(upbeat music) - Hello, and thanks for joining us for another edition of Mid American Gardner, the stay at home edition.

I'm your host.

Tanisha Spain.

And with me today are three of our veteran panelists, who are here to answer your questions and help you solve the mysteries that are going on in your garden.

So I'll leave their introductions to them, and they can tell you a little bit about who they are and what their specialties are outside.

So John we'll start with you.

- Oh, okay.

My first show and tell is a couple of... - Well, first you have to introduce yourself.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm John Bowden Cider.

I'm a Vermain County master gardener.

And I like vegetables, perennials, trees, shrubs just about anything that grows in my yard.

I've got a little bit of everything, so I, I like a big variety of plants, succulent... - A generalist if you will.

- Yes a general actor, there you go.. - Okay.

Alright, Richard.

- Hello.

I'm Richard Henshaw.

I'm a horticulture educator here in Northern Illinois.

My official county are Kane Du Page and Kendall.

Although I work in all of Northern Illinois and it's still zone five here, not Alaska.

(all laughing) - And Marty.

- Hi, my name is Marty Alanya.

I am a retired landscaper.

I've had my own gig for about 25 years.

And when I counted how much it actually was, I thought, well, probably my back had liked it if I'd quit, but I still design and I love it.

I just, I do.

I just, you know, not quite as hardy as I was 25 years ago.

- Fair enough.

You earned it, right?

- Right.

- Alright.

So we've got show and tells.

We've got questions.

We've got all kinds of stuff to talk about.

I would like to start if I may, I have a show and tell that comes with a question for our panelists So as I've been digging stuff up outside and bringing them in, I made some cuttings of some Basil a few weeks ago.

And as we're all starting to begin our propagation, I would like to know when do we know that the roots are ready to go from whatever you've got them in into soil.

So are these good roots and am I ready to plant them and, and feel free to weigh in on this one.

- Oh yeah you're ready.

- That's ready.

- I'm really quite jealous.

I did the same thing.

This is Thai basil, and you could see how little my roots are yet compared to yours.

I couldn't even do mine.

They technically, if as long as they're taken care of and yours are especially, you want to be very, very careful being that those roots are so sturdy, you'll want to be careful not to break them off, and when you're putting them into soil, and then keep them well watered for the first couple of days until they get acclimated to the soil and you'll be fine.

- Okay.

Anybody else?

- I was actually going to suggest you might cut like a 1/3 of them off the roots.

- Ahh that's a different perspective.

- Just trim them a little bit.

And then they'll branch out a little more inside the pot.

Cause they're going to have to acclimate anyway and they'll spread a little easier that way.

- Cut.

Say here.

- Yeah.

Just like trimming your hair when it's scraggly (mumbles) - Take off the split ends.

- Gosh it smells so good.

I just want to take a big bite of it right now.

It's smells delicious.

Okay.

So those babies are ready to go.

- Yeah.

- So the thing, and you know, when we'll be talking about propagation, you know, do we want length or do we want these little individual sort of hairs roots?

You know, what's most important, the length or the, Oh, I like to, yeah.

- I like to go with a numbers, the more root starts, the better, you know, the more you have the better.

So root turning a little bit Will encourage that too.

- The smaller the roots, that's where you actually get the most absorption, kinda like the trees, you know, you gotta go get out to that drip line and that's where all the fine roots are and that's where you get most of your absorption.

- Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

So I'll talk these babies up sometime this week.

All right, John, we'll go to you with your show and tell you.

- Okay I was ready to do this.

We've had many calls on what should I do?

I've got lots of leaves falling in my flower bed.

Should I take them off?

And it depends on what kind of leaves you have.

I usually put a lot of leaves in my perennial flower beds, but one of them that I don't is, this is one of them.

This is a Sycamore.

And they are so thick and heavy that they tend to compact and they'll actually keep the plants.

They'll get, you know, my Sycamore is about 75 feet tall and they'll get to the point where they have, they'll be six inches of leaves and they're compacted as the winter goes on.

And they'll, they'll feel that plants cannot break through.

Now, what I suggest then is what you put on your flower beds is something that looks like this.

This has been run over by the mower and I've even got some, some white pine needles in there that helped break it up, but you can see it's almost like a dust, but they're all broke up.

And that's what you want to put into your flower beds.

And especially things like mums after their, after they freeze, I never take everything right to the ground.

I usually leave four to six inches of the plant there.

And then if they're tender perennials, if I've ever had them freeze off during the winter, or if they tend to heave mums tend to heave out of the ground.

If we get warming and cooling.

And so that mulch over that, that plant keeps the ground kind of at the same temperature.

And they, they survive much easier.

And as soon as it warms up in the spring, say early March, I start to take those off and kind of look for the green underneath.

You don't want your plants to be white.

You know, if they're, you know, sometimes they stay low like mums and you want to take that leaf mold off and let the sun hit them.

And then so they can do their chlorophyll works and get them going.

So.

- Gotcha.

I was just going to ask if you are supposed to go in and remove that, or just kind of work it in the following years, plantings.

- If it depends on what it is, if it's going to come from the ground, you want to take it off, especially if you've put quite a bit on my, you know, on my fig tree, I'll put up to three feet of that mulch to protect it.

Cause it's a zone seven plant and I'm in zone five.

And so it's, it's, I've done it for, this would be next, next year will be my ninth year and it's come back and it gets to the, it grows from the ground, but it goes all the way to the eave troughs.

So it grows about eight, 10 feet.

And sometimes if I, if I don't have a real hard winter, actually it will come out of some of the stems that aren't within that mulch pile.

So, but it is important that you take that, that mulch off.

- Okay.

All right.

Thank you, John.

Marty.

We're gonna go to you with a question.

This is nine 68 from Annette Coleman.

She wants to know if it's time or if it's too late or too early to move a three year old oak-leaf hydrangea plant doesn't want to risk stressing it or killing it during the move.

So she wants to know like fall or spring is the best time.

What do you think?

- I think we've got enough warm whether left before the ground freezes hard that she could, she could moving it now is just fine.

If she rather wait until spring, she can do that too.

You might want to cut it back by half or even two thirds.

It depends on the size of the plant.

Get out, get out to a, when you initially begin to dig it, get out 18 inches or so from the, the crown of the shrub.

Okay.

And dig a little trench around there.

Okay.

And then start there and then dig deeper.

Cut out.

Use a sharp sharpen, your spade, sharpen your shovel.

That'll be easier on the plant to a clean cut.

It much, much easier than a ragged one.

So just cut around in a circle and dig deep enough.

I would say you'd have to go probably a foot, 15 inches, but 12 inches for sure.

Dig around there and make sure you take plenty of root ball with you and take it out.

You know, dig it up, move it immediately, put a hose on it right away, backfill it, and then take the extra soil back to the hole you dug.

So you don't have to have a hole in your yard or in your flower bed or wherever, wherever it's at your shrub border.

So, I mean, just, you're gonna have to move the soil, make it easy on yourself when you're digging the new hole first, put it in the wheelbarrow.

It's easier to raking it out of the lawn.

Believe me.

- So for 25 years, right.

- Then drag your hose around and make a pencil thin stream.

Okay.

Like the size of a pencil, no more water coming out, than your little finger.

Okay.

Just a pencil thin stream and put it at the base of the plant and let it run for an hour.

All right.

- Hey Marty ?

- Yeah.

- Would you recommend that when they dig that hole, maybe dig the hole that night or the day before and fill it with water and you know, and so that, that, cause we're, we're in such a drought that I thought maybe that might.

- I was thinking about that too.

I was thinking when you did the whole, when you did the whole it's going in, if it seems very dry, then do like John suggested and you know, four or five gallons of water in that hole.

And then that, yeah.

I mean, I have a credibly good drainage here in Illinois.

So then you can, Oh, the sun came out like that.

Then you can put your plant in it, you know, transplant it, but loose, nice, loose, fine soil around it.

No clouds, chop it up.

If you have a little compost, you can sure.

Put that around there too, top dress with some mulch it really well like three, four inches deep and then trickle that water on there.

And then the next day, water it again.

And then two days later, water it again, unless you get an inch of rain, water it about every three days until it freezes because it needs to join the soil and the root ball with the soil on the planet.

That's, what's going to keep it from, from freezing and dying over winter.

And that goes for anything, anything you plant in this time and this time of year, you have to make a meld between those two soils.

And if you don't, you're going to get air in that down the side of that hole and then you'll essentially root prune.

And that's not always the best idea.

So make sure you've got plenty of water, plenty.

I mean, turn that whole a mud.

You're not going to hurt it at all.

- Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

We're going to Richard a question nine 29.

This is a long one.

So bear with me folks.

We've got two varieties of blueberries and I recently noticing something seemed to be eating the leaves and the fruit on one plant, but I never saw anything.

And the plants are enclosed in a hardware cloth cage to keep the squirrels and birds out.

Woo.

That infected plant is now subsequently defoliated and the berries are almost all blemished.

More plants are showing damaged leaves.

Tonight I noticed the bag-worms.

We handpicked as many as we could.

Anything else we can do this year or next?

That's the question.

We try to stick with organic control methods.

So I have the bucket of soapy water and hand-picking method down for pests, but these plants represent a lot of time and effort, and I'd also like to prevent such loss in the future if possible.

So how can they save their blueberries from bad ones?

Organically.

- First off, it's kind of unique that we're finding bag-worms on blueberries, but the lifecycle of the bag-worms is such that the female comes out of its overwintering bag has the ability to crawl around the plant and lay more eggs.

And then what's kind of interesting.

The larva are able to spin a silken thread that they use more like a para sail and they can float away off the original plant and land somewhere else.

On in this case, they landed on your blueberry.

Each bag, by the way, if it's on an evergreen, we'll have one appearance, cause it uses the needles of the evergreen to make its bag.

And on blueberry, the, the bag will look entirely different.

It'll have bits of leaf tissue sticking around on it that they construct the bag with, in terms of control.

We're very lucky in that one.

You want to do it organically.

And two, we actually have a product bacillus thuringiensis crostocky probably is the right one.

This is an organic material.

And once the worms come in contact with this kind of gives them a very severe tummy ache to the point where they die.

And it is very much organic.

You couldn't have prevented the bag-worms from getting to those plants as they're extremely small and they'll would have just floated right through any wiring or things like that, that you had in place around it, where you were keeping bigger wildlife like birds and other things out.

You really can't treat unless they're there.

So next year, just keep an eye out.

The bag-worms may never even revisit that blueberry ever again.

So as soon as you see a little bit of feeding, it's time to put the BT on and that should prevent it.

- What time of year are the bag-worms out on your evergreens normally, is it late June, early July?

- Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, towards the end of spring, if you will, and as we enter into summer on plants that are their favorites, like junipers, they can defoliate an entire evergreen eating every needle on the plant.

And the more bags you have represent the potential of more females to lay more eggs the following spring.

So the damage really does, does accumulate.

So the handpicking is great.

If you find a bag that seems hollow and empty, that may have even been an old bag from the previous year, but for sure, there's no females inside.

Overwintering, if they're solid and firm, for sure, there's a female in there just waiting to provide eggs the coming year.

- And don't throw them on the ground, pick them up, put them in a bag and haul them away.

Because... - They'll crawl right back out.

- If they're to the point where they're overwintering stage, like I would think right now would be, they won't have that ability.

But if you pick them off in the summertime, in the summertime, they carry the bag with them.

The only bug I know that carriess it's motel with it, as long as they're crawling about the plant.

Yeah.

They could potentially, if you throw them right on the ground, they could potentially crawl back up.

But if they're hanging on the tree, like little ornaments at this point, pulling them off and throwing them away is perfectly okay.

- And also, I also have one more thing to add to that.

It was really dry.

Like Richard said, they're so small.

You can't keep them out with wire or something, but when you get an infestation of an insect or disease on any kind of a plant, usually it's because that plant is not as healthy as the one they skipped over, they, it's kind of a natural selection thing.

You know, they go for the ones that are weaker and then the, the Hardy can survive.

So especially when it's drafty like this, make sure you have mulch or if you don't have mulch, at least water, both would be better.

Keep them as healthy as you can keep them as well watered as you can.

And the insects will likely often move on to something that's, that's a more pitiful.

- Natural selection.

Right?

- All right.

You're going down.

(both laughing) - Okay.

John, do you have another show and tell or did we get through all of your items?

Okay, go for it.

- Okay.

This is a Hoya plant.

It's kind of a strange plant in that you can see there's a long stem here that looks dead, but the flower is going to form at the end.

So if you have one of these Hoya plants and they're very interesting, they're kind of a succulent and beautiful.

They've got like a, when they start before they bloomed, they're like a little balloon, but then they open up and they're just spectacular.

They've got a whole bunch of blossoms, but don't cut this off because you'll be cutting off the blossom and be patient.

It takes a while, but a very interesting plant and easy to start.

Once you get, get them real thick.

This is one I just started, let's see last fall.

And so I just made a cutting after it bloomed, I cut this part off and just stuck it into a wet bed.

And I had a whole new plant.

So, but be patient don't cut those tips off just because you think they're dead because if you do, you won't get the blossom.

- I don't think I've ever gotten mine to bloom.

I've had it for a very long time.

It came in an arrangement and it's healthy and beautiful, but I don't think I've gotten a bloom on mine before.

So I might have to look.

- What did you take those spades off, pay attention.

- I don't think I got it.

- Well don't.

- But now I'll be watching.

- The first time.

- Don't.

- No, first time I had a Hoya plant, I cut all of them off.

And I was wondering the same thing.

Why is every everybody else's Hoya blooming and mine isn't.

I did some reading and I found out I was trimming off the blossom, so.

- Yikes.

Okay.

I'll be more mindful of that next time.

- Tanisha don't be like John.

- Don't get those pruners out, just let go.

Let it go.

Okay, Marty, this one is for you.

Let's do the coffee question.

Mariangela.

I hope I didn't butcher your name.

I tried, writes in, I love the program.

I would like to know your opinion on using coffee grounds in the garden and in potted plants.

So I've heard a lot of people do this too, and I know it kind of varies on which plant.

So break this down.

- Coffee grounds tend to be acidic.

And even if you have an acid loving plant, I don't know that I'd put grounds right in a pot, especially not in a pot, but I've, I've put them in the compost.

That's a great place for them.

And they kind of get evened out with the more alkaline things.

Coffee grounds are kind of an odd addition to the, the compost pile.

They don't really fall in, I guess they're browns.

Of course they're brown colored, but they're not, they're not green, but they're not dry either.

So they're, they're kind of weird that way, but they're great for the compost pile and I would totally put them on there, but I don't know.

I'm not sure I would put them in a pot in a, in a potted plant in the house.

I mean, sure.

It smells good, but no.

- Any one use coffee grounds in another way?

- I do put them in, in, in the compost pile and I believe their carbon number, which is you look at when you're looking at composting things, vegetables have a carbon number of around 15 to 19, leaves are about 20.

I think coffee grounds are around 60, like saw dust is 400.

And so you want kind of a 25 to 45, somewhere, that carbon number you want to kind of make your number in 25 to 45, somewhere in there.

A little bit of, a little bit of coffee grounds is fine.

And yeah, the acidity is going to be gone.

They found they did the testing because of on blueberries.

A lot of people were putting them up on blueberries and they found after six months they were back to being.

They had deteriorated enough that they were back to being seven or something.

- Are hydrunches another one, another acid loving plant?

- Oh.

So they don't put coffee on Hydrunches.

- Rhododendrons.

Yeah.

Stuff like that.

I didn't know.

The acidity would diminish like that so much.

I learned so much on this show.

- After six months they did a test and then it was back to like close to very close to seven.

- Interesting.

Okay.

All right.

We've got time for one more question.

- We're better off.

You're better off.

If you want to acidify something, just use an acid, a food, like a soluble something and do that with your potted plant.

- Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

Last one, Richard, this one goes to you.

This is from Mr. Miller writes in, about a month ago, a friend gave me a grafted weeping cherry before they gave it to me.

It was in a pot, very stressed with very little care, planted it, gave it lots of water.

It sent out a few branches at the top.

And a few more about a foot from the bottom, does it have a chance to recover next spring?

And should it receive extra winter protection, but you have another matter entirely that you noticed with this.

So go ahead and, and tell them what you, what you observed.

- Okay.

Thank you.

The three pictures you provided.

- Well, first off Weeping Cherries are usually buttered or grafted onto what's called a standard, which is the trunk of something else totally.

And you can see the difference between the foliage is coming out of the middle of the trunk and this and the whiff.

The little scrappy bit of foliage at the very top.

So those middle branches are going to be whatever the stock plant is.

Some other form of a cherry.

Sometimes they use a Villous Lilac as the trunk.

So that's those gigantic leaves you're seeing are probably something along that line that will, those leaves will never turn into a weeping anything if the foliage at the top is decidedly different in appearance, that indeed may be a weeping cherry come next year.

I honestly wouldn't spend a whole lot of time with this one because the chances of it surviving the winter as stressed as it is maybe maybe highly questionable, but, but certainly, you know, worth a try if it didn't cost you anything.

And you've got a spot to try it out, go right ahead.

But even the closeup of that, of the very top of that plant, I can't quite tell.

But if those, if that foliage is different than those leaves on the middle of the plant, you might have the beginning of your weeping cherry there yet, but it'll just be a wait and see.

- Okay.

Any tips for how to get that baby to survive the winter so that they can see what develops.

Mulch it, cover it?

- I wouldn't probably, yep.

I'd probably consider mulching it for six inches, eight inches worth of a mulch, at least as wide as the pot was when you, when you put it in the ground or the ball was if it was balled and bur lapped a water at late in the season.

So there's as much moisture in the root system as possible, by mulching it, you also will, the ground's going to get cold and stay cold.

And when you mulch it, that coldness will be in the ground coming next spring.

And actually getting it to sprout out again will be delayed because the ground will not warm up as much.

So you will also avoid any late or early or late frosts, wherever you want to look at that, which might, which might help it.

But if I would guess that was probably a weeping Higgins cherry or something like that, purely ornamental wider pink blooms.

So that's, that's my thought.

Enjoy it for what it is, whether or not you ever see a weeping cherry again, highly questionable.

- Okay.

All right guys.

Well, just like that, that was 30 minutes.

So thank you all so much for your time and talents and your show and tell.

And thank you for watching and hanging with us throughout this wacky year that we have called 2020, and we will see you next time.

Thanks.

And good night.

(upbeat music)