From the mostly vermin free studios of Rodale Institute in radio and television at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another infested episode, of chemical free horticultural hijinx.

That's right, cats and kittens.

It's rat control.

Plus, exciting news for everyone who uses bulk compost on their farm or garden and your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and decidedly deliberate denunciations.

So keep your eyes and or ears right here, true believers, because the only problem you'll soon have is your kids watching that cartoon one who's a great chef on TV.

Right after this.

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- Sharon.

Welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Good afternoon and thank you for taking my call.

- Well, good morning and thank you for making it, Sharon.

Where are you?

- I'm in Piscataway, New Jersey.

- Oh, is this the dreaded wife of cheerful Charlie Sarah?

- It sure is.

- Our sound engineer.

I was going to use an adjective there, but it's around the holidays, so I should be nice, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Cut him some slack this time of year.

- Slack or flak.

I wasn't sure.

All right.

Well, we've talked to you before, Sharon, and you're always a delight.

So what can we do you for?

What's happening in Piscataway?

- Well, in the summer, I bought these beautiful palms.

I wanted to create a little oasis in the backyard without putting them in the ground.

- What, do you...?

What, do you think this is Wildwood.

- I know.

I know.

Well, you know, I tend to dream that I want to, like, just come into the backyard and see some palms and all that, knowing full well that they're going to die.

And I don't have the heart to just let them die.

I was tossing back and forth.

Do I just let them die?

Do I bring them inside?

So I've been carting them back and forth in the garage when it looks like it's going to be really cold and then back out.

And so I just wanted to know, like, what... - What you were thinking of.

-Like, I don't want them to die.

I feel bad.

But so they're in the house and they're just like, we were challenged on our space and I just don't know what kind of...should I repot?

Should I cut them down?

I just don't know what to do as far as winterizing - these palms.

- Right.

Because because the plants are already under stress.

So let's stress them some more and then attack them with sharp objects, that'll make them feel better.

OK. Had you called before winter set in, I would have suggested plastic palms from Wildwood.

You know, people people get a couple drinks in them out by the pool, honey, they can't tell the difference.

- Yeah, you're right.

I should have done that.

- Now, where did you get palm trees?

Did you drive down to Florida and invade somebody's front yard?

- No, I got them... Yeah, I got them... No, no, I got them at this nursery on Route 9 South.

They call it a majestic palm.

So I thought, what the heck?

You know, maybe I mean, I don't know what I was thinking.

I just got caught up in it.

That happens in the summertime when I passed, you know...?

- Huh.

That's it.

That's why they have the candy next to the checkout at the supermarket.

- That's me.

That's me.

- All right.

So now a lot of people don't know this, but there are hardy tropical plants.

For instance, one of the most famous and one of the favorite plants of our readers back when I was editor of Organic Gardening was the Hardy Banana.

Now, bananas are majestic plants for the gigantic leaves, and if you live in a place like Southern California or southern Florida, they will actually flower and fruit for you.

And the flower of a banana tree is the most spectacular flower you'll ever see.

But there have been various cultivars bred that can survive a northern winter, but they're not going to produce bananas.

It's just the bragging rights that you've got a banana in your front yard.

Now, the idea that a nursery in Jersey was selling these plants, did they have any information about them being hardy or semi hardy or about overwintering?

- No, not really.

I asked the guy that was another fellow shopper that was buying a few.

And I asked him, you know, because obviously he lives in the same area if he's buying them.

And how does he and he just said that he wraps them in burlap and keeps them in the garage.

And then I said, all right, that seemed like a good idea.

Whatever, enough for me to sell, you know, sold.

Let me just get three of them, not just one to try it out, but I got to go ahead and get three.

- And they're still alive.

Have they been outside during any cold stretches?

- Yeah, they did like about a few weeks ago.

I mean, I was doing really good bringing them back and forth.

And then when the weather got really nice, I left them out in the driveway area.

And then one day I just forgot.

I went out and the leaves just some of them just dead.

And it just, like, broke my heart.

So I brought them in.

I cut those off and then just, you know, replenished them with some soil and just have them in the house.

You know, I didn't if there was anything else.

- Yeah.

Hold on one second, because, you know, Charlie is our sound engineer, and so he's listening to his wife here talking with me.

Charley, when you get home, hide all of the sharp objects, not just pruners, scissors, you probably know not to argue with your wife in the kitchen, but get rid of any sharp knives as well, OK?

These plants have already had a hard enough time.

Are they inside now?

- Yes.

- OK. What kind of situation are they in?

- And they don't look good.

- Well, I didn't ask that.

- I meant... - Oh, they're in you know, they're just they're in a nice, light spot here.

Not near vents, because I know the vents are bad.

- Good, good.

- And I've just been leaving them alone.

I just I check to see, you know, finger deep to see how dry the soil is and if it's dry.

- OK, no, no.

But that's a good thing to bring up at this time of year.

In the winter, even tropical plants will go dormant if they're not getting the right type of sunlight.

So dormant plants don't use a lot of water.

What you want to get is just a basic wooden chopstick and push that down into the soil until you hit the bottom of the pot.

And if it's wet down there, they don't need water.

Their roots, their roots need to dry out.

Well, you think about palm trees in the tropical climates they're in, how often does it rain?

How many inches of rain do they get a year?

Maybe five, seven inches.

- Yeah.

- So one of the reasons that their leaves are so big and fleshy is they hold a lot of water.

So what I would do is keep them in good light, as you say, away from away from any kind of heating vent.

Now, what's the humidity like in your house?

If you're mad at your husband, can you rub your feet on the floor and then touch him and shock him?

- No, no.

We're about we're about 40% in here.

-That's what the thermostat says.

-Yeah, as long as that one night didn't kill them.

And really when plants like this get killed by frost, they tend to turn black.

You know, in between is like, well, you're not happy because Charlie locked the door and you had to spend the night in your car, but nobody's dead yet.

- OK?

- No.

- So the plants are getting decent light from the outside and everything.

Turn them every week, turn them a quarter turn, check their water, water them when they're dry and otherwise just leave them alone.

Do not feed them.

Do not attack them with any more sharp objects, and then wait until all chance of frost is over.

I'm a coward.

I have birds of paradise which are just as tender as yours, perhaps more so.

And I never put them out before June 1st.

Because they're, because they're big and you don't want to lug them in and out, there's no reason for you to take them outside.

That type of sunlight you're getting now really does not induce photosynthesis.

The sun's in the wrong position.

So all you want to do is keep them alive over the winter, put them out between, you know, May 20th and June 1st and then water them, but do not prune them.

Do not take off any leaves unless they totally turn brown.

- Oh, OK. OK?

And don't feed them until they go outside.

And then a very gentle feeding.

And then when we get to like September and October, bring them in sooner than you think you have to.

And there's quite a possibility these things will live for years - again if Charlie hides the sharp objects before you get home.

- Yeah, we've got a brand new set of knives.

- Oh man.

We're in trouble here.

- Yeah.

- All right.

Well, always a pleasure, Sharon.

Good luck to you and hope you had happy holidays.

- Thank you.

You too.

And thank you again for taking my call.

- My pleasure.

Bye bye.

- Bye bye.

Hi, I'm Mike McGrath, host of You Bet Your Garden right here on PBS39, and I have a very special offer for our television friends.

We have obtained a sizable number of little lucky duckies.

So if you're a fan of the show and you're a fan of ducky and you'd like to support public television and PBS39 and specifically this show, we are prepared to send you your own little Lucky Duck for a generous pledge of $60 or more.

You'll also get a passport, which will allow you to watch millions of previous PBS shows and you'll know you did good by your old Uncle Mike.

So to get all the details.

Visit our website.

Youbetyourgarden.org.

That number to call... Boris, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you.

How are you doing, Mike?

- I am just ducky.

Thanks for asking.

Boris, how is Boris doing?

- I'm doing well in Brayne, Arlington, Virginia today.

- Oh, boy.

You know, I kind of forget that Arlington is a city.

So many military in my family.

I've been to so many funerals there.

I forget that it's not just the name of the place.

And for some reason, it should always be raining there, shouldn't it?

- Probably, yeah.

Yeah.

- All right.

What can we do for a Boris very close to our nation's capital?

- I was recently watching a podcast and they talked about how earthworms are mostly imported and are kind of a pest species in certain situations.

And I wanted to get your take on that.

- OK, so this comes up every couple of years and this is nothing new.

There was...

Researchers were putting out this - I'm going to call it a theory - back when I was the editor of Organic Gardening magazine.

But, as many of you probably know, a great deal of North America was still covered with ice sheets as recently as 10,000 years ago.

Not, you know, millions or whatever.

And that during the time of the Little Ice Age, I think it's referred to, all of the native earthworms died out and then what?

I mean, 9,000 years and change later, immigrants from England come over with potted plants that just happen to have European earthworms in them?

And the European earthworms are allegedly bad because they do what all earthworms do.

They live right under the leaf litter in any kind of forest floor and they transform that leaf litter with their castings into nutritious soil.

And you know, so far, I don't buy the fact that all the earthworms were killed off during the little Ice Age, I mean, we have seen research and we have seen so many creatures be resilient to those kind of extinctions.

I mean, even when a, you know, we get hit by a comet or an asteroid and 90% of species are wiped out, there still seems to be a lot to come back.

So what these researchers are saying is because the forest floor that existed before we illegally immigrated from England and other places in Europe, that the plants that developed there needed very little nutrition because the leaf litter just laid there, there were no earthworms to transform it.

And now plants that like to be fed are outperforming other plants that like famine conditions.

So... You know, this is not the worst thing we need to be worrying about right now, and I will still always be a fan of earthworms and I will still use shredded leaves on all my garden beds to encourage earthworms to live around the roots of my plants.

You know, I think it's good for the plants and it allows me to be even lazier because now I don't have to feed them twice.

First, I already put compost down so I don't have to, quote, feed them in an American way and then the earthworms come in and do my work for me while I'm sitting in a garden chair drinking iced tea.

And I think that's a good deal.

More importantly, this whole issue of invasive species and invasive plants, it's like we were stuck in a refrigerator or a freezer, like the mammoths they keep uncovering and nature was static.

Nature has never been static.

Birds and even butterflies easily migrate between countries.

So anything could be brought over with them or taken back the other way.

I think that the nature of nature is constant change.

It's Darwinian.

There's always new species winning out over old species.

But what I've seen from some specialists in kind of chaos theory, everything kind of stratifies.

Everything kind of meets a happy medium.

When the new species come in, there's a great upheaval, but they learn to adjust and the other species around them evolve to adjust to their presence.

So...and we're never going to get rid of the earthworms there.

I think one thing that I have seen that falls into the same genre is fisherman, please don't dump your bait, your leftover bait when you go fishing, because those would not be earthworms most of the time, those would be red wigglers like compost worms.

And now you are kind of introducing a very non-native species to the outdoors.

And obviously, don't throw your fishing line over the boat and kill sea turtles and all that.

But I think that's that's the one takeaway is don't deliberately introduce non-native worms into the environment.

But, you know, to put it plainly, the earthworms have been here as long as we have.

And to see, just get a glimpse of what the primeval forests were like before we got here and how the Native Americans were able to get a good living out of the land.

Something had to be going on underground to facilitate that kind of symbiotic relationship between animals and trees and seed bearing plants.

So, you know, don't use Roundup, but don't worry about the earthworms.

All right.

But thank you for bringing it up.

I know this goes around the internet all the time.

And I for the life of me, I can't understand what the people want to expect us to do about it.

- I think your suggestion - don't dump them when you're done fishing, take them home and go fishing again or whatever is probably the only thing we can do.

- Right.

Put them back where you got them.

- Yep.

- And if you put them back into the refrigerator, make - sure you label it real well.

- Yes.

- Honey, these Gummi worms turned bad.

- Well, thank you so much and have a happy new year.

- You, too, have a good season ahead.

- Thank you, sir.

- All right.

As promised, it's time for a highly festive Question of the Week.

What to do about dirty rats.

Pat in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, which is in the greater Washington, D.C. area, writes... Well, thank you, Pat.

I often forget that many people don't realize how dangerous some of these over-the-counter products can be.

After all, you buy it off the shelf and then it's practical to assume that there's no need to read the warnings or directions because you bought it off the shelf.

It's so obviously safe.

Here's the deal with all these things.

If you go into a big box store and say you have weed problems, they'll almost certainly try and sell you a chemical herbicide like Roundup, whose parent company, Monsanto, is currently paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in claims to people who use that product and then developed specific types of cancers.

If you say you have insect problems, they'll likely try and sell you a chemical herbicide like Sevin, which is spelled S-E-V-I-N, which will make problems worse by killing all the beneficial life in your garden and maybe shortening your life as well as well.

Actually shortening.

But that's a tale for another time.

If, however, you complain about mouse problems, you just might be offered old fashioned snap traps, which are highly effective.

You might even be offered the relatively new electronic mousetraps that use bait to lure mice inside a small box that electrocutes them.

These devices also contain a light that comes on to signal a catch, allowing you to open a door and drop the former mouse into the trash without touching it.

But if you say you have rat problems, it's dollars to donuts.

They'll say rat poison.

We'll get to the nontoxic alternatives in a moment.

But first, why you should just say no to rat poison.

Rats are very suspicious of new food sources, perhaps unlike cats, because they lack the ability to regurgitate and so much of the poison is ignored, leading to its possible consumption by cats, dogs, children and raptors like hawks and owls.

Now, raptors like hawks and owls and foxes are prime consumers of rats.

So if you kill even one of these beneficial creatures, your vermin problems will probably increase greatly.

In farm settings, even worse, the poison is often just scattered on the ground, leading to the potential poisonings just described.

In addition, rain will then wash the poison into the groundwater, where it can now wreak havoc on frogs, toads, salamanders and you if you're using well water.

But the number one reason not to use poison is rats in the walls.

Yes, the telltale scratching sound of a rat running around in your walls is enough to give anybody the willies.

But rat poisons are slow acting, allowing the poisoned creature time to maybe escape outside the house where the carcass will almost certainly be eaten by a raptor or household pet.

But much worse is when the rat heads back to its nest inside your walls.

The stench of the slowly decaying animal is, to put it mildly, unbearable.

So what are your intelligent options?

I'm so glad you asked.

Snap traps that are labeled for rats, which are essentially large mouse traps on steroids, are big enough to do the job, bait them with peanut butter and be careful setting the trap as the snap would be painful if you set it off on yourself.

Then position it where you have seen rat activity.

If it snaps but you got no rat, nail that trap to a decent sized piece of wood and repeat the added stability of the wood will help prevent another failure.

Now rats are very intelligent.

If they avoid your traps, watch the traps well, or start with new ones that won't have your scent on it.

Wear gloves when you position them, add some bait, but don't set the traps.

You want to allow the vermin to come and go eating the bait without danger.

And then when, you know, they're, quote, taking the bait, set the traps.

Now, I realize many people are squeamish about dispatching the dead vermin.

If that's the case, recruit a helper or just use a couple of plastic bags to dispatch the rat trap and all.

They don't cost that much.

Electronic mousetraps coming to larger size to catch rats as well.

I think it's called the rat zapper.

No muss, no fuss, no touching.

In addition, have a heart and similar live catch traps can be highly effective.

The creature goes inside and triggers the mechanism that drops the door without harming it.

If it's a bird, kitty cat or other non offensive creature, you can release it.

If it is a rat, my advice is to drop the entire device into deep water and come back 15 minutes later.

However, it it's a possum, release it.

They eat rats.

Whatever you do, never release rats or mice back into the wild.

These creatures are disease carrying age-old enemies of humans and they would love to have another opportunity to harm you.

And, finally, I have to give a shout out to a website called automatictrap.com.

I found them while I was researching this piece, and they're informative sections are first class.

And they market a device that looks like something Wile E Coyote would buy from the Acme Roadrunner Destruction Company.

It lures in rats and then beans them for good with a pressurized CO2 rat thumper.

No beep-beep.

Well, that sure was some festive holiday information about getting rid of your Rattus rattus, wasn't it?

Luckily, you can read that information over at your leisure, or your leisure, and that includes the link to that excellent information about the new Wile E Coyote Road Runner... No, rat trap.

And by the way, I realize now that it's meep-meep and not beep-beep.

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 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.

Hey, kids, don't try this at home.

This man is a trained professional.

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, in association with Lehigh Valley Public Media in 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 a strange meteor fell from the sky near the Colonial Theater and he got to it before Steve McQueen.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to wrangle my rats if we don't get out of this studio.

That wouldn't be too bad.

But we must be out of time.

But you can still call us any time at... Hopefully we've got the phones fixed.

Or send us your e-mail, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at... Maybe.

Please, please include your location.

You'll find all of our contact information plus answers to many of your garden questions, audio of this show, video of this show, audio and video of old shows and links to our internationally renowned podcast.

It's all on our website.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

Saying stay safe, wear a mask.

Distance yourself socially and try to still have fun this holiday season, because we need each and every one of you to take Dr. Fauci's Advice so we can see you again next year.