You 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 your faves.

Welcome.

It's been a while we've seen you ladies, so glad to be back.

Thank you.

Introduce yourselves, and off we go.

So we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Karen Ruckle, and I'm a gardener in the Peoria area, and I love house plants, perennials, just about annuals.

All right, yeah.

I'm Ella Maxwell, Master Gardener, horticulturist, arborist.

I have a big yard.

I like everything.

I brought everything, yeah.

So we're going to motor through as much as we can in one show, because these ladies always come prepared.

All right, Karen, we'll start with you for show and tells.

Well, I wanted to talk about you guys just went out to see Maggie Taylor at delight flower farm, yes, and you touched upon digging up dahlias.

And she dug up a Dahlia, and then touched upon over wintering.

And I wanted to do Ella's no cost, because she talked about getting vermiculite, where you'd have to buy that containers.

You probably don't have empty shoe boxes or totes.

You have to buy that.

Ella's version is no cost.

So what she does is this is, this is actually the farmer's dog.

But if you have somebody who has, like, what are those other names, like a mule, subscript these boxes, and it has this, this kind of insulating liner in it.

And so what Ella does is she just has her dahlias, just like what Maggie showed you digging it up.

Let the soil dry.

Ella knocks all the soil off, and she just sets it down in the box and lets it sit there through the winter in a warm spot in her in her house, yeah, in her closet.

And I did it last year and had really good success, so I didn't have to buy anything extra.

I think when you don't have a lot of tubers, that it's always good to go low cost in the beginning, as you perfect where your spot is in your house, how you want to do it, that you're not spending any money.

You know, I took a page from you with the cannas.

I use the pine shavings.

It's so easy and they're that's relatively low cost.

But, and you've always got boxes coming in with Amazon and other companies.

So any any way we can cut costs and shave off a few dollars, that's fantastic.

So, and then you said, keep them in the house.

Yes, they want they can't freeze.

And for some reason, with these insulated boxes, it just it works somehow, I guess, because it keeps a little bit of moisture in it with how it's contained.

But yep, yep.

Now her dahlias are doing much better than mine.

I must say, I do get around to planting them.

I kind of force them in a tray and but I they're further away from the house, not in a container.

Next year I'm going all containers for dahlias.

Okay, well, we want to see pictures.

Okay, all right, all right.

Thank you, Karen, we're to you now.

Ella, oh, okay, so I just wanted to show my tithonia, which is the Mexican sunflower, and they did super well this year, and they were a really great late season nectar source, kind of flopped over in the car for the monarchs that were migrating and nice flat top flower.

But the reason that I brought them is to talk more about seed saving.

So these I grew from seed that I've saved from the past seasons.

So here are the spent blooms.

And these will dry.

They just kind of leave them hanging on the plant until they're kind of dry, and then you can just pick them off.

And usually I just, you know, put them in like a paper sack, but eventually you will have an entire seed head, and we can actually see kind of the marigold like seeds.

Now I'm saving seeds of lots of different plants, hostas in particular.

Here's a mature seed pod, and again, you can dry them in a paper sack, because these pods will split open.

And, you know, the seeds are viable when they turn black, like this.

And so I'm recycling envelopes from solicitations that I get in the mail, not that.

I mean, I do support lots of them, but they send them every year.

You have Yes, so I just put the date and seal them up, and I've got a little, kind of like a little box that I just arranged these and so seeds.

From the hosta.

I'm going to sow indoors, some of these other seeds I'm going to just winter sow, or like the tithonia right here.

I will wait until probably the middle, early May, middle of May, when the soil is warmed up, and I'll just broadcast it in the garden.

So I just think it's a wonderful thing that you can do.

And just to say that there's lots of seeds out there that you can save.

And I had a friend who requested oak.

He was wanted to sprout some oaks, and you have to understand how to store them, etc, etc.

Well, these little oaks that I got from my friend.

She said, Oh, they're dropping on my deck.

They're all over my driveway.

So I think she just walked them up.

The problem is, is that there is a small little grub that gets inside of these oaks.

And I think I've been picking them out as they've hatched.

Oh, here's a couple of them.

So, little, little, little, well, we'll just let them crawl on the table.

They kind of look like little fat seals or something, but you'll find an exit hole.

So how do you know that your nuts are good?

You float them so anything that sinks to the bottom is going to be, you know, it doesn't have any any larva inside that's creating eating and creating an air bubble.

Or, you know, you can look for exit holes.

So floats, toss it.

Floats, toss it.

But here you can see the Ooh, the little, see the exit, the little exit hole.

So she gave me these all in good faith.

And I said, Did you float them?

And she goes, what?

And I go, Well, I'll just take care of it easier that way.

So I have thrown out more than half the bag because and I'm pretty sure that most of her acorns will already have these little, small larva in them.

I did not know.

Now, question about these, do you have to wait until they are completely dry on the plant to snip that head off to save for seeds.

No, no, I would say I'm always confused about which ones need to dry out and which ones you can well, didn't you go and see them string those?

Yes, I made some of those.

Yeah, with the with the marigolds, those would all be viable seeds even.

So, yeah, you can snip some of these off now, and that's why I put them in a paper sack, so they would drop or something.

But then I will move them into individual envelopes, gotcha, gotcha.

And I grew those as well this year.

I don't know if they thrive in hot, dry, but they did so good, and they got really tall, and then they fell over.

They grew so well, so excellent.

Yeah, it was a good year.

It was a good year.

All right, Karen, we're back to you.

All right.

Well, we've gotten now to that time of season of bringing in all the house plants.

That's so sad.

So the amaryllis is a plant that I love hate.

I love when they're blooming the rest of the year.

I just kind of hate them.

So this is an amaryllis, and it's so tall and big, we just angle it this way.

It's been sitting out in a shaded porch area all summer long.

I try to fertilize them.

I kind of forget and I just keep them watered.

So now's the time that I'm going to tuck them away to forget about them.

So I'm going to stop watering them, bring them inside, because I don't want them to get touched by frost, and then let them go completely dormant, bone dry.

And typically, when we do a resting period for the amaryllis, we normally want to do at least a good eight weeks, eight to 12 weeks of just let it be I actually just leave it all winter long.

I need to, don't want to mess with all these long leaves in the house.

So I I leave them till either they start sprouting and want to try to flower, or it's basically May, and I get them out and I start growing them and enjoy, hopefully the flowers done in spring, because I don't want to.

I don't have room for this and this don't have room or time for it.

Now, as it's drying, do you cut the foliage, or do you let it dry and kind of die naturally?

Or what is what's the best practice?

I always take the best rule of letting it die completely on its own and then cut it off.

Now, I have had problems in the past when when laying them over, and if they keep growing a little bit, then I get this twisted, funny neck thing.

So I'm gonna have to think a little bit different on some of these pots.

And I do clay pots just because I tend to over water.

So I just get a little bit more of it drying out to help me, because I tend to over water.

Got you?

Okay, let's.

Go out the Coleus while we're well and in your neighborhood well.

And the thing is, once again, you know, plants we're talking about seed saving, well, some plants that, because of of the hybrids, or what they are, you know, the only way you're going to get the plant is to do cuttings or divisions.

So Coleus is such an easy plant, I feel to bring in for the winter.

It roots very easily.

Pot them up, take cuttings, root those, and then plant them out next spring.

Now the thing is, this is, this is how lazy I am.

Is last fall, I did this beautiful bouquet of coleus.

And this is a Coleus i i took cuttings from last year, kept all through the winter, and then grew in the garden.

I kept forgetting about it, and the vase was just filled with roots.

And so then I would take it over to the garbage can, I would trim off all those end of the stems, and I'd stick it down in fresh, clean water, and like, okay, in a couple weeks, I'll remember and I'll pot these up.

I never did all winter long, they lived in a vase.

And then finally, in the spring, I'm like, gosh, Karen, you really got to get these transition to soil.

So I did cuttings, put them in potting soil, and got them rooted to then plant out.

The color is just beautiful on those.

So it was just just a decorative bouquet that I accidentally found a different way to over winter, the coleus, that is a great way to do it, because you you didn't have to water individual plants.

You didn't they didn't take up all that space.

That's the problem that I feel.

That's what I've done with coleus, too, and it's fun to see them in your kitchen, and if you have under kitchen counter lighting, you can just leave it set there.

Or if you have a bright window, yeah, this is the way it looks out over the winter.

It's the way to go.

Yes, all right, let's do How about Maggie says my hibiscus.

Summer storm started out beautifully this year.

By the time it bloomed, all the leaves got brown spots and started to fall off.

Doesn't seem to affect the blooming, but it's very unsightly.

So what is your take on that?

Okay, so for Maggie again, if you really wanted a specific diagnosis, you would maybe want to send a sample to the university's lab to have it, but I believe it's some kind of fungal infection.

Karen and I were talking about it on the way down, and the fact is, is that it almost looks like little drops on top.

So we're wondering what her watering practices might be.

We want her to keep the plant well watered, but don't water the foliage.

So water at the base of the plant and destroy pick up sanitation so important.

Pick up any fallen or spent leaves.

Again, it's primarily cosmetic, but the plant does shed these infected leaves, and it will somewhat affect, she hasn't seen it in the flowers, but it can affect its vitality.

And there are some, maybe some, systemic fungicides, fungicides that she could use earlier in the spring, but she could try the cultural practices first to see if that would work, and it's the same way if you wanted to do the questions 51 right?

So Glenna writes in, for the past few weeks, my lawn has like a rust like powder that covers my shoes and my dog's paws.

What's causing this?

Is it harmful?

Harmful?

She said there's been no lawn treatment since early summer, no fertilizer, weed suppression, but wondered if the lack of rain had anything to do with it.

So again, you're thinking, this is a fungal Well, it's rust.

Is a kind of an unusual fungal infection in that some rusts have alternate hosts and different things, but in the lawn, it usually is a sign of a cultivated grass that is more susceptible to the rust fungus because there's different degrees of infection as well as lower fertility and lack of available moisture and moisture at the right time.

So again, cultural practices, you want to bag that mow to a like a three inch height.

You don't want to scalp the grass because that, you know, cutting lower that even reduces its ability to make food.

And if you can use some nitrogen fertilizer and some good watering practices in the morning so it has a chance to dry off, it really makes a difference to bring the lawn back.

Back.

Gotcha, and you mentioned this, but is it?

Are these drought prone summers contributing to some of that with it being so dry?

I don't think so necessarily.

I think it's more the grass that she has is more susceptible, and the fertility practices.

And maybe that the because really and truly, the rust fungus likes moisture, and so Karen and I really thought that the spring contributed to maybe that being building up and then becoming more problematic as they were not mowing as regularly as it drying off, so not sure.

But both fungal problems, seek out some cultural controls before you, you know, think about using any kind of chemicals and, yeah, put in a dog bath.

Put in a dog bath.

You've got a cute little annual peeking out of the backside there.

Let's talk about that.

It's actually a perennial, a perennial.

I wish we would see more of these.

I saw this in a garden center.

It was one fall, and it was really rainy, and the goldenness of it popped out.

And I'm like, I didn't want to buy it because I didn't know where to put it.

So I couldn't, didn't let myself didn't let myself buy and it took me a whole nother year to find it.

But this is a willow leafed sunflower, and it's a helianthus, and it's a variety called autumn gold.

And so this didn't start blooming till the beginning of October.

Unfortunately, the hot temperatures we've had this fall, the bloom cycle is going to be a little short, because last year it flowered all the way to a good hard frost.

So it sat as this pretty little green foliage and then starts blooming.

Now for once again, that late pollinator source.

But so height wise.

Can you talk a little bit about its growing habits?

It's, it's only 24 to 26 inches.

I was high needle start of it.

I was hopeful that it was going to be a little taller, but it's kind of what they said.

And it's just this little shrubby little thing doing there.

The native species can grow up to eight foot tall, so that this cultivated variety definitely is more in line with our gardens and then not having that flopping that you had with the denonia.

But I just very loved this, this little bright spot, those little winds back here, fun too.

Yeah, we spent some time in a remnant prairie a couple of weeks ago, and there were all of these really pretty variants of sunflower like that that were native to Illinois that you just you don't see.

When you think of sunflower, you think of the great big ones, but there were these really pretty little, dainty ones just like that, all in the prairie.

So that one kind of reminds me of that one, yeah, but I wish, I wish I'd see more of those in the garden center.

But once again, you know, it's that late fall, so a lot of places are clear and seen out and getting rid of and that's when this is starting to shine very pretty.

Yeah, and Karen's Late Bloomer is my late bloomer.

This is a different Aster than we normally see.

This is Aster to tariqus.

And you can see that the flowers haven't even opened yet, and that they have rather large leaves.

They are tall.

This one's four to five foot, and it does have a beautiful lavender purple flower with a yellow center.

And again, it usually doesn't flower until almost late October, Halloween, practically.

So it is a really late one.

It is not a native Aster variety, but, you know, it's something different.

So again, with these, these unusual plants, it's kind of fun to collect them and have them in your garden and see how they perform.

And you know, I would have weeded that one out long time ago.

Well, okay, so that comes to question 53 if you want to read from Caleb.

So Caleb says I was wondering if you could help me Id this plant.

We just moved into a new house, and there are a few of these in an overgrown flower bed.

Didn't know if they were perhaps a weed or if they were planted there.

He says newer leaves at the top are red, bigger leaves at the bottom are green with dark red petioles.

So what are your thoughts, guys?

Well, the pictures that he sent were really difficult to try to ID.

And I did take a picture of this Aster, because I forgot what it was, and my app would not identify it, because it really wasn't in flower yet.

I think, had it been in flower, it would have gotten it.

And then finally I figured out which one it was.

Well, we don't.

Know what this is, but like Karen said, she would have weeded this out, and we kind of think that that is most likely some kind of weed.

But then the flip side of like what Ella does in her patients, that she waits till it blooms, and then you're sometimes a little bit more able to buy a weeder.

Yeah, great.

I And when did it flower?

I thought it might be a Penstemon, and they, of course, flower earlier.

But Karen and I are in solidarity that, if in doubt, weed it out, because there are so many, much better, more beautiful.

You have an opportunity to plant what you really want.

Not wait around to see if this is going to be something or not, and then it ended up being a weed or something.

And yeah, you lost time.

So when in doubt, weed it out.

Yeah, there you go.

Love that.

Let's do the broccoli.

Question number 50.

Anna Lee says, I planted broccoli for the first time this year, but something ate the leaves, leaving only the spines.

Is there anything I can do to save this late in the season or tips to prevent it next year?

So you guys think you have an idea of what ate the broccoli, huh?

Sure, we do.

Okay, give it to us straight.

So it is a the larva, which would be a caterpillar of a cabbage moth, which is kind of like a little white butterfly that you can see flying around.

I believe that to be the cause, because it has happened to me with my kale.

So I was going to get some kale this morning with the spines, but that was much earlier in the season.

It's fallen off the top of the kale looks really good.

Again.

I might have kale soup, but Karen brought a plant that will show the picture of what the broccoli looks like.

Well, this, this is my red twig dogwood, and it has a sawfly.

It's called a dogwood sawfly that attacks.

It just made a mess.

That's all right.

And it only is supposed to have, like, one to two generations in Illinois.

And I swear they just kept producing this whole summer, and I kept thinking I'd spray it.

And now I'm to the point I'm going to have no fall color because they ate all the leaves.

But so once again, like with Ella with the broccoli, you'd need to either do a row cover or some sort of barrier to protect the plants, or use an insecticide, like for my saw fly, I could have just easily used, spinosad, and that is a biological control that actually is pretty friendly to for beekeepers, bees and pollinators.

And for the broccoli, you can use Bacillus thuringiensis, BT, and because that's very effective against butterfly and moth larva so and there are other other products as well that are safe for the garden that she could spray with when she first starts to see the damage.

And that's where it's important to scout, because if she would have lifted up one of the broccoli leaves, she would have seen, and they blend in well, because they're the exact same color as dilemma, because they're eating, that's what they're eating, so they look like what they're eating.

Oh, wait, what do I look like?

No, all right, we've got a couple more minutes left, and you still have a couple more things over here.

Whoa, we'll directly get to well, Karen brought her red twig that has lost leaves.

I have lost leaves on this catsura because of the drought.

So Karen and I are in central Illinois, and currently it by the beginning of October, we have been in a severe drought.

And so certain trees, this is a native from Japan and China, and doesn't it's not native here, but it is very sensitive to drought.

It is the first tree.

It colored almost a month ago and all the leaves dropped off.

So this is an indicator plant for what's happening in the landscape.

And I have a lot of trees.

They're drawing a lot of moisture.

Consequently, the perennials that are growing under those trees are also under a lot of stress.

I have been trying to water it's been very, very difficult.

I'm hoping that everything comes back next year.

I don't know what I might lose.

The good thing is, though, is that there are lots of plants that are bulbs, and they can make it through because they have that limited life cycle, and the bulbs are in the.

Garden center now.

And I thought this was really cute.

This was a little snow drop.

And so these little, small bulbs are easy to plant anywhere, whether it's daffodils or tulips or some of the minor bulbs.

Is it now?

Is now?

Well, when you see them in the store.

Now's the time to plant them.

Okay?

All right, ladies, we just ran out of time.

That was a really great show.

Thank you for everything you brought in and talked about.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Just look for Mid American gardener, and we will see you next time, thanks so much for watching Good night.

You.