(theme music) 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, one of our favorites, Shane, is in the building.

So tell us a little bit about you and what you like, what you're into.

Sure, yeah, hi, I'm Shane Cultra.

I'm one of the family owners of Country Arbors nursery in Urbana, and I've been retired for a couple years now.

So now I get to play in my own garden and go see other people's gardens instead of selling you plants.

I used to work with trees and shrubs and perennials, and I still love them, but now I get to do it myself and write a little blog at botany.com where I just kind of talk about the plants and what other people are doing outside of the nursery.

So so you get to go in and actually peruse the inventory.

And I'm taking my mom to Chelsea Garden Show, and I went to see some tulip tulip fields, and just really taking it from the other side, I'm seeing what you all have seen.

I'm always working when you guys are playing.

So now I'm going to get to play a little bit very nice, very nice.

And you brought some great things in to share with us today.

So take it away.

Yeah.

So the great part about this time of year is it we're thinking it is go time, right?

You look at the weather every day, depending on where you're watching from.

I think it is go time.

We were talking about it earlier.

Do you put out stuff?

I am I'm going whole hog for it.

I've always gone whole hog because I know I've got a million plants behind in case I die, but it's a little harder now asking my brother if I can take more so.

But I still did sneak into the nursery last night, and I just walked around it.

I could have purchased or could have brought tables and tables of stuff, but there are some things that I thought were really interesting and really fun.

And I'll start with the ginger.

I'm a big fan of shade plants.

Shade plants are often hard.

We always have kind of the same things over and over, right?

Different hostas.

Hostas, still bees, coral bells, and so there's just, I think, I mean, there's plenty of plants to choose from, don't get me wrong, but I see the same ones in different colors all the time.

And ginger is something that you don't see quite as often in the foliage.

I'll kind of turn it here, and the foliage is amazing.

The leaf size is great.

And this is a Chinese ginger, a serum Splendens, which you don't see that often.

It's not something that you can eat.

It's not you're gonna, not gonna cut up and make ginger beer and add it to your sushi and your food, but it's still something that grows really well in the shade, and it's not going to overrun the garden and not go crazy, but it will definitely spread get a couple feet wide, and the leaves can get quite large.

And when you do pick the roots, the roots are very fragrant, like ginger, so you just kind of rub them.

And I mean, again, you're not going to go out there and pull the roots up every time.

But it is nice to have something that you can go in and when you smell the leaves like again, geraniums, you'll have that sense of geranium.

You'll do that.

It's just another really good shade plant.

Is this a perennial, or this is a perennial?

Comes back every single year.

Okay.

Now as far as care goes, do you have to cut it back?

Will it die all the way back to the ground?

No, it's semi perennial, meaning that you'll see it'll keep its leaves over the winter.

It won't be full, so you'll get some die back, but you definitely will have some leaves still sitting there.

Kind of like a Helleborus kind of guy never truly dies back.

And yeah, and it just adds more and bigger leaves.

Now, in the spring, I do take off all the old ones.

That's why I was showing you earlier.

I love picking off the leaves.

That's kind of actually fun, because it smells good, but it is better to let to take off leaves again.

We were talking earlier about nature feels whole.

So if you leave dead leaves there, it tend to, will not grow another leaf in that spot.

So take it off, and then it'll fill out okay, in the spring.

So, and then does this flower as well?

I see some.

Is that a flower?

Yeah, it gets just a tiny little flower to it.

It's, yeah, it's, I think this makes it look a little bit more spectacular for the foliage, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No.

There's a couple things where you look at the picture and go, that's amazing.

Then you look and it's like, this thing, the scale is not there.

This is really pretty, though.

And it looks like something that would go great, like under a tree, or, like you said, in those shady spots where you're let's say you've got plenty of pasta and almost has a tropical look to it too, because the leaves are so big, yeah.

And there are lots of different Canadian gingers.

There's lots of gingers, and it tends to be slow to propagate.

It does spread once it's taken off.

So that's what a lot of people don't understand, is sometimes when you grow plants, they don't like to be divided and grown.

They just move slowly.

They don't.

The cuttings don't.

Or if you divide them up, they really kind of stagnate and don't grow.

And so they they're harder to find, or a little bit more expensive.

So but once you get them established, they tend to root up and grow, you know, crazy.

They do a lot better.

But that's generally you can tell the price of a tree or shrub or even a perennial, by how fast it grows or how available the plant is, that's really the things that make the you think it's maybe because of marketing and those and that is a cost.

So if you see a proven winner, you know it's probably going to be a little bit more because they have put quite a bit of money into letting you know that that's a popular thing.

Yeah, you see it on all the magazines and TV.

So there's a cost to that.

But on a tree, a tree that grows really slow is going to be more expensive.

A perennial that grows really slow is going to be more expensive.

And you generally can tell by how fast it grows by looking at the pot.

If it's grown to the edge, you know, there's probably going to be a spreader and grow fast.

If it tends to be clumped up in the middle, you know, it's probably going to be a little bit more contained.

That's a great little nursery tip.

If you take a plant and it's busting out of the pot, you're probably not getting an older plant.

You're probably getting a very fast growing plant.

Okay?

Noted as I head to the garden center this week, absolutely speaking of filling in.

We had a question that came in from Nicole mallet.

She said, so glad I found the show on PBS.

We're glad you found us too.

She's in Park Forest, Illinois, and she's got a bush on the side of her house.

It faces the south.

And I showed you the pictures a bit ago, but and we'll get these on the screen, but there's some gaps there in the hedges, and she's wanting to know if perhaps she used the wrong fertilizer or if there's insect damage, but when you have those gaps in your hedges, is that something that just kind of naturally occurs?

Or what?

What do you think could, I mean, it could, could be all of the above.

It is, you know, it almost looks like somebody sat in those spots, like it broke, because the way it's V shaped.

But regardless of what happened, I don't think it's bugs, but she didn't really send us pictures that get too close onto it, but I can tell you what I would do, because they do get gaps all the time.

There's various reasons why plants don't grow in certain areas, but that happens all the time, and so I tend to trim them to force more growth.

She has a deciduous shrub, and it looks like it could easily be trimmed.

And so I would take it down about a foot and take it all the way across.

It was literally the whole side.

It looked like a little in a cut into her house or something, but the whole hedge, I would make a line and trim that whole thing level about a foot lower, and then I would fertilize it.

And I would do this right when it starts to leaf out.

This is a really good time to trim once it leafs out, you can see what leafed out.

Make sure it all did leaf out.

If it doesn't all leaf out, then you have a different issue.

If you're getting big die back, that's a different issue.

So if last year, it was just this hole, but in the spring it opens up and there's a bigger hole, well then she needs to maybe explore a little bit more about bugs and root rot.

But if it all leafs out green, trim that back, fertilize it, and you'll be surprised at where you trimmed the left and the right will fill in that gap, because plants love to hit sunlight open spaces.

They love to grow into that area.

That's why, if you see it against a house, it stops.

If you see an open area, it grows towards that direction.

And that absolutely in that hedge is going to flush out.

And when you trim, it actually stimulates a plant to grow more, so it will grow more by trimming than if she left it alone.

Very nice.

Now I have to ask, let's say that that's a very large section which it kind of looks like.

It is, is there?

Is there an option to transplant like, yeah, filling gaps.

You can do that absolutely.

Okay.

I didn't know if it would look different.

I didn't know if the younger one, you know, I didn't know how long it would take to sort of blend.

Yeah, that happens all the time.

So let's say, let's say you have a This happens all the time too.

You planted three of them, and all of a sudden, the left side dies.

If it's a middle, maybe you could replace it with something else, and it would be balanced.

But a left side dies and you're messed up.

And yet you can't find a plant that big.

There is a way to match it.

Sometimes I'll plant two together to give it the same size, because you don't know that it's two plants if you plant them close enough.

So a lot of times, I will fill gaps with another larger plant and plant it right in the middle grass.

Ornamental grasses, for instance, they tend to die out in the middle.

That's a very I will take a post hole digger and dig out the whole middle of it and plant a new grass in the middle, so the outside grass will grow, and then a new grass will grow in the middle, gotcha.

And it's really cool.

If you plant a different grass in the middle, you have, like, a variegated in the middle and a green on the outside.

They go, what is that grass?

Man, we're getting all kind of insiders.

You know, I always say, God fills holes, but you can feel them too.

You get the choice.

So don't just don't.

Get ready to rip it out right now.

There are some options in there.

Yeah.

Okay, let's move on to some more plants.

Yeah.

So another one I brought is geraniums.

At the nursery, we always plant up a, you know, five gallon pot of Geranium and a spike.

Everybody over 70 loves their geraniums.

To me, it's a little boring, but people love them.

It's kind of like your Easter basket.

Every year ever got to have it, you've got to have the geranium basket, and they sell like crazy.

But there are some geraniums that I think are a little less boring for me, and this is one of them.

It is.

This is a geranium where the foliage alone is worth it.

Still gets a geranium flower, not quite as big and vibrant as a traditional zonal geranium, but the foliage alone is worth having.

So you can imagine in a pot of green how this will really stand out as a centerpiece.

And so this is this one's called shield, and it you soon as.

Be walking.

We have one greenhouse at country arbors.

It's all geraniums.

There's nothing but geraniums.

This is the first one you see, because it's the only one that's bright yellow with a, you know, the Red Center to it.

So I really like this one.

I will not be returning this into the nursery.

I'm a big fan of geraniums.

I think for me, it's the it's the prolific flowering.

I just love the flowering.

And just watching it seems like overnight I'll be like, oh, there's, there's a reason.

It's if something with all the flowers we have nowadays to still be popular.

It means it's a good plant.

Yes, it just, I do think of my grandmother always wanting a dream.

It just that was a that was a non negotiable thing.

Every year, she would say, Bring me the pots of dreams, even to the point where my grandfather would try and make me over winter them, oh, wow, yeah, like trying to save one in the house.

Yeah?

At the time, he was saving like $4 yes, yeah.

And I'm carrying a 40 pound pot from a narga Illinois all the way back to Urbana, so I don't I probably spent $12 in gas, but yeah, you did just something about that 100% traditional flower, yeah.

As far as care goes, maybe that's why we love them.

Are they low maintenance?

Very low maintenance.

Yeah.

And then again, when they're done flowering, you just pinch off the flower and they come right back.

It's just prolific flowering over and over all summer long, and not a heat thing.

So, you know, there's some that really bloom, roll in the spring, and when it gets really hot, they tend to not really get, you know, die out.

They tend to keep blooming.

And during the hot periods, if you keep the water up and then the full sun is good, but all plants like a little break from the sun.

If you can just not put them out in the middle of the yard, just sometimes where you get a little break, they bloom even better in the summer.

But yeah, that's, that's again, why they're popular.

Just keep they keep going, for sure.

And there's lots of colors, because I can't tell the difference between salmon, yes, and off red and pink.

Like, you know, people all come back and go, here you go.

And she goes, I said salmon.

And I was like, not what?

I was like, that's not salmon.

She goes, No, that's something.

And I was like, Okay, well, I knew it wasn't fuchsia, one little shade, and now you're in the pinks.

And it's not the same terrible, not the same absolutely terrible with the colors.

But they do know, and I will run and get as many colors as they want.

Sometimes I just bring them all.

Idea always going to be a crowd favorite.

Yeah, so I spoke with a ladies garden group a couple of weeks ago, and one of the questions in the audience was about hydrangeas, and whether or not you are supposed to I wouldn't even call it dead heading, because that's from last summer.

But removing those spent like panicles, and I've read that it is a good practice to remove them.

I've read that you can let nature do its thing.

So I left mine on, and I've got a picture here.

I'm going to take them off.

But what are your thoughts on those?

What do you do with yours?

And yeah, I mean, you always can let nature do its thing.

Nature was here way before we were ever here.

So undoubtedly, you can do nothing, because it did nothing for 1000s of years.

So it'll do it again, but you can also help it.

And I enjoy the flowers like you had on in your flower, in your hydrangeas, and especially the panicle ones, that are the triangles that are a little larger and a little more prolific.

But if you this is the time to trim them.

So if you want to trim your hydrangea, it's good to take those off.

It's also good to take it back.

So if you have that panicle, and this is what I always tell everybody a simple way, if it's more sun loving hydrangea, it's got a triangle flower.

If it's more shade loving it has a round flower.

So you don't even have to know anything about hydrangeas.

But if you look at that flower, you know exactly if it likes sun or shade.

Okay, a rounded flower always wants shade.

A triangle always wants some sun.

So, so when you see a triangle flower, you know that it blooms off the old wood.

That's how they bloom.

So you see these five and six foot if you want it three feet tall, if you want it five feet tall, you trim it to that now the flowers have not set.

The flowers are going to form a little later.

So now is the time to trim it all back.

Dead ones, new ones.

Just get it into shape.

I'll have to text my husband, yeah, put that on the list, yeah.

And they're pretty easy.

Again.

You can't do wrong this time of year, because you're not going to cut off flowers.

If you take it too far back, it'll just grow.

Just grow back.

That's the tricky part about knowing when to prune and who sets flowers in the spring and who sets flowers in the fall.

You can normally see the bud set right now, especially with the nice weather we've had, things have swollen like the dogwoods and azaleas and rhododendrons have set that flower set.

Hydrangeas generally have not, not yet.

Yeah, and the there's a whole, we could have a whole show on the wind to how far back to trim the round flowers, because there's some that bloom on old wood, some that bloom on new wood.

So there's a little bit more on that trimming.

So that's a little bit more difficult, but Gotcha.

But in general, take the old flowers off.

If you can in lilac, they are beginning to they're not.

The ones at my house aren't in bloom yet.

But yeah, the bushes need trimmed up.

And I, if I cut them now, I will sacrifice Yeah.

So that's a little different that you want to wait till the flowers are done.

Okay?

So go ahead and let it bloom out.

Come.

Completely, then you can take it as hard as you want back, so by, by letting it bloom.

Yeah, it'll be a little scraggly, but you'll get all the blooms and then trim it back hard, and it'll probably bloom again.

Oh, yeah, that's trimming on spireas and lilacs often bring, bring it the blooms one more time.

I didn't know that.

Yeah, you can get a spirea to bloom almost through the summer if you trim it, every time it's done flowering, okay, trim it back and you get beautiful new foliage.

Of course, you get that new flush of growth.

The new kind called Bloom around is a very popular one.

It will bloom again.

It's very easy.

If you trim it's going to keep blooming all summer long.

Noted boy Travis just got another job.

Did you lots of trimming later on the spring?

Okay, we can go on to the next Yeah.

So again, now that I've gone home and started planting my own gardens, I have fallen in love with large zinnias and dahlias we've we used to grow dinner plate dahlias at the nursery, but they're a little harder in pots, because they get pretty tall and they're floppy, and you have to cage them, and you have to time it out.

They only bloom.

They only sell when they bloom, right?

Nobody.

When they see a Dahlia, they don't want to buy it until it blooms.

But at home, I can be patient and grow a lot of them.

So what I've, what I've done, is I've ordered a lot of Dahlia bulbs, a lot, and they're 14 inch blooms, 12 inch I just couldn't click, click, click, click.

Just had to have them all.

Yeah, and I don't, normally don't buy online, but dolly bugs are pretty easy to ship and locally.

We have some, but we don't have a huge selection.

But I think that's going to change if I can get Julie at the nursery to start growing more.

But Zinnias have come a long way, too.

So Zinnias have gotten quite large flour so the you know, now we're talking three and four inch zinnias.

And this is called cotton candy on the left.

And I think they call, there's a name for, yeah, it's called sweet tooth.

Is the series.

And again, Proven Winners always does a good job.

It's, if you see it in their pot, you know that it's a pretty good flower.

I grew both of these last year.

I do not remember what the red one is, but I can tell you that these flowers will also get double so not only will it be a single pink and a single red, but it will fill in.

So it'll be a completely full double flower, and it will have, not exaggerating, 40 or 50 flowers on one plant.

So if you see the cost, if you see it, it's six or $7 don't, you know, don't be upset.

That will produce way more than six or $7 worth of flowers.

It's unbelievable.

Those are absolutely gorgeous.

I fell in love with those a couple of years ago, and they're just so easy to grow and they're beautiful.

And the birds, the finches, and like every the whole gang just is there every morning when I go outside to sit on the pour and they DO RE seed.

So I took, I don't know what flowers I took, I just grabbed them all and put them in a bag, and then I re seeded them in my basement, and I have tons of them, so it'll be kind of interesting to see what's pictures between that and the dahlias.

Yeah, my basement looks, I do look like I'm probably growing cannabis.

To be honest.

I've got somebody grow light.

Yeah, it's a little odd down there, but I am growing I'm falling in love with with big flowers.

Yes, cut flowers.

I've always brought them home from the nursery.

I've always walked around and every day brought cut flowers home.

It's just something lovely about having flowers.

I will say, my wife maybe has taken it for granted because we've had fresh flowers every day.

So you know, getting her flowers for a present just didn't do another day, yeah?

Like, Oh, great.

It's Tuesday.

We do this every Yeah.

And then to spend the money we spend, she's, like, you could just go the nursery and take flowers.

So I don't take that for granted now at all that that a beautiful cut flower every day is just, it's a great way to start the day.

It really is.

It's refreshing.

Maintenance wise, with Zinnias, I didn't do a whole lot.

I didn't, I didn't even really deadhead.

I'm not even gonna lie to you, I had a drip system set up, so it was kind of set it and forget it, and I would go out and cut every once in a while.

But I didn't do much with them.

And they were absolutely beautiful all the way into October.

Yeah, that's, that's the great thing about these plants, is they really are and they get big and wide, you know, they'll get 1824, inches.

You can take as many flowers, the more flowers you take off, the more it will grow, and more flowers you can get.

I will say it.

I was reading something on on Instagram, and the problem with with Instagram is anybody can say anything, right?

And somebody was saying that they don't use mulch because it takes away the nitrogen.

And that's that's understandable, because that's true.

But at the same time, this plant is going to be 24 inches across, and she says she fills it with other plants to make she uses plants as ground cover.

And I thought, Wow, I'm not doing this.

I'm not using $7 plants as ground cover.

You know, row cover.

Give it space.

That's where mulch, or heavy soils, like a heavy compost, that's fill it with something.

You know, as we said earlier, God or nature is going to fill that hole with weeds.

If you don't, but you fill it with something else.

Give them their space, because these plants will be big and beautiful, and it will be.

No maintenance.

But if you plant them right next to each other, you're not going to get the full value out of the plant and and fungus can the one thing that I found out these plants don't like is to sit in water, because I had one little area by the gutter, and it's the only plant that stayed small.

Got a little fungus at the bottom of it, it just sat there, and I could always kind of pull it up.

So the roots just always wet.

You know, when it comes to roots, roots get wet.

They soak up the water.

You let it get dry, the roots grow out to hunt for water, and then you give it more water, and you keep that process you want the roots always hunting for water.

If it's always sitting in water, they're not going to grow roots.

It's going to rot up.

If you have it too dry, then it doesn't have enough to sustain the top so that medium of teas, water.

Teas, water is how you grow a big plant.

Gotcha now, where will you put those in in let's say you've got a bed.

They're gonna get tall.

They're gonna get big.

So what would you put in front of them?

Or how do you kind of dress that up?

Yeah.

So I have a, I have a Zinnia bed that's all zinnias.

And there are different size zinnias.

So I do figure out the height of how what's going to be in the back?

Well, this year, dahlias are going to be in the very back.

And I do till it up.

You know, not everybody tills up their whole garden when they plant, but they do better with tilled up soil and loose soil.

But I will have a three foot section, probably by 20 of just the different zinnias.

And I do put marigolds around the front for the rabbits.

I line the whole thing.

It keeps detour, yeah, it keeps it low, keeps it fragrant, keeps it bright, but it also keeps a rabbit saying, if that's what's in here, I'm gonna skip to the other one.

Very nice.

That's a trick that I've learned.

And I have a lot of rabbits same here, so I'm going to definitely be using that one.

Let's see.

We have a question from Ratna and sank Duta.

They say, Can you help us in resolving the following problem?

They have an oak tree in their backyard.

It's about 30 years old, they're guessing.

And for the past six or seven years, within a month or so of spring and summer, the new leaves that come on are crooked, crooked.

Excuse me, they dry up and they turn brown and they curl, and a lot of them fall off.

And now that is sort of taking over more of the tree.

And now she says more more of the branches don't have any leaves at all.

So when you're dealing with an old tree with an issue that's happening consistently year after year, what would you do here?

Yeah, the die back is concerning the part.

So leaves occasionally will get a wilt or some kind of fungus, but that tends to be one year, or it can carry over through the notches and the branches so it will hide sometimes in that so when the leaf unfurls, it will actually catch last year's.

But when it dies back, that means we probably have something in vascular inside.

And so I Oh, there is Oak.

Wilt unfortunately, oak wilt you know, we had bores for ash that were a huge problem.

And oak wilt across the country is a huge problem.

It hasn't been too bad in our area, but it is here.

So this is one of the things that I would absolutely take an old some old wood and new wood, and take it to a plant lab, if you have that local and have that tested, because if it is oak wilt, you have to remove it.

And you actually, if there's other oaks near it, they actually chain saw the roots like a trench to keep the other roots from inno Tang, because it spreads through the roots as well.

So it's an ugly process, and it's it's not good at all.

We've just got so many things we're battling when it comes to large trees, and I know what they're thinking, because I have one of my back.

It's kind of the heart of your house, right?

Like, it's like a family member provides shade.

The kids have played under it the time to replace that.

So it's definitely worth the time, or even if it's a little cost to find out what's going on, but it definitely has a disease that needs to be tested, and it won't probably be an easy fix.

Yikes.

Yeah, we hate saying goodbye to those.

I know those big family trees, like you said when you sat under them and they're in the background.

Of all the pictures, it's kind of tough, but at least you can get some answers.

And then, yeah, know which it's hard to replace time, like, we can replace everything, but time is very difficult to do.

So that's true.

Yeah, I hate giving the bad news.

I'd hate to be an arborist, you know, takes the stethoscope out and it's like, I can't save it.

Yeah, I'd either be the guy that I'd either be an arborist or a person that takes it down.

I can't be both, not the one delivery and then and dissecting the tree in front of them.

Yes, yes.

We've got about two minutes left.

And as you said earlier, it is go time.

So what about some just last minute tips for folks as they're visiting nurseries and ready to get their beds in?

What are some pitfalls that we can avoid?

Well, I think, you know, I think the, I think it's go time.

I mean, I really think I'm not worried about the pitfalls.

So let's say we get some cold weather coming ahead.

No plastic.

A lot of people cover the plastic, and that actually burns it more than cloth.

So to me, I'm more of a bed sheet.

So make sure you have those guest best sheets.

Bed sheets, sitting around ready to go if that happens.

And also this, if you do container, movable containers, like I'm a big, like, little container that I can move in and out, definitely do those, because you could move those easily if you want.

But I think it's, I think in central Illinois, it's time to plant.

The forecast looks good.

The farmers are out.

You can always tell by farmers putting seed in the ground that the soil temperatures are pretty good as well.

So I think it's a good time hummingbird too.

So they're birds.

They're a great indicator.

So let's, let's get that sound in the morning too, of the robins and the birds that only come in the springtime, the smell of the grass once the masters have teed off.

I also know it's time to start.

It's all these things coming together that I think that we are going to be popular people around town, because it's going to be, it's going to be good time, and now the farmers market will be full of fruits and vegetables before you know it.

That's right.

Okay.

Well, we're out of time.

Thank you so much.

I learned a lot today, like a lot, a lot, and I hope you did too.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you've got questions, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com, or search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid-American Gardener.

And we will see you next time.

Good night.

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