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 faces you will definitely recognize.

We've got the A team here in the building, Karen and Ella.

So before we get into all the lovely things you brought, introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about you.

Karen, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Karen Ruckle and I'm from the Peoria area and I'm a horticulturist and I love perennials, annuals, houseplants.

If I had more room, more shrubs.

Everything.

Okay.

All right, Ella.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

I'm also a horticulturist and a master gardener in Tazwell County and I have a large yard.

I love plants.

Karen and I are best friends and we garden together.

And I love that.

Just love that.

Okay.

So let's just jump in.

Karen, we're going to start with you.

You guys brought a lot of stuff, so just let's get into it.

All right.

Well, we're at that time of the year for our annuals.

If you're like me and have some in pots or you've got hanging baskets that we could be at that point that things have gotten a little hopefully overgrown.

And now's your time to kind of take a step back, tidy them up to then that you can do that push all the way to fall that they look wonderful rather than draggled by that time.

So I've got pots in my yard and I've found that just some things have overgrown.

And one in particular is the colius plants have just gotten overrun.

So I trimmed off on this plant all the extra, what I figured was extra foliage and that's a before.

And then there's an after picture of tidying it up and taking it back because it was really overpowered.

Now you have the option of giving these away, rooting them yourself.

I had gobs of this.

I mean, it was just a bucket full of the coleus.

And then the pot behind it also once again had a coleus that had just done so wonderfully, it was overtaking the whole thing.

And that was this guy.

And so once again, there's just stems after stems that you can propagate and start new plants.

But for me, it was also wanting to get that pot that we would still look good all the way to fall.

And then another pot I had with a petunia and it's a bubblegum supertunia.

I forget that series, what it's called.

I couldn't find any of my tags.

Everything was so overgrown.

And once again, it's that trimming them back.

I've seen some nurseries actually posting, they take it back to nubby stems quite severely.

I don't like to go that far, but I do like to take it back so once again that the plant will stay fresh and look good into your fall time.

And if you haven't fertilized, maybe mix up a little bit of fertilizer and give those pots and annuls a little extra push in this time to make them look good the rest of the season.

They look great.

And by the end of the summer, will they have then replenished and probably hit that same link that we cut off?

Oh, easily.

Wow.

It gave them just a completely different look.

Still beautiful.

And I like how you said you don't cut yours all the way back because then you kind of can enjoy them for a second while they're recovering.

So very nice.

Okay.

Thank you, Karen.

All right.

Misella, we're to you now.

Okay.

Well, I was thinking, what am I going to bring?

And.

I too have, I do not have annuals, that much annuals in pots.

I have a lot of tropicals that I over winter and I have them arranged in different rooms.

And one was a ZZ plant that Karen gave me and I had it in the window of a spare bedroom that really got too cold.

So I killed my ZZ plant.

It died.

And I still, or the roots died, I guess.

But I had a stem that was still healthy looking and I decided to propagate it.

So I asked Karen, the queen of propagation, what to do.

And I cut it in several places and I used a rooting hormone.

And so here's my pot of cuttings.

You can see that there's some large pieces of pearlite in here so this is very well drained.

I soak the soil and then I have this little thing to just put on top, cloach.

And I'm going to just wait the required year that it probably takes.

So let's see if anything's happened.

They've been here in for a month.

Ooh, the big reveal.

Are there any roots?

None.

Dang it.

Another 11 months to go.

Another 11 months to go.

It looks healthy though.

The cuttings are.

Healthy looking shining out glossy.

Yeah.

And I can still tell by the weight of the plant that there is some moisture in there.

And that's what this cloach is kind of doing is kind of keeping in the humidity.

Not enough to really cause any condensation because they are an arid plant, but we'll see if... And then she gifted me with a new ZZ plant.

So.

This is more like a project at this point.

Yes.

Yeah.

So.

I'm back in business.

Nice.

And those are slow growing, right?

Or are they?

For propagating, yes.

Propagation.

Okay, gotcha.

So that's going to really take some time to take off there.

Okay.

Y'all have to give us updates because now we're all emotionally invested.

Yeah.

There you go.

In the baby's easy.

Baby ZZs.

Yes.

All.

Right.

Karen, that puts us back to you.

Well, this winter I unfortunately had a butterfly bush that died in my yard that I never can remember if it was Ms.

Molly or Miss Ruby.

And they're two different colors, but I always forget which variety it was.

And it was probably in my yard maybe 15 years.

I. Mean it.

Did really well.

And I went to dig it out.

We consider a butterfly bush in our area more of a perennial.

Well, they truly are a shrub in the south.

And trying to dig out the root from this plant, it was more difficult than I though.

And I was just really surprised how much was down there from this butterfly bush that only got about three foot.

It wasn't that big.

So I just thought it was really interesting.

And now Ella wants it for some sort of flower arrangement or something rather.

Oh, it's a gorgeous piece of weathered.

Wod.

It.

Really is.

But I was pretty sad.

So all of that was under.

There?

Yeah.

This was ground level here.

Wow.

I obviously stopped digging and just whacked off because I was at that point done.

That is a pretty.

Piece.

Of.

Wood though.

So now you know how hard it can be sometimes to dig out certain shrubs.

Others are very shallow rooted and you can pop them out.

And we really like the roots layer shovel to do those kinds of jobs.

And when you're out there wrestling with certain weeds, you really appreciate how deep their roots can go.

So that I'm sure was a big chore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, we did have that woman write in about the bed straw.

Yes.

And that's something where the roots are not deep at all.

Oh, no.

No.

No.

It's easy to just wind it up and pull it out.

So for Cindy, if you're watching, you said you tried a herbicide early because it is a winter annual that germinates.

So possibly, but it doesn't really have a root system that's significant at all.

So it is easy to pull out and really that's your only recourse is to kind of eventually keep pulling it out so that you've eliminated the seed bank.

When I've dealt with it, what I tried to do is that before it went to seed and dropped the seed, when it was kind of long and having cloth gloves, because the foage is stickery.

It kind of clings to stuff.

And so you go out there and it kind of just clings on and then you yank it and typically then it doesn't break off at the ground.

A lot of times then the little root area will pull out of the ground.

So it's just unfortunately keeping at it.

Keeping at it.

Now she says when she first noticed it, she was charmed by it and did nothing.

But before long it was everywhere.

We're.

Always fooled, aren't.

We?

I mean, it adds a little pop of color, but yeah, now I could see why she's ready to get rid of it at this point.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's - So stay on it is the advice.

Yes.

There is no herbicide post to aply later in the season that would be able to take it out and not hurt other plants around it.

And I am a big proponent of physically removing the plant.

Okay.

All right.

Well, we are back to you, Ella, with show and tells.

What'd you got?

Oh, a show and tell.

Well, okay.

So a friend of mine, when we would get together, she would always have a display in her house of around the garden bouquet.

And so what that meant was the day that she was going to entertain or have some garden ladies over, she would go out and just cut flowers from her garden.

Now you can go to the store and you can buy a bouquet, but right now my garden is primarily pink.

Now I do have a crocosmia that's going to bloom.

This is lucifer.

So this is probably the hottest plant color in my garden right now, but everything else is the flocks, the coneflower, the estilbi, the hosta blossoms.

This is lead plant and this is a bug bane here.

Make a really nice bouquet and you can add interest with the hosta leaves, with some of the ornamental grasses like this Japanese forest grass and with the variegated solomon seal.

So you too should enjoy your garden.

And this is just a wonderful thing to do on a weekly basis is you have a vase, you go out, you cut a few flowers.

You can journal it and record what's blooming when.

I've got a little kind of pink hydrangea.

It's not very stunning, probably too much shade, but it's just so nice to see because I'm thinking, oh, I don't really have anything blooming.

But when you're out there, then you get to see what there is.

Oh, I had some sweet peas.

That is really pretty.

And I like how you use things that you wouldn't normally see in an arrangement.

I love that.

The hosta leaf, that's really, really pretty.

So yeah.

So enjoy your garden.

That's the reason that we're doing all this work.

So you should be cutting some flowers and seeing.

So if you have some roses or especially if you have more sun perennials, there's a lot blooming now.

But you can also take advantage of colored foliages, even evergreens, just a few springs of boxwood for a basket arrangement or something.

Is there any way or any hacks or any information that we could use to keep our arrangements fresh or longer?

Is there something in a cut in the way that we make the cut?

Is there something that you add to the water?

Or do you just naturally enjoy them and then when they fade, they're gone?

Well, I think you can extend the life of the blooms with the flower food that you get at the florists.

And so if you have gotten packages of those and you have them left over, I save them in a drawer.

And then I do use them with the water because I think one, it keeps down the bacteria so the water doesn't look so murky and you can change it every other day or so.

And again, once the flowers start to fade, you take that one out.

You can replace it with another one.

It can last more than a week.

You can see that really this bug bein simisafuga didn't last.

I cut it yesterday.

But the other plants certainly are still looking good.

And of course you can have a whole thing of foliages.

Gorgeous.

Yeah.

Gorgeous, gorgeous.

Okay.

Karen, we are back over to you.

All.

Right.

With my yard, I don't know about everybody else, but it seems like in the springtime I get a lot of perennials that come up.

We don't have any rain, we don't have any wind.

And then all of a sudden they're tall and we get the first thunderstorm that just flattens things.

So I'm always looking in my yard for the ideal tree branches that fall down.

And my oak tree once in a while gives me what I feel are these great twigs that have a nice sturdy extra side branches on it.

And I try to save all these because then that's what I'm sticking amongst some of my perennials that get a little bit of flopsiness or issues.

And sometimes they're not even perennials that maybe are prone to that, but -.

It just helps.

We get that horrible wind out of one direction and the poor plants are laying over.

So I always utilize a lot of these in the yard.

Smaller ones I even do with my annuals, like the salvias that I love that I have all over.

They're prone to a wind gust splitting.

So I always try to save nice sturdy sticks like this that kind of have a candelabra effect To help support the plant.

And then back with my oak right now I've got a lovely squirrel running around and sometimes it's always hard to tell.

Do you have an insect problem?

Is there wind damage?

What's going on with the tree?

And right now I've got all these little twigs dropping with leaves that were healthy in the yard and it's a squirrel making a nest.

And so they're gathering some, but obviously they're just letting a lot fall down.

So it's nothing wrong with the tree.

It's not going to hurt the tree.

As talking to my friend Ella, who's an arborist, you never want to prune your oak tree in the summer.

That's right.

But she said that these branches typically aren't... They want more of a inch, you said inch branch is more injurious to have a cutting on a bigger stem that could invite problems than to your oak tree.

Gotcha, gotcha.

So the smaller ones, the damage... I wouldn't even say damage.

The work that the squirrels are doing is not necessarily harmful to the tree.

Right.

And we've seen that happen with cicada damage those years that we had that.

And then also it can happen on other trees.

I have a walnut that's continually dropping those that the squirrel is then harvesting and building that nest.

And so you see it on a lot of the different hardwoods.

If you have squirrels in your area, they're just pesky.

They are pesky.

At the bird feeder, boy, I tell you what, they cost me a lot of money in bird seed.

The squirrels do.

So go ahead.

No, it's good to have healthy squirrels.

It is.

It is.

But man, sometimes it's just like how many times do I have to plant this same bulb that you're going to dig up and just leave it there?

Sure.

So what else ladies?

You guys always come with so many wonderful things to show off and talk about.

Let's just keep it going.

Well, I. Did have a new plant this year that I bought, a new annual, or at least new to me.

So this is a vinca.

It's Katharanthas, but this one is Suire Kauai series.

It's a new series from Suntory, which is a plant breeder.

Specifically you've seen them with different mandavilla colors or diplodinia colors.

But they had this, this is like a petite.

They had this in a selection for fairy gardens.

And.

I though it was kind of interesting.

And then I found one in a little bit bigger pot.

It's supposed to get maybe 18 inches wide and about 10 inches tall.

And I haven't decided what to do with it, but I'm going to try to over winter it.

And I just was taken by the petite little flowers.

I just thought they were so cute.

And it comes in a series of, they have some whites, some lavenders, some pinks in this kind of reddish tone.

So it was new to me, this little suire.

So.

I wonder if it's going to behave kind of like a shrub.

Is it going to behave shrub-like?

It looks a little shrubby.

Do you.

See.

It?

I think it's because of the branching habit or whatever, but this would be the way that your regular vinca would also perform.

I would think it's just diminutive.

But anyway, I though it was so cute.

And like I said, I'm going to try to winter it over.

I'm not sure how you propagate it, but I suppose you could take cuttings.

Have you ever propagated?

I've never had vinca.

Okay.

She doesn't - Do.

We know what sun it likes or like - Oh, this is.

Full sun.

Full sun?

Okay.

It's full sun and it's very drought tolerant.

And that's why it's doing so well still in its little pot.

I need to upgrade it if I'm going to try to keep it.

Very nice.

But I liked it.

I wanted to ask, we got an email from a woman named Alyssa about some hail damage.

I don't know if where you guys lived, you got hit with hail in June during all that wacky weather.

I know I did in Vermilion County.

And so she's asking about pepper plants and tomato plants that were damaged in that hail.

Do you have to do anything to them?

Is it wise to cut back damaged leaves?

What is your experience in sort of helping storm damaged plants recover?

What advice do you have?

Oh, I'd say the leaves just leave them alone.

I mean, it would be too many of them to maybe try to clean up.

But certainly if I've seen some plants that have got damaged enough that the stems have been broken, yes, you'd want to tidy up, cut, not have a bent over stem, but just kind of take that back.

Certainly if you're a little worried about the plant... I've seen all of my plants recover.

I mean, they got a few holes in them, but they're doing all right.

Pepper and tomato plants, sure, you want them to perform well.

So maybe giving a little bit of fertilizer to help that new growth push along.

But I wouldn't remove the leaves just because if they're still attached and doing photosynthesis, they're still doing good for the plant.

Sure.

And I would agree it depends on the time of the season.

Back in June, people's tomatoes were still relatively small.

They have the whole summer to grow a tomato or a pepper.

The hail damage is probably more problematic when you have fruit on it or later in the late summer that it could cause more substantial damage, I think.

But overall, I agree that -.

Right.

If your baby tomatoes and baby peppers got hit and pummeled by hail, that would probably make the fruit abort and not develop properly.

Where the leaves, they can take some punishment and you'll still be okay.

Okay.

Just keep an eye on them then.

Yeah.

Okay.

Did we get through all of your items?

I feel like we still have a couple more plants that we did not.

Well, I have one more thing I can't think of.

We probably have enough time.

Oh yeah, we do.

We have plenty of time.

Okay.

So I am a big hosta collector and I belong to a hosta society in central Illinois.

And I brought a leaf, this is now pretty old, that I personally tested for hosta HVX.

Hostas can have insect damage and they can also have virus damage.

They can have nematode damage.

So what our club has are some of these immunostrips where they can actually test for the virus.

So this is very much like what we learned about testing for the coronavirus.

You can actually test your hostas.

And so I had this hosta called Midnight at the Oasis and it is a hosta that has a splash.

So the virus exhibits itself in color bleeding, in some unusual puckering, a couple different symptoms.

And so if you're a real avid collector, if you get it in your garden, it can be spread from plant to plant by cutting leaves, infected leaves, and then moving on to another plant.

So I joined a Facebook group for hosta diseases and people need to be educated.

And this is the great thing about this program is I feel like that's what we're doing.

And so there's a lab in Indiana, Agdia, A - G-D-I-A, that provides these test strips.

Interesting.

And so we bought a large group of kits and then offered them to our members.

And last year I tested one of my hostas that someone thought looked problematic and it turned out to have the virus.

So you have to remove the roots and everything and not plant another hosta there.

But you take about a quarter size piece of the leaf and you put it inside this test.

Now this has been more than a month ago and I saved it.

And then you macerate it till it's just green and gushy.

And then you put this little strip in and if there's a double red line, that means it's positive for the virus.

If there's a single red line, it's not positive.

And this one turned out to be not positive.

So what tipped you off to that?

Was it puckering?

Was it discoloration?

It.

Was the weird discoloration and you can't quite see it because the leaf is now pretty old.

But there was what I felt was maybe some unusual leaf discoloration in this one.

But it turns out that you have to know the variety of the plant and what is typical for it.

And evidently this is more typical for this particular hosta variety.

Has a lot of unstable color chloroplasts arrangements in its -.

And so the whole plant had to be destroyed.

Well, it was advised.

It would've been.

Unfortunately, this can be spread in a lab and this year, this spring, while out shopping at one of the box stores, I did see a plant that I suspected could have the virus.

And before I really knew that much and before everyone knew this, Dr.

Lockhart found this virus and there are many viruses in plants, all kinds of them.

So it's just something interesting.

Is this something that the home gardener needs to be worried about as we come down to this last minute?

It's cosmetic in nature.

It doesn't really hurt the plant, but it can spread around and it doesn't make your hostas true to what they should be.

It destroys their integrity, I should say.

And for the collector.

And for the collector, right.

And the tests are not inexpensive.

They can be anywhere from six to $15 each depending on what you buy.

But again, join a society.

They should help you.

And I am going to Madison, Wisconsin for their Midwest Regional Hosta Convention.

Bring us back all the good hosta information.

I will.

Keep us and our hosta safe.

Thank you.

Thank you for doing the good work, Ella.

All right.

Well, we are out of time.

Thank you ladies.

Always a blast when you come.

And if you have any questions for Ella and Karen and the rest of our panelists, please send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com or search for us on socials.

Just look for Mid-American Gardener.

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

Good night.