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 the Jennifers as promised live and in person.

And before we get into the items that they brought for show and tell, we'll have them to introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about what they do.

So we'll start with you.

Hi.

I'm Jennifer Fishburn.

I'm a Horticulture Educator in the Logan Menard Sangamon counties, which is the Springfield Lincoln Pertersburg area.

I enjoy talking to folks about all types of gardening but my favorite things are herbs and vegetables, herbs and vegetables.

Alright, Jennifer, and I'm Jennifer Nelson.

I am a horticulture instructor at the University of Illinois.

And I also have a blog groundedandgrowing.com.

And I like to talk about anything horticultural related.

Excellent.

All right.

So you guys brought some great stuff.

Jennifer Fishburn, we'll start with you.

All right.

So I have for you this lovely rhubarb stalk here.

This is not what you want to see with your rhubarb, you can see this is super tall.

What we have here is a rhubarb that has started it is flowered.

And it'll want to produce seed.

We don't want our rhubarb plants to do this, because when they do, they're putting too much energy into this particular stock and the seed heads and not as much into the stems the parts that we want to flavor, their flavor.

So when we start to see this, we want to pull these out.

So you could see what I showed you this morning, this just shows you that this has been pulled out of the ground, it'll bring with it a few leaves, these leaves you could eat, these are a little wilted right now.

But you will do want to get that removed from your garden.

Because if you don't, like I said it will make the plant a little bit weaker.

So the next question is, why did this happen?

So this could be due to multiple types of plant stress is generally when this happens, it could be it needs divided, we want to do that about every four to five years that we have a healthy growing plant could be that it needs nutrients.

So adding more fertilizer to the area do that in the spring with a well composted manure could also be variety.

So Canada, red and Valentine are two that tend to do this a little bit less.

Now I notice you said pull it up, not cut it.

Yeah.

What's the reason for that?

Um, it just gets that whole stock up and out.

You just want that regrow.

I don't know that it'll regrow necessarily.

It's just always how I pull rope arm.

So I pull it out rather than cut it out.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I was gonna say, like Jim said, if you cut it off, you're gonna leave that stock.

If you do cut it, I would cut it at an angle, not flush with the plant.

So I had a little bit of an angle, you could do that as well, but I just kind of yank it out.

So it was good and wet right now to pull right out perfect time.

And we don't want to rhubarb going to seed Correct.

Noted.

Okay, thank you, ma'am.

All right, Jennifer.

Okay, I brought a couple of examples.

And I was looking for something to bring for show and tell.

And I had my son along with me.

And he did not want to shop for plants at that point.

He's like, just pick something and let's go.

But then then I caught him.

He was looking at some flowers.

And he's he's deadheading.

I'm like, deadheading those plants.

Oh, and maybe.

Yes, I was like you're a gardener, whether you like it or not.

But I was looking for some things that were a little different to show.

And this is a Petunia called Blueberry Muffin.

And I couldn't find any information on exactly what's doing this.

It's got this cool star pattern with some white and green but it's different on each flower.

So there's got to be some sort of instability in the genetics that's, it's not consistent.

So that's, that's kind of cool.

I always get drawn to the odd balls.

And then they had black petunias.

Like check this out these This one is called black magic.

It's gorgeous.

And I was looking up about black petunias and nothing in nature is truly black.

So it's either dark brown or dark purple.

So in the flowers case, it's really dark purple, and you kind of see it in the light here.

So what they did was it for all there's a number of different black petunias.

They breed them for high levels of anthocyanins.

So that's usually in the Reds just like bluish purples, so they're so saturated with that color that they appear black so they they have the red jeans and the purple jeans mixed together gives you the closest thing you can get to black, the closest you can come, but they are suggesting that a good color combo would be pink, yellow or white with it.

Not like that would look amazing in a pot.

So look really pretty.

Yeah, very pretty.

Now, does that take full sun, just like a Petunia?

Just regular like this.

Blueberry Muffin supposed to be really good man.

wandering habits so it shouldn't get all all scraggly, at least not right away.

I'm going to try something different with petunias this year and try to get them to trail.

I've never done that before.

But there were I've heard some folks talking about using them as like a plant to spill out of the box.

Yeah, they've always just been in pots for me, but I'm going to try that this year and see if it looks nice, or if they let get long and scraggly, because sometimes that happens.

And sometimes I cut them back like in July sometime, just kind of give them a hair cut.

And that seems to kind of re invigorate them, give them a shot of fertilizer, notice and deadhead, deadhead, get my son over to your house, get him over to the house.

Okay, thank you, we're back to you.

Alright, so big.

So I got some veggies and I have cabbage and broccoli here.

What I want to talk about with these particular grouping of plants is these are plants that prefer the cooler temperatures.

So it's perfect time, we should already have those in the ground, we'll get them in the ground pretty quickly.

But the other part of that is any damage to the central poor part of that plant, when it's small can cause the cause it not to continue to grow.

So it'll cause to form a seat ahead, either with the cabbage or the broccoli.

So keep that in mind that when you're picking out these plants, you do want to do look for the best healthy plants don't look for the bargains with the yellowing leaves and the drying plants.

Those are not good bargains at that point, they probably won't grow very well.

Also, with that, make sure that if you're growing anything in Nebraska, Casey Family so your cauliflower, your broccoli, cabbage, kale, that you're making sure you have at least an inch of water on those per week.

Water is very, very important and consistent watering will result in poor growth of the plant and probably excess bitterness.

So water is super important.

Do you have any problems with pests with these in your gardens?

So for pest Yes, most definitely, as a spring crop in particular, they will get usually cabbage worms just start to see holes in the leaves.

There's two ways to help help with that.

One is to prevent them.

So covering them with a row cover, which is going to be something that's white generally and kind of see through but we'll keep the insects out.

And then the other would be if they do get on the plant when they're small yet.

You can either pick them or hand pick them off or use btw it's filled with a vengeance on those.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

And did you want to talk about I can talk about I brought some tree.

These are lavender cookies.

So laughter is all the rage this year?

I guess.

Starbucks?

Yeah, everyone's honestly, I wasn't all that happy with the Starbucks when it's too little too sweet to me.

But I probably shouldn't say that, to me on this show.

So these are a butter cookie with lavender flowers in them.

We had them as our a treat in my class at the end of the semester.

Because we talked about herbs and spices.

And one of the things to point out as lavender is kind of tricky, because if you use a little too much, it's gonna taste like you're eating a bar.

So and the other thing is that you got to be careful when you're buying lavender that it's sorry that it's labeled, that it's labeled for cooking.

Oh, I didn't know there was a different well, because sometimes you'd be buying it for its scent.

Like it can be used for a number of different like, like lotions, or perfumes or whatever.

It's just a taste.

And it's so funny.

It's like I can taste the lavender.

But now I can also smell it.

Yeah, and this, this lavender I bought at a tea shop here in Champaign, but if people are looking at their lavender in their yard wanting to use it, you would dry the flowers and make sure you haven't put any kind of pesticide on them.

And then you can use your own with no problem.

But it seems to not last that long when I have it on the shelf.

So I actually have the dried flowers sealed up in a bag in the freezer and they keep a little longer longer.

Yeah, otherwise they tend to seem to lose their scent.

Yeah, well, thank you.

Thank you for baking.

You're welcome your students and I appreciate it very much, gentlemen.

Okay, we've got your lovely flowers.

So just as as the season starting to wrap up kind of for some of our spring blooming flowers is there the last of my daffodils that I have so daffodils I'll tell types bloom at different times.

This is one of the last ones I have just wanted to make note that if the seed heads stay on those make sure you both with tulips and hyacinths and on all types of spring bulbs, remove these seed heads, just clip them off, and that'll help put more energy into the ball rather than putting energy into trying to make seats and I don't know I just brought my pretty low Iris.

It's one of the first ones in my garden ready to bloom.

Same thing with Those with Iris after they fade away.

If you start to see, like a seed head on there, make sure you pop that off because again, they'll put energy into that rather than into the root system.

So very pretty.

We use some of these little ones too.

And they usually have a scent.

Yeah.

Where the other ones other deaf tools.

This one does.

And it's a little bit faded because they're off the timeline.

Yes.

Very pretty.

Oh, I love this time of year.

Which brings me to my next question.

Not my question.

But someone's question.

Everyone's chomping at the bit to plant so the million dollar question ladies is this.

It's officially May, can we put our stuff in?

So it depends on what stuff is.

You can do anything you want the garden police is not going to come to your house.

Great.

Can I Can we plant without having to get every bedsheet out of the house to cover the garden or replant when it goes horribly wrong.

So we do not recommend that prior to Mother's Day as a general rule of thumb that we use.

Mother's Day isn't the always the exact date of the frost free date.

But it's something that most folks can remember very easily that after that time, at least for Central Illinois, that danger of frost pass Mother's Day May 15.

But pay attention to the weather and we're not out of the woods yet we're in the we're past the 50% mark.

So like chances are greater than 50% that we won't have another frost but it's not unheard of like this wacky weather is why we tell people not not to plant so early because even not even not freezing but getting chilly it can be harmful to certain plants like basil will show will show frost damage or cold damage if it hasn't gone down to 30 to two years ago, I jumped the gun by eight days.

And I paid for it because we did we got a light frost and I was out literally putting sheets.

Everything I could find in the house over sheets on the bed.

And so now I've learned my lesson but it's you know, everything is starting to come up and oh no hoster up and you just it makes you want to get out there and get an order.

And what was that?

What I would recommend though, is that folks are wanting to plant your warm loving vegetables such as tomatoes, and peppers and eggplants purchase those now.

Because the selection of course decreases as we go through the season, you might not find what you want later on.

So purchase them now.

If they're small, pot them up in a little bit bigger pot for a couple of weeks, and then put them out in the garden.

We're almost there.

homestretch there.

And speaking of spring and things coming up, so are the weeds.

So a lot of our folks have been writing in asking for advice to get rid of weeds.

So we're going to package a few of these up and talk about this old creeping sharply and find lead.

So this is from Janet Carol, and our outcomes are in our so how can I eradicate creeping charlie?

And there's no easy answer, correct?

No, these are all all your selection are really tough ones.

Oh, no.

So with the creeping charlie, that's kind of an indicator, it's telling you that that's an area where you have a lot of shade, grow shade, they like to be in that type of situation.

If you can tolerate it, I leave it I let it go in certain places.

Because it does have a really nice flower to it.

It's helpful for the pollinators.

But if it's really bothering you, you have to keep in mind that you have to get every speck of that plant.

So every little root that's there, you have to get it out handy, again, is going to give you good good options.

There are some chemical control options as well.

But it's an indicator con indicator, wait, it's telling you that that's a sunny, or excuse me a shady area, and it's usually in lawns or grass can't grow.

Because maybe you could throw a hosta in there.

Yeah, perhaps this was like the number one enemy of my dad.

He fought this weed for years.

And so a couple of things I learned during his battles against creeping charlie is it's easiest to pull when it's flowering, because it's putting a lot of energy into flowers.

So that's usually in like May June.

It's very easy to pull.

Otherwise, it really hunkers down and it's hard to pull.

It's also tough.

A lot of the weed killers don't work very effectively, because it's really bad at taking that weed killer from the leaf and translocating it to the root.

So you might see some die back on the top.

And you think you've won, but it's just coming back going on.

I mean, there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

So what my dad ended up doing and got he was just like ready to he gotta do that thing, right.

He spent an entire summer like one section at a time.

Gosh, that's dedication.

But he did it and it completely got rid of completely got rid of it.

It's a lot of work that while he was fighting it was coming over from a neighbor's yard.

Yeah.

Okay to get the chemical control out along the fence.

Yeah, that's fine.

I never an owl Janice zoo ski I told you I was going to pronounce it right owl Geneseo ski has bind wheat.

We have bind lead growing in between our shrubs and decorative rocks, I've had it growing for three or four years, can't get it under control.

I've used everything, and it keeps coming back.

So bind weed.

So again, really difficult control even worse, because the buying weed has a taproot that gets anywhere from a foot or more deep.

And that's it's if there's no way you're gonna dig that out, it's nearly impossible.

If you have a flowerbed situation, I would probably just cover that really well with maybe a black plastic or something that's going to smother that area for like an entire season solarization type thing to try to get rid of it in between shrubs.

Oh, it's going to be super difficult.

You could try some chemical controls.

If you do, you'll want to use like a foam brush and paint that on.

So you're not getting it onto your shreds.

And so like the thing, the thought being that over time, you're going to just deplete the energy in that tap root.

Like every time it shows its face hit it with Yeah.

Yeah, and it's the same with the other one that's on the list here.

thistle.

Yeah, that's that's the thing.

Like it had, I've read that it has roots that go down to like six feet.

So they are a problem.

And they are they just keep coming back.

And if you've had like a disturbance to the area, and that and same thing with buying weed and creeping charlie, and it gets chopped up into bits, you just multiplied the population.

But yeah, with the thistle, we have a small patch of it in our front yard.

And it probably because of whatever was on that land before it's probably farmland and it was just probably there and it comes up and we knock it back with some roundup and it'll be gone for a while, but we usually see it at least once a year.

Okay, and the other thing away with this little is if it is one that flowers, flowers, and then drops seed, just make sure that you don't let it flower and drop seed or, and remove those seed heads.

And then if you see any new little baby plants, those are usually pretty easy to just take a soil knife and pop those right out.

And I would do it now while the soil is getting wet.

And that'll help get some control under that.

But yes, difficult to control with chemicals for sure.

Okay, this sounds like you've got some work cut out for you all three of you to get those managed.

Let's see Cheryl wants to know, she's going to be planting perennials.

And love Styria because it has lovely flowers and the leaves change colors during the season.

She's got two bushes that she wants to plant in a sunny location, is there anything else that she needs to be aware of before planting it?

Berry are pretty tough.

They're nice plants for the landscape.

Full sun best option and just know what the height is.

So you're placing it appropriately and your landscape what the ultimate high blood plant will be.

You know, there's they're super forgiving, I don't really have to do much two hours.

Every other every third year we do a renewal pruning where we cut it back almost to the ground.

We just did that this year.

I'm sure the neighbors that we are not.

But what tends to happen was by rail over time, as you tend to notice all the growth is like kind of on the outer edge and it's kind of looks dead in the middle.

We start seeing that then think for the next year, like really early.

We did ours in like early March.

Come in and just chop it back and it's real drastic just leave a little stub and it comes back and looks like this perfect little little bush and you can tell of yours isn't fully leafed out by now at least in central Illinois, then you probably do need to cut it back.

It's probably just getting a little woody in there and you're gonna hear cattle take care of that all the way down.

How far did you leave?

How much did you leave?

I only leave I mean it's severe severe like yeah, it looks like our we had a clear cut situation in our front yard.

Yeah, gotcha.

Okay, all right.

So maybe cut it back and it'll be reinvigorated.

Let's see.

How do i pronounce this is it liro Maria de la Raya P Thank you.

And that says she wants to divide a large patch of variety.

There are crocus bulbs that are also in there invading the area.

And she's just wondering how to clean all of this up.

We'll have to clean the lily turf divisions to bare root plants in order to remove the crocus bulbs from the soil ball.

We're kind of actually laughing about this a little bit because Lily turf, Nairobi, whatever you want to call it, la arrivee has gone by many different names by folks, but it is a very very tough ground cover that spreads very quickly.

So I find it very interesting that something is actually competing with it to try to grow and the crossbow wolves as that foliage fades it's just going to fade away so I don't really see I would just leave it and leave it because crocus blooms really early spring and the IP not till later in the summer, and I will tell you, I managed to kill it.

I was trying now I was trying to grow the variegated version of Laura IP.

And that's not not as vigorous as the plain green one.

So but at the desk, I wouldn't I wouldn't take the time to separate them either.

I would just leave it because they were flowering at different times and it's not like it's not going to out compete to know.

So there you go, just leave it.

All right now we're going on to pots.

Let's see at Kaplan wants to know how to keep squirrels from digging in his outdoor planters and I'm all ears.

Because I've got him too.

You can try hot pepper flakes or pepper, hot pepper like chili powder.

No.

Okay, because they don't like that.

Birds can't taste it.

But it's a solution if you've got squirrels and your bird feeder too, because birds can't taste the heat from the pepper.

They don't have the receptors, but mammals like squirrels do.

So that is one way you could keep them out.

You can also try some exclusion like hardware cloth types of things or you had forks, yeah.

Space up out of the pots.

They sell this like I've used it to keep our cat from playing around in the pots inside.

It's like a like a plastic mesh that has spikes and you can cut it to fit your pot.

Okay.

You might try that.

I try that.

Okay, because they are troublesome and once they I find that I'm saying sign a pot that they like, every day they dig and leave it alone might move the pot.

Maybe that would I might try that.

Okay, speaking of pots.

Is it okay to put pool noodles in the bottom have big pots, so they're not so heavy for filler material?

Is that okay?

If that's what you got to use?

Yeah, I've seen packing peanuts.

I've seen news upside down pods upside down pots.

Yeah, like water like the clear water bottles or pop bottles.

Okay.

Chopped up leaves.

Yeah.

leaves from your your lawn.

Still you can chop those up.

Sweet gumballs.

Well, they're gonna, right now.

Meantime, I would look at like things that you already have that you don't want to spend with before I would spend money.

Like if you had an excess of pool noodles, then?

Yeah, use those.

Just make sure whatever you're growing, you do leave some soil for for the root system to grow a nice, deepen root, maybe 12 inches about Yeah.

Okay, awesome.

Let's take some Facebook questions.

Let's see, um, lots of cicada questions.

So let's just generally get into that quickly.

We've talked about it a few times, but folks are wanting to know if they need to cover trees.

So just do you have some some cicada tips?

I guess for folks as we get closer and closer?

Well, I looked it up because there was some discussion of this at our house.

And the four big ones that the four trees that they tend to go after are maple, Ash, Willow, and oak.

And so if you don't have those trees, they're not going to tend to go and other trees.

But if they're smaller than they tend to lay their eggs on smaller than a pencil diameter.

So a young tree would potentially be vulnerable.

And think about if you had cicadas was it 1314 years or 17 years ago or whatever they're you're expecting in your area.

If if you had a ton of them back, then you're probably gonna have a ton of them again, if you didn't have much gotcha, you probably not much again, I've a few folks have already started to cover there's a little early, you can wait a little bit to actually start to hear them only be around for about four to six weeks.

But a lot of people are using like tool, white tool, something that see through that the light can still get through.

But then wrapping the trees and making sure that they can't, you know, go up the tree and get into it.

But make sure it's tight on some of the burden headings can work because they're big.

Yeah, they're not yes, yeah.

So they're not going to be able to get through any kind of detour and on particularly anything you've planted probably in the last three years are going to have somewhat smaller branches to them.

It's good investment.

It's not now Taylor Taylor one of our production folks she was saying at her family home there was a large a very mature tree that was chopped down it was a very old tree and now they planted a smaller tree in its spot.

So the cicada are probably Taylor over that one because that tree covered Taylor's mom dad if you've made that kind of an investment most people that's a that's a decent investment.

A little bit of some kind of an adding them over it is a very innate abilities I planted on birch birch, correct?

Yes.

So all right.

Well, we hope that tree makes it through this.

Let's see we got about two minutes left.

Gary wants to know how you can control squash bugs.

Or move your garden to a different location or no plant squash.

Sorry, one squash bugs find your garden.

No.

And I tried all kinds of debris removal in the fall.

They still keep.

They're still there.

They keep coming back.

The only year I did not have squash bugs is when I put my squash in planters on my deck.

Oh, wow.

And that 10 They didn't find them.

They didn't find it that year.

So they didn't arrive very well.

The only year I didn't have them was when I do as I say not as I do.

I got my squash planted way late.

So the timing, so the timing was all off.

So I didn't so I avoided them.

Yeah, so timing, living location.

Or don't plant them.

Don't plan on Wednesday, the thing to remember is once they get into your garden and you start seeing them start squishing them start removing those egg cases right away.

If you don't, those populations spread very, very they go exponentially.

Okay.

And that's the show.

Thank you so much, ladies for coming in.

It's always a blast whenever we see you.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions for our panelists, send them into yourgarden@gmail.com or just look us up on socials just search mid-American gardener and we will see you next time.

Goodnight