- From the seed-starting studios of Rodale Institute radio and television at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another germinational episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks You Bet Your Garden.

Millions of new people have taken to gardening to escape isolation and the sight of their old wallpaper.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, we'll reveal how they can grow their own plants from seed.

Maybe.

Otherwise it's a fabulous phone call show, cats and kittens.

That's right.

Potential guests are busy saturating their cells.

So we will take that heaping helping out of your telecommunicated questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and terrifyingly terse trepidations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than your baby tomato plants.

Right after this.

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The Rodale Institute - because the future is organic.

- Jim, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Well, thanks very much, Mike.

It's a pleasure to talk to you.

And thanks a lot for taking my call.

- Well, thank you very much for making it.

How are you doing today?

- Doing real well, just kind of waiting for spring.

- Yeah.

Aren't we all?

So where are you, Jim?

- Well, we're in Drums, a little bit north of Hazelton.

- Oh, OK. PA. - PA, correct.

- OK, what can we do for Jim from Drums?

- Well, during the winter we sit and stare out our window and think about gardening, and we've got outside the window a flowering pear tree that's about 12 years old.

And it has been a gorgeous tree.

I mean, in the spring, it's just spectacular.

And last spring, we noticed that it wasn't quite as spectacular as it has been.

And now that the winter is here and the leaves are off and the tree is bare, I notice that it is filled with...I don't even know how to describe them, alien life forms that have attached themselves to all of the branches, many of the branches throughout the tree.

They're black, they're kind of crusty.

They seem to be more in the outside of the branches rather than in the real thick part of the branches.

I don't see them on the trunk.

Mm hmm.

I don't see them on any other trees.

But I would say this tree, there must be 50 of them.

- Oh, well, that's not many.

- Scattered throughout.

They... Do you think this could be an insect in the scale family?

These are insects that position themselves on tree limbs and such and then secrete out a cement that attaches them to the plant part and then they grow a kind of armor shell over time.

- I've never seen an insect around them.

- Well, you wouldn't.

Nobody sees scale getting started.

They only notice it after they've armored up.

Have you tried to just wipe them off with a damp cloth or anything?

- Well, some of them are pretty large.

Some of them could be as... not quite as large as your fist, but... - What?!

- Sizable!

- Run, Jim, run!

Get out!

- That's why I called them alien life forms.

I'm a little bit afraid that they're going to take over the house here pretty soon.

Now, are you... Are you sure these are - living creatures and not... - No.

No, I have no idea.

- OK, I'm going to suggest that at that size there's a disease called canker.

And this disease gets into the branches of a tree and then really ugly-looking black growths cover that area and they are about the size of a human hand.

- That sounds like what it is.

- Yeah, canker.... Canker is really tough.

But I'll also tell you that... Do you know the name of your pear?

Is it a Bradford pear?

Cleveland pear?

- No, I don't know the name of the pear.

It's just the flowering.

It doesn't bear fruit.

- Right.

Right.

So far.

Um...

The so-called caliper pears.

- When it first blooms, when it first comes out, the leaves are green, then it flowers.

Then the tree leaves very quickly turn red.

- Right.

And do the flowers stink like rotting flesh?

- They do.

- Yes.

OK, yeah.

You have what are called one of the caliper pears.

They are the cheapest, most invasive and just...people are urged not to plant them.

- Oh, really?

- I'm not surprised it got canker.

What generally happens is they break apart in storms when they're very young and they are very fragile, they're very brittle.

And the only reason they've been used so heavily is they were and probably still are the single cheapest tree to nursery grow to a good size.

So you might not want to hear this, but my advice is to take it out.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Cut it down.

Either burn it or get the wood in the trash.

Don't compost it.

Canker's a nasty disease.

And then if you want, if you can get the stump out of the ground, replace it with something nice - no offense - like a flowering cherry.

They're beautiful, and they're not subject to these kind of problems.

- Well, that's not necessarily what I wanted to hear, but that's good to know, because it's ugly and it's getting worse.

- And it's only going to get worse.

That's going to make it more brittle.

And sooner or later, you'll have to take it down or it will fall on your pumpkin head when you're outside.

- Mmm.

- All right, sorry, I wish it was better news, but that's the truth.

- Oh, I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

- All right.

Good luck, sir.

- You too.

Take care.

833 727 9588.

Mark, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you.

- Well, thank you, Mark, - how are you doing?

- I'm excellent.

- How are you?

- I am just ducky, thanks for asking.

- You sound it.

- Yeah!

Now I'm going to guess, you sound like you're driving.

- Yes, I am.

- But you're hands-free.

- Well, that or I'm using my knees.

- Ha ha ha, we don't want to hear that!

OK. Now you could also be a wise guy when I say where are you located... - I'm following your lead.

- Yeah.

- and say South on 81, you know.

- Yeah.

- So where...where is your home?

Where do you garden?

- Nazareth, Pennsylvania.

- All right.

What can we do for Mark from Nazareth?

So we have a strawberry patch that's about three years old now, and the whole patch is full - of a black dot fungus.

- Huh.

- Are...?

- It's about 25 plants.

- Right.

- 8 by 12, something like that.

- OK, is there mulch on the bed?

- What I actually did is between the rows of plants I put down, a couple of years ago, I had some extra straw.

I put some straw just for the, you know, walk between the plants and whatnot.

I did a little bit of... - There are many people who feel that's where the name comes from, because straw is the first choice for helping prevent weeds, but also helping keep the plants above the ground where the chances of disease and rot are much less.

So go ahead.

Years ago, you used some straw.

What about after that?

- Yeah, and then...

It's a relatively new patch.

And then after that we did put some compost, it was manure compost down to try to feed the plants.

But it just, we didn't have much luck.

With the black dot, I tried to, you know, prune the plants.

and I did use some kind of a non, a fungus killer that was...

I just didn't I didn't have much luck.

It just spread more.

- OK, so now every plant is somewhat infected.

- Basically it's spread throughout the patch, yeah.

- OK. And composted horse manure is the only natural fertilizer you have access to?

- Yes.

Yeah.

I didn't use anything else.

- OK, well, you've got to stop using it, first of all.

Composted horse manure is rich in nitrogen, which is not what flowering plants want.

The horse manure at the very least is inhibiting the number of flowers and strawberries.

- OK. - So this is on every leaf?

- Yeah.

Yeah, more or less.

Yes.

- And the patch is what size again?

- It's like 12 by 8.

I know it's 25 plants.

- OK, so what I'm going to suggest, and you're not going to like to hear this, but I would pluck off every bad leaf.

- OK. - You know, in Nazareth, those leaves aren't doing your plants - any good right now.

- Absolutely not.

- And the bed should start producing new leaves.

You might also want to start propagating daughters all through the bed.

They will be naturally healthier because they won't be as old.

And then you have to find some real compost - yard waste compost, no manure.

And then I want you to put down an inch of compost in the lanes around each plant.

And don't worry about taking all the leaves off.

They'll come back.

And then save some compost, and if you see any discoloration in the new leaves, which I honestly doubt will happen, take an old sock, a gym sock or something like that, fill it with the compost, sit that sock in a five gallon bucket of water for 24 hours and then spray the compost tea on your plants.

- Thanks.

I appreciate it.

- My pleasure.

Take care.

Kurt, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, Mike, I'm glad to reach you.

I'm in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, - not too far from Bethlehem.

- Right.

- And I heard you talking, I listen to you on the podcast and heard you mention that it's not good to put wood chips on a flower bed.

And I do, I get it by the truckload and put it around my yard, around trees and stuff.

And I was wondering why not to do it on flower beds.

- OK, so when you say wood chips, are you referring to what we call arborist wood chips from tree trimming crews or...?

- Yes.

- Yes, so it's not been dyed, there's no chipped-up, pressure-treated wood in there.

- No.

- OK. Just from a tree trimming company.

- OK, that is the least offensive wood.

- All right.

- The problems are that if the wood becomes incorporated into the soil, it will steal nitrogen from the soil and the plants will starve to death.

- Oh.

- If it is spread too thickly, which can be a problem when you have a lot of something, - you want to use it.

- Right.

- But if you spread it too thickly, rain can no longer get through.

And even though you're using a material to retain soil moisture, you can't retain what you never had.

So for weed control, one inch to a maximum of two inches, because we have real good studies showing that after two inches, it sheds rainfall.

- OK. - Another reason is not anything bad about the wood chips but landscapers have kind of corrupted this idea with this insistence on volcano mulching, you know, building up large mounds of woodchips around the base of trees.

Now, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize this area is going to be a haven for termites and other wood eating insects because they can do their dirty work on scene.

Same for voles, which love living in these mulches and will eat the fresh bark off the tree that you're theoretically protecting.

And once they girdle the tree all around, it's only a matter of time before it comes crashing down.

And the final one is if this is near a home or a light colored car, there is always the possibility of it breeding nuisance molds like shotgun or artillery fungus.

This is a really nasty one because it shoots little tar balls up to 30 feet in the air towards light colored objects.

And so many people with white vinyl siding or nice white cars have found out much too late in the game that these spores are living.

And if you don't get them off right away, they kind of creep into the material and become part of it.

It can be very expensive.

Pennsylvania, for instance, stopped paying for those kind of problems on insurance claims because they were losing so much money.

So, you know, if it's not near a home or car, if it's not touching the stem or trunk of a plant and you don't mind if maybe some X rated fungal organisms kind of pop up from it overnight, and it's not too deep, then it's fine.

It's like anything else, the dose makes the poison, so using it correctly goes back centuries.

I mean, even when I was the editor of Organic Gardening and we started to realize the inherent dangers of wood chips, we all still put signs out for the tree trimming companies, "You can you can dump a load here."

- Mm-hmm.

All right.

- I appreciate it.

- So those are the rules.

- All right.

I'll make sure I keep it less than two inches.

- Yes.

And away from the trunk of plants, and then you're almost home free.

Should you see any of these little tar balls appearing on your house or the side of your car, use a Mr Clean Magic Eraser to get them off right away and then incorporate a lot of spent coffee grounds into the wood.

That will give the wood the nitrogen it's seeking to absorb and it will turn into soil quickly and it won't be shooting out those spores.

- OK, also, so would like horse bedding help, too?

- Well, now we're not being very attractive out there, are we?

I think we can sprinkle coffee grounds around without making a stink.

You never want to use fresh bedding or fresh horse manure.

You'll have the kind of weed problems you never imagined.

- OK, all right.

- All right, sir?

- Thank you very much.

- Well, thank you.

Bye bye.

- All right.

Bye.

All right.

As promised, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling Seed Starting: The Basics.

In our last thrilling episode, we told Janine in Washington State that she didn't need to start her pea and bean seeds indoors for transplant outside later.

But she also asked what was the best way to do such a thing?

And it is getting to be that time of year, and millions more of you are preparing to do the gardening thing to avoid thinking about the pandemic that was caused by a virus named after a tasty Mexican beer.

So if you have never started seeds indoors previously, be prepared for failure.

But by all means, do it anyway.

Seed starting indoors is very different than gardening outdoors, and the only way you're going to figure out how to do it well is by making mistakes.

Speaking of which, my sincere apologies to the cannon fodder seedlings that died an ignoble death on my chilly windowsill many decades ago so that I would eventually become surprisingly good at this.

That said, there is absolutely no shame in buying plants that were professionally started after you've killed yours by week three.

That said, containers!

This is not the time for an egg carton kindergarten project.

The plastic six packs, four packs and onesies that garden centers use are made of the right material and have the proper depth and drainage.

If you haven't saved up any yourself, ask a gardening friend for some of theirs.

We have thousands.

Gardeners never throw anything away!

Or ask your local independent garden center to toss you a few when you buy your planting medium and seeds from them, and strongly imply that you'll probably be back in six to eight weeks for replacement plants.

The planting medium.

This is not the fortune teller who predicts the exact day your starts will die, but the non soil you will use to fill your containers.

It should not contain any of your wretched garden soil or any old potting soil you have used in previous years.

If your clever plan to save money involved either of these non options, there's a bus leaving for Des Moines at midnight, Be under it.

So.

Yes, with money, buy a premium planting medium.

This may be labeled potting soil, seed starting soil, pro mix or soil free mix.

It will contain milled peat moss or core, which is shredded coconut fiber, perlite and or vermiculite, and compost or, quote, composted forest products.

It should not contain nasty chemical fertilizers like Miracle-Gro or Osmocote.

It should also not contain water saving crystals, which are bogus and slimy.

And bogus.

It is fine if the mix contains small amounts of natural fertilizers like worm castings and such.

Now, you're probably not going to find a really clean mix at big box stores where you should only be buying batteries and light bulbs anyway!

Support your local independent garden center and they will support you.

The system.

Fill your containers with what we will now simply call potting soil for simplicity and for the use of not too many words.

Fill them to the top because they will shrink a bit when they get saturated.

Place these containers in an inch or two of clean water, not city tap water, and allow them to take the water up through their drainage holes.

When the containers feel a little heavier, add more water to the sink, or wherever they are, and let them saturate overnight.

Once they're fully saturated, you won't have to worry much about watering during this stage.

When the containers feel heavier, add more water to the sink or wherever they're sitting and let them saturate completely overnight.

Now, you won't have to worry much about watering during this stage.

When the containers are heavy as heck, do whatever you need to to drain the excess water out of the sink or whatever, and then let the containers sit for an hour or so, then lift them up and place them on a stack of old newspapers.

What?

No old newspapers?

What is wrong with you?

At least buy your local Sunday paper, and get paid back with the coupons.

Place these supersaturated containers on a moisture proof surface or an old baking pan.

Sow two seeds in each individual container, also called a cell, and cover them with about half an inch of that good quality potting soil.

Now mist the surface.

If you don't have a mister, go to the freaking dollar store or wherever and get one.

Oy!

What am I, your mother?

Cover your saturated, planted and misted containers with saran wrap or some cheap generic version of that famous cling free plastic wrap.

Now you have a choice.

You can either place these containers on a professional heating mat.

Amortize the cost over decades, If, like Scrooge McDuck, you're adverse to spending the first dime you ever earned.

Or just leave them out on the warmest countertop of your home.

Which is fine for tomatoes but maybe not so good for peppers, which really love bottom heat.

Examine your dead plants to be daily and mist them again if you don't see moisture beating up on the inside of the saran or saran-like wrap.

After the first green sprouts appear, congratulations!

You're a third of the way there.

Remove any saran or saran-like wrap and turn off any heating mats.

We now enter the whitewater rafting part of this river - light.

Your so-called sunny windowsill is closer to a war crime than proper plant parenthood.

How cold does that window get at night?

How long does it get sun during the day?

Is that sun even coming in at the right angle for photosynthesis?

The answer is no.

Unless you're living in Australia or near Skull Island, whose coordinates I will reveal during the "Mike McGrath was created by" portion of the show.

So stay tuned.

But for now, we're out of time.

Next week, more about the right light.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about starting your own seeds now, wasn't it?

Luckily for you, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your leisure, just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be YouBetYourGarden.org 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 Rodale Institute Radio and Television in association with Lehigh Valley Public Media in beautiful Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when the skipper of a tramp steamer headed south southwest after reaching the coordinates of two degrees south, 90 degrees east, as described by the lone survivor of a Norwegian shipwreck.

Yikes.

My producer's threatening to sabotage my starts if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us any time or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse steaming towards our garden shore.

Please include your location.

You are not doing very well at following that instruction, cats and kittens, OK?

So please include your location.

Harumph.

You'll find all of this contact information at our website where you'll also find the answers to all your garden questions, audio of this show, video of this show, audio and video of previous shows, details on getting your own little ducky, and our priceless internationally renowned podcast.

It's almost more than we can handle.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

I'm growing pepper plants indoors, listening to Phil Ochs albums and still trying to find the best route to Skull Island.

I would have made it there years ago, but I refuse to stop and ask for directions.

But I'll still see you again next week.