Good evening, and thanks so much for joining us for another edition of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha Spain.

And as always Joining me are two of our panelists who are here to answer your questions and tell you a little bit about what they've been doing out in their garden.

So, let's have them introduce themselves.

Kay, we'll start with you.

Okay, I'm a Champaign County Master Gardener and my areas of expertise, I guess, our vegetable gardens and Ermes and I grew a lot of flowers.

Awesome.

And in the very cool hat.

Tell us a little bit about you and your hat.

My name is Kelly Allsup.

I'm a Horticulture Educator based out of Bloomington.

My expertise is integrated pest management, which means I know how to kill insects.

However, I say this all the time, I spend more of my job promoting insects like beneficial insects and pollinators.

I did decide to dress up today with my cactus beanie to celebrate Halloween, which is a really cool holiday for holiday and that kind of lends itself right into your your showing tells you pick up creepy, the creepy batch, right?

I know usually when it comes to Halloween, I like talking about bats and spiders.

But I do want to talk about some carnivorous plants that have this creepy Halloweeny vibe.

The first one is called venus flytrap.

I'm going to try to take down my camera and show you that what happens is these plants live in a bog.

So they don't absorb nutrients through their roots.

So how are they adapted, they've adapted to where they actually capture insects.

To get those micronutrients they need to make their food.

So you look at the venus flytrap he's open.

Okay, now I'm going to put my finger in the inside and rub him and he's going to close what he saw so he if I were an insect, he would have closed up on me and then he would absorb that, that insect through that, that pitcher that Venus Fly Trap and absorb that nutrients.

Another one.

Let me show you over here that was very cool, very cool, is called pitcher plant and they have these pictures on them.

Again, it's the same concept there, they live in bogs, they can't absorb any nutrients through their roots.

So they absorb it through the plants.

What the insect does is it gets trapped in this picture.

And it goes to the bottom and absorbs it.

And so these can grow really rather big and actually digest pretty large animals like frogs, or even birds.

And so they're just a really cool kind of creepy looking plant to have now I grow these in the greenhouse, they're a little temperamental sometimes I call them you know my temporary plant because because they grow in box they don't like our water they want water without any elements in it no fluoride and they might want you know, reverse osmosis water which is something we do in the greenhouse.

So I'm going to try to keep them alive this time.

And I'm going to use rainwater to water them that way I'm not you know over you know giving them elements they don't need from our drinking water.

So if I were to go buy one of these at you know a box store department store, do you I guess I never knew should you be buying a certain like is it distilled what what type of water would you buy for them?

Yeah, I would use a distilled water not drinking water or distilled water because they don't have those new those elements in them you we think about it we pump our water full of fluoride, right?

We wouldn't have teeth if we didn't pump our water full of fluoride.

Thank you for pumping our water full of fluoride.

We wouldn't have Tanisha is beautiful smile with those.

They thanks mom and dad My dental you know, you can think your water source too, right?

Yes.

You know, daily fluoride.

But that plants do not like that.

Ooh, no, no, no, they don't like that they don't like those additions that we add to our water.

So sometimes what we do in the plant world as well let water sit over and some of those elements will, will evaporate out.

Or we might, you know, do the rainwater that has less of those types of things in it.

And then the distilled water, and I do this for really, particular plants, like orchids really are very sensitive to our water.

And plants like this.

Now, you know, just my average house plant, I'm going to water it normally, I'm not gonna sit here and do special water.

But these I kind of want to keep going.

I know if I water them with tap water, they're going to be dead.

Well, we will have to check in with you in the coming months or over the winter, to see if they are still in the fight.

Yeah, they've managed to keep them alive.

All right, Kelly, thank you.

All right, Kay, we're going to go to you with your first show and tell item.

Okay, this is about the time of the year deployment dar like, so when you plant garlic, so this is the ball.

And if I can get it up here, okay, there we go.

A little bit higher, Hold that one up a little bit higher.

There we go.

And this is, this is the clove.

Yep, that's good.

Good.

Though, the cloud is what you want to plant, you want to split the bones of the clothes off of the ball, you want to try and retain this kind of papery coating on it.

And then you plant them with the fat and down and you want to plant them about three or four inches deep.

And so I just dig a good trench and plant them and then put a handful of compost or some kind of, you know, soil in it, and then cover them up.

And that's twice all you do.

You want the four inches apart in the row and the rows about four or five inches apart.

You also once they're planted, I cover them with a nice thick cover of either straw or dried grass clippings.

And then now that'll keep and then in the spring, they'll come up and you plant them.

Traditionally, you plant them in October.

And because they're harvested in in July, and then you let them dry and cut the balls off of the stones and then keep them either keep them.

So I usually keep the biggest clothes for planting because the bigger the clothes, the larger the bulbs going to be.

And there's tons of different varieties that garlic.

I grow usually seven or eight different varieties.

I was going to mention when we visited chuck out of his place we did kind of a lesson about garlic and he taught us about hard neck and soft neck.

Which do you prefer?

Do you grow both or I grew up both I really kind of prefer the soft necks but I have some a beach.

So yeah, there's it's there's quite a lot a lot of varieties.

Some are have the covering is kind of red.

And there's a real white and some are large and some are small.

This This one happens to be a pretty good sized one.

You can see those clothes are really large.

And so when you're cooking, do you choose a certain variety for a certain dish that you're thinking of or other flavor differences?

Not really.

There's really not a lot of flavor difference.

That's mostly the size so if I need a lot of garlic, I'll take the big clothes and chop them up and I don't need much and preserve them.

You can also dry them if you have like a dehydrator and I saw recently where you could dehydrate them and then grind them up from garlic powder.

Which I do use a lot I haven't tried that yet.

That's on my wish list.

Oh adventurous little adventures.

Okay.

Every time I go to the farmers market i that I've gone to the farmers market this last couple of weeks.

There's garlic everywhere.

Yeah.

And so I love buying garlic from the farmers market because, you know, I recently discovered that It tastes very different.

The taste is so much richer, and so much nicer than any softneck garlic that you can buy in the grocery store.

And so I love going to the farmers market.

And those ones that you buy from the farmers market can also be planted too, right?

Okay.

Sure.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cuz I think sometimes the grocery store ones are treated.

You know, so they can't plant them.

They won't, you know, sprout the roots and little sprouts.

That yes, anything.

I mean, it's like a lot of produce.

It's a lot better at the farmers market and a nice plug for the farmers market.

Kelly.

Hey, I remember the first time I tried it, and I was like, Whoa, this is a game changer.

Clothes.

Sciences.

There you go.

Very good.

Where you normally would use for clothes from the grocery store.

You don't you could use one or two from the farmers market, but the flavor is hands down better.

It's just like tomatoes.

Hands down better.

Yeah, yeah, just one of those things.

Okay.

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

Do you have any more creepy plants.

Uh, man, I have a few more, you know, the black ZZ plant, you know how I'm always talking about these really trendy, super trendy plants.

You know, I just think we decided through the pandemic that we wanted to, you know, have plants around us.

And you know, it really does improve our moods.

Think about it, if you're miserable.

If you have a miserable, I'll rephrase that.

Think about if you have a home office now.

Me you're working from home.

Think about putting some of these cool plants in your around your office, and it will make you feel better instantly.

I guarantee it.

You know, I have plants everywhere.

I love looking at them.

I love taking care of them.

And so I'm like, and then I can't stop myself from buying new ones because I see it on Instagram.

And I'll be like, I have to have that.

Here's one.

It is here's two that I just bought.

And I'm experimenting with this one's called.

Let's see if I can get it string of needles, string of needles.

And those are always notoriously very delicate string of hearts.

Pretty Oh, that's gorgeous, very dainty.

And so there's like string of bananas out there string of dolphins.

And so I met I'm just you know just fascinated with by the way that they grow really long.

And just just a unique looking plant so I I've used to be really into jungle cactus.

I'm still am but I'm starting to go into some more types of now.

I'm industry of everything.

So and now like I tell my husband, there are worse things to be addicted to blow, right?

I know.

I'm scrubbing the air in our house.

I'm improving the mood.

Every time I walk in the door with a new plant.

They should be more appreciative about what I'm trying to do for this family.

I have four pairs of shoes, right.

I have more than four pairs.

Let's be honest.

I agree.

No excuse.

Yes, but it could always be worse.

It could always be worse.

So women don't have 400 pants been?

You know, I bet my clean the air is cooler than your shoes.

There you go.

Yeah, there you go.

All right.

We're going to go to some questions now.

Kay, let's do a question for you.

This is right up your alley.

This is from Nancy Albert.

She writes in from Orianna, Illinois, and wants to know what type of mushroom This is that they found in their yard.

So we're gonna get a picture of that this is Nancy's question.

And then what do you think this mushroom is?

Well, I talked to my husband who's actually the mushroom expert.

And he looked at it and he thought he know knew but he's not sure.

So I'm going to ask our viewers when they take pictures of mushrooms, take one of the top like this one is but also the underside of it and the stem because those two in addition to the top are crucial for identifying mushrooms.

And there's a few you know, you never want to eat a mushroom that you haven't identified For certain, because she might get a bad one.

The one he thought this was his edible, but he didn't want to make a definite because he cannot tell for sure.

So that's just kind of, and this year has been a crazy year for mushrooms.

They've been growing in our yard stuff we've had never had before.

And other people I talked to also when of course he handsome in the woods and finding all kinds of stuff that he hasn't seen before.

And so I would have to agree with you.

Okay, it's been a very my even my parents who never really get mushrooms, they had like rings, and they had some grown mulch, and they have just been everywhere.

Is it just because we've got is it been moist?

I think it's the moisture.

Yeah, Kelly's nodding at the right time.

And another thing with mushrooms, even if you get it correctly identified and it's edible, the first time you eat a mushroom that you've not eaten before, you don't want to eat very much of it.

Because some people, you know, some mushrooms will affect people differently.

And you can really get sick even though it's not poisonous.

You know, it could react with your digestive system and make things pretty miserable.

So we always would we get a new mushroom, we just eat a little bit of it the first time and then you know, there's no problem, then of course, all you want, but just make sure to grease first, right?

Okay.

All right, Kelly, I've got a couple pictures I want to show you for these are from actually my neck of the woods, I went out and bought a couple of these insect motels or hotels are whatever the industry term is, and I hung them up a couple years ago didn't get any action.

And I remember we were talking and you said some of these weren't built for the insects in mind, it was more sort of a gimmick.

And then finally this year, we've got some takers.

So I, you're the bug expert.

So tell me who we've got visiting and what to expect in the spring.

Well, you probably have brown nesting cells in there.

And those are bees that are actually either nesting in the spring or overwintering.

You really want those to be different sizes.

So they attract different bees.

And they really have to be six inches deep for them to be pretty effective.

And but then Tanisha wants to, you know, change those out every season, perhaps in early winter, before they start nesting in the spring.

Once they've come out, of course, so there's like that kind of that time period late spring, late winter, early spring where you do want to change them out because you don't want them to to have a disease problem and then that be of a future potential disease issue.

So to know this, know that this is not a static thing, this is something you're going to have to redo every year, especially when it comes to the tubes for the beats.

But you know, other things within this picture, there'll be little boxes, or you'll do like little leaves or sticks or moss or something like that.

Where it really is for other beneficial insects, perhaps like a spider or some parasitic was that some parasitic wasp, you know, overwinter underneath tree bark.

So when you think about all these butterflies and bees that we're trying to save, right, by planting flowers, we don't understand how they overwinter in the landscape.

And what we do is we do these very harsh things to them.

For instance, one thing that we should never do is clean up the landscape in the fall.

By creating this little insect hotel, she's kind of mimicking how we should mimic nature.

We should have things of late, you know, open stems, and wood and leaves and all of this stuff laying around because it's helps these insects overwinter.

So it's really kind of a it is kind of kind of gimmicky, but if you manage it correctly, it can be very beneficial there.

You know, there's more research coming out.

It's still a very new product to Nisha, and they're talking about, you know, how bumblebees use it and I'll see some stuff about some beneficial insects but there it's still not like this, this this and you will get this this and that.

I still think it's still out there.

I think it's fun to experiment.

But you're teaching yourself in a way right today.

You know, by having an insect hotel, that there are lots of things overwintering outside in your backyard.

And so that's, you know, if you could mimic that in nature where you don't clean up all the leaves where you don't trim down all the plants where you leave those up throughout the winter, that way we're contributing to wildlife habitat.

And so that's what an insect hotel is.

It's basically telling everybody Hey, did you know that insects overwinter here?

In Illinois?

Yes.

Yeah.

They don't fly to Florida.

They don't overwinter.

And they wouldn't really like it for you not to clean the landscape bear and put them on the side of the road for cop for pickup right?

There.

Good information, really cute idea.

Tanisha.

And I would keep going with it.

I just would, you know, I would replace those be tubes after the winter.

Okay, we'll do.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Okay.

I want to go back to another question we're going to do with an insect question.

This is for Kelly number 60.

This is from Penny or pennis.

Harris.

She wants to know if the penny hairs she wants to know if this is a wasp, or I'm sorry, a Hornet.

Yeah, it's a European Hornet.

And she wants to know if it's the murder Hornet.

First, the million dollar question.

European horn.

I don't even have to know how to identify a murder Hornet.

I know that they're not here.

They're if they were in Illinois, believe me.

We know.

It was a internet sensation.

This thing?

It they just went crazy with it.

But it's not affecting Illinois.

They're not here.

They're in Washington.

And they're doing they're doing different things to prevent them from spreading around.

What the big news was was murder Hornets attack honey bees and they kill the bees.

And we don't want murder Hornets in Illinois to kill our bees.

Right?

The bees have enough problems on their own.

They don't need more murder Hornets coming in, but we don't have murder Hornets.

Okay, so Illinois doesn't answer as soon as they let you know.

But it was just this media frenzy sensation.

I think K probably knows when it came out.

It was you know, the pandemic we were like, murder Hornets.

know everybody sees a Hornet and they pick up the murder horn.

It is a murder horn in automatic.

Illinois.

It's a European Hornet.

Not a murder noted.

Okay.

All right.

Okay, I wanted to circle back and ask you.

Have you planted any spring bulbs yet?

We just talked about the garlic.

But have you put anything else in the ground?

Yeah.

No, but a friend of mine gave me some tulip bulbs.

And I really need to get them out pretty soon.

So I will be doing that soon as it dries up.

Now, yes, digging in.

Tips, any tips there?

When you're putting those bulbs in the ground?

Do you do you put compost in in the fall?

And sort of how do you set them up for success when you plant them in where you want to plant them?

I think a couple of time, you know, the height of the ball.

And it depends on what the ball is, you know, she gave me two lips.

And they're big ones.

So they'll go a little deeper.

I just around recently.

Thing that said you could put your big balls down deep.

And then the little ones like crocus's and things like that on top of them.

So you'd have two layers, and they would bloom, you know, either separately or else they bloom together but they would look really nice.

Awesome.

All right, Kelly.

We've got two minutes left.

So probably time for one more question.

Let's do number 65.

This is from Robin Wolf.

She says I recently found what looks like the shells of hundreds of tiny insects on the floor of my garden shed search the internet.

The only thing I could find was a picture from someone on Reddit, who was trying to identify them but didn't have any luck.

I've enclosed some pictures that shows you a portion of the floor.

Any idea what these are?

She's writing this in from normal.

So we know you are the bug lady.

What are these?

I had an idea of what these were but I didn't know for sure.

They are not bugs.

I know that for sure.

So what I did is I used my I naturalist app.

And I'm telling you buddy probably lose my job.

But I have this app on my phone it's called Eye net list.

It's a free app, you guys.

And I can take a picture of pretty much anything in nature.

And it will identify it for me.

So I'll look at the suggestions site and if I go ahead and submit it some some person who, an entomologist or some person who has an expertise, we'll go ahead and identify it for you.

So I did this and I found out that they are snails.

They're just normal snails that come on land.

Now I don't know why they decided to go into her, her shed.

Or you know why?

We maybe it's all the wet conditions we've had, and then she'll never have them again.

Because they'll notice that shed will never be moist enough again, I'm not sure.

But yeah, with that I naturalist, you guys, it'll put me out of business put me in k out of business.

Right.

Well, we get you still need us to tell you how to guess we still need you for sure.

For sure.

All right, guys.

That went so fast, so fast.

It always does.

Time flies when you're having fun.

Thank you, Kay.

Thank you, Kelly for coming on and being so festive and so fun.

And we look forward to seeing you next time and thank you so much for watching, and we will see you next time on MidAmerican gardener Good night.