that's what you're trying to avoid that crossing.

Okay, that makes perfect sense.

And is it time to start pruning up and shaping up all of our shrubs and bushes?

I mean, we've had people ask about lilac and all sorts of things.

So Is now a good time for everything.

So yes and no, it depends, right?

It's you know, anything that blooms in the summer, now is a perfect time to go after it.

There is a there's a few caveats like OakLeaf hydrangea is one you probably don't want to go too crazy on but anywho summer flowering shrubs, absolutely.

And most of them will tolerate this kind of dormant pruning, just fine.

Your spring flowering shrubs, those are going to bloom on last year's growth.

So by removing those buds at the end there, I would have removed the flower set for this year.

Now sometimes you just gotta cut it back because it's getting to be too big like somebody Burnham's can get out of control.

Sometimes you just sacrifice one year's worth of blooms in to control the size.

Okay, so All right, thank you.

All right, we're gonna move to a question.

This is from EULA Browder, she wants to know how to grow potatoes.

And that seems pretty timely, as well.

In fact, I was just at Menards and they've got all the sweet potatoes and everything on the end caps and I was trying to just get the and get out of there but everything is out.

So I know you do grow bags and you've got some different techniques.

So what is a really good way for someone who's never grown potatoes before before to start even there's a number of grow bags out there that would be a nice way to do it on the patio and feed potatoes you want to buy the smaller the better, you can buy bigger ones and cut them apart so that they have at least one I like where the sprout is coming off with you want two to three eyes per piece ideally, but just one is technically enough.

But if you buy the smaller seed potatoes and you just plant that whole potato and you actually started at the bottom of the pot or the Grow bag and just mounded up with a little bit of soil and as it's growing you keep adding more and more and more and more layers Yeah, some people use will use compost or use even shredded leaves and that's so that's easier to harvest because you don't have you just kind of shake it off.

I've seen people use straw out in the garden or piles of leaves out in the garden if you have that space.

Not everybody has that space but this is the perfect time and there's there's a number of old wives tales about times to plant potatoes isn't isn't St. Patrick's Day one of them.

I hadn't heard that one.

Good Friday is one of St Patrick's days when my father in law plants, cabbage.

Okay, that's what he subscribes.

I know.

I know St. Patrick and good St. Patrick's and Good Friday are in with the spring crops for some things.

Yeah, but definitely you'll see him at Menards at our local grocery store has seed potatoes this time of year.

Onions are another good one to place really early.

I've seen those.

Do you grow potatoes?

Actually potatoes are the one thing that I grew up fairly well.

No, I don't I don't know that there's anything special that I'm doing is this maybe the other ones I don't get in early.

I had a window where early season I can kind of get some things going and then there's like two months where nothing suddenly it's a June and going out.

Now, what can I grow really fast?

Can you put yours in the ground?

Do you put them in bags, buckets, which we have a couple of my wife encouraged me.

AK to do this many, many years ago to create some raised beds and like they're basically four by eight raised beds.

And so we do plant them in the ground.

But it's kind of a fun activity.

You know, it's big enough.

So whenever our son was was smaller, he come out and you know, dig the trench together, and he'd go out and plop in the seed or the part of the potato and it works.

It works out perfectly.

So yeah, it's that time of year.

And that is that would you say that's a pretty easy one to grow to pretty easy one to grow.

The one problem we've run into at my house is mice.

Mice getting in there.

Yeah.

Both with white potato and sweet potato, they seem to have found that they were growing quite well in our garden, and I would go to harvest them and they look perfect.

And then you go to grab them and they're hollow because a mouse has just tumbled right in huddled on their hand.

They're like, Hey, thanks for the so we have been, that's one reason I started trying to do stuff in pots, because it seemed to deter the mice a little bit.

Gotcha, gotcha.

Okay, so you've got options, raised beds directly in the ground growing bags.

Did you want to do another demonstration?

Or do you want to take a question?

Let's do a question.

Okay.

This one is from this is question 91.

We'll talk about some shrubs here.

This is from Paula.

And she wants to know, what are some good bushes or shrubs to grow?

And what problems do you run into when growing them?

Do a whole show?

The whole course.

And the low end?

Yeah, you know, now is it spring?

So people are going to start thinking about planting?

What am I going to do?

You know, it was shrubs as with my answer earlier, it depends.

You know, do you have sun or shade?

Do you want to be you know, three or four feet as a foundation planning?

Do you want to back border or you want something a little taller?

And so I've got a couple of recommendations.

Didn't notice kind of general purpose plants.

Maybe some folks hadn't heard of aronia or now I can't come up with a regular Oh, I don't know what else.

There's one called Mozscape mound and landscape hedger.

It's a it's a newer, newer plant that's out there a little bit newer aronia melanocarpa.

It's coming to me.

So it always happens like that.

I'm ready to Google.

But that's it's a nice short compact plant and has white flowers in the summer.

And it has a groove, great fruit set.

So most of those are going to be either a black or a red berry or fruit.

And then the fall colors fantastic and the reds and purples and some oranges either.

So that's kind of a nice one.

Another one that's I've just tried out just recently is buttonbush.

There's one called Sugar Shack.

Also like a three to four foot shrub, it has these white flowers that are kind of a look a little bit like, like, oh, sweet gum fruit, you know, kind of kind of a spiky ball.

And then they turn kind of red, and then also a nice full color.

So that is something that's maybe a little bit not on somebody's radar already, though.

So those are great for the foundation.

And then if you're talking about something taller for like a back border, one of the ones that I feel like is very, very could be placed in a lot of different landscapes.

Is that Blackhall viburnum.

It's it's not.

It's taller, but it's not too tall, right.

So eight to 10 feet, grows fairly slowly.

great habitat for birds has the early flower set of white, great fall color, good fruit set.

There's just a lot of really positive things about that.

And it's a native shrub.

Okay.

Now what problems do folks run into when they set the small shrubs or bushes in their yards?

Typically, the biggest problem people have is they'll run out and under the front bay window, they're gonna plant some shrubs that maybe are a little too big for the space.

So something that's labeled dwarf like a dwarf burning bush.

Dwarf burning bush still wants to be 10 to 12.

Right dwarf is relative.

It depends, right?

And so then they find they created a make work program.

They're out there trimming it two or three times a year and you're just didn't, you're not enjoying it.

Because it's a make work program.

And people want to set it leave it forget it, maybe touch to it touch it once or twice a year.

And so that's probably the biggest thing I would say.

Particularly with evergreens.

You know, for a while like Neagle pine was a big thing.

And now there's some other small spruces that like Oh, that's cute.

This little in its comes in a little two gallon pot and it's about yay big and then suddenly, five years from now it's like can see All right.

Colorado blue spruce is my example.

Yes, it's the perfect door.

And your you know, your average homeowner like myself just goes out and goes, alright, it says door.

I'm gonna go, you know, we just have the pots to read you guys go in with the inside knowledge.

And it's like that door.

Well, most of us at Google in our back pocket, it's true.

Look up, look up.

If this is the look it up and see what Google says.

But also look up the non dwarf version of chats like 30 feet tall, the dwarfs not necessarily going to be three.

The original is 30.

Yeah, we're looking, you know, yeah.

And so a lot of times, what I always encourage people to do is look like there's almost always the Latin write the botanical name on the tag.

If you Google it, you're probably going to get something from a botanic garden or an arboretum or something along those lines or university.

And they're gonna give you the skinny.

Yeah, more reliable.

I'm trying to sell you anything.

I'm just trying to provide you information.

So take a little bit more time in the aisle once you find one you like.

And Google the Latin name.

Yeah.

Okay.

Good advice.

Good advice.

All right, Jen, this was for you.

Let's see, Dan Sullivan wants to know, when is the correct time to start seeds indoors in our area?

And continuing with the theme?

It depends.

It depends.

If you were planning on growing onions, from seed, you're late.

If you're planning on growing tomatoes, you're right about on time, you're a little late to be starting peppers, I would I would say you're a little early to be starting things like cucumbers and squash, they don't need very much time to start ahead.

They actually do better.

If they're not in a transplant situation for too terribly long.

They don't like being transplanted.

So I guess it just depends what you're what you're going for.

Chuck gave us his plan to schedule the coveted yes schedule, which I didn't know until afterwards.

Everyone was a hotshot gave you is right, you're special.

You rank.

It is on our website.

You can search from an American gardener on wi ll and you'll get the coveted VoIP planting schedule.

It's got what's on there.

I think his was mostly transplant.

So if you're looking for direct, so plants, read your seat packet.

Yeah, yeah, that'll work too.

Okay, Rusty, what do you got?

We got about 10 minutes left.

Okay, well, I restock while you were talking, I brought some fresh, fresh things up.

So because we're sort of in the spring of the years, there's a nice transition time.

One of the things that often comes up is sort of okay, when do I cut back my my remaining perennials, how far do I come back that sort of thing.

When I first got into this industry, it was clear the bed in the fall.

And we've kind of gotten a little smarter about it.

And you know, you can leave some material up the nice food source for birds over the winter and some other things.

It's also habitat for a lot of beneficial insects, your pollinators and things like that.

And so one of the sort of the newer trends, and it's good practice, is to, instead of cutting everything back completely in the spring, we're going to cut things back to maybe eight, maybe even 18 inches.

And here's why.

You can see inside this guy, I don't know if you're gonna catch that or not.

But there's a, there's a, it's a hollow center.

Gotcha.

So it is completely like the whole inside of that is completely hollow.

This is off of a seed and plant, like an autumn joy or Madrona, or something along those lines.

And if you cut this off at about, you know, up to here, so what you're going to do is leave that new photo come up, come up around it.

And next fall whenever the the bees and wasps and other things like that they're looking for a place to lay their eggs, they're gonna, they're still going to be there, you're going to leave the material up.

And then they're going to pack the pack the place with some mud or whatever to kind of seal it in.

And then in the spring, whenever you also the next year, don't cut it back too far.

They'll emerge from that, that.

So it's an overwintering habitat.

I brought another sample and we'll try to see if we can zoom in on this one.

This is August docky, or hyssop blue fortune, it also has a hollow stem.

So which is really cool to think about, you know, because there's all these hidden things and then like little treasures that you just didn't understand how nature maybe was working.

And this is one way you can keep you know a lot of the beneficial insects in your own backyard instead of cutting them off hauling them off taking them to wherever they are burning them or whatever.

There's just, you know, leave some of that refuse around in just a month or two new green will come up and you'll never know it.

And then I spent hard trying to keep my husband out of the bed because he likes to tidy up and I you know Put the rake away one of those guys that it warms up a little bit or the calendar, you know, hits March, he's ready to get out there and clean up and I'm like, buddy, we have to let the insects do their thing.

They're waking up.

Yeah, that's right.

Oh, they're still they're still asleep.

I'm gonna make sure he watches this.

I like this method of where you're saying leave a little bit, but leave a little hotel because I struggle with this.

I struggle with this because everyone is saying, oh, leave it up until the insects emerge.

And then I'm like, Oh, this is licensed to procrastinate.

I'm in and it's like, okay, now I'm gonna use the pruners instead of Yes.

And now all this new stuffs growing in and it's June.

Right.

And it's hard to get.

I can't get the molds down.

And it's just way it's a make work program again.

Yes, it is.

And so it kind of working with nature.

And still some you know, you're not saying when this way?

Yeah, absolutely.

And the stems from two years ago, those are just gonna disintegrate.

You know, it's not a problem.

Now, you've given me a whole new perspective.

Thank you.

I have for years, done the exact opposite.

You know, we're all we're all getting smarter.

Along those same lines, we've got another question.

This is about bulbs and pots.

So we've got folks asking when they can begin to wake up their elephant errs.

They're cannas.

And is it time for that?

Can we start?

Yeah, I, I would say it is.

And that's something that a lot of people don't really necessarily know they can do.

You can start elephant ears, and cannas indoors in pots where it's nice and toasty and warm.

And then just you would bring them outside not until about mid May, because they're warm season tropical plants, they are not going to tolerate 50 degrees, very well.

Highs of 50s and lows towards freezing.

They're just not going to but definitely get a jump on them get and then you kind of get ahead of ahead of the game.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I love the elephant years.

It's so cool.

You can harvest them in the fall and they need some time to really get going.

And I feel like when I'm looking at things in June often here's the ground crusty.

Earlier, maybe we can get going but yeah, and in an ideal world.

Yes, I would get them started now.

Okay, them out.

Again.

Along those same lines.

What about dahlias?

Dahlias, I've heard people saying Is there a proper way?

Or is it just preference?

Okay, well, we're gonna go with however dahlias.

When is it time to start toes?

I mean, are we got another person asking about that?

I would think it's kind of we're in the realm of starting on now.

Same thing.

I've actually done some dollars in pots and never never taken them out of the soil.

Just move the pot in the garage.

It's worked.

It is complete cheating, but it is it has worked for like two to three years before I've just kind of refreshed it repotted it to get rebound.

Yep.

Hey, whatever works.

Okay, we've got about three minutes left.

Did you break?

Did you have anything else that you wanted to demonstrate?

Or show?

Okay, let's take another couple of questions.

Rusty, we'll do this one for you.

Since we had sort of a mild winter, someone was asking, should we expect this extremely mild and dry winter to affect our gardens and yards this year, this year?

And then are there any measures that we should take to offset any ill effects?

So is it bad for the garden when we have a mild winter?

You know, I wouldn't say that's necessarily bad.

I also wouldn't say that, you know, particularly first winter is particularly bad.

You know, it's sort of a, you know, forget to think a bit on a little bit more larger scale or a little larger timeframe.

In this particular case, really, the biggest challenge that I would see is that the dryness we kind of went into the winter with and that that ship kind of sailed back in the fall.

But if, in general, if you see going into the winter, when a dry situation, it's always a good idea, especially with your evergreens to give them a good drink before kind of putting everything to bed for the for the year.

This time of year, you know, it's mild really isn't that concern.

And certainly we've had plentiful rains in the last few weeks.

So we're definitely going in with that soil moisture renewed, which is which is a good way to start the season.

Excellent.

Well, that sounds good news.

Yeah, it's a nice side up sort of forecast going into.

Yeah, and maybe we'll have a few more I know, as always, whatever links the more insects or something like that that are going to be prevalent.

You know, what's going to happen, it's going to happen, we might get some few more things that have overwintered that wouldn't normally overwinter good and bad, bad insects and plants.

There was one row of cannas that I just it was October and I just thought, you know what, you guys just survive if you can, so well.

See ya make it so anyway.

Okay.

Well, we are out of time.

Thank you guys so much for coming in.

And welcome back.

Hopefully we'll see you a little bit more and come out to visit you and you see what you're doing out there.

Looking forward to it.

Awesome.

Awesome.

All right, and thank you so much for watching.

We will see you next time.

If you have questions, you can send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com and of course you can search for us on Facebook.

Just look for Mid American gardener and we'll see you next time.

Goodnight.