From the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another long, loud out of chemical-free horticultural hijinks.

You Bet Your Garden.

Did you ever realize how baseball and gardening follow the same timeline with similar results at the end of the season?

I'm Mike McGrath, and on today's You Bet Your Garden, we'll discuss why they are essentially the same summertime diversion.

And of course, we're going to promise to take lots of your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and curiously callous conformations.

So keep your eyes and your ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster the hump of destiny yelling "plant your peas", right after this.

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Welcome to a highly unusual edition of You Bet Your Garden.

Broadcasting from the Univest Public Media Center in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

And later on in the show, we are going to indulge my love of baseball and gardening and reveal why they are exactly the same thing, Walt Whitman said so.

Well, not really.

But first, a bit of housekeeping.

You may recall when Jan from Rhode Island called in to tell us about her five-year-old son, Jackson, growing a scarlet runner bean plant.

Well, he is my hero.

And one of the issues that I explained to mom, scarlet runner beans are pole beans.

They're very tall.

So I enlisted my good friend Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden, and she sent this package of tricolor bush beans, gold ones, purple ones, green ones.

They are the perfect garden, the perfect plant for a child to start gardening and they're bush beans.

They're very well behaved.

They grow fabulously in containers and you know when you have for your first outdoor plant string beans of three different colors, woo!

You the man.

In the meantime, we will take some of your fabulous phone calls at... David, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike, it's great to talk to you.

- It's great to talk to you, David.

Sorry to make you have to listen to like half the show go by.

What's up?

Where are you?

How you doing?

- I am in Alexandria, Virginia.

- I know it well.

- I have a question about bare root seedlings.

- Oh, are we talking Arbor Day babies?

- Uh, no, it's it is a local county government organization that has an annual bare root native seedling sale every spring.

- Mm-mm.

- And they basically six trees of three species.

And I've been looking to add some trees to my backyard to increase natural habitat.

- Mm-mm.

- So on the day of the sale, I logged in to see what was what was being offered, and all of the trees that were being sold were on my wish list, so I bought them.

- What'd you get?

- It's two American Horn bean.

- Excellent.

- A Canadian service berry.

- Oh, excellent.

- And, yeah, and winter berry holly.

- So you know what you're doing.

- Yes, three really great trees.

- But they're bare root, and are they at least six inches tall?

- Well, I don't know, I guess I'll find out in a couple of weeks!

- Oh, right, right.

You haven't picked them up.

- Yeah, they're apparently grown by Virginia Forestry Service, I believe, and then the county buys them from Virginia Forestry Service to sell them as part of the sale.

So my...the trick is the timing is not exactly what I planned.

I figured I would be spending the summer finding the trees I wanted and plant them in the fall, which is, I think generally the recommendation for when to plant new trees.

- That's correct.

And I have some, I guess, a minor construction zone in my yard currently because I'm getting a new shed delivered and built.

- Mm-hm.

Well, I think you're right on the money.

What you're thinking about doing is called healing-in.

Sometimes, for instance, the tree will be a year or two old and you'll have to move it for construction.

In this case, you're kind of in the catbird seat.

What you want to do is get... How tall...?

Oh, you don't know how tall the trees are.

I would still get big pots.

I would get 17-inch pots with good drainage.

Saturate them completely and then plant the bare root trees, remember not to plant deeply, the trees that don't fall over are the ones that you can see the roots on the surface of the soil.

And then, you know, it's kind of, it's kind of up to you.

I would say, don't plant them in full blazing sun because it can get hot where you are in July.

- Mm-hm.

- You know, dappled shade.

But again, if they're in 17 inch pots, you can move them around.

If that's your idea of a good time.

And then you are absolutely correct, the time to plant is in the fall.

I'm going to say September, but October wouldn't be terrible.

- What do you recommend as far as the like, not dirt, but the potting medium to put in these pots?

- Half professional, non-chemical potting soil and half compost.

- Okay, that sounds good.

- Good luck to you.

Number to call... Sam, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, how's it going, Mike?

- Oh, I'm just... Ducky finally got to take his mask off.

We brought out the Phillies bobblehead.

So, yeah, I'm just Ducky.

How about you?

- Well, that's what I wanted to hear.

I'm great, too.

Beautiful day here in Louisville, Kentucky.

- What can we do for you, Sam?

Well, I do a lot of container gardening, gardening where I'm at, and at the end of the season, I pile a bunch of the containers up in the backyard.

You know, they're on the dirt.

They don't, you know, it's the side of the garage, under a tree.

And I notice like the next year when I pull them out, you know, sometimes I will add like Perlite and stuff back to it to use containers again.

But they're filled with worms, so I'm sure that's fortifying that dirt, and I'm just curious to know what I can do with the dirt, if I'm doing the right thing, basically, to re-use it.

- Well, you're talking to somebody who has heirloom potting soil also from the previous century.

- And if you've got worms in your soil, that's going to change my answer completely because generally when this comes up, I say, you know, get a wheelbarrow and pour your used potting soil into the wheelbarrow and then add about a third as much fresh potting soil, compost and some Perlite.

But if you got worms in there, everybody's happy.

So what I would do is reuse them, as is.

We don't want to hurt our little wormies.

Put your plants in them and then two inches of compost on the surface of the soil, and that should really, that should fortify everything.

But I mean, you got free worm food, baby.

- Right, yeah, and I and I noticed, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't want to do too much, the dirt seems kind of, I guess, thick.

It's just kind of packed down so that's why I hadn't... - Well.

You know, I think the worms are going to be hardy enough.

Get a wheelbarrow, empty out all of your potted plants into the wheelbarrow, add a bunch of Perlite, you know how much I love Perlite, baby.

So, yeah, add a whole bunch of Perlite and then, you know, refill the pots.

And then, like I said, after you put them out, two inches of compost on the surface of the soil.

If you have a garden bed that has gotten heavy over the years, you could empty all your potting soil into a wheelbarrow, which is the easiest way to, you know, manipulate this stuff.

And, um, use it to lighten up a bed, just one bed, because we don't like tilling.

But if there's one bed that has gotten obviously heavy over the years, do a little bit of... Oh man, it's been so long since I thought about it...double digging.

And really mix that loose... Potting soil itself is loose.

And, you know, with the Perlite in there, that should be good and just don't hurt any worms.

- Well, I appreciate that and I appreciate all the advice over the last decade of listening to you.

- Try three!

All right, man.

Thank you very much.

Bye-bye.

- I appreciate it.

Take care.

- Jim, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, Mike.

Jim Hack, gardener from Gilbertsville, PA here.

- Oh, OK, well, Gilbertsville is up in our area, that's for sure.

- Can you offer me any advice to jump start a spring 2022 perennial garden without me having to spend a fortune purchasing expensive, mature plants?

Is there any way to get a head start by planting things in small pots now and keeping them inside until the chance of frost is gone?

- Um, why does it have to be in the spring?

- Because I didn't do it in the fall.

- OK. You realize right now, because of COVID and uncertainties about just about everything in our world, you know, plants are going to be hard to come by and they're going to be at their most expensive.

Um, it is, the survival rate for plants that go in in the fall is much higher than anything that gets planted in the spring, you know, because the ground is cold, there's nothing you can do about that.

We're still marching towards the maximum hours of sunlight.

And you know it, you're playing against yourself, really.

Didn't you notice when you didn't buy the plants last fall that they had been reduced in price greatly?

- Uh, this bright idea just took form probably in the new year here.

- Oh, a resolution.

- Yeah, something like that!

- Oh!

I resolve.

Buster Brown used to do a resolution at the end of every Sunday page back in the turn of the century, and his dog Tige.

So I would say, sit on your heels for several reasons.

One, you would have to heal them in and plant them later in the season.

In the meantime, have you really picked out the type of plants you want?

- Yeah, I I've actually ordered a couple, uh, cut offs of hydrangea, um, ferns.

Um.

I can't think of any of the other names, this is all new to me, so the names aren't at the tip of my tongue.

- Hydrangea cuttings, not bare root plants?

- Well, they're little branches.

Maybe I misspoke there.

- Do they have roots?

Yeah, they're in a pot.

They have roots, I just thought they might have been a cutting off another plant.

- No, no, no, no, no, that's not how she works, Jim.

And OK. And what was the other thing you mentioned?

I'm scatterbrained.

- I've got a fern I've started.

Um.

- Jim, you can shovel snow off of ground, get an ice breaker out there and drop the fern into the ground and it will thrive.

- Oh okay.

- So you can put that puppy in the ground.

And you know, in the meantime, yes, keep it in a pot with potting soil and compost and then, you know, do the same thing as tomatoes.

Wait till the nights are reliably in the 50s because the soil takes a long time to warm up, whereby in the fall it stays warm into Christmas.

- Right, right.

So, you know, but I would still wait until at least May 15th, June 1st if you've got them in pots.

You give them a little natural plant food and keep them in part shade, not full shade, not full sun.

You won't lose a day, you know, because they weren't going to grow in the cold ground.

And, you know, you may be deceived by one of these amazing 70 degree days in the off season, which are always followed by an Arctic blast!

- Right.

We're not done yet with winter.

- Right.

And they're not going to grow any bigger.

Matter of fact, they'll probably grow better if you wait till something like June to put them into the ground.

- OK. - And just plant them no higher... No, plant them no lower than they are in the pot.

Make sure they're not buried.

Don't mulch them with wood.

Tell them how pretty they are, even though they're ragged little sticks, and you should do fine.

- Wait, wait, wait, a year or two more to see what they're going to look like then.

Yep.

- No, no.

Put them, you know, keep them in their pots right now.

Feed them a little bit.

Keep them outside in dappled sunlight and then plant them in, say, September.

You don't want to... - Keep them in pots over the summer?

- No, let's review.

They're in pots now.

- Right.

- They're going to stay in pots until June and, that way, if you get an Arctic blast, you can bring them inside.

OK?

In June, pick your spots, plant them without the pots and make sure they're high up.

If there's got it too much dirt in the pot, scrape some of it off.

And then they'll have the whole summer to grow.

They won't have to fight cold soil, and that's it.

And if you got room, go plunder the sales at the end of the season.

- Yeah, at the end there you said plant them in the fall.

So you confused me a little bit.

- Well, again... - But I got it.

- Yeah.

Fall planting is always the best, and I might have even said that.

But there's also no loss to planting them once summer is here.

- Okay, thank you.

Bye-bye.

- Bye-bye.

And now it's time for a very unusual Question of the Week.

There is no question - this is a scientific treatise on the combination of baseball and gardening, which we're calling Baseball is Gardening is Baseball.

Now for something completely different, right?

It occurred to me several years ago that two of my three passions, four if you count neon, were so intertwined that they followed the same season.

Pinball, of course, has no season and was designed to help keep people like me relatively sane during the cold, dark season of no baseball and no tomato growing.

Yeah, yeah, you can grow stuff inside, but it's not the same.

Yeah, you can go to indoor heated batting cages, but that, like pinball, is just an outlet to prevent your descent into madness in the off season.

As Walt Whitman noted, voiced by Garrison Keillor in the classic Ken Burns PBS series In our sundown perambulations of late, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing base, a game of ball.

Let us go out for a while and get better air into our lungs.

Let us leave our closed rooms.

The game of ball is wonderful.

Now, all you have to do is substitute gardening for ball, and you get, let us leave our closed rooms and get better air into our lungs.

The game of gardening is wonderful.

But both have an off season.

Hall of Fame hitter Rogers Hornsby, whose modern-era batting averages an astonishing .424 famously told a reporter, you want to know what I do in the winter?

I stare out the window and dream of spring.

Sound familiar, gardeners?

After that last desperately ripened tomato has been achieved, after the stands have been swept clean, the season is over.

Then comes that most treacherous holiday of them all, Thanksgiving.

I think I'll eat at Boston Market this year.

Then comes the much less treacherous Christmas and a bit of peace in our lives.

On second thought, I should volunteer at a homeless shelter this Thanksgiving.

At least nobody is going to be arguing about when the turkey is done.

Then the death march of January arrives.

But in the stygian darkness, we are already beginning our rituals.

Baseball managers figure out who will make their team this year.

Gardeners study seed catalogues much more diligently than any school book they claim to have read.

The preseason begins as the seeds and contracts begin to pour in, and we are rewarded for our perilous months in limbo with the arrival of March.

Spring training begins as we limber up from the off season of darkness.

Professional teams retreat to the cowardly climes of Phoenix and Florida.

We plant peas, anticipating picking those peas during the month of June.

Major leaguers are hoping they will perform well enough to stay with the team through June.

Now, our mutual seasons are beginning as the athletes and sandlot players loosen up and get ready for real games we're doing bright lights, heating mats in the same hope that we will make it to the bigs by opening day.

When it's too cold to actually pretend you're having fun, Walt Whitman said to get fresh air into your lungs, not to breathe out frost.

But we all share the same prayer.

This will be our year.

While the big leaguers pretend they're not freezing to death, blowing on their hands on May 15th, we are at a critical step in our process.

Plant now in the hope of getting an early lead.

Or wait until the team is totally ready with no cold nights forecast in the future.

What would Moneyball say?

I bet you they would say to sit on your hands, at least it'll be warm that way.

It's a long season and you want to see what the youngsters can do, so put them out in the field, but hold off on your big money players.

Many seasons were doomed by injuries before the end of May.

The teams who slipped their stars in here and there until June were the ones that could well be playing after Halloween.

For gardeners, that means testing the waters with a few disposable plants.

Come on.

What were you going to do with 14 Cherokee purple plants in a nine-tomato garden?

If you're lucky, those rookies will thrive, if not, your superstars will be warming up to get into the game for real in June.

Sweetcorn, pole beans and indeterminate tomatoes are your tall, hard-throwing outfielders.

Your infield has the quick-witted ones just begging for a bunt.

Bush beans to squash to melons to hot peppers.

It would make a great groundhog to make it through that line.

And now we hit the middle of the season.

Spring training is over.

The first month is behind us.

Nobody anywhere wants to be inside.

We get enough of that in January.

Now the playing is fast.

It's a low-humidity, 80-degree day on a mid-season Sunday.

Everything is possible.

Say your infielder tears his ACL.

A helpful gardener weeds out the zucchini.

No problem.

This is why benches exist.

Anxious players praying to get into the game.

And if you're like me, you also have a bench full of replacement plants in the event of a hailstorm.

Injuries are going to happen.

It's part of the game.

Be prepared.

Most seasons progress to a sad, inevitable outcome.

Many of us are done physically and horticulturally by September, but it's all gravy if you're not.

Suddenly you're playing hard in late September and then you're in the playoffs.

And if you're still standing on October, you could win it all.

And if not, I think you all know what's coming next.

All together now - there's always next year.

Well, that was an unusually philosophical look at our great games now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, you can read this masterpiece over at your lee-sure or your lez-ure because the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

Just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you'll 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 the Univest Studios at 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 he watched the film Plan 9 From Outer Space too many times in a row without a break.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to call me for a balk if I don't get out of the studio.

We must be out of time or the ump must be hard of sight.

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I'm that host Mike McGrath.

And if the folks on the second floor keep not catching on, I'll see you again next week.