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

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and we are out of the studio, as you can tell, doing one of our road shows.

And I'm so happy to be here.

This is my new friend, Bob Streitmatter, and we are at Luthy Botanical in Peoria.

So tell us a little bit about you.

First, what do you do here at Luthy?

I'm the manager here at the botanical garden.

So I do a lot of everything, a lot of gardening, pruning, planting, propagating, a lot of anything that goes into a botanical garden is what we do.

We've got a small but stalwart staff that excellent.

Have you been here for a while?

Have you worked here for a while?

I've been here since, oh, five.

This will be my 20th year, 20th so I've been here a while.

Wow.

Okay, so tell us a little bit about the history.

How did Luthy come to be luthy, so it's a long history, sort of Luthy started in 1951 it was opened in 51 and it gradually became a botanical garden.

Initially it was just classified as a garden, and then it became a botanical garden in the 70s.

And so we're we met all the criteria.

And then I was not here in the 70s, but and then eventually it was named after George Luthy, who was a long time park board member and park board president and mover and shaker here in city of Peoria.

Really nice man.

Wow.

All gardeners are nice people.

Of course, we just can't help it right now, over 20 years, I bet you've seen a lot of these plants go from, I mean, that's where my mind went when you said 20 years, you've probably seen a lot of these plants grow from tiny, little potted guys to, like, full on trees.

We've got six acres here outside, and so we've made a lot of changes over those 20 years, and you really start to see things come to fruition.

You know, over that time span, it really is sort of cool, and you see a lot of changes too.

Do you have volunteers that help here as well?

We have a lot of volunteers that help us out on certain days.

We we also have a lot of master gardeners.

A lot of those.

A lot of our volunteers are master gardeners, which one of them will be making an appearance later on?

Yes, she's a Master Gardener, wonderful extraordinaire.

I'm so excited to check out some plants that you've got around here.

Let's start with the unusual lemons, but I'd love to take a look around and have you show us some of the unique and cool plants that are in here.

Sure.

Okay, sounds good?

You music.

So as soon as we came in, my eyes were immediately drawn to this tree.

Tell us what we're looking at here.

This is a Ponderosa lemon.

It's not a true lemon.

It's a cross between a Citron and a pomelo.

So that's where you get the bigger size from.

They can get almost as big as a close to a soccer ball, if it didn't have such a large fruit set on it.

There's a lot of fruit coming on.

And it's like I said, it's not a true lemon, but it tastes like a lemon, looks like a lemon.

You can eat them.

They're just proportionally larger.

So you know that outer rind is really thick, but they're great.

Make it for lemon water and that kind of thing.

We actually, we're right next to the zoo, and we share a lot.

We do share them once in a while with the zoo.

Certain animals really like a citrus fruit once in a while, or it's sort of an enrichment thing, sort of like a treat for them cool.

They play with the lemon for a little while, and then they'll eat it eventually.

We also send a lot of them with we have a lot of school, school groups that come through, and we send them home with a teacher.

A lot of times lemonade, and it's really cool, because a lot of times people don't understand their connections, such as the botanical world, and when you have a food crop like a vanilla orchid or an orange tree or a lemon tree.

It makes those connections between the person in the botanical world.

Like you said, we all eat, yes, one thing we can love to eat, too.

Now I see there are varying sizes all throughout the tree.

How long does it take to go from, you know, one of these little guys up here to a full size fruit I would see, a couple months.

Because, you know, we're not the fruit production is great, but sometimes we we get a lot of fruit production, and it's mostly comes from we use mushroom compost in here.

Once in a while.

We don't really try to promote the fruit production, but the mushroom compost really helps us out a lot.

Wow.

That is fascinating.

It smells a little funky for a day or two, but then that disappears, great for the plants.

Now, this is not something that someone could grow outside, say, on their property, in our growing zone.

No, this is guessing zone eight, gotcha.

No, don't get any ideas Florida, you know.

And then we're where you grow citrus.

Gotcha, yeah, but you know, and maybe this.

It's too large for one of those plants that you move in and out, because that can be a problem when they can, oh, sure.

But you can grow some citrus fruits like that, you know, move them in and out onto your patio and then inside for the winter.

Very nice.

And then, how often does this bear fruit?

Is it just all year long?

It's continuous, really.

And this is a funky, contained, weird environment in here.

And, you know, the sun is maybe not the same as it is where they're native, but so we just sort of get fruit production all the time.

Now, that's that's a nice and you sort of see that because you've got big ones, mature ones, and you've got little, tiny ones on this tree.

And yes, this tree seems very happy.

He's probably been here, I'm estimating 30 years.

So that's incredible.

How do you water?

Do you water?

Or is this more like an environment where it's it keeps itself moisture.

It does keep some moisture pretty well as you you can feel that.

Yes, but we water, it depends on the season.

We water once a week.

We hand water once a week, and that's just a really cool, serene thing to water a tropical rainforest.

We usually we it's once a week, and once in a while, like in the summer months, when things are really arid and dry out faster it's hot, we might have to water twice a week or and what a great respite to come to in the winter time.

I mean, just to come in and feel, you know, someplace where there's warm and, yes, and the oxygen is better here, absolutely, seriously, better, absolutely.

And if anybody's got a keen eye, I don't know if you've noticed our little pal back here who was making appearance on the show.

So there are frogs in here.

Yes, we have tree frogs, and they add to the ambience a little bit, but they also help us with insect control.

So very nice.

Well, now I'm going to challenge you.

Do you have a favorite plant in here?

I know that's tough, but do you have a favorite and we'd love to see it.

If so, it's a powder puff.

It's a pink powder puff.

Awesome.

Okay, let's go check it out.

Okay.

Okay, so this is one of your favorites.

This is one of my favorites, and it's a pink powder puff tree.

We also have a red powder puff tree in the collection, but I think this is cool because it reminds me of the Lorax and the truffle of trees a little bit, yes.

And we're actually theming our Lily show, upcoming Lily show around the Lorax.

So it's just it goes from this stage where it looks like a little green raspberry.

So this is an eventual, yeah, this is gonna flower here, okay?

And to this powder puff, full bloom flower.

And then it sort of Oh yeah, gets a little tired.

Yeah, its hair relaxes a little bit.

Here's an is that all the way spent one there?

Yeah, that's all the way.

Wow.

It's just a cool tree that you can see the flower progression on, and it has this funky, very unique now I see lots and lots of buds.

So is this more?

Does this bloom all year long?

Or are we coming into I think we're coming in bloom period plan, you know.

And it's, it's, it's probably from a much warmer climate, like Central America, Central and South America and so.

But it's really coming into bloom right now.

It's very nice, hopefully on cue for our Willie show.

Yes, fingers crossed for that.

And you said it comes in red as well.

Yes, I think there might be other there might be a white one out there too.

That's pretty.

Just a fun thing.

This is really gorgeous.

Now, size wise, is this one fully grown or or how tall will these get?

It's close, but it probably can get another eight foot taller.

Wow, to the point where we have to trim it from the ceiling, but that's the nature of a conservatory.

You've got a limited head headroom.

And again, this is not something that you can go pick up at a nursery and grow not usually, you know, maybe in Florida you're gonna find something like California, Southern California, excellent.

Okay, very nice.

So this stop is for the dinosaur lover in your life, right?

Kids and adults alike.

Yeah, everybody wants a dinosaur one.

I love this.

You guys have a whole exhibit, right?

Yes, we've exploring some of the Jurassic plants.

It's called Jurassic garden, and we here at the garden, we have various plants marked with these little Triceratops tags to define the Jurassic plants.

These plants are essentially living fossils that have been around here since that time period.

So we sort of show the plant and then show the fossils in the display case up in the classroom.

And it's a good way to interpret plants, especially for kids, and making that connection, like you talked about earlier, and it, you know, it's, you know, you see a kid with the dinosaur lunch box.

Well, that's the market.

We're looking for them.

How many do you have several plants like this in the exhibit?

We have quite a few plants.

We've got.

You.

Dionne, we've got this queen Sego.

We've got King segos.

A lot of the ferns are super primitive, and so those are like a maiden hair fern is essentially a Jurassic plant.

So we've got a lot of plants in the collection.

Even our logo, the ginkgo, is essentially a Jurassic plant.

Ginkgos have their own genus.

They're isolated from the rest of the plant world.

So they're very unique.

So there's a lot of these plants around.

It's just people don't know how.

Now, question for you, how do you differentiate between the king and the queen?

Well, they're a different species.

Oh, they're a different species.

It's not a male.

I imagined the couple.

Well, you know, it stands to reason that, you know, there's male and female plants, but they're just different species.

Gotcha, gotcha.

And when people come here, they can grab a guide and kind of identify these plants on their self guided tour.

How does that work out?

It's just you match the pick up the book, and it's got a green tag that you match with the numbers in the book, and it sort of explains the plants a little further, a little bit of the history there.

Very cool something for everybody here.

Okay, we're going to check back in with you in just a bit and talk about some of the upcoming events that are going to be going on here.

Ruthie, but first we're going to go talk to our friends, Taylor and Amanda, and they're going to tell us about how you can be a friend to shows just like Mid American gardener.

Thanks Tanisha, and thanks to all of you for tuning in to this episode of Mid American gardener.

We're so happy to be here with everybody today.

My name Amanda Hill, I'm the membership manager at WILL, here with Taylor plantan, first time on camera.

She is the producer of Mid American gardener, amongst many other titles that we'll get to later.

But so glad you can join me on this side of things.

We are in a march TV fun drive, and those of you who are loyal viewers, as I know so many of you, are probably recognized, and they know a couple times a year, we do break into your programming just to remind you how special and amazing this show is, and it wouldn't be here without your support.

We do ask a couple times a year if people want to make a call, 217-244-9455, or go online to will give.org We're looking for gifts of support.

40% of our support does come from viewers like you and listeners and everybody in our radio side of things and education side.

We always have a lot going on at Illinois public media, and now, more than ever, it's so important that we hear from people like you, because we want to keep bringing this show to everybody.

We know how many fans we have, almost over 30 years somewhere like that that we've been on the air.

How long have you been a part of the producing this show?

I started as a production assistant back in November of 2021, so we're a little over three years now.

I'm now a full time Producer Director at Illinois public.

Yeah, and I work as a producer on an American gardener.

So with that that involves, you know, planning you are busy, busy.

I'm sure you love getting out of the studio, though, too much like I do.

This is so fun.

Have you ever been here before?

I've never been here Lucy's botanical garden in Peoria, Illinois.

Hope I said that, right.

Um, this is such a cool venue.

I think it's so funny.

We can kind of get out and explore.

The panelists are going to be great.

It's so fun to be in different parts.

You know, we're in Champaign, Urbana, and so it's fun to travel, see all the other real hands on gardening techniques, you know, see different parts of our growing zone, experience.

What other people throughout the state, especially with Illinois Extension, what they're doing, different educational techniques, different spaces like this, that are are utilizing horticulture in different ways, yeah, and teaching people and educating the public.

So I, you know, I always make this joke, but I'm not a very good gardener.

I'm very lucky that my husband loves doing it, and he's great at it.

What about you?

Are you like Tanisha?

I am not a master gardener or any of our panelists, but I have learned a lot from the show, I bet.

And I learned something every week, flowers, veggies, fruit.

Well, I live in an apartment, okay, okay, I work.

Don't have a full garden, but I do have, you know, patio plants and house plants.

You don't kill your plants.

I try not to, and I utilize the cameras when I can, too and ask questions as well.

So it's just so useful for me, yes, as all of you, as viewers, yes, and keep watching, because we are here to educate and entertain and, you know, bring some light to your airways, TV ways.

So give us a call.

217-244-9455, you can go online to will give.org We'll toss it back to Tanisha, and we'll be back for more.

Thank you.

Well, look who I bumped into here at Luth.

Thank you so much for coming out.

Miss Ella.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Now, for those who may not know you, which is no one, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

Well, I'm Ella Maxwell, and I am a horticulturist and a Master Gardener over in Tazwell County.

So if you just go down the hill from Luthy here, across the bridge over the Illinois River, you end up in Washington, and I am three blocks south of their square.

And that's how you can find out.

That's right, that's how I got here.

Her.

This got dropped off, actually, and just looking forward to warmer temperatures.

And I thought the sun was going to be out.

Was a little bit ago.

It just it's hiding right now.

So do you come here often, since this is right in your your backyard, right in your neck of the woods?

Well, I have been in Washington pretty much most of my life, and this conservatory has been here since, I think 1951 is that what Bob said, yeah.

So we came in 1968 so, yes, I've had a love affair with this greenhouse conservatory for my whole life.

You've seen it change.

Oh, right, come and go, Man, yes, fantastic.

It is.

And they do a wonderful job here at the park district.

And I'm really glad that I know Bob Street matter their director, and, yeah, they have wonderful shows.

And this is the place to learn more about the house plants that you take home.

Excellent.

Okay, so I can see you speaking of house plants, I brought a lot of things to talk about I did.

So start wherever you like.

Let's jump in.

Would you bring us and teach us all the things?

Well, this is my little greenhouse, adorable.

So this, this is a candy jar that I bought at one of the dollar stores, and it's now a little mini greenhouse.

And I work at hair nursery, and one of the little Christmas plants that they sell is a little house plant.

How did I get it in there?

You know, it's like putting something in a design in a bottle.

Yeah, shipping a bottle.

But this is a little it said it's frosty Fern, but it's Solange Elia.

I don't know how to pronounce it, but it's more commonly referred to as an arborvitae Fern, because of these flat fronds, and I've never been able to grow it well, it looks happy now, right?

Because it requires high humidity, and you can see these little aerial roots.

So when I saw this container, I thought, Huh, I'm going to see how long I can keep this alive, rather than just two or three weeks, maybe I can get it a little longer.

And I had to kind of bend things around to get it in here.

Well, you can, well, it's definitely loving that environment, right?

And even these little pieces are doing so well.

So I'm just kind of excited for my little frosty fern.

And I really don't have to hardly water it, because the it's a self contained environment.

And I do have a another terrarium in a bottle that's, you know, I've had for years.

And, you know, it's fun to try different things.

And I was, as soon as I saw that, I was wondering where you got it, because I'm definitely in the market for cookie jar, candy jar, whatever it is.

Well, they they have their, I was just at the dollar store, and they have their cloches, those little plastic covers for plants and things.

So there's lots of interesting things you can repurpose, or, you know, that are reusable, yes, and we do that gardening.

We do that a lot with when we're talking about winter sowing, getting the milk jugs and the lunch meat containers, sure you and Karen have made bird feeders out of old orange juice container.

So that's kind of our stick.

Here is just using what you have.

There you go, making it work.

All right.

What else did you bring us?

You got a lot to get.

I did.

I did?

I have some hyacinths, and you can just smell these.

They kind of fell over.

But these were bulbs that I bought back in October, and I decided I'm going to try to force them.

And so what forcing means is that you're going to give them the required cold period so that you can then bring them out and let them flower out and enjoy them maybe weeks before they would in the garden, in the ground, and so did you put them in the fridge, freezer?

Tell us step by step, that's what we did.

We actually did it as our garden club project.

So I was in charge, and I bought a lot of hyacinths.

So we had, this is just a little six inch pot, and everyone got four bulbs, and we had potting soil, regular potting soil, and we potted them up at our November 4 meeting.

And then you.

Take them home, and you put them in your refrigerator, and it takes 13 weeks of chilling.

Oh, so it was like, Don't even think about checking them until November.

Don't even bother.

So you put them in the refrigerator, already potted up, already potted up in a moist soil.

So what they did is they rooted, and they began to have an internal change where the flower primordia is developing for the for the flowering season, which will be in the spring.

And so we had mixed bulbs.

Didn't know what I was going to get.

We had purple, pink and white.

So you know, in the you said you picked them up in the fall.

Yes, that's when a lot of those places you walk by and they've got all the tulips, and you can catch them for a steal, because they're trying to get rid of them in all months.

Well, I needed to make sure that I had several 100, so I bought them a little earlier.

But needless to say, our February, early February meeting, I think that was the third or the fourth was coming up.

And I thought, I better look at them, and they were starting to come up already.

So in less than a month, they've gone from just sprouting in the bottom of my fridge.

I brought them out, put them in a warm, you know, household environment, and they've just done so well.

And it's like, I'm going to do this every year, because the best thing is, I'm going to plant these outside, so they're going to come up next year outdoors, and I'll have some new bulbs to force inside for that wonderful smell, the smell and the pop of color just right at the tail end of winter, when you're just needing to see something.

And that's what coming here is, because there's flowers all around, and some of them are fragrant.

They have gardenias flowering over there.

I saw those.

And camellias, I don't think they really smell, but really nice.

Put these when you plant these out, will you have to dig them up every year or every fall?

Or can they stay once you plant them?

Can They Sell this hyacinth is a fall, usually a fall planted bulb that is perennial, and so flowers every spring.

Now, once the flowers are gone, I'll remove the flowers, but if it's warm enough, which it should be, I'm just actually going to go plant these in the ground, just a little bit deeper, and let the foliage ripen outside and feed that bulb and have them come up next year.

Very nice.

And it smells so good.

Oh, I know like you can almost just bottle that and wear it as a perfume.

Right on the other side of that, she accidentally killed some things.

So we don't win them all.

Right, can't wait.

Yes, no, unfortunately, not.

So in my garage, well, in my basement, I overwinter a lot of house plants, but I, you know, am always getting more plants than I can really take care of sometimes.

And so I put some plants in the garage.

And this year, the garage went to 20 degrees.

And as a result, here were some herbs that I was hoping were going to overwinter.

And you know, I mean, there's a little green, right?

I can scratch the stem and maybe see a little but this is thyme, and this was parsley.

And parsley, I think it say that, yeah, I think so.

But the thing about Parsley is it's a biennial and so next year it will really, I mean, this coming spring, it will more likely bolt Okay, and not, not give you very much greens, but you know, that'd be okay.

And if not, here's some for my next, you know, cooking dish.

There you go.

So I can throw some in, yeah.

Now, normally you don't have problems overwintering things like this in your garage, but it just got cold this year.

Yeah, it got it got too cold, too cold.

So I am hoping that that some of the things will have made it.

And it looks like, if we look real close, there is some this.

I'll just take this survivor, yeah, there's still a little life in there.

We're going to hope so.

And I do water in my garage about once a month.

Oh, good point, good yeah, just to make sure they don't get too dry.

I think they're going to be okay.

Now, of the things that you overwinter, are there some things that you do not want to water, as it is, door or not dormant?

Yeah, I guess is what I said.

That's the word.

Are there things that you What do you hold water from?

I guess is it?

Um, nothing, really okay, but I don't, I don't water weekly, or anything.

Just maybe once a month, and and I'll wait to see, you know, how heavy they are.

You know, do would they need water?

Do the little finger test.

Just check it on them.

There, yeah, oh, there goes the sun.

Ooh, there it is.

And you can feel the warmth.

It just invigorates you, and it makes you want to go outside and clean up the yard.

And cleaning up the yard is what you can do now, now, just to to to make sure that people don't go hog wild, really and truly, there are some wonderful native insects, whether they're butterflies in a chrysalis, or their little dormant caterpillars, or whatever they might be, they need temperatures of at least night, temperatures of 50 degrees.

So you don't want to go raking off all of that leaf matter and everything and disturbing their hibernation, so to speak.

But there are a few things that you could do.

And one of those is, you know that I have a fascination for hellebores.

And so these are some hellebores that were above ground all winter, and here's some hellebore leaves that were covered by snow and leaf mulch.

So big difference, yeah, but these are so unattractive, and they do die back, and you can go ahead and cut them back now to tidy up, and that's what I'm going to do, and I'm going to compost these leaves.

So as a general rule, if you have dead foliage, it's okay to cut that off.

Well, yes, I mean, there's different kinds of foliages that plants go through, the ornamental grasses that die down to the base.

This is Japanese forest grass.

And this is the Miscanthus with the plume.

These are all starting to really Yes, get worn and break it up, yes.

So I cut these back in March as well.

Okay, so, so these, I'm figuring a nice day, I'll go out for maybe an hour or something.

And again, I tried to chop up and compost most of my leaf material.

Now, there are other plants that have what we would call hollow or pithy stems and these kinds of perennials.

This was an Aster, this was a cone flower.

And this is a sedum.

These stems could be used for twig nesting solitary bees.

So rather than cutting these off all the way down at the ground with your pruners, what you can do is leave like eight to 10 inches.

So just in case somebody's in there, no, they're not in they're not there yet.

So they're not in there yet.

Okay, so we're gonna leave these, the basal green part will come up and obscure this.

But then in these stems, gotcha, we could see some solitary bees using it as nesting sites.

So again, don't be in a big hurry to get everything cleaned up.

You can tell that I left my cone flower for the birds, and there's really very little seed left and accomplished on that bed right.

And then again, too, in most of my perennial beds, I will cut back some of these potential pithy and hollow stems for the solitary bees.

Very good, creating that environment right to be able to nest right and and I am not going to be removing any leaf matter until the temperatures the night, temperatures go into the 50s.

Gotcha.

Another plant that I think that you could certainly trim is boxwoods.

And so I have a number of boxwoods.

And if we look on the back and we you can actually see how poor this plant looks.

And if we hold it up to the light, you and I can see through it, and you can see that it has damage from what's called a leaf miner.

And I think I've spoke on this before, what are these little guys here?

Oh, that's the flowers.

Oh, those are flowers.

Okay, yeah, okay.

But anyway, some of my boxwoods have this.

It's like a small fly.

And they lay eggs on the leaves, and then they create a. Yeah, they hallow it out.

It's a leaf miner.

So they're living between the epidermis of the leaf.

I see those little brown spots, right?

That's it.

Do they feed on that as well?

Or do they just cut burrow in there?

Well?

Yet, no, they're damaging all that.

And so these have a potential to bleach out, turn yellow look.

They're no longer really photosynthesizing.

They're not making a lot of food for the plants.

And one way to chemically you can chemically control them, but one way to control them would be to trim off all of this and get rid of it, either bury it or burn it, or take it off site somewhere, to the ground.

Are you going?

No, no, no, I'm just going to shear off this.

This was last year's growth, okay?

I was just going to say, if someone else is dealing with this, how much would you want to cut off?

Right?

Leave green, okay, cut back as much as you'd like.

But now is the time to do that.

So I put a sheet around the base, and I do use an electric trimmers, or actually a battery powered one.

I got a wonderful gift, and so I'm going to be trimming some of the boxwoods, disposing of these, and hopefully that's going to reduce my pest population.

Gotcha?

Yeah, I wanted to talk to you.

I was texting you this morning on my drive over here.

Well, no, not on the drive, yes, right before, but we're getting our seeds.

We're talking about winter sowing.

We're getting those schedules.

And so I stopped by the public library to grab some seats, and I know in several communities, if you reach out to the extension, or you reach out to your master gardeners, a lot of places give you were talking about just giveaway seeds to help other folks out.

So are there any programs here, seed swaps, or anything like that, that you can think of where folks can Well, there's a number of different seed libraries, just like the library that you have, and I'm not sure what their you know what their selection is right now, and that's a good thing that you can donate if you have seed, and you can make little packages and share them with your community.

And of course, the master gardeners in Tazewell county do have a seed swap for their members, and we will have the plant sales, like you were talking about with Bob taking advantage of those kinds of things.

For sure.

I just really like to always spread this around, because gardening shouldn't be cost prohibitive.

And you know, it can get expensive.

It can be an expensive hobby, but when you have resources like this in your community, it really does help.

So reaching out to master gardeners in your extension program, I think is a great opportunity to well, and the local garden clubs, a lot of those people support, and there's different societies, and I know that if you join different kinds of groups.

I had a friend who joined the Primula society so she could get seeds to try some of these different plants that aren't really offered in the central Illinois area.

She wanted to try growing them.

And same way, if you're interested in ferns, any of these specific genera of plants has people that are so excited about them and want to share that information.

Phil.

Phil's part of the bone size society.

I know John loves hosta.

Everybody's got their niche, sure in the garden game, sure.

I wanted to ask you about the seeds that you brought me so you brought me common milkweed.

Thank you.

Now is it time to start these?

Early March?

Is it time, can I winter sow these?

Or should I wait until after well, when do you start milkweed?

I think I would winter sow them.

You would Okay, sure.

I mean, if you're not, I mean, you just need a couple of clumps, sure.

So I think winter sowing is a wonderful way to do that, because it's done outdoors, following the natural cycle of the weather that we're having, the seeds, I think harden off better, and I think it works really well for a lot of the perennials.

Got it Okay?

I've got a milk jug ready with the name on it?

Yes, absolutely.

And did you had a stem in your hand?

Were you going to talk about something else?

Oh, that you were holding it like you were going to demo something so well, the here's the cone flower seeds.

So there's still a few little seeds, very nice if, and I do have a whole lot of coneflower seeds.

I saved a lot of seeds, and I am going to start some winter sowing.

Usually I start in early February, but it was just too cold.

Same way with I started tapping my maples.

Oh, I'm so I missed that.

How is so?

The weather's been kind of wacky.

I.

Has that production been okay?

Well, I started on Sunday.

Oh, okay, so Sunday, we hit 45 and so the temperatures are climbing.

It's going really well.

Okay, we'll have to, you have to bring us a sample in, because we've had your your maple syrup before, and it was absolutely incredible, right?

Okay, one more.

I want to ask you about false sunflower.

What do we know about this guy?

Can I winter so this, or should I wait?

No, I think all of the perennials can be winter.

So, okay, I didn't know.

And and then if, if you're, if you're concerned, maybe you save half the seed back, or, you know, you have two packages, and you try one, because I do have a list of some things that I didn't that didn't germinate.

Well, you can't win them all.

Let's talk a little bit more about tidying up our flower beds and in our garden.

Not too much, like you said, don't disturb a lot of the leaf matter, because there are things overwintering in there.

But can we be like, I have mint, I have some old mint that's under a tree.

Can I go ahead and cut those off?

Can I be cleaning up those sorts of things?

I think whatever is comfortable, really for you, when you have the time when the weather is cooperating.

I think that's kind of a go.

And you know, we have guidelines for a specific reason, but again, sometimes it doesn't fit a busy schedule.

And so I think more important, you're the gardener, your drive you're the driving force with your experience.

And you know, you want to enjoy it on your kind of terms.

It's so like when you get nice days like this really early, where it's not even spring yet, you do?

You want to go out there with that rake and get things tidied up and get ready, but also trying to be mindful of right I think right now people can do more assessments for pruning.

I noticed that when we drove into the garden here they're doing some tree removal.

You know, now it's time to take stock of what kind of tree canopy you have.

Do you need to remove some of those limbs to get more light in.

Do you have anything that had storm damage?

I'm still picking up sticks.

You know, that could be a whole day that's a whole day event.

And so I've got two little ones that I can have help with.

Oh, and then they become light savers, right?

That's right, they get a little distracted during the mission.

But you know, what can we be pruning?

Can we be pruning our shrubs?

Well, like I said, we talked about the box wood that I'm trimming, but I think most of your trees, if they aren't spring blooming, because if, if they're spring blooming, certainly you can trim them, but you would lose flowers, and so don't trim your Magnolia, your service Berry, your crab apples, your cherry.

But now is a great time to prune grapes, to to do some fruit tree pruning, you know, to tidy your brambles, raspberries and such.

If you didn't do enough last fall?

Yeah, I was just walking through the yard yesterday, and they're kind of a mess back.

They're blown all over.

And so I need to retrain and get everybody where they need to go.

So I mean, that's the best thing, is going out and just being in nature, experiencing nature, and then making some of those lists, and hopefully you can have enough hours in the day, there's never enough time to get everything done.

Well, Ella, thank you so much for meeting us here.

I really hope we can come back sometime and maybe get to one of those events.

But thank you for meeting us, and we're going to check in with Amanda and Taylor to talk about how you can become a friend of our show.

Thanks, Tanisha, it's so amazing having an expert panelists always every episode.

I mean, to learn so much.

I bet you've met so many people over your time here.

I mean, how wonderful to be able to share that knowledge with all of us.

One of the wonderful things about our show is each each episode features these panelists who know a little bit about everything.

And not all of them know everything about horticulture, but they all have their different areas of expertise, and so we can call upon them when we have different issues with our plants.

We can when viewers send in questions which we love, like that's the most popular segment, yeah, all the questions, part of our show is that we get to connect with you as a viewer.

We get to help you grow your garden and build your own community of gardeners.

And so it's a really dumb club, yeah, so it's something that we really value on this program, and we hope you do too.

And Amanda, how can.

People, should you notice something different about us this time?

Yeah.

So if you don't have one of these mugs yet, I don't even know if you're a true gardener, this is just at a level of $7 a month, one time gift of $84 say, Happy Birthday.

Happy Mother's Day, Happy Father's Day.

All the things to you, if the gardener in your life, if you don't want it for yourself, these are so cute.

I call them the flower pot, coffee mug, $7 a month.

Or we have this amazing book.

And for those of you that do watch pretty regularly, you might remember Alan branhagen was on one of our episodes.

He is the best.

He is an expert in all things.

We can't keep these books on the shelf.

We order them all the time.

This is the second version we've had from him.

This is at $10 a month, or a one time gift of $120 and of course, we love a combo.

So for both, $15 a month or one time donation of 180 and this is new this year, you'd see the little brim here, a sun hat for when you're in the garden, waterproof, lightweight.

Also $10 a month or a one time donation of 120 I think you need all of these things in your gardening life.

Join, join the club.

There's a few different ways you can give.

If you've never given a gift to our station before, we'd love to have you become a friend of w, I, L, L, we always suggest becoming a monthly sustaining donor.

It kind of helps us forward fund as well.

We know the funds are still there, so we can keep bringing Mid American gardener to you year after year.

Pick a credit card you can come directly from your bank account.

Or if you work for the University payroll deduction, pick your set your amount, set it and forget it.

We like to say it's it's really that easy, and your support truly does help us.

And you know, pick a thank you gift while you're at it.

We'd love to share the love, so give us a call.

We're at 217-244-9455, or you can go online to will give.org and your gift also supports other local programs at Illinois public media as well, such as Perry fires, another local program.

It supports all of our radio shows.

But if you're giving directly towards Minneapolis and Gardner, these are your thank you gifts, yes, and we'd love to hear from you, especially now, so yeah, give us a call.

217-244-9455, or go online.

Do will give.org so you guys have a pretty busy schedule coming here.

Let's tell folks who are interested.

First of all, give us your address so that folks who want to stop in and experience all of this for themselves.

Okay, it's a 2520 North prospect Road in Peoria, and we're just north of the Peoria Zoo.

We're in glam park, so you can make that a double, a double trip.

Or if you've got little ones, there's also the Peoria Playhouse.

So you can make it.

There's three different facilities here on this campus.

Very nice.

And then hours, we are 10 to five every day, every day.

Love that.

Like I said on these shows, just come on in here and warm up and check out these beautiful flowers.

So let's talk more about the events, because I love how that you guys do things to get the community involved out here.

A lot a lot of events, we do the traditional things that a lot of conservatories do.

We have a Willie show and a chrysanthemum show and a poinsettia show.

We do all that, but we've got a Willie show coming up in the near future, april 11.

It starts april 11 and runs through the second of May.

And it's patterned around the Lorax so it sort of explores the story Dr Seuss's Lorax book, and sort of explores the concept behind that, and what the meaning of that book, and the ecology of that book, and that kind of thing, which is really fun.

It's a good kid's book, and it really sparks the imagination of a child in a lot of ways.

Also, we have a huge plant sale coming up.

It's the weekend before Mother's Day, so excellent time.

Yes, yes.

I wonder how that happened.

It starts.

It's this five may 2 through the fourth, so three days, and it's a vendor show.

So there's going to be plant related vendors and food trucks and that kind of thing.

So it's going to be sort of cool.

Now, are those garden plants?

Are they vegetables?

Are they flowers, or a little bit of everything.

We have multiple garden clubs that or garden groups that participate.

But Luther itself, we've like the herb guild will have a booth, but we will focus on a lot of perennials.

The garden itself will be selling a lot of perennials, tropicals, some vegetables, quite a few vegetables.

Some natives as well.

So it's everything.

It's just cells are so great.

Community local plant cells are incredible.

We have them at like our community colleges and our master gardeners do them all throughout the state.

It's such.

It's a great way to get your garden ready to go.

Yes, good stuff, yeah, and you get fun stuff.

We you know, we're not, we can grow whatever we want.

Basically, we're not, you know, so we whatever the public might want.

So we sort of focus on a lot of vegetables and perennials that people are after, succulents.

Not to talk poorly of the store, the plants that you could buy in the store, but I find sometimes that the ones that the plant sells are loved a little bit more, right?

Because someone is paying attention to them, versus a 17 year old kid just coming through with a holiday.

It's cool to talk to gardeners, because usually there's a lot of gardeners there, and there's, it's just a, it's a fun sort of almost a gardener reunion.

Yes, it's really fun.

And did you have another event?

Yes, we have some container garden classes coming up, but once specifically, is container gardening and cosmopolitans.

So it's an after hours, 21 and over, and it's an opportunity for people from the office to come have a cosmopolitan and build a container garden, or bring mom.

It's right before Mother's Day.

The Friday before Mother's Day, it's just a fun night.

Maybe it's a date night.

It could be a really fun date night, but there's, there's always a lot going on, especially here at the garden in the park district in general.

You can always go to Peoria parks.org and get all the registration information and all that wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

This was incredible.

Hopefully we can get back here sometime and get to one of those events, or interested in coming to get to the plant sale, because clean up and get rid of the garden.

So thank you again.

And before we go, we're going to take one more visit to our friends, Taylor and Amanda, to tell us how you can become a friend of the show.

Thanks, Tanisha and thanks Bob, we really appreciate being here at Luthy Botanical Garden.

What a beautiful spot here in Peoria, it's always so fun to get out of the studio.

I'm sure you can agree, as a producer, it's probably more fun to move around and see all the sites, meet new people, new panelists.

It's gotta be a little more exciting than this.

I love the studio, don't get me wrong, but yeah, that's one of the great things about the show, is that it changes with the season.

So when it's winter, we're often in the studio, which is great, but we love it, being able to come to a place like this and escape into this world during the winter a little bit.

But feels great in here, too.

For those of you watching, it's warm, very nice.

Yeah, I feel a little tropical, yeah.

But then, you know, in the summer, we try to get out and about in the community, meet new people, see different practices, and, you know, that's how the show changes, as the seasons change.

And we're hoping that, you know, you learn from our experts throughout the entire year.

Yes, we do.

I mean, for all seasons.

And you guys are such a small and mighty team.

I mean, I always have to give you guys so much credit.

The work you do is amazing.

Emmy, nominated for Prairie Fire.

Emmy, winner for Prairie Fire, my bad.

Yes, so many nominations.

I forgot how many you actually won.

It's just so exciting.

I love working with all of you.

It's just great.

We are a small and mighty team at public media, as most stations are.

So that is why, you know, we're in the middle of our March TV fun drive, and we do reach out to occasionally ask for gifts of support.

And we know not everybody can right now, and that's okay, Mid American gardener and everything else we do at Illinois public media, it will always be here for you, but if you are in a position to give, we would love to hear from you.

217-244-9455, or go online to will give.org we'd love to send you some of these gifts, the mug, the book, the hat, which I had to take off because it was so warm.

But we'd love to hear from you.

We'd love to send that back.

You know, it's always great hanging out with you too, and I have to, I feel like you must be so lost without your camera and all your stuff, are you doing?

Okay?

Yeah, this has been great.

And you know this, thank you.

Gift.

The book is a great resource for people, it's a way to incorporate more native plants in your yard.

Yes, support native pollinators, because a lot of Illinois is actually not native prairie land, right?

So, yes, bring, welcome, a little bit of those pollinators in your yard.

Bring back some of that natural landscape.

Yeah, and you can always go back, you know, passport, which is a $5 a month benefit, hugely popular.

You can go back and watch older episodes of an American gardener, and you should watch the one with Alan, because he's just such a great guy.

He's so smart.

It was so cool of him to be on this show.

This is an amazing gift.

It really is.

So we hope you'll check out all the gifts go online to will give org give us a call.

217-244-9455, 10.

Taylor has been so awesome.

I'm so happy to have you on this side of things you did so great.

And thank you all.

We really hope to hear from you, and we appreciate your support.

Thanks guys, and that is the show.

Want to say a big thank you to Bob Streitmatter and the team here at Luthy botanical for providing us with this lovely tropical background that we have for our show this week.

And another thank you to Ella Maxwell for coming out and serving as our panelists this week.

And big shout out to Amanda and Taylor.

That was Taylor's first time pitching, and I think you're going to probably see more of her in the future.

So thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions for our panelists, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com or just search for us on socials, look for Mid American gardener.

Enjoy the sights and sounds of loopy botanical.

Good night.

You.