- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener," let's create new autumn memories.

For over 40 years, Lucinda Hutson has celebrated Day of the Dead to honor her family, friends, and beloved pets.

Daly Young from Bloomers Garden Center, in Elgin, styles up cool-weather beds and containers.

Entomologist Wizzie Brown answers your questions, and from our 30th season archives, John Dromgoole demonstrates how to graft houseplants.

So, let's get growing right here, right now.

- [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener's" 30th season is made possible by Lisa and Desi Rhoden, supporting a love of gardening and nature for all communities.

- [Announcer] Wanna know what happens to your recycled plastic?

Since 2004, H-E-B has turned 58 million pounds of recycled plastic into things like composite decking and Field & Future by H-E-B trash bags.

You can learn more at OurTexasOurFuture.com.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music ending) - Lucinda Hutson's been part of "CTG" since the very start.

Last fall, we returned to her Life's a Fiesta purple cottage to celebrate Dia de Los Muertos in a loving tribute to family, friends, and precocious pets.

- Dia de Los Muertos is a celebration of life as much of a celebration of death.

And, in Mexico, people go to the graveyards.

They bring flowers, and wreaths, and garlands, and candles, and photos of their beloved deceased.

Midnight, November 1st, so November 2nd, the Day of the Dead, the graves are mounded with marigold petals.

It just looks like gold.

It's so beautiful.

Marigolds kind of speak of the brevity of life.

There are short season to be able to grow marigolds.

Think of the scent of a marigold, heady, strong, musty.

The brilliant bright color was paying homage to the sun gods of the Aztec Indians.

So they feel that both the color and the scent of the marigold help lead the deceased home for the night.

And the cross of marigolds at my front door, as you walk in, it takes away your sins and it cleanses you.

But it's a time of remembering those you loved with the photo, with their favorite food, with tequila or mezcal, a little thing they loved, a deck of cards, a cowboy hat, a sombrero, you know, something like that.

People dress in different costumes, more like muertos instead of pumpkins or whatever.

But what I love, it's a way to remember your beloved deceased.

I do very lavish altars, obviously, and this one is my contemporary rendition of a Mexican Day of the Dead altar.

I don't have the marigolds, I don't have a real Mexican motif, but I'm celebrating and honoring my mother, my grandmother, my sister, who are all now deceased.

But this particular purple altar in my cabin is more of my, you know, contemporary version.

They all loved purple, they all loved jewelry, so I have their favorite jewelry around candles.

One drank gin, one drank tequila, one drank bourbon, so I made sure they all have a little bit to go with their altars 'cause we're having a fiesta.

We're gonna just celebrate with them.

They loved seashells, they loved the beach.

And so I tried to bring out things that they loved.

And my grandmother's best friend, Pummie, made this doll bed for me, what?

How many years ago?

I was 10, so a long time ago.

And I would sit in bed with my grandma and I'd be at the end of the bed and she'd rub my feet.

And in this 100-year-old scrapbook is a picture of Pummie, my grandma's best friend who made the bed.

My grandmother hated to have her picture taken, so this is an oil painting of her in a beautiful Mexican blouson with purple flowers embroidered all over it.

And I found the blouson.

I hung it up next to her picture and it looks like angels' wings.

The ofrenda for my father changes every year, but he loved fishing in Baja, so he always gets some fish on his altar, the piece of flan, because he loved flan, and mermaids.

He liked mermaids a lot.

So some of you at home think, "Oh, I can't do all this, I can't do all this."

Set up a little table, put a vase of flowers, put a picture of your beloved deceased, put some cookies out there for them, light a candle.

It can be that simple.

And it teaches your children well.

You know, it teaches them about people maybe they didn't know or need to remember as well.

Sancho was an incredible cat.

He was 16 years old when I lost him.

He was the mascot of the neighborhood.

Everybody knew him.

He was so bad.

One year I had a box of Day of the Dead bread, a big cardboard box with about 16 small Day of the Dead.

He opened the box in the middle of the night and ate the tops off of all of them.

He loved muffins.

In fact, his altar has a muffin for him.

But he was the most precious cat.

There's a picture of him on his ofrenda, on his altar, in a red velvet sombrero, and all of his favorite little things are up there.

Again, you could just have a picture of your dog, and a candle, and a little bowl of his favorite food, or some cat food or a dog bone.

You know, just remember him.

And we have a banner of Day of the Dead cats above him to kind of flutter in the wind.

They say the fluttering of the banners and papel picado means life, life, life, wind and life.

But I think when we think of ofrendas, it can be spiritual, political.

There can be other ways that you might wanna do an altar.

And we have so much that's happened in the United States this year, the floods, the fires, well, also Ukraine, and Gaza, and Israel.

We have so many things going on.

So in my other altar, I honor all of them as well.

You know, it's been a hard year, and we have to really take the time to remember what people are going through and to say bless you.

Day of the Dead bread is so important too, that yeasty scent of orange peel and anise.

10, 20 years ago in Austin, I could go to all the Mexican bakeries that are gone now, and by Day of the Dead bread shaped like corpses, shaped like the skull, the calaveras.

Now, you go, and all I can find are the round breads because they're easier to make.

I can't find the beautiful skull breads or the corpse breads.

But, oh, to have that bread slightly warmed up with a cup of Mexican hot chocolate.

That's a wonderful way to celebrate all your beloved deceased.

I used to go to the graveyards in Mexico.

I started going in the '80s, I believe.

And I would go to the graveyards every day for Day of the Dead, and she's holding vigil at the altar for her husband, and they didn't have cameras, so there's a little hand-painted picture of her husband.

She's very serious and very seriously holding her vigil there.

And the next year, I went back to the same grave to see her with the picture, to give her her picture.

Her family was all there holding vigil for her.

And when I gave them the picture, they were so excited, but they were merry, they were remembering her.

They had tamales, they had some tequila, you know, and she was more serious.

She was of the old world of, "He's gonna come home tonight.

My husband is going to come home and he's gonna have his little mole right there.

He's gonna have his little Coca-Cola there."

I have been building ofrendas in my house for 40 years.

As you walk into my house, there are several smaller altars, but the one on the dining room table is so much fun and it too changes every year.

I think it's my favorite this year, because I've done tiers of sugar skulls and confections, and little toys and things I've brought back from Mexico over the past 40 years.

And again, they poke fun of death a little bit.

In death, you do what you were doing in life.

You sell turkey, you sell pineapple, you make mole, you drink tequila, and all these little confection dolls show people doing that.

I have sugar skulls in those rooms that are so beautiful.

They're probably 30 years old.

I bring them out every year wrapped in tissue.

They're burnished from all the candles and the altars I've done, and they are so beautifully crafted.

I want it to be a time that I can reflect upon people, things, culture, histories that have influenced my life so profoundly.

Yes, it's a solemn time, but it's a joyful time.

Day of the Dead is a celebration of life.

- As we transition seasons, let's bring along ideas for color as we head into this winter.

Today, we're thrilled to meet Daly Young from Bloomers Garden Center, in Elgin, who's going to style up containers and discuss garden beds.

Daly, how are you doing?

- Very good.

- Thank you so much for coming today.

Let's first start with what is Bloomers?

- Yeah, so my parents started, Marcus and Jody, in 1987.

And they started small, and now it's grown into a full-scale nursery.

We sell perennials, vegetables.

We do a lot of growing ourselves and whatnot.

- Okay.

Why is fall such a good time to plant here in Central Texas?

- It gives kind of a headstart on just getting your plants established.

You also don't have to worry about having to water as much to start out with.

I've planted several plants at my home that have just flourished after planting in the fall, versus other plants that I planted in the spring just 'cause they got that extra head start.

- Well, you've brought together a smorgasbord of plants to talk about some color in fall and into winter, some of these being evergreens.

So we're gonna try to cover as much as we can.

We probably won't hit all of them.

Let's start first with, you've got some annuals and edibles within these containers.

What do you wanna talk about with these?

- Yeah, so these make great just patio pot plants.

I like to add in vegetables along with some color.

- You've got some Swiss chard here.

- Swiss chard, yeah.

And then, also adding in some smaller growing perennials, like the blackfoot daisy.

Eventually, you could transition that into the ground once everything else is kind of past its season.

It's a great thing for apartments and smaller areas.

- For smaller spaces.

Okay, like balconies and all that?

- Yes.

- That's great.

And then, you change them out just seasonally.

- Usually seasonally, yeah.

- What about some of these others here?

We'll start with American beautyberry, because fall's when it's really starting to get in its prime.

- [Daly] Yeah, that's a great native plant to bring out.

It's great for wildlife, birds, and it can actually, it's a good one for shade.

- Right.

- [Daly] It's a good understory plant if there's less options available for shade.

So that's a really great plant to have.

- Some others we've got, flame acanthus on the opposite end of the spectrum, loves the sun.

- Yes, yes.

Yeah, that's one of my favorites.

It is a beautiful plant.

It's also great for hummingbirds, pollinator plant.

- Right.

- Very hardy.

It gets big, but it's not gonna take over.

- Some of mine I've seen gotten pretty wide though.

- Yeah.

- They'll go if you let them though.

- Yeah.

- But I've also known too, though they don't mind if you hack away at them.

- Oh yeah.

- You know, so you can sort of keep them in check.

What about, let's see, the fall aster right up here?

- Yes, that's a great one to get for fall.

We have one planted behind our building, and when it's in full bloom, we can't keep those in stock.

They get so covered in little purple flowers.

Perennial, very hardy as well.

- Well, what about sedges for evergreen folks?

There's a lot of sedge options out there.

- [Daly] Yes, there's many varieties of sedge, and those are another shade or sun plant.

The clump will expand over time, but they're very thick, but I would still say that clump expanding is gonna be pretty slow.

- [John] I know some of them, at least with the natives that I've had, that they all actually will seed out as well.

- [Daly] Mm-hmm, yeah, you can have them seed out, yes.

- But you don't wanna mow them too much.

I've also seen people trying to say, "Okay, I'm gonna replace my lawn, I'm gonna do sedge," but then they try to mow it and then it doesn't work.

- Yeah, yeah, it really is more, it gets too high to really keep cut.

You just wanna let it flourish.

- [John] Right, let it do its thing.

Grass is over here, we've got in the front, two blue gramas, which are wonderful drought-tolerant plants.

- Yes, full sun, very drought tolerant, can definitely withstand our harsh summers here.

They look great with any of the ornamental grasses mixing those into landscapes and even color beds.

- With those, they probably want soils that are drain a little bit more, right?

- Yes, yeah.

Yeah, well-drained soils.

Sometimes, you know, you can get things established if you, you know, mix stuff in the hole and do adequate soil mixing.

But, generally speaking, you do want pretty well-drainage on most of the grasses.

- Okay, and then behind that, we've got, which is fairly popular, the coastal muhly here, the Gulf Coast muhly.

- [Daly] Another great one.

It blooms a purple plume, and a lot of places, you know, you see them around town just planted in mass plantings.

It makes a very pretty plant.

You can also plant them just alone, you know, again, in your landscape as a focal point.

- Right, and they're sort of the opposite of blue grama, right?

We're gonna wanna go with a little bit more moisture.

- Mm-hmm.

- And what about the Leucophyllum we have up over here?

The barometer plant, or cenizo?

People love that.

- Yes.

Yeah, there's so many new varieties now too.

It's really cool to have those there.

There's dwarf ones now that, you know, if you don't have the space for a big eight-foot shrub, you can, you know, get a smaller version of it.

Very drought tolerant.

You can also, when they start getting leggy, cut them back a little bit and they'll stay full.

- [John] And those are evergreen as well, right?

- Mm-hmm, yes.

- Yeah, so you always sort of have that anchor in the garden if you like it.

- Yes.

- [John] And when they are full bloom, man, it's hard to beat.

- Yes.

- [John] We've got some rock penstemon right here, I believe.

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's just a great little, low-growing plant.

It is gonna want good drainage, full sun, very drought tolerant as well.

- [John] And is that an evergreen or is that-- - It's gonna be more, it's gonna depend on our winter, I would say that would cover a lot of these.

Sometimes we do have some mild winters where some of the perennials that do freeze back don't or vice versa.

You know, we have some hard winters where everything freezes back, so-- - Yes, everything does.

- So it can fluctuate a little bit, yeah.

- Right, but I mean, I guess to go back to the grasses, that's always a great option if you can think about evergreens, but also, you know, leaving the growth up there and it's brown, yes, but you have this wonderful texture that's also a wonderful nesting resource for wildlife and other species as well.

And then, we've also got here the red yucca.

That's a great evergreen, but very robust as well, but also puts out these really beautiful flower stalks.

- That's another great native that, you know, if you just want something to leave alone, get that planted, and it's gonna attract pollinators as well.

- [John] And I know there's some that have some white flowers I know that attract some nocturnal bats that are kind of cool.

- Yeah, there's white flowers.

There's even ones that have like a little bit of a darker color, like a almost a red-- - Is it the brake lights?

- Brake light, yes.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You've got the Gregg Salvia, correct?

- Those I would say are pretty much evergreen here, another great pollinator plant.

Even though they are evergreen, it does help to cut them back right before spring to help them stay full and bushy.

- Some of these will need freeze protection, correct?

- Yes.

The bowls, for instance-- - Containers, yeah, yeah.

- You know, they don't have anything, any insulation around their roots.

A lot of the perennials are gonna be root hardy.

It'll just depend on the winter.

If we're gonna have a really harsh freeze, some people will mulch pretty heavily and then water them in before the freeze, and that definitely helps insulate the roots.

- And then, what are some of the big changes y'all have seen in terms of interest at Bloomers in terms of what people are going after in terms of plants?

I think survivability is probably one of them.

- Yeah, yeah, a lot of people have been coming in for natives and that's great, just wanting to get stuff that's gonna grow well with minimal care and look good.

House plants have kind of come in the last few years, and so a lot of people that don't have space outside, you know, wanna have something, so they do house plants.

And just, overall, I think just landscaping has kind of picked up.

- All right, well, wonderful.

Daly, thank you so much for coming by.

Folks should all go out to Elgin and visit Bloomers and pick you up some winners for this winter.

Fun fact, Daly's dad, Marcus Young, first appeared on "Central Texas Gardener" in May, 2007.

Here's a clip from November, 2015, about a great pollinator plant for winter.

'Cause this is a tough performer, you've brought us, it looks like a double-flower form.

- Right, so calendula is also called pot marigold, and it has a long history of being an edible flower.

It has kind of a peppery taste to it, but it's a wonderful fall flower.

- Next, we're gonna check in with Wizzie Brown.

(gentle music) - We get a lot of questions about butterfly identification, especially the difference between queen and monarch butterflies, both of which use milkweed as a food source for their larvae.

Milkweed flowers attract all kinds of butterflies, including these queen butterflies spotted by Brittany Bosworth.

Milkweed attracts other insects too, like these large milkweed bugs on Nicholas Martin's swampweed milkweed.

Milkweed bugs have piercing sucking mouthparts that they use to feed on stems, leaves, and seeds of milkweed.

Another insect you may see munching on milkweed may be mistaken for a ladybird beetle.

Swamp milkweed leaf beetles feed on various types of milkweed in both the adult and larval stages.

If you don't want your monarch or queen caterpillars to share their milkweed, you can use a handheld vacuum to remove both milkweed bugs and milkweed beetles.

That brings us to how you can tell the difference between queen and monarch butterflies.

For adults, the upper sides of monarch wings are orange with black outlining the wing venation.

The tips of the monarch wings are gonna be dark brown to black with white spots.

Queens lack the vein outlines on the upper side of their wings.

Their wings are orangish brown edged with dark brown with white spotting.

We know that milkweed is the larval host for monarchs, but did you know that it's also the larval host for queen butterflies?

Nicholas discovered several queen caterpillars on his swamp milkweed.

So how can you tell the difference between queen and monarch caterpillars?

They look similar with both having black, white, and yellow striping.

But monarch caterpillars have two pair of tentacles, while queen caterpillars have three pairs of tentacles.

And when Lily Angelle spotted a lizard going after her queen caterpillars that were close to pupating, she brought the milkweed and them inside.

Her timing was perfect, since, by the next morning, they were forming the J, which is a sign that the caterpillar will soon shed its last larval skin and form the chrysalis.

When monarchs come through Texas in the fall, it's important to have nectar plants for them to eat and get energy to keep moving into Mexico to their overwintering grounds.

If you still have milkweed growing, it could cause them to break their migration.

Find out more and watch online at CentralTexasGardener.org.

- John Dromgoole's been a favorite "Central Texas Gardener" host since the 1990s, spinning a few yarns along with hands-on advice.

As we celebrate our 30th season, take a look at this Backyard Basics from January, 2016.

- Welcome to Backyard Basics.

I'm John Dromgoole.

You ever had a dracaena in the house kind of get out of shape in there?

It happens quite a bit.

If you don't turn it once a week or so, a quarter turn, then they're gonna get all twisty.

But if you want more dracaenas also to pass out to friends or for another window in the house, you can propagate them rather easily, and this is called air layering.

There's different ways of doing this.

One of them is to take a slice like that out of it.

But the way I've always done it is to make a little wedge in there, and I'll show you how this works.

You get in here, get something sharp, be careful, and cut that little wedge like that.

Just take it down at a bit of an angle.

Then you change the angle and you come in this way.

And now you've got that little piece that came out of there, you see that?

The other thing that really helps it is some rooting powder, that'll stimulate roots much more quickly.

Now that it has the wedge in there, it's a little bit weak at that point.

One of the things I do is put a support on there, a little splint.

Now, if you don't have a piece of bamboo at home, what you can do is use an old chopstick.

These are fine.

But the main thing is to get it to a certain length that will support it.

And so bamboo is always hard to cut, but with some good pruners, you can make a nice, clean cut on there.

There we go, so there's our little support.

But you need to keep it moist.

In order for it to root properly, moisture is essential.

So the way we do that is we take some sphagnum moss, and you can buy sphagnum moss at any good nursery.

And then, you take a nice bundle of the sphagnum and you put it right here where the cut is and your support.

So I'm gonna wrap it up.

You need to use a generous amount.

Don't be afraid to put that sphagnum out there.

Put a nice, generous on there.

Keep your splint right here.

And the next thing we need is a piece of plastic.

This one is about eight by eight.

This is a good way to keep it moist in there.

So I wrap it.

Let's say you're making tamales, and it's just like that.

You wrap it up and there you go.

Now, we have a little greenhouse with some moisture there that will stay there if you wrap it up.

And so I'll use these.

You can use twine, you can use anything that is flexible that will hold it together.

But I like to use the twine, because it is inexpensive and you can find it at home.

Or these twist ties, sometimes you find them in the kitchen from something like bread that came in.

So this is a very good way to tie it down nice and tight.

Now the support's under there, right?

Here's another one for this end.

One of the things that happens is it has a tendency to dry out.

So this is a good way to be able to open it in the future and put some more moisture in there.

It takes a while, but the next thing that's gonna happen is the roots are gonna begin to grow.

One of the ways of kind of making a little more of a greenhouse is you can put some aluminum foil around it, and that is really helpful also.

Usually, this is still on the plant.

This cutting is taking while it's still there, not after the fact.

And that way, as it grows, it continues to have this nice vigor in there, but you begin to see roots.

Pretty soon you'll see the roots growing all through there, and that's a good time to cut it off.

You'll go right underneath it, and you'll have a plant that you can put into a good potting soil and you're on your way to a new house plant or a gift for somebody.

Several different types of plants lend themselves to being propagated in this way.

For Backyard Basics, I'm John Dromgoole.

- Be sure to check out CentralTexasGardener.org for tips, resources, and to watch online.

Until next time, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(gentle bright music) (gentle bright music continues) (gentle bright music continues) (gentle bright music fades) - [Announcer] "Central Texas Gardener's" 30th season is made possible by Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

Supporting a love of gardening and nature for all communities.

- [Announcer] Wanna know what happens to your recycled plastic?

Since 2004, H-E-B has turned 58 million pounds of recycled plastic into things like composite decking and Field & Future by H-E-B trash bags.

You can learn more at OurTexasOurFuture.com.

(gentle music) (no audio)