Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid-American Gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain and joining me in the studio today are two of our panelists that are going to educate you on all things green, growing, and crawling apparently.

We'll have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their specialty.

So Phil, start with you.

I'm Phil Nixon, I'm retired extension entomologist from the University of Illinois.

And so, entomologist means I'm a Bug Guy, so I'll be talking about creepy crawlies.

Creepy crawlies.

All right, Chuck.

I am Chuck Voight and I am a retired horticulturist from the University of Illinois.

And my specialties were vegetables and herbs.

But at one time, I thought I was going to be a woody plant specialist.

So I can I can cover that.

And certainly I've done like fruit trees and some of those things.

Okay, got a nice cross section of knowledge here today.

So, again, Topping our news at this hour, cicadas, again.

We want to talk about so Phil's gonna fill us in on some cicada business.

So here we go.

Did you want this one first?

That's whatever.

Okay.

One thing we've we've heard is, is information about periodical cicadas.

And that, you know, they're they're coming out twice as many as they were, but that's only on a statewide basis.

And I've seen various things on the news and others that are just plain wrong.

But imagine that.

But the point is, is that the Great Southern brood and the Northern Illinois, brewed are emerging at the same time this year, which covers the bulk of Illinois, there are five broods or five areas in which cicadas come out in Illinois.

But the but the other, the other three are relatively small in geographic airy area, generally no two broods overlap to any great extent.

And so what we've got is, is essentially our meeting in central Illinois more or less along the Makena river, or another way of looking at it from essentially north of Springfield through to to Lincoln and to Champaign and so on is kind of our Rantoul.

It's kind of the area where the two groups are meeting.

It's the first time it has happened since 1803.

And this is the UN in that interim, there have been we have 13 year broods in the southern half of the US 17 year broods and an hour and a half and those two are coming out to gather.

They're coming out same time, but not in the same place.

And so that's a, that's an important thing that you need to look at.

And every year when we get these sorts of things happening, people I get in the year, it's unpassed.

And I've been I've been working through several emergencies with five different broods in the state of Illinois, and been doing this for 37 years.

The you get two kinds of calls.

or questions about from people.

One is, why am I not seeing those two caterers and what do i Where do I go to get rid of this away from his caterers?

And the next phone calls?

Where do I go to find them because I don't have them and I feel deprived and you know, the the insects are going to come out the the veneers crawl off a petroleum and or any vertical object.

And, and they emerge first is what I like to refer to as their angel face.

When they're white like this, they look to me like little angels.

So you got to be a bug guy to think that I guess.

And then after a few hours, they will harden off.

And there's so many I'm coming out to they're coming out over a period of several days.

And you'll be able to see that that might phase before this but the outside covering is hard enough.

But we're out of the reason why you might have cicadas or not have cicadas has a lot to do with, with the area that we have and realize that when cicadas come out, they typically only are going to fly a couple 100 feet.

So every 13 or 17 years, they're spreading two or 300 feet, maybe 1000 feet, but not to any great extent.

And the ones at the edge of those areas are mainly going to be picked off by birds and mammals things like this.

So there's a real high mortality if if there was probably a higher mortality in cicadas no matter where they are.

Because they just sit out there and get eaten.

It's kind of like we got so many of us.

You can't possibly eat us all you know that sort of thing.

But at the edge you can possibly Don't you all?

And they do.

And so generally, fringe areas don't survive very well, which means keeps us separate as good as well, because you start thinking up and you go, well go for 13 year, 17 times out and the last 221 years, since Lewis and Clark were making their big tracker.

We're going way back here.

And so before I was born, well, yeah, you go back and you go back 10 years, and I want to know who's calling in saying, I don't have cicadas I've actually had people work and I go get some so I can collect them.

Put them in my yard.

So in 17 years, I can have again, I got several calls that way from Chicago area before who in their right mind would want that?

Because they enjoy nature.

We're not looking forward to this summer, we just let it happen.

It happens.

Is this one of your love?

Yeah, this is one of my lovelies.

Yeah, this is what they look like, except it's much more drift.

The insects are only about an inch and a quarter long.

So this is about twice as long or four times about it and what you would normally have a skater of one of the periodical skaters, this is about the size of the of the annual or dog day skater has painted like a, like a periodical.

And so and so this is what you're gonna see.

But, but instead of being this long, they're about about that long.

Now, I want to ask you, we were talking before we started rolling.

You said the males will emerge before the females and that's most insects do that.

Okay.

And they're the ones that seem to right.

So what can we expect moving forward in the next couple of weeks when we start to hear that at night?

Just know that it's the males and they are singing?

First off?

You'll hear it at night ceasing during the day during the day.

That's the difference between them.

That was never a thing I heard on the news.

All night.

No, they're gonna be quiet at night.

See, I didn't know that.

It was okay to sing at night or an evening the periodical thing during the daytime, primarily only when the sun is shining.

If it happens to be a dreary morning, you will hardly hear any at all until that sun comes out.

And it was on me or on.

Okay, so yeah, it's it's sunshine.

It's it's, it's bathing beauty time.

Yeah, it's out there.

Yeah.

And so and so.

And the thing is, is, is that in So depending on Illinois, what we have is a if we go back a couple 100 years, our whole area has is dominated by prairie fires.

And and when how to prairie fires burn?

Well, they burn with the normal wind direction, which is primarily going to be out of the west or where they get to eat toast in the fire, and so and so we tend southwest, or northwest, but generally out of the west.

And in Illinois, and throughout the Midwest.

We have a lot of north south running rivers and we have things such as not just a Mississippi, with the Illinois, the Rock River, the grain, they've the DesPlaines River, the all embroil rivers, cast cast River, primarily all run north and south.

And the same thing happens in Indiana.

So you may have to know Ohio.

And so essentially, if you had at a prairie fire sometime in the last 150 200 years, that burned off all the trees, you killed all the cicadas that prairie fire, because their feet on the roots underground is nymphs.

And if a tree dies above them, they're toast.

to have them and Peoria is a great example of that.

There are very few cicadas in Peoria, but lots of them in East Peoria.

And what's in between priorities for your area, the only River, which is a firebreak interesting, there are upland areas in the northern part of Peoria that are up on some on some limestone bluffs, they have cicadas but down below.

They don't interest that again, limestone blocks are a firebreak.

Similarly, when we look at at people and housing areas, as a general rule of thumb, before 1970, when somebody was putting houses into an area, they came in and put the houses in around the trees.

But construction has been has changed about 1972, where generally when you do a housing development, first thing you do is you doze out all the trees kill every tree in there.

What happened to his case, when he killed trees, they're dead.

And so housing developments that have been developed since around 1970 7580 are probably not going to have any cicadas at them whatsoever towns that are and towns in this area in Illinois, if they were established in cornfields no cicadas they don't feed on corn roots.

Okay, yeah.

Has to be probably near a north south moving river or, or a good size Creek Are you going to have them Alright, so now you know what to look for depending on where you are.

Alright.

So get ready.

All right Chuck, you've been in the garden let's see have been in the garden you bring us well I just was checking out some earth things so I can keep my my herb credentials up to date, this is just not an herb, whatever.

Not a herb garden sage.

And as you can see I did not give this a hard a hard prune this spring because if you only want the leaves you would go out in the spring and cut it really, really hard.

You don't want to do that in the fall because it kind of messes with the winter hardiness.

But I'm gonna have lots of flowers on this plant I don't need to harvest as much sages other people might.

But if if you then want to encourage the leaf growth as soon as the pretty flowers are gone, cut it back down here to this first leaf and and then it will sprout side shoots and grow lots of leaves.

french french tarragon I wrote my master's thesis on on the asexual reproduction of French tarragon which as it turns out is fairly easy if you get them at this stage where it's just very lush and full of moisture and grown rapidly.

I don't know that I've ever eaten that how do you enjoy it?

What part do you eat I guess?

well the leaves.

the leaves okay.

It has kind of a kind of a licorice sort of a taste but also has an extra goal that that loves and so was used as a toothache remedy way back when you just your toothache plant?

Is that what--?

no no that's that's a different plan that's disregard that people still it's a cadet.

Step back grasshopper.

When you said toothache, I just--- around the Mediterranean where it was very popular.

You know when there wasn't much of anything else Sure.

Other than maybe pliers chewing on that was in if you were to take a little sip of that it would numb the end of your tongue.

And so that so also popular with like fish dishes.

Because if the fish has been away from the sea an extra day or two it doesn't hurt the tongue a little bit understood.

This is the native monarda monarda fistulosa The purple flowered one that's just everywhere in the ditch banks and in everywhere out where there was prairie in Illinois that's getting ready to to come up and get going.

And then this Beebalm, right?

Yes more or less more or less.

Okay, the genius at least Yes.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

That's That's purple flowers instead of the real normally has has red or some form of red.

This is loveage.

If you don't do not send a celery family.

Like you can use more or less like celery.

But you can also use it in your bloody Mary because it is aloe stems.

You can use it as a as a gotcha and also as a straw.

So it sounds like a sweet celery.

Yeah, I think it's somewhere between celery and well Geez What's the one that candy anyway it's it's in that group.

So those are you know some of what's happening in the herb garden.

As is we're let's do a couple of your pictures to I want to start with or any any specific photo you'd like to start with.

Oh, how about the Asparagus Asparagus my fav there they are in all their glory.

Yeah, and there's I was out with a with a yardstick anyway.

I was gonna get a meter stick and be very scientific but they found the yardstick first.

So you can see there this is what we looked at when they were just those little babies then just first aid I'm gonna say some of them are the size of not cup directly but the most of them Oh, come on.

There's one that I have marked that only had like one stock last year and I was in danger of dying.

So that one's marked That's a do not cut.

Everybody else we've been cutting.

You can start to see the diameter going down now but partly because it started so early.

They kind of snuck up on me there in April.

We got so warm that they were they started way ahead of time.

And I brought you a bunch even even though I hate to reward your lack of patience and grow on your own and being able to wait three years.

Three years?

Come on.

That's a long time to wait.

But it seems like when you've got friends who grew up, it seems like we just talked about those little plans emerging and you're either very robust.

The Millennium particularly started a little earlier and was very nice.

Those are pre trimmed and ready to go.

There's no There's no fiber to bottom or anything different on and took care of.

Always Donna spoil me rotten.

Thank you very much.

You didn't get to enjoy yours.

Did you?

You said that?

No, we just noticed I just noticed them yesterday, but they were five foot tall ferns now.

When that happens when it gets away from you like that, what do you do to maintain the patch?

Do you just leave it?

Do you cut them down?

What's the Well, as I said, I It's kind of a recharge year for him.

You would fertilize it and just let it grow.

Get all that energy in the roots.

And then hopefully next year, when he finds it on time, they're gonna be fatter and more of them and and you'll be able to harvest a longer season.

My new patch is doing so well, that that's what I did with my old patch that's kind of in the weeds.

They're down to kind of skinny.

I just mowed that off once more, as they were starting to come up, we picked it once.

And now I'm going to fertilize it and just let that one grow up and either either recover or if it's just always going to be fiddly, then we're going to just keep it because this one is producing obviously more than we can keep up with.

And that's that's well 17 plants 18 survived and, and and the one we're not harvesting, so 17 plants and we're not getting that much each time, but it's certainly a good asparagus.

Here it is.

Okay.

All right.

So we're back to you with more critters.

Well, this is a time of year in which we get floating fluff.

And essentially what these are, you'll see a little piece of look like, oh, that size of a head of a corsage pin or maybe a little bit smaller, just go floating by your eyes.

And I've started to notice it.

And what it is, is the one you just had before that one right there.

And that's what you're seeing is this is a woolly aphid.

The most common one we have around is this one.

This is the woolly Apple aphid.

The Yeah, well, the Apple woolly aphid or Willie Apple leave it.

And you can see that it has a couple of pairs of wings on it.

And but it's essentially got lots of white waxy filaments on it.

And they really seem to just kind of float through the air.

And, and if any of it you can tell for sure that it is one of these is if it changes direction, because they tend to blow come on the wind, but they are able to have powered flight and they will all of a sudden just all of a sudden move a little bit real real slow over and dispersal stage.

And it's interesting to me that it tends to occur and I think probably on purpose.

At about the same time you're starting to see cottonwood fluffs start to come off a cottonwoods.

And if you've got that blown around, then something that's going to want to eat one of these guys, it's just, you know, it's kind of going with the wind so to speak.

This is this is a classic bug couch potato, I mean just kind of goes wherever and, you know, they're, they're going to overlook it.

And, and they're going to get away but this is what put the insect looks like on on the host plants, various members of the rose family where Apple is located and will will produce these sorts of things.

And and they are not very very obvious when you get this close up on him they look pretty, pretty obvious.

Here's catonian Aster with unwanted which is also in the same family related plant and it gets on the same bugs.

And there are other related insects to this that also occur on other roads, family plants.

And so and they also we'll get on other related things we'll get on to onto elm and on on beach and some other types of plants.

So interesting people will have some kind of wonder, you know, do I even is this a bug or what is it just looks like a piece of fluff that went by it's actually a woolly aphids, and they are out now and it's kind of neat to neat to see something that you know, just just kind of lazily floats by falling like they're a piece of fluff or, or a tiny angel or whatever you however you want to look at it.

And they're they're doing their thing that's kind of neat.

Just nothing that really causes in some of them the the the apple effect, we'll go to an ordered host and and get down on on the route So I believe it's poplar and some things like that, and can cause some root damage.

But they actually alternate generations from looking like this on the upper part to living down on the roots and on a different tree.

But they're kind of an interesting feature of nature and they're out right now.

All right, thank you, sir.

All right, more pics from Chuck in the garden.

What is what are we looking at?

Those are the two red rhubarb plants.

And the one the bigger one is the Canada red, which is famous for having a great big petioles and they're bright red on the outside, but they're they're just green on the inside, where the crimson red is, doesn't get nearly as big, but they're red all the way through.

So if you cook the crimson red, you get this wonderful pink agglomeration of bad taste.

Oh, I forgot you'd have a thing with rhubarb.

But I'd love to grow it.

So there it is.

And they're doing well there's that is the the music garlic, the cause of our music.

I think I gave you a ball.

Yes, you did.

It has just gone crazy.

You can see it's almost a yard tall.

And and it's probably going to grow you know through the rest of May.

And then it gets about as big as it's going to and then it'll get a tab set that will cut off and, and use for something else.

But that's great.

One time before when we had what I called zone seven winter, when it really didn't get super cold.

Well, this year, we had that 10 day period where it was very cold.

But in Kankakee County where this was we had had like five inches of snow and then a couple of one inch things.

So had an ice blanket over it.

And it it was as soon as that melted and we went back to our warmer than normal.

It was up and growing.

That that last time is when I had four ounce bulbs, four bulbs to the pound which which is incredible for our neck garlic.

And so I'm hopeful that that maybe we're going to be back in that that banner year.

This is the flowers on Gill feather turnip, which also came through the winter, which doesn't normally happen too much.

But again, they were under snow cover and and they came back also the rutabagas next to them because the rutabagas in the in the Gulf of the turnips are fairly closely related.

The Gill feather is like a hybrid between a rutabaga and an a turnip.

I got rid of the rutabagas because I want seed of the of the gill feathers.

And so they're up and and the insects are doing their thing with and when we're having we're having so far so good.

Have you guys now that we're in May, would you plant out or would you guys wait a little bit longer history I succumb to he looked ahead and well, because last year I got shout out on my gypsy hybrid peppers couldn't find him.

And I went they were there.

I bought them and it was so warm yesterday.

I'm planning I planted it I planted my my eight tomatoes.

And my eight peppers I managed to hold myself back I didn't get 16 peppers this year because that was way too many last year.

But I did find the gypsies and so we're going to have gypsy peppers, I put out salary I put out some leaks about you got the garden I gotta clean that brush off a garden first, the entomologist you're gonna make sense he has branches of trees you know things happen during the winter, you know, it's but, but generally, about the middle of May is when I would put out first tomato second into gear and and an important thing associated with that is, is we get blackout worms that will come out and start chewing off your tomatoes and as well as other things in the garden but but cold crops such as cabbages and broccoli and so on, probably have more of a nasty taste to cut worms and then tomatoes do although tomatoes have got nasty things.

But at any rate, the Black Cutworm is essentially about to size your little finger and get up to about an inch and a half long and they're kind of a fat body Caterpillar comes out at night crawls across the surface.

And when it sees something tasty, you know, curl this body around and eat it off and you'll find a little stub of a tomato, which is about a half an inch to an inch tall.

And that's and that was just that half inch or inch was enough space for the first cut room to curl its body around and eat it off.

He does the same thing out in the in the fields to field corn.

And so it's a problem for farmers as well.

We've got about 30 seconds go ahead might have collars around them so that they can't get to the base of my trance and as long as that gets in about a half an inch they won't dig underneath it.

Or another thing I can do is put a stick right against the stem to make the leaving on that to make the to make the stem too big for the caterpillar wrap around.

Thank you Phil, and thank you guys for watching.

We will see you next time.

Good night.