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 three of my best pals, and we're going to talk about all things gardening.

We've got a lot to cover, so let's have them introduce themselves quickly, and then off we go.

So Jen, we'll start with you.

Hi, I'm Jen Nelson.

Wear lots of different hats.

Where can you find me?

You can find me some of my articles online at grounded and growing.com and teaching vegetable gardening at University of Illinois.

You can find me beating back weeds and trying to mulch.

Despite it all, I will win in my yard and enjoy being on the show today.

Wonderful.

Okay, Jim, I'm Jim Appleby, and I'm a retired entomologist from the Illinois natural history survey, so I deal with the insects and mites attacking trees, shrubs and flowers, all right.

And Miss Martie.

Hello out there in TV land.

I'm Marty Alangna, and I am a private landscaper trying desperately to retire completely.

However, I can't help it.

It's in the blood.

Yeah, I walk by beds in public, and I'm like, Oh, you don't belong there.

You'll never, ever really get out.

You can't you can they keep dragging me back in?

Speaking of dragging you back in, let's do that right now.

We have a question, and I sent this to you for a little research.

Someone came up to us at the Virginia theater.

We had an event there a couple weeks ago, and she wants to do a clover yard, and she was wondering if she's got to rip all that grass out, or burn it, or any, any scorch the earth in any way to start this.

So if you're wanting to replace your grass with clover, how do you do that?

And do you have to start from ground zero?

I don't, I don't think she needs to take all the grass out.

I don't I would say Clover.

Clover spreads by a couple different ways.

I mean, it'll, it'll, it's, it'll move by rhizomes.

It'll drop seed.

You may have to keep mowing a little bit until the grass is all coiled, but you could slice and seed that yard, especially you ran a slicer seeder, okay, it's got several little blades in it.

You drive it over the ground.

It's, you know, just little, little round blades.

And they just cut little grooves a couple inches apart all the way and if you'd run them, you know, one direction, then the other direction, and your yard, drop you, load the seed in, gotcha and a hopper, and then, so it's doing it at the same time, yeah, oh, yeah.

So it seeds, it slices a little cut in the ground, several, I don't know, 18 or something, probably, yeah.

It's like little rows of, yeah.

It's like a little, like a grid, sort of a little disc, and it just cuts, you know, it's like a pasta wheel, only paints a cutter, but like times 18 or 20, and it cuts a slot and it drops the seed in.

So if you slice and seed, clover seed into your ground, cut your grass short, really short, slice and seed in there, and then slice and seed the other direction, the clovers, your germination rate is going to be pretty good.

And, I mean, check the label, see what the germination rate is when you buy clover, or when you buy seed in bulk at all, even grass seed, it'll tell you what the germination rate is on the label.

Gotcha so read that.

Keep it watered.

How long do you think until it's established and you've got what you want.

Couple of seasons, seasons, couple seasons.

Have you done this in your yard?

Or I feel like you've done it with grass seed.

Grass seed, okay, with clover, but the slit seeder or the will give you good soil contact with the seeds, because if the seeds are just they're not going to do any Gotcha.

Okay?

They won't germinate.

They'll dry out.

Birds will eat them, etc, etc.

You know, it's right out of Matthew, so hello.

So be patient.

It's going to take a while.

You can spray for the grass.

You can get an herbicide that is grass specific, and spray that over to take that out and just leave the clover however.

Yeah, yeah, okay, so just play with it a little and, yeah, see what you get.

But be patient.

It's gonna take a while.

Yeah, okay, and it's nice effect grass.

Also, grass will keep you up out of the mud better than Clover will.

So I'm thinking you may not mind a mixed bag when you have to walk across the yard or turn the dog out to go, poo, poo.

Yeah, your little grass might be might, might want to keep a little grass.

Yes.

Great advice.

Okay, Jim, we are moving to.

You with something else that we don't really want to talk about, mealy bugs school, yeah, they can really be a problem.

So actually, I've had a couple people ask me about mealy bugs, so I made up a program here.

The first one is a citrus mealy bug.

This is the one that's most common.

They're about 116 inch long, and it's only the females that cause the damage.

The males are very tiny, and they don't cause any damage.

So you see mealy bug damage on any kind of plant.

It's the females that do the damage, and here the adult females along both the mature and immature forms have six legs, so they can move around.

Most of the time you don't see them.

They're stationary, and you think they don't have any legs, but they can move now they reproduce.

The citrus mealy bug produces a large number of eggs, and sometimes there may be more than 100 eggs after egg laying, then the female dies, and then the eggs hatch about five days later.

And eggs are often hidden in plant crevices, so plants like ivy and Hoya, they're hidden so they're very difficult to control with any insecticide.

Here we see a tremendous number of all stages of the citrus mealy bug, you see the numerous nymphs on the arrow to the left, they're sort of yellowish in color, and then the other arrows show the adults.

So when you got an infestation like that, you really got a problem, you've got to get those under control, because it will kill the plant.

Then I talked about males.

The males develop in a elongate, white wax, waxy cocoon.

And then the male, the males actually do very little damage.

So if you see those little cocoons, or the male cocoons they're in actually inside the they have their mouth parts into the plant.

And this was a plant that they were actually on the underside of the leaves.

Now this shows a picture of the adult male.

It's very infrequent to see these male mealy bugs because they're very fragile.

They don't live very long, and they only live probably about a day after mating, and so they really don't cause that much damage that'll do it, yep.

Now here we see a large number of the female mealy bugs.

They insert their mouth parts into the plant, and then they feed on the plant SAP.

They also produce a liquid called honeydew that falls down on anything beneath their feeding site, the plant will maybe have this coating of honeydew.

Then what happens is a fungus grows on the honeydew, generally called a black sooty fungus, a black fungus that knocks out all the light to the leaf, and so then you get defoliation.

So not only do the mealy bugs cause defoliation, but they also suck the sap, which can really injure the plant.

Here we see now in the university greenhouse.

I thought I wonder what would happen if I just let the mealy bugs go and let them for sciencey, he's very science and then you can see what happened.

Actually, this killed.

This shuffler, the plant you see at the very top, it tried to produce leaves.

It couldn't.

So the mealy bugs just kept attacking, attacking, and eventually the plant died.

And then the mealy bugs left.

The plant moved up.

So they can really be a very serious pest.

Now let's talk about the long tail mealy bug.

This is another species that's not quite as common, and you can understand why I got the name long tail, because they have these long projections at the end.

And these are a little bit different, that the egg actually hatches internally in a female, and then she produces Young.

Mealy bugs are born.

I hope it's painful for her.

Here we see again, numerous male cocoons on a philodendron leaf, and the females are actually feeding, this time, on the underside of the leaf, but you can see sort of distortion of the leaves.

Now here we see all stages of long tail, mealy bug.

And note some of the newly hatched are mainly newly born nymphs, those little, tiny yellow specks, they'll move around on the plant.

So, and then you see there are many, numerous adults pictured here.

So let's talk about control now.

Now, if you have just a light infestation, you can use like a soft brush, little tooth brush, and just remove them.

Or you can use a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol and apply that to the mealy bug.

I have to caution.

You have to be careful about there's so many different kinds of house plants that.

You want to be sure that that alcohol is not killing a spot, so just use it on maybe one or two leaves and see how it works out, and then maybe about five days later, check to see if it's okay.

If it's okay, then you can go and kill more of the mealy bugs, or you can apply a soap spray at weekly intervals, and I say about three applications at weekly intervals, because there's a chance you can miss some of the nymphs or the eggs that are going to be hatching.

Now, a company that's really good, really caters to the homeowner, is called Bon eye, and it's insecticidal soap.

It's all ready to go.

It's about a quart size.

Very handy.

It's got a little device where you can spray the plant.

So it's a very nice setup.

You can use a soap spray to control it, or you can use a neem spray at about two applications.

Again, bon makes a neem max for house plants.

You can use that now if you have a plant that's a great big plant, like maybe a palm or a big Hoya plant or Scheffler, you might be advisable to use a systemic This is they come as a granular application.

And again, Bonide makes a systemic house plant insect control.

It tells you, on the label on, okay, I have to say, with all these insecticides, be sure that you follow the label direction very, very carefully, and it tells you exactly how much you know you can say a teaspoon or two teaspoon depends on the size of the pot and the size of the plant, and then that you water it in.

And then the systemic is taken up by the root systems, and then any insect that is feeding on the foliage or stems, it will kill them.

So how do people first, initially, usually know that they have mealy bugs.

Is it the is it the honeydew?

Or is it the actual, I think probably the actual that you see them.

You see them.

Think so, gotcha.

And you know how you get them?

Notice the time is you buy them.

You may go years and not have any problem, but then you buy a plant, and you put it in with the other plants, and all of a sudden you got a mealy bug problem, because that plant that you brought in brought in, that's a problem.

It's probably best to when you buy a plant, to isolate it from the other plants for maybe a week or two and see how things develop.

Okay?

Any, any battle stories about overcoming the odds against Mealies.

Or are we still in that fight?

Always in that fight, it's really.

I have some orchids at home and I lost.

I used to have a really big collection, and I lost them all to meal, really?

Yeah, were they all close?

And, yeah, they just had them, like, on a baker's rack with lights.

And I didn't even see the little white cottony bits.

They were on the roots, because there is one called root.

Yeah, that's another species.

That's another species.

No, I learned I thought they were kind of the same, but no, well, I got that one because it it looked fine from above ground, and then all of a sudden, this perfectly healthy plant was just like, all limp, and I just got curious and pulled it out of the pot, and the roots were just coated.

Well, you know, you really probably need a systemic insecticide on that.

I figured it out they actually use that, that bone eyed, the granule, I do too well.

This is years and years later.

I had it happen again on my on my handful of orchids, I don't have nearly as many now.

I don't know where they came from.

They I usually put things outside to kind of break the pest cycle, keep them in the same spot.

Sometimes they kind of just promotes them, because they can be like on the ship.

Yes, they hide really well.

Had some mealy bugs again.

I was trying all the insecticidal soap.

I just couldn't get a handle on them.

And I tried the granular I wasn't sure how well it would work on an orchid, but it worked great.

Yes, I use that even just to bring the plants in, I'll start that at like the end of August, just to make sure everybody gets their medicine before they come into the winter.

Because, yeah, why not?

You know.

So it kills fungus gnats and that because they've been in the soil.

Scale too.

Yeah, really hard.

Oh yeah.

Scales on aphids, systemic is the only way to go.

It really is great information.

Thank you.

So easily and it's always on something barky, yeah, so there's really, yeah, yeah, okay, well, now we have tools and ways to beat the mealy bugs.

Okay, you brought in a lovely little vase.

So I was forging in my yard to see what is looking good.

Despite it all, it has been so ridiculously hot, so I don't know where to start this.

I'll start here.

This is one of my favorite perennials for late summer, early fall.

This.

Is called Japanese anemone.

And I actually kind of had to hunt for one that was open, because it's just starting to open this time of year.

And it is a glorious perennial that it takes a little while to get established, but once it is like, you really don't have to do anything.

And there's like, way tops in my book.

Yes, we love that.

Like it.

It does to it did take, like, you hear that rule about, like, three years to get sleep, leap and sleep, creep and leap.

Definitely follows that rule.

But now I start out with a little, tiny plant that I got from a friend, and what's the name, again, Japanese anemone, okay, and then these three plants here.

These three flowers are actually all celosia.

My kids call this one the brain.

Oh, yeah, this one I got at a plant sale.

But these are little volunteers from last year.

I bought some seed down in Arthur, where there's lots of Amish families.

And this a pretty common flower you'd see in their gardens.

So these are what came up from last year's seed.

And I was telling Tanisha, I started the seeds very carefully in a flat like, you know, every good horticulturalist should.

And got a few plants going last summer, and I, I didn't plant these at all.

These just came up on their own, and they came up in different colors.

So Petunias, yeah, I'm fine with it.

It was like you're within, like you're behaved to control.

But these plants look better than when I start what I did start any natural selection, exactly so.

And then the other things I have are lantana.

This is one that just loves the heat.

It didn't really do much for a while, and now it's going gangbusters.

And then, of course, our tried and true Zinnias little friend, oh yeah, well, spider made an appearance.

Yeah, the Zinnias are doing really well.

Don't care.

They don't know, bring it the heat.

Bring it.

They don't care.

Very pretty.

And what was the Japanese, Japanese anemone?

What is the growing behavior?

It's a shade plant, like partial shade, gets a little bit of morning sun.

It's kind of a low, mounded most of the summer, like this time of year, it's sending up these sort of flower stops.

They kind of hang above.

It's really Wandy.

They move in the breeze.

You get a little wind, and they kind of shake.

So Jennifer, do you have any animals that cause injury to these plants?

They have just mealy bugs.

That's all.

I haven't seen any mealy bugs, but deer are probably my number one with me too.

That's why he's asking.

He's trying to get any damage on these so they prefer the tomatoes that are nearby.

Man, we were at Lake of the Woods for a different show.

They mowed that hosta bed down to the stem.

I mean, it was like crazy how much they'd eaten, though.

So they love you're not you're not alone.

They are all across the viewing area, all right.

And we have a design question for Miss Marty.

This is from Peggy in Charleston.

She's got a section of her yard that is largely been neglected and overgrown, and she says it's wild.

She pulls weeds and vines and things from there.

But she wants to make this kind of like a cool, casual, low maintenance, no maintenance, kind of perennial wild flower whimsy area.

I just made that up.

So here's the picture, one of the pictures, and she said, Actually, she wrote me back and said, it does get good morning and early afternoon sun.

So we've all got corners like this in our yard that are, you know, just doing their own thing.

If you were to show up and advise her, what would you say?

I know she wanted like you were saying.

She sent in the question they were hoping for, you know, a wild flower, kind of a feel, perennials, you know, native perennials, natively derived perennials.

And I'm going to suggest some cat mint Nepeta Rudbeckia, these guys little black eyed Susans.

Monarda, get a get a Mildew resistant variety.

She's got a couple of hydrangea there.

She said she was going to put a path between those going back to the doorway of the shed.

But keep in mind also that native plants, while they're listed as full sun, they're native plants so they can survive partial shade.

Just fine.

Just fine.

Agastache, liatris.

Are you ready?

These down.

Hope so Peggy, yeah, there's just, just a lot.

She's got some day lily there.

You could also do some different colors.

She said she kind of got ditch lilies there, you know.

And they're, they're great, but they're almost too robust.

I mean, you see, she's got a lot more that are that are blooming, but just try to get something that blooms.

Now, when we were talking about this, originally, you were saying is as low maintenance as you want to go, there is nothing.

There is no zero, right?

No.

So let's talk a little bit about that.

There is no zero because there is vine weed, there is creeping charlie, there is horse weed, there is poison hemlock.

There is no such thing because all those things are also native plants.

So they just go crazy.

You know, they just go nuts.

And they like partial shade as well.

You know that little bit of moisture at their feet?

Hallelujah, so happy with it, and they're going to climb.

I mean, I can see from here, if you look in the picture, she's got what appears to be maybe a mulberry sprout, very common in the back corner there, she could even do some smaller shrubby perennials like carryopterus blooms in late summer, early fall, blue, kind of lavender, blue blooms almost look like a mimosa flower or a scabiosa, huge butterfly magnets.

They love those.

And they're a nice blue color when, when in the doldrums of summer, I mean, they're blue.

And now they also come in a variegated leaf on the very edges of a shady garden where it's a little shadier.

I might suggest some big hosta, not the little, well, they're so cute, they'll just look.

Yeah, get the big guns.

Get them big old Biggins, you know, more color, the better, you know, get.

Get the variegated snot out of them, you know, get as much visual impact as you can out of a plant.

I mean, they only bloom during the growing season.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna say, don't even worry about a winter evergreen presence, because the heads of things sticking up will be great.

That way they catch the snow.

My cone flowers, my sedum seed, a bigger variety.

Sedum is a great idea.

Okay, I have sedum.

Most of my sedum is in the shade more than the sun.

I mean, the taller I've got some old autumn joy that they don't sell anymore, because it tends to flop, even in the shade.

Mine doesn't flop.

It's like, we're here.

Hey.

Okay, so, yeah.

So she's got lots of options, lots of options.

Anything you'd add to partial shade, you know, put it and mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, mulch, all the mulch you can get.

Yeah, okay.

Jen, any flowers that you would add to that?

Hmm, no, you kind of hit all she got them.

Maybe some fall Aster.

I like it, oh yeah, that it's like, late, yeah.

I'm always looking for things that are late in this, in this, yeah, yeah.

Asters are nice.

She asked if seed or plants, yes, start plants.

Plants.

Start plants.

Yeah.

I mean, even, you know, get a hold of the garden community.

There's, there's plenty of garden clubs in the Champaign Urbana area, which say she's in Charleston.

Yes, Charleston.

I bet there's a garden club in Charleston area around there.

Matthew, see about it.

You know, people will give you starts and stuff.

They're happy to share.

You know, dig it up, take it home, especially this time of year.

Oh, yeah, I will caution you against Liss MACHIA.

It will move around quite a little bit.

Actually, I found that Japanese anemone in a place it likes, but it's kind of delightful.

And I will say this, there's no weeds.

Yeah, I have it holds them down.

Okay.

Got a wide maple, like, leaf, and it just, I don't think so, shades America.

Oh, yeah, no, I am thrilled with it.

Oh, it was very politely, like, staked its claim, and I'm fine with that.

Yeah, it took over a couple of things.

But, I mean, it's not that hard to pull out.

You could do so, I mean, yeah, spreading, spreading delightfully, yes, yeah, some order, right?

All right.

Peggy, so that you've got a lot of options there.

Okay, Jim, I want to make sure we get to your Oh, we have one minute.

Okay, so quickly, Jim, this is called Brown Eyed Susan.

This is just a native plant, but it's so pretty, and it grows everywhere.

And then the other one I brought in.

This is the button Bush again, and this is the seeds, where the seeds will be produced.

This is a really a nice plant, button bush.

It's a bush, but it's.

Native, and it has these nice, dark foliage, Japanese resistant, Japanese beetle resistant.

So I would promote this plant, all right.

Well, guys, thank you.

We ran out of time.

That was great discussion.

Thank you so much for watching.

If you have questions, you can send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com, or search for us on socials, just look for Mid American gardener and we will see you next time.

Good night.

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