Tom Hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of MidAmerican Gardener.

I'm your host, Tinisha Spain, and joining me in the studio today are two of my pals, and we are going to answer your questions and talk about all things gardening, because it is almost time so exciting.

So before we get into all that, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their specialty, Jim, we'll start with you.

I'm Jim Appleby, a retired entomologist with the Illinois natural history survey and University of Illinois.

So I deal with the insects and mites attacking trees, shrubs and flowers, wonderful and rusty.

Sure.

My name is Rusty Maulding.

I'm site superintendent out at Lake of the Woods.

It's part of the Champaign County Forest Preserve system.

I'm a horticulturist, and before that, before my current position, was a landscape professional for about 25 years.

Okay, we were just talking before the show that we were finally feeling like real grown ups, right?

We can say I've been doing this for 20 years, that doesn't necessarily mean that I feel like a grown up.

Okay, you're right.

I took it one step too far.

I took it one step too far.

All right, Jim, we're going to start with you, because it is time we're seeing the insects back out and about, and so teach us who is lurking.

Well, right now, though, it's lurking are wasps, and particularly the paper wasp.

Here's the nest of the paper wasp.

We often see these under the eaves of houses.

This is the bottom they attach to the nest.

A little stalk there is attached.

But this is what that looks like in general, I would say, Let's protect the wasp.

They're important insects in the environment.

They're act as pollinators to our plants.

They also attack insects like cabbage loopers and cabbage worms larvae, which they feed to their young.

So they're important biological agents, and so they need to be protected.

There are instances, though, where you have to control them.

Obviously, if you have a paper wasp under your house, ease and you have to paint, you're going to have to control it, because if you don't, they will sting you.

I had actually one on my front door, and generally they attach on horizontal.

But sometimes this was on the front doors in this position, and you left it.

I left.

I thought, isn't this interesting?

But those wasps got used to having the door slam all the time.

They never, I never got stoned.

So, so they are important.

And there's quite a few different kind of species, the paper wasp.

Now, if you have to have control, do that early in this in the day, very early, the earlier, the better.

And they do have sprays now that can squirt quite a distance, 1015, feet as an aerosol.

So you may have to use that if you're going to be painting, but otherwise, just leave them alone.

Are they aggressive?

Are they naturally?

These, the ones of paper, are not okay.

I mean, I head on to the front door, Yeah, but you're the bug whisperer, so they're probably right.

No.

The other one I have actually, this is a big nest here.

This is of the bald faced Hornet.

Wow.

And, you know, again, if you don't bother their nest, they don't bother you, and they're and look how beautiful this is.

I mean, the colors on everything that is cool.

It's really cool.

And see, you can see in the center there, they're comb, so they're really important insects.

But leave them on the one that's really pretty nasty is the yellow jackets.

Now they are generally found in in the soil.

They make their nest in burrows like chipmunk burrows and and they make their nest like this, that they're a whole line of these hive combs.

They can be very aggressive.

If you have some in their lawn like that, you almost have to pull a picket.

If you don't, you'll get stung.

My dad works for the water company over in Vermillion County, and stepped on one of those, and he ended up in the emergency room.

Oh yeah, because once they swarmed him, he couldn't get them off.

They can be very aggressive.

And we had one picnic.

And particular picnic, I'd have to say, these yellow jackets love picnics.

Who doesn't?

Particularly in August and September?

Oh no.

You know, we had a picnic for our grad students and boy, the wasps.

You have to cover stuff, particularly sugary stuff.

They like sugary stuff.

This one fella had a Pepsi aluminum can, and the wasps got into the can.

He put it to his lip, and he got stung on the lip.

Oh my gosh.

You know, very, very painful.

Oh, I'm sure.

So they are a problem, so be careful, but also leave them alone.

Leave them alone.

I like it.

I will tell you.

Do that anecdotally, we had a bold faced Hornet nest above an area where we had public programming happening, and some of the educators came to me and were like, what do we do about this?

This is kind of a problem.

And I looked at it and it was about 10 foot up, and I said, let's leave it alone.

And it lasted all season in that space, and never once had an issue.

So yeah, to your point, like the yellow jackets, that's sort of a deal, but the bald face Hornet, it looks big, mean and nasty and sort of something from outer space.

But it's, it's, they're beneficial, and they're, for the most part, fairly docile.

Now, how long does it take to for them to build?

Oh, it takes a seat.

I mean, they start early in the spring.

It's only the female that over winters gotcha fertilized females.

And so they start very small, and then, and then they keep building that.

And then their young construct the nest.

So it takes a long time, wow.

And then this nest deteriorates in the winter time, and they only over winter as a fertilized female, that's the only the others all die.

So you can get this, so there's one use, one season out of you.

Yes, one season.

That's a lot of work.

Oh yeah, a lot of work.

And, you know, but they're continually building up their population, that's fascinating.

Okay, thank you.

All right, Rusty, do you want to do tree or temperature?

Where you want to go next?

You want to do the tree question?

Okay, let's read that.

This was a good one.

This came in it's a pine question from Richard Barrett, and he says he's got a young Eastern White Pine Louis variety that's about three years old.

He's concerned about its future because it doesn't have a clear leader branch at the top.

And we've talked a lot about that with pruning.

When he looks at the two ends of the Y, they're similar.

They're widely split.

Neither one seems like it's five or 10% more to work for a straight leader.

So he just has some questions here about how to prune this and the future of the tree, and we've got a picture of it.

But what is your advice to him to keep this tree healthy and happy?

This is a fantastic question, right?

Because if you're at home and you're starting to see some saplings or some young trees that have what's called a co dominant leader, where you have a leader that pops off like this, now is the time to take action.

So I brought in kind of a sample here, and what typically happens is, if you could imagine play along with me a little bit, this is a tree.

What typically happens is, in the winter, or potentially, some sort of squirrel or something lands, and the leader gets broken out.

So then you end up with this nice you've got two leaders here that start to form.

And plants are sort of hard wired, chemically for there to be a true top.

But whenever both of these tops are the same, they sort of like, it's like two brothers that are closely close in age.

They just kind of duke it out for a while, and both of them end up growing and growing and growing.

Well, that's fine on a shrub, but on a tree where this branch is going to eventually become 16, maybe 20 inches across, and this one becomes 16 or 20 inches across.

Suddenly this split is like way up here, and you get all of this included bark.

And that included bark is a weak point in that tree.

I read something that it was it actually weakens the branch by 14 to 20% which is pretty significant.

So when you have these sort of narrow crotch angles this, you know, this area down in here as a tree calipers out and gets bigger, just becomes a weak point.

And so what you want to do is select one, and this is a good time of year to do this, dormant season.

Actually, anytime you find it really for most species is going to be fine.

For the for the pine in particular, now is a great time.

It is also candling out.

So this is the it's starting to flush new growth.

And so it's, it's at a prime point to be sort of given some direction.

And so what I often do will look at, particularly if you're in a windier area, look to see what the prevailing winds are coming from, and choose the branch that's facing into the prevailing winds.

And then you would cut off this other one.

Tie a stick, bamboo stick, and I brought with they've got these nifty little Velcro deals where you can zip, you know, don't zip tie.

Those are pretty rigid, but you can use floor for floral tape or these nice soft velcro ties and secure that post.

Tie up your new leader.

Oh, to straighten it up.

To straighten it up, gotcha right?

Snip off that other one, and then you'll just put a like it, like I said, a piece of bamboo.

It would run down here well below and sort of encourage it.

And after about one season, that's all, all it takes should be able to remove that, and then you've got a nice central leader.

So that's true for pines.

That's true for any of your deciduous trees.

Oftentimes, like I said, it's winter damage, something I'm noticing that's particularly.

Um, timely at this this year.

Last year, we had the cicadas, the 17 year cicada, right?

Jim 1313, year okay, there was a big cycle, and there are a lot of damage to some small twigs, including the ends of small branches, which would be inclusive of the leaders.

So you may see that you need to kind of train in that new leader.

And now is a great time to start working on that.

Okay, and so when you splint it, or whatever it's exactly, yeah, you would said, Take that off at the end of the summer, or I would wait one full year, one full year.

Okay, interesting.

I did not know that you could kind of train, you can become the new leader, particularly your spruce, your pine, those are very malleable to bending.

There are a few like Black Gum comes to mind, which is kind of a difficult tree to get a central leader in.

Those don't like to bend very well, so you may take a couple of years of repositioning, but they will eventually establish that leader on their own.

Okay?

And go ahead and get that done now.

You say, Now is the time?

Okay, Jim, we're going to come back to you.

Do you want to do the let's do the insect question that was sent in.

You want to do that one?

Yeah, sure.

Let's see Mary kluske writes in, I was working in my landscape this weekend and found this guy in my wheelbarrow.

I learned from Google that it is a locust borer.

First time I've seen it on my property.

What can you tell us about it?

Well, I have quite a few black locusts on my property.

The Locust borer does attack the trees, but I'll tell you, I don't pay any attention to it.

One little locust borer does not cause that much damage on a large tree.

So I wouldn't worry about it.

I think there that was a beautiful photograph.

And by the way, look at this photograph, it has that big yellow W I always thought, if he had a football team or a baseball team in the state of Wisconsin, wouldn't that be a great I agree.

I agree.

Yes, it just lends itself beautifully.

Anyway, I would not worry about that at all.

So they are not filed under the harmful category.

No, I only saw one instance where the state planted some black locusts along the highway, and those were young trees.

They were weakened trees.

They were a problem there.

But in general, like I say, I have plenty of black locusts on the land.

You always have a hue.

Don't bother about it.

But nothing to worry about.

No need to control or do anything like that.

No, just enjoy them.

Okay, well, that's good news.

We like to hear that.

That's true.

Yeah, that's an easy fix.

Okay, so now let's move into temperature.

What's appropriate, what's not appropriate?

We're in early May.

It's been kind of chilly, it's been kind of weird, and we had a question about timing, which it's been all of our social medias too, about people just chomping at the bit and wanting to plant things in the ground and then having done it and having to go out and cover so we're going to have rusty talk a little bit more about the timing, but let me just read this, because this was from a master gardener who really just wanted us to get our hand slapped by a professional Okay, here we go.

Mary Beth says, Hello.

A friend was shocked because I do not yet have any cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers or my whole garden in the ground.

She said, we're past our frost day, and if I don't plant soon, it'll be too late.

Frost is not the only criteria for planting.

Please.

Would you explain why planting in warm weather or planting too early can cause disastrous issues, and why you can get cold damage, stunted plants, disease and what have you?

So, if you wouldn't mind, Rusty, walk us through why it is a good idea to wait.

Sure, absolutely.

And to your point, this has been a little bit of a goofy spring.

We had some really warm weather in early April.

You know, it got up in the 80s for several days.

We hit upper 70s following that, and it has caused sort of some things to, like, go haywire.

I've seen hibiscus out of the ground, the perennial hibiscus, a lot of times.

I'm not seeing that until, like the third week of May, so that that's that's a little bit further down the road.

At the same time, it's gotten colder again.

So just in the last week, we've had some pretty chilly nights.

It got down to about 36 here in central Illinois, that was actually cold enough to have some cold injury to perennials.

Back in late March, we had a hard freeze.

What a hard freeze.

That's down to 28 degrees.

A lot of the saucer magnolias, their buds were not open yet on the flowers, they get the one shot of like potentially two to three days or a week of your glory, and they were at least at Lake of the Woods and in Bloomington, where I live, or normal those those flower buds were aborted.

So we've got a couple of different things happening here, but like to step back here.

There is a frost free date for your region, the the Illinois State climate.

Biologist, they have some great information on this, and I've got a couple of graphics today to show you.

So this first one is the median, median frost free date of everything above 32 degrees.

I'm just going to use Champaign, Illinois as an example here, and it's around April 15.

The next graphic shows, sort of the frost free date that is almost a month later, May 15.

So for your folks that are getting itchy to get out and get gardening, you got to get your vegetables in.

Want to get your, you know, your peppers, your cucumbers, those really, really frost sensitive plants in the ground, even your annuals, right?

You don't want to put those in until you know for sure that you're going to be beyond that frost free date, or that.

I usually cheat a little bit.

I sort of look at the 10 day forecast.

I sort of look at the two week forecast.

You know, what are people telling us, starting about the third week of April?

I never, ever would put anything in before that, because you just can't tell, and you don't know, we could easily get down to 32 degrees, and it's game over for those tender annuals and vegetables.

And then you have to start all over.

Start all over again.

So meanwhile, for everything that's in the ground, our next picture up here that is, that is a Asclepius incarnata, or swamp milkweed.

That's one of those perennials that usually doesn't get up out of the ground until well into May.

And so what you're seeing is cold damage.

The leaves are curling.

We didn't get down to freezing.

This is just 36 degrees.

So that is the difference that it can make on those really, really warm little blue stem, same thing.

They just they weren't happy.

Now they're going to come back.

They're going to be fine, and it's not going to it didn't really impact any flower buds on any trees or anything along those lines.

But you may if you see that that is not herbicide injury, which kind of masquerades is very similar or presents similarly, sort of cupping of the leaves and drooping, they're going to die off, and the plant will come back.

But it will take two to three weeks before it sort of recovers.

I have some curling on a perennial that came up, and that's, I never put two and two together, probably cold, and it's a hibiscus.

We hibiscus exactly right.

Whenever I started seeing those in April, I was like, Whoa.

That's that was whenever I knew things are out of whack with the world because we had so many 80 Degree Days, we're actually about 200 growing degree days, base 50 ahead of what I somewhat normal.

Oh my gosh.

So it's pushed things along.

But then we got this cold that comes in and it's like, yeah, back there's a couple of friends that we've made along the way, farms that we visit, flower farms.

Delight.

Flower farm comes to mind first, but she had flowers blooming months ahead of schedule out there, and they're trying to figure out what to do, because they weren't expecting these, and others are having trouble.

So it has been a wacky spring, but hopefully everything can kind of catch back up.

And this is kind of the reset, right?

This is reset to normal.

Reset to normal.

Okay, all right.

All right, Jim, you've brought some more plants in that you and rusty are both going to talk about, yeah, one I really like, and rusty and I talked about that is called Korean Spice Bush.

I have two of them on my property.

The blooms are exceedingly fragrant.

We'd agree on that.

Oh, absolutely.

And so Russ, do you know more about that plant than I know, sure.

So viburnum pelicea.

It's a great fragrant viburnum.

And in general, it's part of a group of viburnum that are fragrant flowers.

I mean, it's like this, waft in and you just, we're in the lilac zone right now, and I'm just taking it all in.

Exactly, the viburnum are a little bit earlier than the lilacs.

But the nice thing about those that most of the fragrant viburnum group, is that they they stay relatively small, so we're talking five to seven feet, maybe somewhere in that vicinity.

There are a lot of newer varieties out there, and their names are completely escaping me right now.

Never did come up with them, but they do behave in the landscape.

They're not gonna, they're not gonna get huge, out of sorts.

They're good foundation plantings.

They have great fall color and, yeah, okay, that's a wonderful plant.

I wish I could have smelled the blooms.

I love a fragrance.

You know, when you think about it, there's not really a lot of fragrant flowers.

There are some of the valley this one, and, you know, a lilac, but you got to put your nose right in.

You really do.

That's true.

There's this one you can be a distance and rusty.

You and I were saying, plant this near your picnic table.

Yeah, plant it where you can have an open window, or where you're going to walk past it, or just it's going to waft right in your patio.

Wonderful.

Yeah, ooh, lovely.

Okay, and then Jim, let's talk a little bit more about the dryer sheet, because as we're going to be spending more time outside insects, and I'm sorry, I know they're your phase.

Well, they are.

They're great.

The bitey ones are.

Well, you know, I was out in a yard.

Yesterday, and gosh, the gnats were just terrible, absolutely terrible, getting in your eyes and your face.

Bob Dr Bob Novak, who was our medical entomologist in the department, he died a couple years ago, said, Jim, all you got to do is just get a dryer sheet, put that under your hat, let it go, maybe about this way, on your forehead, and that odor will keep them away.

And he was absolutely right.

No kidding, absolutely right, sir.

Try that.

The gnats were really, you know, if you have a dog, you see those gnats that get, oh yeah, dog's eye, oh yeah.

Well, they do that with humans too.

But this really works.

I'm going to have to try that, because they do especially, and depending on when you have time to get out there, dawn and dusk, you're going to be eaten alive.

What other shrubs Did you shrub cuttings?

Did you bring?

Well, I brought in my favorite here is, this is a sample of my button bush that has the little white Yeah, yes, I think I remember you bringing that in in the fall, wonderful.

And it's a native plant.

So if you got a chance purchase a button Bush, they're not very commonly sold in the nursery.

There's a, there's a newer variety that's out that is Proven Winners variety, and that one is a bit more common.

And the name is, again, I had it.

I had it earlier, when we were talking spice.

All right, that's, all right, yeah, something I don't know, yeah, but it's certainly a nice plant.

And they're Japanese beetle resistant too.

They don't get any Japanese beetles, which is really nice.

Yeah, the flower is this white ball, and it's about, it's about that big, and it just, it's cool.

It kind of comes, what, of late June, early July, correct?

Yeah.

So, yeah, butterflies, butterflies, I love it.

And they absolutely, it's a great rain garden plant.

It likes, it likes wet feet, yeah, so it doesn't have to have wet feet, but it does appreciate it.

And in nature, you see it growing on ponds at the edges of ponds nature.

Any new beds, projects or plants going in out at Lake of the Woods?

I know last year we visited and we checked in on the pollinator spot.

Any new things going on this year?

Well, we have a lot of new things happening this year.

We were finally going to get our greenhouse installed.

There was a legacy greenhouse when I started that got tore down a couple years ago.

We had some construction delays, but now that's being so Discovery Garden on the backside of our Museum and Education building that is going to be completely revamped from a landscape perspective this fall and early next spring, is my guess.

So a year from now, we'll have a brand new place that for people to come out and check out.

There's a small conservatory.

It's going to be part of the greenhouse, which would be kind of a fun, exciting place for people to get out of the cold in the winter and experience some greenery in some warmth and humidity.

Yes, always good.

That's probably our biggest, most exciting thing that's happening this year.

Awesome.

Well, we'll definitely have to come out again this summer, because that was we had a blast last year.

That was a really fun show.

Love to have you on couple of shows so well.

Thank you guys so much for coming in and sharing your time and talent with us.

Appreciate it and appreciate all the show and tell items that you brought in.

And if you've got questions for any of us, you can send them in to us at yourgarden@gmail.com or you can look for us on socials.

Just in look for MidAmerican Gardener.

Thank you so much for watching, and we will see you next time.

Good night.

You you.