This barn is literally crawling with bees.

Wow.

I just got a pink onion.

Why not try it?

Our hostas do well in Minnesota.

They like our temperatures.

We have things blooming from early spring to late fall.

It's fun to imagine what this place will be like in a few years.

We've just gotten started.

Hello, and thank you for joining us on Great Gardening.

I'm your host, Sharon Young.

And just a note to our viewers, our May 9th show will be our last episode until we return later this year.

So send in your questions while you still can.

Tonight, our focus is fencing.

Our garden experts will share tips about fencing for animal control, as well as answer your regular questions.

Let's welcome back our garden experts, their horticulturist and educator, Bob Allyn, and garden professional Deb Burns Ericson of Burns Greenhouse and Zoom.

We have phone volunteers from the Saint Louis County Master Gardeners to receive your questions tonight.

Call locally at 218788 2847 or email us at ask at pbs.org.

Let's start things off with some signs of spring.

Bob, what are we looking at here?

Boy, it's happened so fast here.

You know, I mentioned cat kittens and here's some cat gains from Alder.

These are very primitive early flowers.

What's so remarkable about nature is that they jump out before the leaves.

Those are the leaf buds.

If the leaves came out first, they would interfere with the distribution of the pollen.

So they're out there on on birch and on maple and willows, and they're out there in their glory right now, primitive flowers.

And, of course, rhubarb, which is jumping out.

We're going to talk about animal control.

This is the only time, really, that deer will go after rhubarb.

So if you have a heavy deer population, make sure you give them a chance to get out of the ground and then they're going to be resistant.

In the first daffodils, they're out there.

One of the other spring flowering bulbs, unlike tulips that really the deer stay away from.

So we're going to suggesting that people start by thinking a little bit about planting things that maybe deer don't like or deer resistant right now.

Thanks, Bob.

So let's get to a garden tour in 2023.

We visited the gardens of Ellie and Kraft Dreier.

Their home features spectacular, fenced in spaces for both the shade and the sun.

Let's take a look.

My name is Ellie Dreier, and this is my husband, Kraft Dreier.

And we are on an orca street on the north edge of what used to be Hartley Field.

There was nothing behind us except scrub field from old Hartley Field.

And everything was just scrub except for the row of Red Pines behind us.

The story is that those were planted in the 1940s by the Boy Scouts.

So we put one garden on the north side of the tree line and garden on the south side of the tree line.

So a shade garden and sun gardens, which we call the rock.

We quickly realized that the marauding deer.

Everything in sight.

And so we had to fence.

We get an occasional bunny because they're not bunny proof, but the deer have to stay out.

Almost was not here when we started the project.

So it's been an evolution.

This is ground cover European wild ginger as opposed to Canadian wild ginger.

And these have very shiny leaves and are very attractive.

That little sign says Wild flowers Welcome here.

We just had that created for us because it's a line of demarcation between the regular plants and the wildflowers with exceptions with it.

With a few exceptions, yes.

The legal area with the yellow blossoms.

I don't think you can kill them.

They're very, very pretty.

And the is still be is at a lot of color.

And then, of course, we have to put in a lot of hostas because I really like hostas.

And they they come in so many different varieties or alien craft just showed us their beautiful shade garden.

But there's more to see.

Later tonight, we'll show off their sun garden and their beautiful shed, too.

But for now, let's get to some viewer questions.

Fred emailed us and asked, Is it too early to remove the pine needles?

He put on his blueberry plants he put in last fall?

What?

Why would he why would he put them on as a mulch?

Right.

And he wants to leave them there.

And the nice thing about pine needles is they don't break down very readily, but they don't acidify the soil.

That's a misconception.

And they'll keep the moisture in and yeah, leave them there.

They've been there.

So don't don't take it off.

It's emulsion.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sandy in Finland, Minnesota is asking for advice or guidance you would give gardeners to avoid inadvertently bringing in invasive jumping worm.

I don't know where you'd really get it.

I mean, what we're seeing in down in the Twin Cities, Right?

So if you brought in from the cities.

So I would advise people, be careful about what may come from south of Hinkley, whether it be soil or whether it be potted plants.

But in this area, we haven't had the problem.

Local?

Yeah.

Shop local.

It's good advice.

Kathy, you recently had a soil test that showed she needed to add nitrogen fertilizer.

£0.15 per 100 square feet.

She plans to add age to cow manure to the garden this year.

The question is, should she add the recommended amount of nitrogen?

In addition to the manure, or is that too much nitrogen which you growing?

That's the big question.

And nitrogen.

She probably didn't get the nitrogen results.

We don't give them on the soil test because it dissipates.

So she's getting just the standard recommendation.

And if she's growing, maybe a heavy feeder, say you're going sweet corn or you're growing cauliflower or cabbage, then I think some additional organic manure would be fine with that recommendation.

But I would avoid it for a lot of other crops that don't need the extra nitrogen.

What do you think?

Right.

I wouldn't.

I wouldn't.

Yeah, I'd be leery of it and how she's going to apply it and what source is she going to get it.

We always need nitrogen, though.

We do want to minimize that.

But there's such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Shirley in Duluth is asking about inventory that was advertised last year in Bayfield.

Do you know where and if they're being sold in the Duluth area?

The inventory.

So I haven't seen them available.

They were in Bayfield, Right.

But I haven't seen them locally and I haven't seen them commercially available or really they're a relatively new introduction.

And so production is a bit limited.

And basically that's Aspen.

It's a purple Oh, so it's got a great name and maybe some good marketing going along with it.

But be aware that this is not necessarily, you know, a fantastic new native introduction.

Okay.

Galen Brinson, Minnesota, found that last summer her strawberries became discolored and leathery.

They started out fine, but by mid-summer, many became like this.

What do you think this is and what you need to pull them up and start over with new strawberry plants?

Well, I have a pretty good idea.

I really think that that's tarnished plant bug now that I think about it.

The tarnished plant bug attacks that flower bloom right when the fruit is beginning to form and she doesn't have to worry about them for next year, the plants are going to be fine.

So one of the most difficult insects control and one of the real problems that we have was strawberry production.

And she's probably going to have to either give up the crop or she's going to have to use some kind of a synthetic insecticide for control.

And when would she apply then?

Bob would have to be gone early.

So it's a real repeated there.

Probably not.

Oh, it's it's very seasonal.

But tarnish plant bug is a real difficult insect and it causes our commercial industry some real headaches.

Kathy International falls in zone to be wants to know how to grow foxglove successfully.

Well, I haven't I haven't seen a zone to foxglove.

There are some that are available for three and very variety specific.

There's an annual foxglove and it does relatively well.

And so she could try to get some foxglove and maybe it would reseed.

But I don't really know of one that's readily available for zone two.

Right.

We're getting warmer, but not not warm enough.

And international falls here for perennials, but Daniel Daniels would be good.

Mm hmm.

Betty in Moose Lake is wanting to know an effective and organic way to get rid of maggot flies from her apple trees.

Okay, Bob, we did a little work on this because we don't like to do things organically.

A spray program is is really so rigorous that you're better off.

We like to do is just bag the fruit and anything you can reach for your table stalk.

You can use just a a simple baggie sandwich bag and you got to clip the bottoms of the water drains out.

So bag as much as you possibly can, as high as you can.

And then everything above that.

We just use that for applesauce.

Okay.

Thanks for your questions and thanks for your answers.

Moving back to the topic of fencing, Bob, you wanted to talk about fencing for animal control.

Yeah.

First, I admire in the first clip the beautiful fans for their control.

I think the first thing you have to ask is that what is it you're trying to control?

Is it deer?

Is it rabbits, squirrels, mice, chipmunks, or perhaps your neighbors in the view?

So I think let them talk a little bit about privacy fencing.

Mm hmm.

But on the.

You want to ask the question.

Winter or summer?

We have a lot of options for summer control of deer, which is our principal predatory species.

But winter can be more of a challenge.

These are the trees and shrubs to what we call woodies.

We really like metal fencing and people.

For years, I've been saying, save yourself a lot of trouble.

Build a good, solid fence.

You know, if you've got a large area, you really have to go up eight or nine feet.

Smaller areas, you can get away with smaller, shorter fences because they investigate this and they don't want to jump into an area and get trapped.

But good solid metal fencing in the summer, you got other options.

I think electric fencing is a good viable option.

Then you've got lots of different kinds of repellents and these are some of the stress and eggs.

These are some of the tankage pellets, repellents.

And you want to rotate active ingredients.

So not just product because they can have the same or similar active ingredients, you're going to have to reapply frequently.

Then we have some motion sensor sprinklers that I think are quite effective.

But in terms of maybe living fences, Deb, why don't you address that?

So we get questions on this all the time as far as privacy and maybe you don't mind your neighbor, but you just want a little bit more privacy for yourself.

And a lot of people will ask what kind of shrubs you can do.

A lot of different shrubs there.

Forsythia is very quick growing and I like to mix them.

It's nice to if you can do a monoculture and it's one thing, one specie, but then you really see variation.

If you see variation, it can really bother you, but you can add different species.

Like if you wanted to do forsythia and like even a hydrangea or cranberry or Nannie Berry VI, Burnhams, you can do a nice tall depending on your height, a lot of people for privacy, and then they can mix them and then you get spring interest, different flowers, different fruits and different color in the fall.

And so you can add a lot of that stuff will get up relatively quickly.

And it can get up to six or eight feet tall and some real beautiful stuff.

And you can plant for the natives and for pollinators and for birds to make a living.

Great suggestions, but probably not for deer control corrals and.

All right, awesome.

Well, keep calling in your questions and we'll answer some of them now.

The last shot, there was just some, you know, a photo of an apple.

A lot of people are going to be planting apple trees right now.

So don't forget, get the fence ready, get your collars ready because they're watching you as you plant these.

And don't think that you're going to get through that first evening.

So this is in there is pretty is the ones we saw but good metal fencing a good collar around that main stem.

And that's really important when you're putting in your new trees this spring could top extending to skip that.

Thank you so much.

Let's get back to some of your questions.

J.D.

in Ottawa wants to know if any local greenhouses sell Jolly Farmer products.

I haven't seen them.

I haven't.

And neither one I don't know.

Yvonne from Ashland wants to know when you should trim your lilac trees after they bloom straight.

Linda from Duluth would like to know of a vine or special plant to attract butterflies in a raised bed.

Raised bed?

Because I would say a silly bees or butterfly, weed, butterfly.

But sometimes that root.

You know it's it's it's a but maybe the raised bed would be dry enough and would be better for it because you see it near railroad tracks and where it's really dry.

But winter, you know, the cold running through a raised bed, I'm not sure that it would winter in that raised beds.

Yeah, that's what you always have to be concerned with.

PERINO Did she want a vining vining or a special plant?

What do you think of Morning Glory?

Perhaps Clematis?

There are some there also are some Black-Eyed Susan that have a vining for an annual three months annual right.

And it might be better to do an annual in a race bed, but that's a perennial wintering is going to be a challenge.

That's my thought.

That makes sense.

Shirley wants to know why some years for daffodils don't bloom.

Do you have to feed the established ones in the fall or spring?

Well, don't do them at all.

Well, oftentimes what happens is, you know, you've got an established and these naturalized.

So they're going to be there one year to the next.

But grass can come in and they can compete.

The trees can grow.

So you get a little more.

She is bigger on undercutting plantings.

So you really need a lot of vigor in the plant.

So you get that down in the bulb.

So she's not getting enough growth during the growing season.

And a little fertility right now in the spring would be just ideal for the particularly the moisture we've got in there.

You could use a little nitrogen.

And would she be I mean, I don't know if she cleans up too quickly and doesn't have it store enough energy.

Because some people do clear, you know, clean them up.

Just some tidy them up.

Yeah.

Let them grow.

Let them grow.

Yeah.

So you can store some energy in that bulb.

That's right.

But they're great.

They're.

They're resistant.

They will naturally be back to year after year.

But you got to get good vigor out of the growth during the growing season.

Okay.

Annette in Hermantown wants to know if it's unusual that none of her hostas have started to sprout yet.

She lives in Zone three A and have houses in various locations in her yard.

Other plants and flowers near them have already sprouted.

She'd be worried.

Well, I'm wonder.

I don't think she should.

I'm wondering if it's a really deep shade area that these houses are in, and it always takes those areas longer to thaw out.

They're going to be colder.

We've had a lot of rain and a lot of cold weather.

And so I don't know that they're really going to break.

And if there's mulch on them, that keeps the frost in there longer, also.

Very definitely.

And she's away from the lake because the lake, things are warming faster.

But it is time really to get that mulch off some people over mulched.

I think I did because I was concerned about an open winter and too much cold penetration.

That mulch has to come off.

Now.

We've got to get those soils warm and growing.

Okay.

Mary is wondering about her current bushes growing in her backyard that have produced an abundance of currants the past few summers.

The branches are getting long and arching over, making it difficult to pick.

Should she cut them back in the fall where they're dormant to encourage new growth or will that kill them and kill them?

No, I'll kill them.

You know what I think?

And you can give me your opinion on this, Deb, but I think if they're older plants, you can see the woody stems and she might prune out maybe 20% of the woody stems right at ground level and let the others flourish.

And this will encourage additional sprouting from the roots.

So rather than trying to prune, you're going to take our flowering buds and damage your potential for yield.

So I would take off.

I'd get in and thin them out.

But only a few of the woody stems to the ground.

To the ground?

30%.

Yeah.

Okay.

Linda in Duluth wants to know how much blood meal should she add to her veggie garden?

That is an eight by 16 Ladder 2000 application.

And what's her?

And once again, this is a slow release nitrogen so she'll get away with more for the heavy feeders things that really require a lot of nitrogen which are plants that have great big bushy vegetative material and it's unless she gets really extreme, it's difficult to overplay because it's going to be a very slow organic release.

Phyllis in Hibbing has to pick any plants.

One has beautiful flowers and one does not.

Why is that?

Well, I always go to a plant depth on peonies.

Where's that crown out at?

Did she or did she over mulch or.

Because a lot of times people get them in too deep.

And I see it all the time that people have one that's a little bit higher and it just takes that little bit of lift and then the eyes come up and then then they know where they're sitting, you know, and if and if they did over mulch the one, then that could be an issue and could be sunlight too.

Yeah.

Does is one in more shade than the other.

Yeah.

Maybe a little nitrogen and not heavy feeders.

You know, we use a rule of thumb, the three finger rule, when you're moving them in the fall, you know that those buds that emerge should not be deeper than about three fingers deep from the soil surface.

So including mulch, too.

Right.

So I really think you're right there.

That one is in too deep.

Raise it this fall.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Right.

And just get it up a little higher with that.

Jeff from a clock has a five foot tall are provided that lost some needles over the winter.

Currently they're part green, part brown.

Will they die or they should die?

No, no, no.

I mean, they're going to be esthetically unpleasing for a while, but you could definitely clean out that brown because it's not going to green up.

No.

You give them a haircut, share them down, you know, let you know I'm taking the green portion off, but they can be pruned pretty aggressively through most of the growing season.

So right now they could do it now.

Sure.

Okay.

Thank you, Bob.

Thanks, Tim.

And now let's return to the gardens of Lee and Kraft desire to see their son garden.

We have a rock garden.

We built it if for no other reason than there was an abundance of rocks here when they bulldozed, every rock in the rock garden was harvested.

Half of this lot.

Since it's nice and sunny, we can grow a much wider variety of plants.

We have a gooseberry plant.

Thornbury, Currants, and everybody loves the blue Sea Holly because it's just so striking.

And the Hollyhock is really my favorite because it's different.

Every year comes up where it wants to come up.

It changes colors too.

It started out bright red and then white, and now it's pink.

It's a beautiful shed.

It was designed with the help of an architect made, made to custom made to order.

It was a retirement gift from Kraft, and we pretty much knew what we wanted it to look like.

So we employed Builders Commonwealth to design the interior and exactly what we wanted for an exterior and a different company.

Did the stone work all around it.

But I wanted an ability to create it into a flower bed that reflected my Lithuanian heritage, the colors that reflected around the shed, the yellow and red and the green from the Lithuanian flag.

In the back we have yellow potent tillers.

We also have rule, which is roto gravel ins, and that is the national plant of Lithuania.

It's very, very bitter.

That reflects the history of the country because they've they've always been war torn Nazis from the West, Russians from the east.

And it seemed a fitting a fitting flower.

It's written in Lithuanian and it means welcome to my flower garden.

There's a different word for flower gardens and vegie garden.

So this flower garden.

What a beautiful garden.

It's fancy.

Yes, yes.

I love the fencing, but I love the themes to this wonderful whilst we really, really thank them for their nice work and sharing it with us.

Absolutely beautiful.

Let's wrap things up with more of your questions.

So we have a viewer that has tulips in a bunch.

Should they be growing them separately?

Yes, it's my opinion.

If they're really too tight, you know, then you're going to really not get the kind of bloom that you want.

So tulips really should be separated out.

And the bigger the bulb, the bigger the bloom, right?

Oh, absolutely right.

How far apart should they be separated?

Again, how big is the.

That's right.

Is the plant.

I mean, they tell you all this on the packaging, 6 to 8 inches at least raised.

Cindy in Duluth wants to know if she should put manure on rhubarb for fertilizer.

I think it's fine as long as it's well rotted.

Right.

One quick caveat.

We don't like fresh manure of any type on a garden.

It should really be composted for a year and then slow release.

It's going to be fine under rhubarb.

Now's the time to get it on.

Where's the best place to actually get it from?

The cow?

Okay, good, good.

Again, it is kind of tough because of cross-contamination and making sure it is well rotted.

So find a good source again.

Find maybe a farmer.

Know there are their farms.

They are being a little precision.

But there are commercial products.

Right?

Right.

And they're they're big.

And much of that really is turkey manure that comes from the southern part of Minnesota.

But if you're getting fresh local source, we really want it composted for a minimum of year when you're great.

Robert from Calumet has many wild raspberries.

Anything you could do to make them better, Hardier, Hardier.

They're going to be hardy.

Yeah, they're hardy.

You can dig them down.

Obviously.

You can thin them down.

Take the real small stems out so they have a little bit more vigor, some fertility, maybe a little bit of that manure.

And but they're never going to give you the big fruit.

It's the hybridization process that gives us in the cultivation that that gives us the real quality.

But they're smaller fruit, but real dense flavors, but spread them out a little bit, thin them down a little bit.

Okay.

Shirley has a three year old climbing hydrangea and wants to know if she should be concerned about the Basement Foundation being damaged from the roots.

Or.

Shashi, move it.

It's climbing up a vinyl siding house, and she's in Marengo, Wisconsin.

I don't think so.

I don't think they're very vigorous.

I don't see that the hydrangeas, the climbing ones, I mean, it takes a long time for that to generally climb.

So I wouldn't be concerned with it.

It's so well said.

I think that so many of our cultivated plants we're not concerned about.

It's some of the invasives that we're more concerned than we are about these cultivated varieties.

So what would be something that would mess up the foundation?

Can you give us some examples?

Engelman Can, Engelman can, and we're concerned about plugging them into what people will call bamboo log locally.

We're concerned about that.

And we want that's invasive in a noxious weeds.

We want to get it controlled.

Julie in Duluth wants to know if we have recommendations for getting rid of an extensive creeping Bellflower infestation.

Huh?

Well, herbicide is sometimes you can drag all the covering that you want.

People don't want to use it.

You can, you can, you can dig and let them regrow and cover and but ultimately perhaps a fall application of some kind of a systemic herbicide that's labeled may be the ultimate solution.

You can try and try first, try everything else first, see if you're successful.

Melanie would like to know more about tree peonies.

Should they be pruned when in best soil and light?

I don't think they should be pruned.

I mean, you can once they get started and see if there's any dead wood.

But generally they're really pretty hardy and they're generally pretty vigorous.

And like the barcelo of the yellow, the coral, there are some really they're a little bit older varieties that seem to me to be a bit more vigorous and a bit more hardy than some of the newer breeding that they've done.

But generally a tree, peonies do very well and they're magnificent and they're valuable.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Just take good care of them again.

Maybe a little fertility in the spring and then if they're not hardy, you might want to select one of the older, older varieties.

This is Minnesota, where al Masri Yeah.

Thank you for all your great questions.

And that's all for good gardening tonight.

You can follow us on our social media channels on Instagram at Great Gardening PBS North and on YouTube at YouTube.com.

Such great gardening where you can find tonight's episode posted tomorrow.

Thank you so much, Bob and Deb, for all your great insights.

And thank you for your questions.

We'll return for a new episode next week, our last one until July, where we'll answer as many of your questions as we can from all of us here, great gardening.

Thanks for watching and enjoy the garden.