(theme music) Hello.

It's Tinisha, Spain, host of Mid American gardener.

Thank you so much for joining us for this special show.

This week, we're coming to you from Lake of the Woods in Mahomet.

Longtime panelist and friend of the show Rusty maulding, is going to give us a tour of the Botanical Garden.

We're going to talk about how to do some late summer editing in your flower beds, discuss who's probably eating the hosta and give you some tips.

If you're interested in adding a koi pond or a water feature to your yard, we've got lots to cover, so let's go find rusty and get started.

You and look who I've run into.

I found my old pal rusty.

So before we get into it, there may be some folks out there who don't know you.

So introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you Sure.

So my name is Rusty maulding.

I am the site superintendent here at Lake of the Woods, and we are standing I want to welcome everybody to the Mayberry Galvin botanical gardens at Lake of the Woods, and it's warm.

It's a little toasty, little toasty, little toasty, but we're gonna get through it.

We're gonna break through it.

So we've got a lot to cover today.

Rusty's gonna just talk to us a little bit about this.

Is editing, right bed editing.

Tell us a little bit about that.

So everyone plants a garden, right?

And you've got, everyone edits.

They just may not necessarily call it that.

So if you've got a more traditional type, type of landscape, and we have three of these and five of these, and everything has a place, and that's the only place you want it to be, everything that comes up around those you're editing when you're removing it.

So most of the time, we call those weeds, but in a more native setting, or if you're using other plants, perennials, some grasses that may sell.

So, because that's part of how they propagate, they move around a little bit, and you do need to kind of figure out, do I like that plant there?

Is that worth saving, or is this something I want to dig up and give to my neighbor?

Okay, so, so where we are now is a perfect example of, you know, here we are, late summer, some things have done really well, as you can see, yeah, absolutely outperformed or over performed.

So in a bed like this, let's talk about what you would edit.

What would you would change?

Sure, so this is a very public facing bed, right?

And so we've got a walkway here, and we have plant material that's encroaching on that that is four or five, even six feet tall, and it's even just hanging over, a little hanging over, I don't mind, but otherwise, I want people to feel comfortable when they come here.

And so those taller plants may be just a little bit too close for comfort for some folks, especially if they have some fabulous little pollinators on them.

And so we kind of want to this is great for the back side of the bed, maybe not the front side of the bed.

So we've got some plants in here that are little too big and maybe just not in the right place.

Okay?

And what are these?

By the way, that is called ironweed.

You can see that it's about to bloom.

It's a kind of Blooms mid mid August or thereabouts.

It's a native flower, tiny, little flower in there.

Yeah, pretty.

This one's got a few that are actually in flower right now.

It's great plant, and I think it probably was dropped here by birds.

Oh, so this wasn't even planted here.

This wasn't even planted okay?

And everybody's garden winds up with those.

Sometimes they're poison ivy or honeysuckle.

Sometimes it's a gift like this.

It's actually a really valuable thing, gotcha.

So how?

So, how will you decide how to rework this?

What's the technique here?

Well, so generally speaking, you know, in the spring of the year, we kind of look through what's coming up, and do we think that everything is going to perform well, where it's at.

Sometimes you end up with a period of time where it's too wet, or you've got other priorities, and you don't get to that.

You can get to that stage here this spring with us.

So we're doing it a little bit later in the season, which is fine, right?

So whenever I'm going through again, I'm looking for the taller plants that are here, really close to the edge.

And we can do one of two things, if it's really bothering you and it is impacting your function, you can either dig it out right there in the spot, cut it off, or you can tag it for removal or transplanting later.

So you've got kind of some some different options there.

Gotcha, okay, now with these, what is their fate?

What will their fate be?

These, the ones that are really close to the concrete, will probably end up having to discard the ones, some of them that are out there a little bit further, but I really don't want them that kind of height in this bed.

We'll try to transplant those into other spaces.

So another plant that kind of happened into this space was big bluestem.

Big Bluestem is wants to be six to eight feet tall.

This year, we had lots of rain in the spring, and it is at least eight feet tall as we walked around the corner here.

But you can see, you kind of, you kind of feel like there's a little close got to get on the edge.

Got some big blue here, that's, that's fallen over, you know, that's, that's not really where we want it to be.

And most people don't want that kind of thing in their own, own gardens.

But this guy up here, you know, that's, that's every bit of eight feet tall.

Wow.

Wow.

Conversely, we do have some little bluestem, which, this is fantastic, because right Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, what's the difference?

About six feet.

Yeah, they got their names on us.

This is Little Bluestem down here as a much finer leaf.

Big Bluestem is right here.

So yeah, this guy is probably not long here, and we will, while it's a great plant, it's not really supposed to be in this location.

And boy, if you looking across from where they were originally planted, they made a nice little journey to get here.

They did.

Yeah, we have a great, like, sort of tall prairie example over here behind us.

And it's, it's a great example of it, but it's, there's at least 100 feet in between there and here.

Now, this one is not going to be just a chop and go.

You're going to have to, I mean, this is going to take a little work.

This is going to take some work.

This is likely going to be a spring move, just so that we can more adequately get in.

And we, we're not going to be trampling all the plants around it, even iron, iron weed.

We may tag it this.

Actually, we're probably not even going to tag it, because we know where it's at.

But if it's if it's something in your own garden, you know, tie a little piece of ribbon around it.

That can work really well for just identifying it later in the season, if you maybe, like, Where was that plant at that I wanted to move.

That's a good way to come back to it.

Gotcha.

And when is a good time, as we're out enjoying our gardens and kind of everything is in full bloom, when is a good when is a good time to start this?

Oh, sure, yeah.

No, that's a great question.

Mid August through September is a great time to transplant a lot of different perennials and that sort of thing.

So that's a perfect time.

The weather's starting to cool down.

The warm season, grasses will get a chance to root in before the cold hits, which is also great.

It's just that's a really good window of opportunity.

Wonderful.

Okay, all right, well, let's go check out some other parts of the Botanical Garden.

Let's do that.

Here's another great example, right?

Of a happy accident plant that will give you more than you bargained for, absolutely so to see, you know, this is one of those plants.

It's a great it's a cool plant.

It has a great flower.

This is Bell Canda or Blackberry Lily.

It flowers right here in August, late July.

And what will happen is these seed pods will turn black, and it'll almost seem like a little rattler inside.

There, you shake it, and you can hear the little seeds rattling.

It makes a really cool sound, but because these are full of seeds, and because this germinate, they germinate so well, it then becomes an editing problem in the spring or the next summer.

So you can save yourself some trouble by kind of controlling it now, absolutely, there are a number of plants that are like this.

And if you can remove the seed in the fall before it ripens and is dispersed, you've just saved yourself a ton of time the next year.

Okay, so with this plant, all you do is, after this stops flowering and these seed pods turn to so it's kind of a dark brown, discard, come in here, come down.

And I usually cut it kind of back down in there.

So you can kind of see I'm showing a leaf, but you can't really see where it was cut at, yes, so I don't know.

They're just not my hard and fast rule on this.

It's whatever looks tidy to you, but then cut it back, discard it.

Do not compost it.

Or you're gonna have them growing in the compost.

You're gonna have them growing in the compost Exactly.

Wow.

Okay, so each one of these is going to have more than one seed in there.

Yeah, absolutely.

Oh, wow.

No, you can and to remove them there.

Oh yeah, you can see, oh yeah, that's just one capsule.

And there are, I think these have three different capsules inside there for maybe four compartments.

Looks a little bit like, like a small p, yes, it does.

But yeah, each one of those times 150 Yes, that's gonna get your lot of these gonna be a generous donor for the next year.

So enjoy your blooms, and then when they're spent, go ahead and remove these before they open, drop and then you're editing yes the next year.

Yes.

Now, if you were to save these, say you want to give them to a friend, do you have to let them dry out completely on the plant before you cut them?

That's a great question.

I don't know for sure.

Okay, this is, this is one of those gardening things.

There's like, Well, I think this should work.

Okay, you'd want to harvest them before they crack open.

Okay, so I would recommend, yes, letting them, letting them dry, and they will form when they start rattling.

Yes, then you want to get them off, and that's when you'll not store them in a cool, dry space.

Great being in nature.

You never know what's gonna come at.

You never know.

Never know.

Okay, and then I had one more question, but I forgot it, so just make sure you get these off before they open and dry and get on the ground and reseed themselves.

Otherwise, like we were joking before we were recording, there are people that Yank these out of their yard every summer because they've just had it.

They're.

Prolific, and then you see a big pile of them on the curb with a sign that says, free.

Yes, absolutely.

I've had clients in the past that we came into the situation where they had literally, like hundreds of these that had just taken over space.

And then you'll spend the next couple of years trying to work through that seed bank.

Now, their actual growing behavior is that aggressive?

Do they stay put pretty well.

Once you place them in the beds, or they will expand.

You can actually kind of see down here that the center of this was about here, and it's spread outward.

I don't know what is that.

Maybe it's moved outward to get a solid two foot clump, two and a half foot clump, so they don't spread rampantly.

They're not like something else is going to creep and move by rhizomes and then in the beds I see here, they're on the outside.

Is that a good place for them to sort of line the outsides of the beds?

Depends on your design style.

What do you want?

I would typically more use these a little bit more in the center or in the back because they are fairly tall, but really just wherever, wherever you want, a splash of color, come late July and into into August, and they're low maintenance.

You don't have to do a whole lot once they're established, nothing like they're it's they take care of themselves.

That's what we love.

Yes, that's what we love.

A low maintenance plant, wonderful.

Okay, you so this is a little concerning where we are.

Now tell us a little bit about where we are and what's happening here.

Well, so deer, you either love them or you hate them.

And if you're an avid gardener and you have deer around, you're probably they're not the biggest fan, probably hate them.

Yeah, this is actually a place where the deer have browsed.

They've, they've, I guess, dined well.

Now they did not chew it down clear to the nub like this.

We had staff come through and cut them back.

But what they did do is they kind of came through and, you know, you have deer damage, because it's always going to be a ragged sort of tear mark, as opposed to rabbits, which will do a clean cut.

So they pull, they pull, right, gotcha Exactly, exactly.

And so the rest of this bed that we're that we're standing in, it was literally a field of stalks, wow.

So obviously they don't care for this.

This is not what they had come for, right?

It's the least, right?

And so what had happened here was, you know, I encourage a little creativity, a little exploration.

Staff, sure.

And they thought, well, let's, let's just treat the outside area.

We're gonna leave the center of a hosta bed.

Well, that worked for about a month, and then the deer found them.

They found them anyway.

So repellents do work.

They are not foolproof by any stretch, because you can see they munched on these.

My guess is these were sprayed a little bit, and they had to eat a few before they stopped.

Gotcha.

So repellents are one of those things.

It's one of our primary tools for controlling deer damage.

Unfortunately, they're like, every two weeks, every 10 days, you have to reapply.

Okay?

And then one thing that we've found that works fairly well is to rotate the different type of repellent that we're using.

Oh, okay, so we don't start with one type and stick with that the whole season.

Will go a month or two, and then switch it up, because the deer will sort of get acclimated.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Because this is apparently really, really tasty, I guess, and it's like a free salad bar, yeah, exactly.

You know, I've had several of the panelists this year, Kay and John.

Everyone said that the deer have just mowed down their hosta, John says, you know, he's got like, 400 different varieties at his house, and they're just, they're gone, yeah, gone.

It's like, devastating, right?

Because we gotta get one shot at this for the year.

And whenever the deer comes in and does this, you know you're it's really interesting.

Well, actually, occasionally we don't see him here, but we'll see the flower stalk that comes up later, and it looks so like, looks like a surprise Lily.

It's like, where's the rest of the plan?

Oh, my God.

But the repellents do work.

They do physical barriers, like seven eight foot fence.

If you're feeling feeling froggy, yeah, that they don't leap over.

They'll get over six foot but usually not seven to eight, okay.

But you know, Hostas are a favorite.

They they got to our sedum this year.

They like some Rebecca or Black Eyed Susan.

So there's they definitely have their favorite plants, and there's one other that I've heard of that people have had some success with as well.

So if you have a small enough space, you may consider setting up motion activated sprinklers.

Okay, we fried them here in the garden, but we're a public space, and so that doesn't really work all that well when the people start coming through, okay, so maybe sprinklers will work in your yard.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Rusty, so now I'm joined with Stephanie Workman, also here at Lake of the Woods, and now we're at the koi pond.

Now this is your area.

This is what you manage.

So tell us a little bit about you, how long you've been here, and just introduce yourself.

Yeah.

So I'm Stephanie Workman.

I am the Botanical Garden and trail supervisor here at Lake of the Woods, and the botanical or this koi pond is part of my area of responsibility.

I've been here since January of this year.

I came here with a background in parks and natural resources and zoos.

So yeah, it's very nice.

So we have folks that watch all the time and write in sometimes they have water features in their yard.

And so on a much bigger scale, give us some tips.

You know, if you're interested in adding a water feature or if you have a water feature, what are some good things to know about having that in your backyard?

Well, one good thing to know is it's a lot of work, so you need to be ready.

Know that going in for some work, the work in the beginning to put it in, and then the maintenance of it.

And this one particular one, like you said, it's large.

There's, there is a plastic on the bottom to kind of keep it deep the water in and then behind you here is a pump house.

This is has the pumps in it for the waterfall that's behind us that if you've been out here, you've definitely seen.

So we pump the water just into the waterfall.

So that is what this is.

There's a lot of electrical in there, if the electricity goes out, so does the waterfall, and then we have to go out and fix that.

So there's a lot that goes into it.

Evaporation happens.

So the pond will go down, and we'll need to turn the pond on to add water to it.

It leaks a little bit, sometimes in places, just naturally.

That happens.

So, you know, so just be prepared for the maintenance.

There's things that happen.

Always a surprise on things, but mostly, mostly, every day is fine, yeah.

Now plants do you have to choose specific plants to put around the border or at the edge of the water?

How do you choose what plants will go well, so generally, you want plants that like wet feet, that want to live near water.

So we have a lot of cattails out here that we kind of have to thin out and maintain because they like to grow a lot.

And then there's some plants out here that kind of have added themselves in just from just nature.

We've put in some native flowers and grasses out here, some annuals around here, but inside the water we have, you can see the lily pads with the the flowers in there.

So those are some that you can have in there.

There's other plants that will grow and water.

So it would just really kind of depend on what what you want in your in your yard, what you want in your pond?

And there's definitely professionals that specialize in water gardens, water features, that would be able to provide a lot more of that advice.

Now, this one is stocked with Koi.

It is beautiful, beautiful Koi.

Yes, tell us a little bit about those about how many do you know?

Is there like, a way to count?

Not really.

No, there's a lot.

There's a lot.

Okay, a few.

Yeah, we have a lot of koi in there.

We also have some bluegill in there to, just to kind of help, like with other things and the water, clean it up.

There's a few catfish in there.

But the koi are actually carp.

So they're a different type of carp.

They're native to eastern Europe or the Middle East, so that part of the world.

They're not an endangered species at all.

They're everywhere and so important in the Japanese culture, as a lot of people know.

So they're a prosperity and luck and so, you know, maybe you have some good luck when you come out here and see the Koi.

Yeah.

How deep is this pond?

Ooh, not terribly deep.

Okay.

Only reason I ask is because I was also curious about where the koi go in the winter and what they do, and if there was like, some way to retreat from the cold, or if the surface freezes.

So what are things like around here in the winter?

So I've learned that the pond is six feet deep.

Okay, so six feet at the deepest, which is good, because it won't freeze that deep.

It does freeze in the winter, so we do have a frozen pond, but the koi will go to the bottom.

In the deepest part, there's ways, like some thermal areas, where it doesn't get as cold.

At the bottom, they go into torpor, which is basically a type of hibernation, not totally hibernated, kind of like bears.

They don't completely go to sleep, but they slow way down, and so that'll happen all winter.

They don't eat.

In fact, we have signs out here that tell folks that when it's below a certain temperature, that do not feed these fish because they're not going to eat, and it just makes a mess in the water, so that once the temperatures warm up, then they wake up and they come out and they're hungry, and they're hungry and ready to go, and they're over there putting on a show for they sure are bridge.

You've got some some snacks, so that's exciting to toss some in.

Here.

There are some over here, and if you toss it in there, they will, they'll show up.

Oh, they will.

Okay, let's see if I can test my luck.

Oh, here they come.

Here they come.

Yeah, they know.

Let's walk around and check out some of the plants that are around the pond.

All right.

So now we're in another spot of the garden here.

Everybody loves tropicals, right?

Because they get those great big leaves and the beautiful flowers.

So tell us what we're looking at here.

So we have Canna lilies, which a lot of folks are pretty familiar with, cannas.

So a lot of cannas, you'll see them throughout the garden.

They just bring a lot of vertical height and the leaves, as you mentioned, and then these beautiful red flowers.

We also have Colocasia or elephant ear, which are these smaller ones with the large leaves.

And we have different varieties of those here in the garden that are come in different colors, and some of them have veining that's really pretty, and so those don't flower, but they're just really nice, big tropical leaves to look at.

Now I notice here, similar to the hosta, somebody's munching on these leaves, and some of my Canna at home look like this.

I was gonna say, is our culprit gonna make a debut on the show.

Yeah, they are.

They're right there, Japanese beetles.

They're out, and they like to munch on the leaves.

They'll kind of skeletonize them a little bit that way.

Yeah.

I mean, they really, they did a number on this one here, yes.

And you can pick them off, really, it works.

If you have water with some soap in it, just toss them in there.

Or there's some different kinds of spray you can put on the weeds.

Yeah, I hear people say they get a little bucket and just kind of tap them off in the mornings or something like that and do that.

But, yeah, they're definitely enjoying themselves.

They sure are.

But, you know, it's part of summer, right?

Like it kind of goes along with it.

It's part of that time of year.

And I also wanted to ask you about the just how this bed is designed, because we've been talking about height and how things are put together, and so the cannas to the elephant ear to the coleus.

Like, let's talk a little bit about that, sure.

So definitely, the idea here was to have the tropical vibe in this garden, and then have just kind of that the height going down.

So these guys do pretty well in the sun, obviously, quite a bit of sun here.

Coleus does well in sun or shade.

They're just kind of happy wherever you put them.

So that was kind of the idea was to have these taller cannas in the middle, and then everything else kind of coming down, cascading down from there.

Cannas are also good on borders, like on the back side of things, if, again, like rusty was talking about earlier, if you're trying to hide something or whatever, you can always use the cannas.

They'll come up pretty quickly in the spring, and then you'll have a nice tall, nice, tall plant that's going to last through the summer.

Now, I have just a few of these in my yard and in a couple in pots, but do you guys have to go and dig all these?

We do, oh my gosh, every single one of these come up one of these.

Holy smokes.

They can't over winter here.

So down south and in the tropics, they would be a perennial.

You would always see them there.

But here, I guess, too cold, so they won't overwinter.

So we will pull them up.

You can overwinter them in a cold, you know, cooler, darker place for the winter.

And then next spring, we'll bring them back out, and they'll wake up, start the process all over again.

We'll have a greenhouse soon, soon.

And then we can over winter these.

Some of these, we can overwinter them in the greenhouse.

As you know, we can take the plant in there and over winter it so it's a nice thing to have, and nice to be able to use them over and over again, if you're able to do that.

And when you put these in in the spring.

I mean, do tropicals require a lot of maintenance once you get them started and once you get them going, not really.

They don't require a lot, a lot of watering, really is the biggest thing for them.

But we put some mulch over them, just to keep them, keep them moist.

And, you know, cool, but really, that's, that's it.

There's not a lot of special anything you have to put on them.

They just needs to be in the right spot.

And these guys seem pretty happy.

They seem pretty happy right where they are, other than other than their little lunch guests who are who are coming by.

But this is absolutely beautiful.

And tropicals just add such a nice they do to any garden.

So again, I like the staggering here.

The color is beautiful.

You guys did a great job.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for letting us come out.

Absolutely thanks for coming.

And that is the show for this week.

A big thank you to rusty and Stephanie for showing us all around the botanical garden today.

And finally, a big thanks to.

You for watching and supporting what we do at Illinois public media.

If you've got questions from Mid American gardener, you can send them in to us at your garden@gmail.com, or look for us on socials, just search for Mid American gardener.

We'll see you next week.

Good night.

You you you.