- From the very merry month of May studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another stinking good episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks...

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

Did you try and pamper your growing garlic when things got tough this past winter?

On today's show, we'll explain why "helping" is often the worst thing a gardener can do.

Plus, it's another fabulous phone call show, cats and kittens.

That's right.

Potential guests are busy apologizing to their asparagus.

So we will take that heaping helping of your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and inherently ironic insinuations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than you not killing your garlic right after this.

In life, we have many kinds of partners, school bus partners, business partners, even gardening partners.

Shouldn't you have one for the most important aspect of life, your health?

Lehigh Valley Health Network... - Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma company offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, I am your host... Got a great Question of the Week for you.

We got lots of phone calls, but first we have a mystery.

This package, a seemingly harmless package from Amazon.

However, the original label is stuck over with a label with my name and address on it.

And if I try to pull my label off, I destroy the one underneath, which is the only clue I have.

So I should have warned you to send the kids out of the room because this is spooky, OK?

I think there's no note.

There's nothing to explain anything.

Maybe somebody thought that Ducky needed a friend, but then we noticed there's a zipper up the back of this chipmunk thing and there's an on and off switch inside.

And there we go.

And then he, come on, you!

Anyway, he... Eek!

He will randomly make noises and try to walk.

The only time he walks successfully is when we got him.

Oh, there we go!

Don't you hurt Ducky!

What the heck is going on?!

Ladies and gentlemen, we could not plan for this, we better... Oh, my God, this is horrifying!

We better get right to your fabulous phone calls at... Rachel, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hello.

- Hello, Rachel, how are you?

- I'm doing great, how are you?

- I am just ducky, thanks for asking, and where is Rachel great?

- I'm in... - So what can we do for Rachel in between Cedar Point and Cleveland?

- My husband and I just purchased a new home in October.

- Congratulations.

- Got all moved in.

Thank you.

So we had to get the septic system replaced, which involves a lot of heavy equipment driving all over the yard.

So it compressed a lot of the soil.

And it is like the grass is coming up a lot better than I expected but there's a lot of really barren places and it's pretty compressed.

So I was wondering about some solutions for that.

Also I'm putting in a garden and I was going to be taking up some of the grass there to, you know, put a walkway down.

So I was thinking about maybe moving some of that grass over to that barren soil.

- OK, so how and when was the grass planted?

Did the people who replaced your septic system reseed it?

Did you?

- He actually didn't do any reseeding, they were waiting to see how the dirt kind of settled and everything from that.

So it's just the grass that they drove over that is coming up that I didn't think that it would come up at all.

But we still have about a 10 X 20 spot from where they were driving over the grass that isn't coming up at all.

And then we have all that area where they dug up like the old system and they put in the new system that's just like mounded dirt.

- Right.

And you don't know what kind of grass it is.

- Yeah, there's no grass, it was just what was there before... - No, no.

- They didn't seed anything.

- No, the grass that you have coming up now.

- Oh, yeah, no.

No idea.

- OK, all right, so one thing I want to mention, because I'm a city boy who turned into a country boy and I didn't know from septic systems when we moved to the house, you know, I thought you flush and it goes into the Delaware.

I mean, you know, don't worry about it until I found out that if you don't take good care of the septic system, something may be coming back to say hello to you again.

So it is important not to grow anything over top of the drain field for your new system other than grass.

Because if you grow something there with adventurous roots, it can get in and break up the drainpipes, it can ruin the system.

So it sounds pretty easy here.

What I would suggest you cut out a foot, foot square area of decent grass and take it to a really good garden center.

Call ahead and find out when their lawn guy is going to be there and ask them to identify the type of grass, because it's really important if you're going to over seed, so to speak, to fill in bare spots, you want the grasses to match.

So get that done and then when we get to August, I would have the area core aerated.

Have somebody come out with a machine that pulls little plugs out of the soil, make sure they know where the septic and the drain field is because they don't want to be over there.

But the rest of it, you want to have this core aeration done to loosen up the soil, make it more friendly to the grass.

After the core aeration is done, then you rough up the surface that's bare, spread the new seed.

Do not cover it with straw or any other nonsense.

Just water it twice a day, 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the evening.

And at that time of year, September, a cool season grass, that should be up and running within five, six, seven days.

When that happens, slowly back off.

No more nighttime watering and increase the time that you water, but decrease the frequency.

For instance, when we get to the real summer, the ideal is one inch of water a week.

And that's a lot of water, believe it or not.

But it sounds like you're just yeah, I don't see any issues here.

All right?

- I will give that a try.

- All right.

Good luck, Rachel.

- Awesome, thanks for your help.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

All right.

Before we take your next fabulous phone call, I want to explain to those who came in late or to those who are watching us on radio or in the podcast, someone sent me at home a stuffed chipmunk, which I believe it is, which, you know, it's just about Ducky's size and everything like that.

And I thought he was being sent to be Ducky's friend.

Well, when we pulled up the zipper on the back of him and activated him, he attacked Ducky, tried to take his mask off.

So if you know the identity of the chipmunk giver, please send us an e-mail or give us a call.

But don't worry, kids, Ducky just got his feathers a little ruffled.

Everything's fine.

Boo, no more chipmunks!

I thought only squirrels were bad!

Back to your fabulous phone calls at... Belinda, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you.

- Well, thank you, Belinda.

- Great to be here.

- It's great to have you here.

How are you doing?

- I am doing fabulous.

- All right, and where is Belinda fabulous?

- I am in...

The very top of California.

- All right, well, what can we do for Belinda in far, far northern California?

- I have a planter box in front of my house that faces north that I want to plant some of those low growing roses, but I'm not sure if that would be appropriate for there.

It gets very hot here in the summer, sometimes several days over 100.

And so I wanted to know I need a pop of red because I have a Spanish style house with a Spanish roof.

- Oh, that sounds great.

Well, no offense, but whose bright idea was it to face this thing north?

- Well, we're right on the Sacramento River, so we didn't have much choice.

- OK. OK, so your winters, such as they are, in my experience, occur in July and August.

Right?

That's when the freezing cold weather comes in.

- In July and August?

- Oh, my God, July in Eureka, off of the Humboldt Bay was the coldest winter I ever spent.

- But we're 150 miles inland from Eureka.

We're at the top of the Sacramento Valley.

- Oh, well, how cold does it get in the winter?

- In the 50s.

It can get colder, 40s... - You're breaking my heart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Took me through... - We're closer to Sacramento.

- Yeah.

It took me three days to find my car after the last snowstorm.

And how much sun does this area get?

- A lot.

It's one of the hottest places... - No, no, this one flower box.

- Oh, it gets probably from one o'clock on in the summer, it's full sun.

- Well, no, full sun would start at sunrise.

- OK, sorry.

- And roses typically want morning sun and then maybe even some shelter in the afternoon.

So I'll tell you what you are asking about.

But then I may make a separate suggestion.

- That would be great.

- There is a...

I don't know what you'd call it, a breed of roses, a type of rose called groundcover roses.

And they do not grow straight up.

They are prostate.

They go down low and they're used as ground covers where people will not be walking, very disease resistant, incredibly... fluoricious or whatever other word, they put out the roses like nobody's business.

If you deadhead these roses after the flowers fade, you may end up the season having seen thousands of individual roses.

I used to do a trick on mine, because I have them.

The brand name that I know of is Flower Carpet.

And these are groundcover roses.

And I used to do this trick where I would just cut a single branch and it'll have 50 or 100 roses on it.

So, very productive, very pretty, very disease resistant.

And they're about as tough as roses get.

If they don't thrive there because of the late sun, I would also suggest... You say it gets a lot of sun anyway.

Does it have to be roses?

I mean, there's lots of red flowers out there!

- No, no, I just want I would like a red flower.

I've tried geraniums and I've tried dahlias.

- Mm-hm, OK. - They haven't done so great.

- OK. Have you ever heard of the plant called amaranth?

- As in wheat?

- Well, close.

Amaranth is used as a grain.

It's probably closer to corn, although it's not related to either of those.

But this is an amazing plant, Native American... ..used by the Native Americans.

And when it first comes up from seed, it's called St. Joseph's Coat, very vibrant colors and very good as a salad green at that stage.

But over the course of the summer, it will grow and develop this magnificent seed head, which also, you know, comes in different colors.

So you want to make sure you get a good red, but nice, tall plant, very dramatic, incredibly useful, bulletproof.

And a matter of fact, I'll even recommend that if you have access to an heirloom seed catalog or stores, there's a type of amaranth called Elephant's Head where the top, the colorful part, is huge and blocky, and almost all of them have a snout coming out.

And so the people who don't know the name of the plant will go, That looks like an elephant.

All right.

- Got it.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

My pleasure, Belinda.

You take care.

Paula, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thanks, Mike.

- Well, thank you, Paula.

How are you doing?

- I'm doing great.

It's a beautiful day here.

- And where is here?

- Here is Blanchard, Oklahoma.

- What can we do for Paula in OK?

- Well, in February, we were hit with a long Arctic blast.

- Yeah, I know.

- It dumped about seven inches.

It dumped about seven inches of snow and the temperature was below zero for about eight days and then in the negative digits during the evening.

All the leaves on our 25-year-old yaupon holly and our boxwoods that are right by the front door turned black and fell off.

And as of mid-April, there is no new growth on either the boxwoods or the holly.

- Yeah, black is about as bad as it gets.

Brown is not good, but black is almost always send for the coroner.

Now, I'm not surprised about the boxwoods.

And I think, you know, unless you want to wait till fall, when the prices on these kind of shrubs drop, I give you full permission to pull them out and replace them.

The holly... - OK, we pulled one out already.

- Oh, OK.

So you didn't even wait.

You don't care what I'm going to say.

- Well, I do, because we're concerned about the holly, too.

I wanted to know.

We have a small patio table in that area.

And what can we put in to replace the bushes to give us some privacy?

- Well, you know, that comes down to what you can find at the local garden center or, you know, maybe even a tree farm in your area that is pretty well grown, if you know what I mean.

One of the biggest questions in gardening is what grows fast?

And I go unstable trees that will drop their limbs on your head.

And, you know, I'm always dropping back to this.

It's like my go-to answer.

But how about some nice ornamental grasses?

They grow really tall in a single season, some of them have really nice plumage on the top and I think they would be well suited to what used to be your climate!

I'm sorry about what happened to your climate, but it happened in Texas, too.

Hollies are incredibly strong plants, almost like some other plants that can be destroyed back to the ground, like figs in a cold area.

They should resprout new growth.

How tall is this thing?

- Oh, it's as tall as our roof.

- Oh, geez.

- Yes, we haven't done much.

- Yeah, I would start... And again, it's black, right?

There's no sign of new growth.

- None.

Well, now except some shoots coming up from the soil.

- Yep, absolutely.

You can always count on a holly not to die all the way.

Now, you have a couple of choices here.

What I would do is start pruning it now, taking off, you know, one tenth of the plant to start with, wait two weeks, take off another ten, always waiting in between to see if you can stimulate some growth from higher up on the plant.

If you can't, just take it down to where the new stuff is coming up.

And then you can either wait for it to regrow, which it almost guaranteed will, or pull it out and put a different holly in there.

But, you know, these are like hundred-year things, thousand-year things.

This is just so weird, what happened to you poor people.

And, you know, likely...

It is not likely to happen again.

You know, more likely is that the polar ice caps will melt and you'll have beachfront property suddenly.

- OK, thank you very much, Mike.

I appreciate your answers.

- Thank you, Paula.

And I hope you never have another winter like that again.

Yes, as always happens at this time of day, night or year, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling, and we'll figure out why later on, careful with that garlic, Eugene.

Valerie from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, writes: But on the other hand, we have Gene in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, who writes: Well, I probably should have called this article a tale of two garlics to make it seem like I am well read, but I went audio instead.

Now a small contest.

The first person to send me an email explaining where the Eugene title came from will receive a shout out on a future show, void where prohibited, taxed or restricted.

No cash value.

Must wear a mask when typing.

All right, let's begin to this mysterious reference to, quote, Florida garlic, a term I had never heard before.

But the all knowing Google revealed that the 22nd annual South Florida Garlic Festival was held just last weekend.

Come on, what's their slogan?

"Come for the beaches, stay for the cloves"?

Anyway, it turns out that there are quite a few sites devoted to Florida garlic growing, and as expected, most suggest growing soft neck varieties, a.k.a.

California garlic or supermarket garlic, which does well with less of a chill over winter.

True garlic lovers who appreciate the wonderful colors and superior flavor of hard neck garlic chill their bulbs in the fridge before planting to simulate the winter they don't get but that garlic loves.

So although there is no such thing as, quote, Florida garlic, you apparently can grow garlic in Florida.

And now back to the alleged reason for this so-called article, which is to re-emphasize one of the cardinal rules of gardening.

Leave it alone!

Don't pick at it!

If you don't know what you're doing, don't do it!

If the plants in question are rated hardy in your zone, the only thing they need to be rescued from is your anxiety.

Ignore this warning, and like Gene in New Jersey and the 1964 Phillies, you will seize defeat from the jaws of victory.

If an ice storm is predicted, do not attempt to defensively prune your trees and shrubs.

They have survived countless weird weather events but cannot defend themselves from anxious humans with pruners, blankets, hundreds of pounds of wet leaves and too much time on their hands.

Instead, sit on those hands.

Case in point, a phrase that Rod Serling always announced perfectly.

We have had very little snow for the last several years in my little town, where the women are strong, the men think they're handsome and all the tomatoes are above average.

Then came the biggest no-fun moment of the already fun-free year of 2020.

Large amounts of snow were predicted, so much snow, explained the professional weather guessers, that those of us without a garage should plan on spending an entire day trying to find our car.

They were correct.

I had two plots of garlic in raised beds that were hidden from my sight for two months.

I had another 20 fine-looking sprouts in a raised bed on legs on the patio.

I had 20 fine-looking sprouts in one of those raised beds bed on legs.

After the frosty deluge was over, the spruce tree looked like major sections had been compromised and it would never again attain a decent...sheep.

"Sheep"?

It should not attain sheep.

That would be wrong for a tree.

..never again attain a decent shape.

The garlic in the other raised bed on legs was covered by three feet of snow.

And I'm not talking three feet of snow on the patio.

I'm talking three feet of snow on top of the garlic.

What did I do?

Nothing.

When the ice and snow melted, it looked like the garlic had been through a war.

Again, I did nothing.

It now looks fabulous, as does the garlic in the garden proper.

The spruce had almost magically regained its full conical shape.

During a warm stretch that followed, they all received a light organic feeding as a reward.

I had a cheese steak.

The time to apply mulch is right after the ground freezes hard for the first time, shredded leaves or pine straw, not whole leaves and certainly not a dump truck of death, never cover plants with blankets for any reason.

The wet and frozen blankets would soon crush the poor plants.

If cover you must, use a breathable lightweight fabric like sheer curtains or professional row covers, of which the biggest brand name is Reemay, but not on your garlic.

It don't need to be covered.

Well, that sure was some dire warnings designed to protect your plants now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, the Question of the Week and many more Questions of the Week about growing great garlic appear in print at the Garden Supply website.

To read them over at your "leesure" or your "lesure", just click the link for the Question of the Week at our Website, which was still...is still, will still, will always forever be YouBetYourGarden.org.

Don't try this at home, kids.

I'm a trained professional.

Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week and you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour long public radio show and podcast, all produced and delivered to you weekly by Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when an ancient bearded man in an abandoned subway tunnel said, Pull my finger, which gave him powers and abilities that no one would want.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to grab my garlic if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us any time at our new phone number: Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at: Please include your location, and no I don't care if you're in the kitchen or the living room.

I want to know if you're in Sweden, New Jersey, Delaware or wherever.

You'll find all of this contact information at our website... ..where you'll also find the answers to all of your garden questions, audio of this show, video of this show, audio and video of all shows, and our internationally renowned podcast.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, still trying to figure out which side of the family Marilyn came from.

And that should keep me out of trouble until I can see you again next week.