Unknown: Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of min American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha Spain, excuse the scratchy voice but if you recognize this guy and you recognize this place you've you've been here before then we're back at Chuck's farm.

And he's gonna walk us around and tell us some of the lovely things that are growing here on the farm spring has finally sprung and Chuck's got all the flowers here to prove that so before we get into our tour and our walk around, tell us a little bit about you and where we can find you.

Okay, well for 27 years plus I was a vegetable specialist at the University of Illinois.

I got involved with herbs along with that.

And then the lab both the last half of that career I taught home horticulture to non majors so I can be pretty much a generalist and and certainly over the course of years I've had the interest in just about anything horticultural you can imagine anything.

Today I think I want to talk start out talking about the genus Narcissus.

Do you know the, the myth of Narcissus?

Yes.

Yes, yes.

This beautiful young lad who fell in love with his own reflection and in the water drowned and the gods granted him the he sprouted there as as this flower Narcissus I don't know how much controversy there is, but in my mind, all daffodils are narcissists.

Not all narcissists are daffodils.

There have been up to 50 species within that genus 50 kind of controversial.

50 is an approximation.

And when you get into common names, you know that you can have all kinds of fights with with people about that.

The people who want just everything to be simple want everything they look at to be a daffodil.

And, you know, not that easy.

Most of the common stuff we see I think you could probably call it Daffodil and get by with it, but probably only three or maybe four of those 50 species were things that we would necessarily recognize as daffodils, but anyway, most people will start out with and it was tough finding one that was still halfway decent with a yellow trumpet.

Daffodil King Alfred type, they've been hybridized to this to the to the stage where they may be sold as King Alfred's now but I think like a lot of other other things, Irish potatoes, some of the baking potatoes, they're russets, but are they still rusted Fairbanks?

Who knows.

But that's a basic one.

They're in the, in the grass found the grass area.

So they have things in threes.

So they were three sequels, and three paddles have all kind of turned into a thing I would like to call the parry and this this, the flatter part at the back.

And then then they have a cup of Corona, or a trumpet.

Although, you know, this would be more of a cup that makes that difference that one is flattened.

The pinks are not all that pink.

And then as they age, the pink kind of goes away.

That's a pink trumpet.

And this is a pink cup.

And this one is a cup and this is a trumpet just for comparison.

Yeah, that's that's a flattened cup almost to the point of starting to lead toward being a double Gotcha.

And that one is one of the few that I remember the name of that's Binky.

I got that in the garden center in McLean, Virginia when we were out there visiting my sister's friends and and she was baking and doing stuff in the kitchen and I was out in their yard planting daffodils all over they're all over their yard there well you've got lots more of these to see and to stop in the garden.

So why don't we kick off our our chuck Spring Tour okay all right let's do it Chris we made our way back over to the garden looks a little different than it did the last time right the chick weed has kind of gone crazy and and I haven't done any tilling because it's either been wet or cold or both.

Or my aching back is held me back.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then plus, you know, as we as we know, I was obsessed with the walnuts for quite a while and it's been hard to get them out of my system.

All right, so these are the are the red rhubarbs that I planted last spring and I'm kind of disappointed that they're seeding this badly.

Because generally speaking, I thought when they chose a cultivar to propagate vegetatively, that went into their thinking that they minimally made seed stocks, well, these don't look too minimal to me.

So before they zap any more in their energy here, I'm gonna go in, just take them back to the ground, and then take the whole plant, or just for that seedstock was just the seed stock.

And hopefully, it will focus its energy on growing leaves, because they these form the previous year, get fertilized over the winter and then come up so so they don't like continually try to do it over and over.

Like, and the reason for having these is because they have the red pigment in the in the patio.

And if you're really, really in need of have some rhubarb, you can rescue the ones from awesome.

Can't go wrong with a little rhubarb.

No, those are nice, nice and crisp and nice little snack to have.

Right?

Okay.

So I'm cutting those off.

Right, I'm going to do these two just while I'm here.

And this allows the plant to not worry so much wasting energy on seed seeds.

Because because if anything, we want to dig them up and divide them and propagated vegetatively.

Okay.

Now you remember the tiny little, little asparagus crowns that I got the ones that were about the size of nut cup doilies not so tiny anymore.

No, they, I surprised myself and did a really good job of weed control.

And after you were here in August, they continue to really beef up.

And I was really surprised I came I came out here to haul around them a couple of weeks ago, and was amazed to see Spears already up well, in fact, I think I probably hold a couple off here because I was thinking because you plan them, you know eight inches deep.

That's the thing is you can cultivate over.

But you can't wait.

Gotcha.

Because of the cold weather.

I think my my my thinking was a little off on that.

But hey, and because because I'm a knowledgeable horticulturist, I resisted the urge to cut them off when I saw how beautiful they were because there, they were this they were the size of a grocery store that grow asparagus because I know I won't be able to wait, I don't want to start something I know I can't fit.

Well.

I've let them get this far.

So I think I'm gonna make it.

And they just need to grow up.

Fertilizing probably once apart partway through the season, just to keep them going.

And hopefully, they'll get up five or six feet tall, store a lot of energy in those big fleshy roots.

And then next spring, when I see these first ones, I can sneak a few.

There you go.

And hopefully by the year after that we can get close to a full harvest.

So yeah, this one definitely takes time.

This is where the patient garden.

You've got garlic do is we've discussed I think, yes.

You plant garlic in the fall.

Here in Mid America, usually that's like the first to the 15th of October.

And then it's up and growing first thing in the spring.

They're looking pretty good.

Just generally, when will you harvest these July July.

It will vary a little bit from Friday to variety.

But generally from the Fourth of July till about the middle of July is in we talked about that.

The bottom leaves start to die.

And you want to do at one of those at least three, three leaves that are that are alive on the top of the plants.

Oh good to know.

I love little tricks like that.

Now, I don't know exactly what these are called.

But talk us talk to us a little bit about these.

Okay, those are the miracle lilies are the naked ladies that we talked about with it with the pink flowers on the tongue?

Yes, yeah.

They grow up like this.

I said they're like daffodils foliage on steroids.

And I didn't lie.

They're about to flop over because they're getting up to her two feet tall.

stores all that energy down there.

If I wanted to dig him up every year and divide him, I probably could have 10,000 my gosh, yeah, in a heartbeat.

But that's how they are they happen.

They die down disappear.

And then right around the first of August Zoop they come up and do what we saw on our last August video.

And so did this foliage die back over the winter?

Or does it days back, get the end of spring at the end of spring flower stalks come up last for a couple of weeks then they fall over and go away.

And then it's nothing until very for First thing when the frost goes out in the spring you see these things looking, like ready to go and power up they come.

So Wow.

That's a lot of growth.

Okay, and then so patches?

Absolutely.

Is there a story behind this and how they're planted?

Yes, over here I had, I had rows of, of daffodils that I had bought, and, and blind out and, and I remember if it was before I got the job in Urbana, or when I was still young enough that it didn't matter so much.

I dug them all up, planted them in four rows here.

And that was the original of it.

You know, who I started out, I was telling him between the rows and eventually that kind of went away.

Now I have to wait for him to die down.

Because what happened when I stopped taking off the spent blossoms?

Because that's how I knew I had 3000 blossoms back in the 80s Oh, my God, because I literally counted.

Well, you I was breaking them off.

So what do you do?

Wow, that's dedication.

Well, that that that all ended as I got, you know, enmeshed in the job at the U of I.

And so they've been seeding themselves, which was a kind of a pleasant surprise.

I don't know that the seedlings, by and large are anything monumental.

But I flagged a few that that I want to dig up but by the time we get to June, I'm usually so swamped with other things.

So what do you think on a day like today when you come out and look at these?

You know, a lot of people Why do you grow flowers?

Why do you want to?

Well, in the late 70s, I was living in Manhattan on the island and would love to go out to New York Botanic Garden and Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

They have Daffodil Hill, which is just this solid mass of of daffodils and are narcissists.

It was just inspiring.

And so the farmer in me put them in rows.

But, but the nature in them has kind of been naturalizing them ever since.

You can see this row hasn't hasn't survived quite as well.

I blame myself I'm not sure if that's That's correct.

One foul I came out and was was mowing them down while there was still some green at the base.

And I don't know if a fungus or something got into that pet mode service, because a lot of them disappeared at that point.

But again, again, if I could ever motivate myself to dig them, I could very quickly plant this 48 daffodils Wow, these with I didn't realize they were out.

They get multiples, and those are extremely fragrant.

That is pretty Yeah, never seen one like this before.

Yeah, that's one called cheerfulness and there's a yellow version called the yellow cheerfulness.

In general daffodils Narcissus last a long long time.

They're they're more or less poisonous so you don't get a lot of things grazing on them.

The thing that people don't realize is the sap that they exude shortens the life of other cut flowers if you put them in a mixed Okay, so narcissists should be their own their own their own thing because they don't know because they don't seem to you don't seem to hurt each other but but they can damage some other things but they do last what is that over there?

Oh, Crown Imperial Can we go check that out?

We sure can caught my eye crown Imperial Fritillaria imperialis comes up in the spring has has kind of a quirky thing when especially when they first come up.

They smell like a skunk.

Oh kind of perfume the area with the skunk but they are just fantastic.

I don't know if they still bloom anymore.

I had some yellow ones as well.

Wow those are really pretty they really aren't with the with the flowers facing down.

It's that's kind of the crown effect.

Yeah.

Oh, and it's got like, scary little beady eyes in there.

Have you looked inside them before?

Not so much look in there.

It looks like a scary little ooh, that's definitely looks kind of creepy.

She's gonna get a shot of inviting a pollinator in there that is kind of one of my favorite spring flowers is bluebells In fact, I my my in laws have a great big patch at their house and I took maybe two or three and planted them in my garden.

The next year I had six.

Then I had nine and so one day I'm hoping my patch looks just like this.

are pretty prolific spreaders.

In 1970, I collected a few of them at my grandpa's, he was very proud of the blue belts in his grove over the next place over a mile, half mile up the road.

I collected more than I needed, planted a few out here, and they have the rest of you over the course of those 50 years have have just taken over some some areas.

And every year they come up, give you that nice hand of blue.

It's such an it's a pretty, it's like an electric blue, right?

It's orange.

And it's so neat, because I have the sylars that come out that are blue, I have the candidate boxes that come out and they're a different shade of blue.

I have the anemones, the wind flowers in there, most of the ones I have are blue, and it's three different shades of blue, and then we get this shade of blue.

And so it's it's it's really it's really fun because as you get into the summer and fall blue is not that common of color and flowers.

But all right now we had to The Paw Paw patch, right?

Isn't there a song or something about waiting on yonder in the pop off at?

Yes.

They're gonna pop us putting him in a basket, they're gonna pop us putting them in a basket picking their pop was putting them in a basket way down yonder in the ballpark.

That's okay, so I've got three grafted Pop Eyes.

They were, they felt they felt kind of expensive at the time.

But, you know, given the rarity of these things, it's probably not so bad.

They're they're in a custard apple family, which is a tropical thing.

They're the only temperate version of this.

And depending on where you are, you're in Michigan, they're called Michigan banana.

If you're in Indiana, they're Indiana banana.

Yeah, no, I've ever heard him called Illinois banana.

But we can start that if we have if we have a stand up.

And we can call him that.

So this is the flower that we're looking at.

Now, these are the flowers this early spring they come out, they're kind of the color of rotting meat, I think they might have a little little food or rotting meat.

Because they're attracting carrion flies to do their pollination, some of the commercial growers will actually get buckets of like roadkill and hang them in their, in their Paw patch to attract the flies, which then pollinate the flowers.

Really?

That's dedication.

It is thus far have not have not Yeah, that's I had my first my first six fruits last year, I got to eat three of them and the stupid critters got the other three, because they're also attractive to raccoons and possums.

And anybody else who likes these things, but you're kind of interesting flowers.

They won't smell right now.

Right?

They have to fully open.

I'll risk it.

Go ahead going in there.

I would say not but I don't know.

Because I you can see they're starting to open I think within within a couple of days.

If we actually warm back up things she'll be good can a few days.

This is a beautiful, beautiful tree with a great central leader.

And then I don't know if it was the smell or what the record was got into it last year and just broke the top of it.

Oh, I can see.

Yeah, they really snapped it.

Yep.

So.

So when will you get to enjoy the fruits from this tree?

Their early fall or early fall?

Okay, excellent.

Well, that does it for our Spring Tour at Chuck's farm.

Thank you so much for letting us come out.

We'll have to come out again and do another check in when everything is up and growing in the garden.

And hopefully I'll get motivated and get some some ground worked up and get some get some spring in before spring things planted before it's summer.

Yeah, if this weather would cooperate.

Yeah.

Thanks for showing us around again.

And thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions for the experts, you can send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com or you can look us up on Facebook, just search for Mid American gardener.

And now Kay is joining us in the studio and we're going to be talking tomatoes today.

Kay loves to grow tomatoes.

We've all we've all talked about that we know that she's our heirloom tomato and our herbs lady, right.

Everybody's got their niche on this show.

So before we get into what you brought, introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

Okay, well I'm Kay Carnes.

And I'm a champagne currently Master Gardener.

And I live out in the country in Mont near Monticello, and which gives me a lot of room to play in the garden.

Yes, yes.

So okay.

You are a big tomato fan.

You actually you've brought them in on the show several times to share with us.

So what two varieties did you bring today?

Okay, these two varieties.

This is called Amber.

It's an heirloom and it's a small tomato plant and I'll only get about 1216 17 inches long.

So this is for your space conscious gardener and it could it actually could be grown in a big pot.

And it produces oh, about two inch yell little amber colored tomatoes, but it's they're very prolific.

Okay.

And this is called an Italian paste tomato, or Italian, potato leaf, tomato, Italian potato leaf, okay.

And that's why I brought these two and because the leaf types are very different on the this is a regular tomato leaf and you can see it's, it's got lobes and the indentations in the leaves.

And this is the potato leaf and it just has a smooth, I don't know that I would be able to identify that just by sight.

Because it looks so different than what you would expect to me it leaves a lot going right and a lot of people mistake them for potatoes.

But the interesting thing about the potato leaf, it's this particular one is a big pain.

beefsteak tomato.

Oh, but the the genetics on this, the genes for this are recessive.

So they it will never cross with another tomato plants.

Gotcha variety.

So it's kind of nice for seed saving, because you don't have to worry about it.

But the tomatoes are like this.

They're big.

These are the bigger big boys.

Yeah, for slicing for Burger.

King canning.

So that that's the interesting thing about this.

And you started both of these from seed.

Yes, I did.

All right.

So we're getting, we're getting almost to where we're wanting to transplant things outside.

But can you talk us through just some things to look at on your plants, when you know that they're ready to be transplanted?

How do we know that they're strong enough?

And how do you know when it's time to move them outside?

Well, I course I look at the temperature, the outside temperature, that's the big thing on tomatoes and any warm weather crop.

So I looked at cigarette, it's going to be the warm soils warmed up.

And it's going to be warmer consistently.

And then when I plant them, I plant them deep.

And I'll plant them, you know, the stem away.

So you're gonna pop this guy Yeah, because what tomatoes do is they'll send roots out in the stem.

And so that gives you a better root growth and a sturdier tomato.

When I plan on my dig a big hole, and I usually add some compost to the bottom.

And I use I put in crushed up egg shells, because that gives them calcium and that prevents blossom end rot.

Oh, and we always get questions about that too.

So crushed egg shells gives a the extra boost of calcium.

So if you experienced that, eggshells, yeah, I'll give that I just have a Ziploc bag.

And whenever I have, we eat a lot of hard boiled eggs.

So I just throw them in the bag and crushed crushed them up.

And then so you'll you'll take this leaf off, you say how far up would you Oh, probably, that's about so that is pretty deep.

Yeah, that is pretty deep.

This one now this one doesn't have as much distance between the soil and the first set of leaves.

So I will plan to hit quite as deep that these they're they're pretty deep in these parts.

They're gonna develop a good root system.

Now on with the plant Do you wait until they have you know, I know what some they say wait till they get two sets of true leaves or something like that.

What how do you know when these are ready?

Beyond temperature?

How do you know when the plant is ready?

Well, just when they get a decent size, I mean, these are actually ready to go in but you know it's going to be a while before because of the temperatures outside before I plant them.

So right now I'm trying to keep them healthy and to pass the time outside.

Now with handling them when you go to plant these.

Everyone's got their own way to get them out.

But Nothing's worse than getting your plant laying and snapping it by not handling it properly.

So how do you wiggle yours out?

What's the best way to get these?

Well, these pots are kind of flexible, so I just kind of loosen them and then a lot of times I'll take a knife or something thin and flat and go around and then just kind of by turning them upside down keeping my fingers between them and just kind of tap them out slowly.

Because man I tell you nothing hurts worse.

No snap and a stem on something you're trying to plant.

Any other tips for gardener As as they're putting their tomatoes in, how do you we talked about the egg shells but how do you ensure success?

Well just take care of them spacing correctly so they're not too close together.

I actually trellis and we have cattle panels and I'm not sure if you know what a cattle panel but it's a long piece of fence okay, but they're iron and they they got a good size bars across them.

So they're really sturdy, there's just to provide some support.

Gotcha.

And as they grow I'll use cloth strips to time to the cattle panels because that are soft and but it'll keep them upright.

So they grow up the trellis.

Now how many tomato plants are you going to put in this year?

I'm cutting back I only have four varieties and I'll probably only do about maybe four plants so Wow, you are cutting I normally do but we just don't eat now.

Yeah, I carry on a lot.

But not don't eat as much stuff as we used to cutting back for Kay Yeah.

Well, thank you only start at four varieties.

Yes.

Thanks for bringing these in and for visiting in the studio as always a pleasure and thank you for watching