Hello, and thanks for joining us for Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain and joining me in the studio with lots of Sean tells today are Ella and Karen.

Before we jump into all the items that they brought in some of the questions that you've asked, We'll have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their specialty.

So Ella, we'll start with you.

I'm Ella Maxwell.

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

I like trees and shrubs and perennials.

Okay.

a generalist, right?

Yes.

All right.

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

houseplants annuals all the things.

Okay, let's get started.

Because you guys have a lot of stuff to talk about.

So go for it.

Okay.

What do you wanna talk about first?

All right, well, coming up will be the Fall Equinox, that's going to be September 23.

And this is a poinsetta that I got from Karen.

Now this guy's made an appearance on the show right throughout the year.

And it was in a little, like three four inch pot, I repotted it, I had been growing it outside.

And this poinsetta, and plants like it are called PHOTOPERIODIC.

Plants, they set their flowers based on day length, how long or short the day length is another plant that you commonly see flowering in the fall is the mum.

And so the mom and the poinsettia can be manipulated with daylength to bloom earlier than they normally would following the natural day lengths that you find outside.

So for a poinsettia to bloom, and they actually make colored leaves called Brax.

But to have that initiate, they have to have days that are shorter than 12 hours.

So what people commercial operations will do will actually shade them for an extended night period.

But your point Seta, if you have it in a room that does not get extra light, can follow the natural day cycle of shorten days, and come in to flower close to Christmas.

So I just wanted to bring this point Seta and say, we'll see what happens and you might see it a third time.

All right, looking forward to it.

All right, there's so much to choose from, right.

You want to do a question, question show and tell.

Okay, this is from Pat.

She said, please tell me what these are.

It climbs at her house.

So what do you think this is 249 that that the picture, you're actually seeing the seed pods because the flowers have already been gone.

And it's a trumpet vine, camp says radicans.

And it's a pretty vigorous, perennial vine where it comes back year after year.

And the flowers are typically red, red, orange ish, and they come in yellow and red varieties too.

Okay.

All right.

Let's do one more ID 241.

This is from Gianna, she wants to know what the name of this flower is.

And we've got a photo of it as well.

So what do you think about this word?

That's a tropical hibiscus.

So that is a basically being treated as an annual outside that somebody put it in the ground.

So it's doing very well being in the ground.

But you'll need to dig that up before a good frost, if you want to keep it for next year.

And you can grow it as a house plant, or kind of let it half go unaided in the house or warm garage to the winter.

Excellent.

All right, we've got another ID question.

252 This is from Carolyn Stewart.

She wants to know what this bush is called in the attached photo and wants to know if it's beneficial for pollinators and wildlife.

Right, and it is beneficial.

It is a great dogwood cornus racemosa and it has a white flower in the spring that is visited by pollinators, and then it makes a fruit that purportedly is visited by over 100 species of birds in my yard specifically, it's Robins.

So we're happy to answer ID questions.

But sometimes it's kind of fun for you to go online.

Just type in fall.

White fruited you know bush and see if you can't match it up yourself and learn some more things about it.

but it's a small tree, maybe 10 to 15 feet.

There are several different varieties of native dogwoods out there in this in Illinois here that you can find and it's it's suckers kind of sometimes you got to take care of those.

But yeah, it's it's nice, keep it.

I like to there you can use apps to there are a lot of plant ID apps that you can download.

But also, if you just Google a picture, a lot of times you'll get really great results.

And I I'm always outside in the backyard trying to find out what's what, it's not 100%.

But like you said, when you're out there exploring and you can kind of find out what's growing in your backyard, right?

And then you can get a confirm, but you can always visit your local independent garden center or whatever to, you know, ask, ask a horticulturist.

That's what Karen and I did for a long time.

answer your questions.

And we go.

All right, let's do another question for Karen.

How about 249?

This is about butterfly gardens.

This is from Katie Morris.

She says I have a question about butterfly gardens.

We planted a lot of flowers that will attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds.

Is it true that cedar mulch will repel them?

Or should we use a hardwood mulch?

What are your thoughts there?

There's not a correct probably answer or yes, no answer is a yes no answer.

Yes, there is some properties that could repel.

Overall, is it probably not and the the effectiveness of that mulch, maybe it's just a season or two.

And here's the bottom line, if you're worried about it, don't use it.

And a hardwood mulch might be something that's more locally sourced anyway, so that you're doing a less footprint to getting less shipping of a cedar mulch that maybe is coming down or coming further from the source.

So you know, if you are concerned, just use a hardwood then.

Great.

Alright, so you are harvesting garlic is that time of year it is well, garlic is actually harvested earlier in the summer, and it's allowed to dry and cure.

And we have two types of garlic bulbs here made up of individual cloves.

One is a hard neck garlic right here.

And if you look right through the center, you can see that there was a stock and this is one that will flower and make the garlic scape which normally you will remove it to keep the bulb large.

And then this one is more like what we see in the store and covered with the papery covers.

And this is the softneck Garlic, so there is no hard stem in the middle.

Supposedly, this one is a little bit more mild.

There's lots of different varieties of garlic.

But now's the time to think about planting it.

And what you'll do is we just break over the clothes.

And so these are the clothes that you're going to replant and I choose just the larger ones.

So if it's kind of small, we'll just keep that for maybe processing to cook with.

But with all of these, we're going to break them all apart, sort them out.

So you can see right here, I've got a really rather nice large clove here.

And you can see this is the basal plate where the roots are going to develop, you plant them in the fall of about six inch spacing.

And then they will actually begin to sprout this fall you can put some straw over them.

And then of course you can then that'll protect them through the winter.

And then next spring, they'll start growing again.

And then they will make the head of garlic.

And you're all set to questions.

Do you completely cover them with soil?

Yes, they're actually planted about maybe in the top two inches or so just enough to to have the top of the bulb slightly covered here.

And you want to keep some of the papery coating or do you feel it all the way down when you plant it?

It doesn't really matter.

Yeah, it'll sprout up through that.

And of course, here's one that the bottom is kind of brown.

That doesn't look real good there.

So maybe, again, you want a healthy, unblemished ball, choose your best one right and then and then of course, you know when you have to peel garlic, sometimes it's hard to get the peelings off, so you just smash them down Just had a lot of water I drank I'm gonna do that.

So now our studio is going to get a little but that's okay.

So yeah, think about garlic, you can find it available to plant, it can order it.

You can plant some of the garlic that comes from the grocery store, although some of that has been treated to keep it from sprouting, but eventually it does sprout.

And like I said, there's a lot of different varieties of garlic and elephant garlic is not really garlic, but that's for another.

We'll put a pin on that one.

Okay.

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

Do you want to do a show in town?

Yeah.

And I think we're getting to that point that unfortunately, we're having to talk about what what do you want to save for next year?

What what do you want to do or expend your energy on and a plant that I do that I like, because it's no no, no energy involved is keeping my purple oxalis from year to year.

And this plant just does such a nice accent with its color through the summer putting in planters or or having it just in his own little pot.

So this plant I overwintered a couple different ways.

One, I bring it in before a frost because I don't want to frost to get on this and I bring it in, I just let it dry down and the ones that are in pots, I leave in pots, let them dry.

Once all the foliage dries off, or sometimes before I chop it off, either which way, chop it off, or take it off and it's dry.

And then I just let it sit in the basement, no light, no water, nothing, leave it alone.

And then next spring, bring it out, start watering or refresh the soil if it's overcrowded.

So the other thing is I do I do planted some of my mix planters.

And so I dug it up to show you that if you have it out in a planter, I just dig up the whole clump, put it in a plastic bag, so I don't get dirt all over.

So this is just the soil from from the pot, and I stick it in a pot so it doesn't fall over.

And then I just overwinter it the same way the potted plant because I would just hold root the whole root ball intact because I want minimal work, you know, just tuck it away.

So it is so cool how this plant forms where you've got these rhizome or underground stems with how they grow.

And in spring, this fleshy, thick area down here is completely gone.

I've never seen it in spring, but digging it up now.

There was some pretty good chunks and these little these little things on the side.

This is what if I'm going to transplant or start a new pot.

This is what I actually will pot up just these little little itty bitty guys.

And so I've got too much of this.

So next year, I'm going to need to give away a bunch of this because I've got the clumps outside in my planters.

I've got three pots of it.

I don't know why I have three pots of it, but you know you have it and give it more room let it die.

Oh yeah, we'll find it a new home.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Okay, now let's talk coneflowers for a little bit, we've got two questions that are kind of along that same vein.

So let's start with 236.

And you I know you guys are both going to talk about these.

This is from Rebecca.

She says I've been growing Purple coneflower for years and they come up all over the yard.

This year.

They had some deformities.

She looked up some diseases and just doesn't quite know what she's dealing with and wants to know if you guys can help and she says it's not just deformities in the flowers.

I've read the asters, yellow asters yellow causes it and some first year plants are even showing deformity as well.

So what are what are some things that commonly happen to coneflower?

Well, the two major problems that you commonly see and affect the flowers is the might that you said now they're considering a sort of photo or No, I don't that that's the answer yet with Astra yellows of phyto plasm.

And then the other problem is the Astra yellows.

The main thing to differentiate the two diseases is the Astra yellows is death, and that affects the whole plant so the flowers will be affected, and the foliage if that's the problem, it needs to be dug up and destroy the plant.

The might, there is some hope removing those blooms that show that sprain as the new blooms come out by our pictures I couldn't really quite tell for sure if the foliage button for her description is saying that the foliage is affected Ella and I said it would be safer just to go ahead and dig up those plants and destroy them.

Do you know that I mean that's something you can't get away from even its internal in the plant.

It lives inside of the plant.

It's a virus like replication And, and it's spread by primarily by a leaf hopper.

So they have a cone flower leaf hopper, it would be any kind of sucking insect, potentially a mite.

But I'm not sure about that.

But more the leafhoppers is what we read.

So the mites though, in the other question that you're going to read, oh, yeah, you want to do the other one, okay.

245.

This is from Carly, my coneflowers have double flowers.

And from what I gather it is due to Aster yellows disease, pretty interesting, even though I will have to dig them up and start all new.

thought you guys would find that interesting.

So, right, so Carmen, really, what we're thinking for her, though, is that she really has might damage that cause the pearl proliferation of these multiple growing points to create this really distorted cone flower head, and that it's not really the yellows unless it's also affecting the foliage.

Because the, the, this disease, or you no problem is, is inside of the plants.

So, again, coneflowers are so easy to save seed from healthy plants, start new plants, you know, purchase new plants or whatever, to not worry about removing a few things.

And again, Karen has already addressed the might issue, there are some things with just removing the flower head, some sprays, one I'd found I forgot what university it was they had was Ohio, I'm not sure, but they had side by side pictures of you know, confirmed laboratory, you know, this is Aster yellows or this is might damage so they had the different flowers and plants side by side.

And it was kind of going to be scary because of the two disease but scary that they are very similar for how they do the blooms.

But the key point is if your plant the foliage is also affected, that's the walk away from so how, how intense is the removal?

Because you know, they drop seed and they spread?

Like, what do we need to do she need to try to get all of the seeds that drop?

I mean, is this a big renewable?

I don't know about every everything that that I've just read talks about just removing the plant destroying plants.

Yeah, I mean, at that point, I think you've you some of those, I'm not sure that they do a good seed.

How are vine?

viable seed?

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, we're back to you.

You've got another Oh, I do.

I have one.

One more thing to show.

This is a Jack in the pulpit.

So in the spring, it had the three leaflet leaf, and it had the hood.

And then this is actually the fruit.

And so my husband loves all kinds of Jack in the pulpits.

And sometimes the deer eat these.

But this is an area where we're protecting them.

And now's the time that you can see them.

And before this head breaks up, as it normally would do.

So inside each one of these little things is is a couple of seeds.

So we've we've opened it up here.

But what I do is I just cut this off, label it and put the whole seed head in a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator.

And they required chilling.

So you could potentially go out dig a little trench, you know, plan to each one.

And then this seed coat will disintegrate in the soil or in the during the winter.

This will keep in the frigerator my seed moist because you don't want it to dry out.

And then in the spring we just again peel them all open.

And then we we see them out.

But yeah, cuz you need more than one way or the other.

Take them directly or keeping them in the fridge and planting them in the spring.

Actually, it's been easiest to control.

Thank you.

Here's my ziplock bag.

Because I'm yeah, I'm not going to lose them.

But the thing is, is that there are some different ones there's the native one, and it can get rather large but there's some that have variegated foliage, some of them that are Asian and species have really large leaves, but they all create the same kind of fruit set.

And so I germinated some this spring, they just make a single leaf they last for only, they're almost ephemeral in that they only last for maybe a month or a month and a half, but they're growing a very small tuber.

So, just thought it would be something to show.

If you're out.

You know, you might want to harvest a couple of seeds, maybe not take the whole thing in my yard, you know, I can save the whole thing, but in nature, you don't want to take everything.

Gotcha.

Okay.

All right, you've got a couple more things we want to get to we've got about five minutes.

All right, let's let's once again with winter coming and plants we want to keep I do back under one of my oak trees.

It's just shady and dry and I'm having struggling with stuff and I've got some plants planted and so I put a pot with an annual to pop color back there.

And this year I was really happy with the begonia course I took a picture of the name of it now it was well the name of it, I forgot now something upright fire or something like that.

The picture you sent it was beautiful.

And so it really helps that dark spot that I'm having trouble with with getting a little bit of color.

So now I like this enough, I'm going to overwinter so we're going to overwinter something and start a cutting because I can't bring in that big pot.

I don't have room.

You want to be really ruthless for some reason with begonias, I always like tip cuttings.

But when you're going to do a cutting, you want to take off all the blooms.

You can see you don't want any of this because you don't want wasted energy.

And then I would do it probably pretty short.

You can do multiple sections.

Like I said, for some reason with begonias I like tip cuttings, and then taking off these lower leaves making this maybe a little shorter, dipping a little bit of of rooting hormone and then putting in your container that you're going to route it, maybe tented or put a lid over to help with the humidity until it starts rooting in.

And the Coleus This is Peters wonder I'm going to keep this year, same thing I have really good luck with with the Coleus that if you want, you could probably easily you know this little stem, we could get three cuttings quite easily.

As they start growing, tip out the middle tip, so then you get four sprouts.

What I find helpful in the winter with a lot of these plants, the original plant i root and fall, the subsequent babies that I propagate off of the parent plant this original plant or throw away, I'll get rid of that original plant and that that was friends of mine.

Roberta and I forgot his name that they they were quite extensive with their Coleus propagation and they found that the vigor of that first plant that you routed it was best in the subsequent what you'd cut take cuttings.

So around February then I'll take cuttings off of this route.

Get rid of the parent plant.

So like these that are rooted already have salvias.

I'll take cuttings off of these and then eventually get them to like a forage pot.

That then would be what I would have for the plants for next spring.

So over the winter, you just treat them as a house plant.

Yes.

And okay.

Yeah.

Do you use lighting?

Or do you just put them in a window?

I do have to use a grow light because I keep them away from where the cats could get at them?

Yes.

And then that doesn't have so much weight.

So I do augment with a grow light.

And this year, I need to get a better timer.

Yeah, the one thing that I do when I do mine is I cut these really big leaves in half off, because I kind of smoosh mine all together.

And so that way they've got you know, it's a little more compact one the less the less they have to transpire the the easier once again.

Yeah, it looks really good.

To to then route but the Coleus will route really easily.

Gotcha.

Okay, we've got two minutes left.

Let's talk tomatoes on our way out.

This is from Darcy in Urbana.

She's been growing Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes for the past four years and saving the seeds.

This year.

They look different she says and she kind of wants to know why she said a third of the plants have some of the characteristics of the original but nothing like how they've been in the past.

So scientifically what's going on here ladies, scientifically what's going on is she's planting more tomatoes than just Cherokee purple, and there's some cross pollination.

And then that seed that is set has a little bit different genetics now if she was only growing Cherokee Purple Hmm, and that is an heirloom tomato, and it should be stable.

But she's saying well now it's not the same anymore Well, somewhere close in other tomato plants are right next door, there's some other genetics coming in.

So the best thing that she can do is buy the seeds for Cherokee Purple from a you know, a good source and start again and then she can keep those seeds going but once they start to change like that, you don't know what you're going to get.

So it's the same way with the seeds that come up in the garden.

Do you want to save some of those volunteers?

Yes, we get right which are usually in my garden cherry tomatoes.

You know, you don't know what they're going to be but it's kind of fun to keep.

But you know, she's invested an awful lot with having a third of her plants not being very pretty well maybe they are productive.

Maybe she's going to have a really great new tomato that she really wants.

Well, we'll have to leave it there.

Good luck Darcy with your with your tomatoes next year.

Thank you guys so much.

Always a pleasure when you come in.

Everyone learned so much when you come in.

They love hearing from you.

And thank you so much for watching.

We will see you next time.

Good night.