in Bethlehem, PA, it's time for another season-extending episode of chemical free horticultural hijinks.

You Bet Your Garden.

The days are getting shorter and the nights cooler, so I guess it's time to put the garden to bed, right?

Wrong.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and, on today's show, we'll reveal why we're just getting started as we walk you through the hows and whys of the third season of Good Eatin', plus endlessly evasive answers to your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and serenely sanguine suppositions.

So, keep your eyes and your ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you growing your flowers and eating them too.

Right after this.

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Don't touch that garden.

Don't get it all ready for winter yet because we are about to enter the third season of Growing Good Eatin'.

Good eating.

Good.

We could be Pennsylvania Dutch.

"We're growing good eatin' in the fall.

"Yeah, they do that now."

So stay tuned and we'll tell you all the wonderful things you can grow between now and New Year's.

But first, lots of your fabulous phone calls at... Ron, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike.

Nice to meet you virtually over the phone.

- Yes.

Well, it's the only way we get to meet anybody anymore, isn't it?

You know.

I hope you're wearing a mask.

How you doing, Ron?

- I'm doing well.

I'm doing well.

Working on my garden and I just have one question I'd like to ask.

- OK. Where are you, man?

- I'm in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

- All right, Ron, what's your single garden question?

- So I am working on my yard and, over the years, I have listened to you, whenever I have a question I go to your site or your videos or whatever it is.

And one question I have is around Wisteria.

So I know from the site that you suggest how they get it to bloom more and some of their characteristics.

But my question is, is it OK to plant on my lean to pergola.

So I'm building a little pergola that's attached to my shed.

It overlooks a flower garden, smaller.

And I want to grow some clips of vine up it.

Wisteria grows quickly.

- Oh yeah.

- It's beautiful.

But I don't know if it's too quick or too much work.

I am not old, but I'm getting up there so, over time, I don't necessarily know if it's going to overwhelm me or is there another type of plant vine that I would grow - say a jasmine or those type of things?

SO all the sites I see say it's very evasive.

But then the other portions I see, it's very beautiful and it can be managed.

And so I always go to you for the final word.

- Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

I think it's as manageable as a house cat.

I have I have Wisteria in my back yard that I constantly have to attack because it sends its tendrils up to the other trees and tries to drag them down to the ground and steal their lunch money, make fun of them.

It is incredibly destructive and, most of the time, when it's growing on something wooden, eventually it takes that structure down to the ground and beats it heavily.

So... - OK. - And I will also tell you that although I don't do anything to get my Wisteria to bloom, I think you just referenced one of the articles where people are telling you to take an ax to it or beat it with chains to get it to bloom.

I've never done that.

And just this past summer, it bloomed beautifully for me.

But I honestly can't remember doing that ever before, maybe once.

So, Wisteria, when people want it to be beautiful, tends to be very bloom resistant.

Now, let me offer something completely different.

- OK. - There is a wonderful event in New Jersey that I do every year at a place called Historic Smithsville.

And of course, we couldn't do it this year, but it's a fabulous estate.

There's all sorts of talks for kids.

And I put it on a dog and pony show, and they have live raptors and it's a wonderful day for families.

But sometimes, because this is one of the latest events I do, I think it's always in late June, it is really hot out.

And the first time I was there, when it was really hot, I've done this event for like 12 years straight, I wandered into this pergola, go up and boom, I'm looking around for the misting fans or the air conditioning ducts because, all of a sudden, it's like 20 degrees cooler.

And I look up, and there is a cluster of grapes hanging down, right in front of my face.

And I started to pick them and eat them.

And they were delicious.

So... And it looked like it was well behaved.

It looked like it was no threat to the pergola.

So since then and that's always been my recommendation.

For one reason, you know, not only the non invasiveness, but you get grapes.

And anybody who's ever grown grapes knows that the thickness of the leaves, the numbers of the leaves, they form a beautiful umbrella over top of you.

And there's just something about this plant that cools that area dramatically.

And, and you get grapes.

- OK, great.

I appreciate your time and I always appreciate the advice you give.

- All right.

Well, thank you, Ron.

You take care.

Number to call... - Well, hello, Mr. McGrath.

It's a pleasure to meet you.

- It's a pleasure to meet you, sir.

How you doing?

- I'm doing well.

All things considering.

- Yeah, exactly.

When I'm in a store and the clerk asks, "How you doing?"

I go, "Same as everybody else."

- Exactly.

- All right.

Where are you, man?

- I'm in Muncie, Indiana.

- What can we do for Patrick in Muncie?

- Well, first, the front of my house, I have two flower beds that are like the focal point of my front yard.

- Right.

- And I have your beautiful hydrangeas all summer long.

They produce big, beautiful blooms.

The foliage was lush and green until about the second week in August when these dark brown, ugly splotches start appearing.

Now, at first, I was not concerned because I would just pick the leaf off until another one appeared.

But now it's throughout the whole - all eight hydrangeas.

- OK.

There is actually a technical term for this, and I'm not making this up because I'm not smart enough, but it's called Hydrangea Leaf Spot.

- OK. - And generally, it's caused by too much moisture.

Too crowded the plants or overhead watering?

- Well, it has been awfully humid.

Would that make a difference?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially... How many plans do you have out there?

- Eight.

- Eight.

And are they...?

How long have they been in the ground?

- Oh, since about April.

March, April.

- Oh, they're brand new!

- Yeah, I put them out this year.

I had hydrangeas at my old house.

And when I moved to this one, I missed them so I planted a bunch of new ones and they've been doing fine so far.

Until that happened.

- What have you fed them, if anything?

- I've not fed them anything because they seemed to be doing so well without anything, so I didn't want to... You know, spoil it.

- Are they mulched?

- They are not mulched.

It's just...

It's pure black dirt.

- Man, you're killing me here.

- Sorry.

- Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

I have hydrangeas as well.

They're really not in the perfect spot.

I think they're soil stays too wet.

But I'm assuming you have fairly good drainage where these plants are.

- I have excellent drainage and I don't think "too wet" is the problem because we've had some dry spells where I've had to actually turn on the soaker and let them soak.

- And you're watering them from below?

- Yes, from the ground.

Yeah.

- I give up.

I give up!

Who told this guy to call in?

Ah!

- Sorry!

- No, I mean, you're stumping the chump here.

You're doing everything right.

Describe exactly what the spots look like.

Do you know what a Rorschach block is?

- Oh, yeah.

- That's what they look like.

It's like somebody just dropped ink on them and it splattered.

- So, what do you see when you look at the spots?

Do you see a happy couple?

Do you see a bat?

- I see a rotting plant.

- Man, you're killing me.

You're killing me here.

- So what I'm going to suggest... Do you have access to compost, either your own or purchase-a-bubble?

- Yeah.

Purchasable.

- I'm going to suggest you mulch these hydrangeas with an inch or two of good yard waste compost, not composted manure.

Really clean the, quote, forest floor.

When all the leaves are down, get all the old leaves out of there.

They're not going to do anything good for the plant.

You can leave the dried flowers up for winter interest or you can bring them inside.

- OK. - In the spring, refresh the compost with another inch.

And then, as the hydrangea begins to grow, keep an eye out.

If these spots appear before you start to see a lot of flower buds, get a copper spray at a local independent garden center and spray copper.

If you're concerned that this is going to happen every year, you might want to even have that in hand and do... - It's too soon to tell.

Like I said, it's a new house.

- Right - It's a new garden so first time it's happened.

- Compost.

And then I want you to prune the hydrangeas the way I always advise, which is you leave them alone until all the flower buds have formed.

Then you go in with a pair of pruners and take out non-flowering branches.

This makes it look like you have more flowers.

It also opens up the plant to better airflow.

All right, man?

- Yeah!

Thank you so much.

And thank you for taking my call.

- Well, I'm not happy about taking your call.

Call somebody else next time you got an impossible problem!

- OK!

You have a great day, Mark.

- You too.

- Nice to talk to you.

- You too.

Take care.

- Thanks, Mike, how you doing?

- I am just ducky, Owen.

Thank you for asking.

Ducky loves to be recognized.

How is Owen doing?

- A little overcast and sprinkling over here.

- OK. And where is here?

- So I'm in Knoxville, Tennessee.

- What can we do for you?

- So, recently, we got a lot of rains and some storms from the hurricane, Hurricane Laura.

- Oh, yeah.

- Yep.

It has hit three kinds of my plants pretty hard.

Those would be the Mexican sunflowers, my Xenias and my Amaranths.

Every single one of those has fallen over so I'm wondering, kind of two parts here, if there's anything that I can do now to spruce them back up.

And then what can I do in the future to keep these guys from falling over?

- So you grew tithonia?

- Yep.

- OK. Did you get monarchs?

- I was just starting to, yah.

I've counted about five or six so far.

- Yeah, I got monarchs.

I got swallow tails.

Boy, that plant keeps the bees and the butterflies so happy.

Mexican sunflower.

Everybody talks about milkweed, but that's just for the caterpillars to eat, for the adults to get ready for that flight to Mexico, they really need high energy.

And tithonia, I think, has some of the most nutritious pollen and nectar in the plant world.

Now, I'm going to tell you a sad story that's going to put yours in perspective.

My Diane and I are both fools for sweetcorn, but again, there's nothing more disappointing than sweetcorn that's not sweet.

And I keep explaining to people that growing it correctly is important, but it has to be ripe when you pick it, you have to pick it first thing in the morning and you have to refrigerate it right away.

Well, there is a guy in my neighborhood, a couple of miles away, every year, he grows a big field of sweetcorn.

And out by the road, he has a setup where there's a tractor trailer kind of thing.

And he either has a little refrigerator in it, running the extension cord to the house, or he keeps running out and put freezer packs in so the corn is cold when you get it.

I saw it for the first time, you know, maybe a month ago, and immediately bought a dozen ears.

Came, brought it back home, steamed it for like three minutes and, oh, there - heaven is a great piece of sweetcorn.

And Diane kept saying, "When are you gonna go back?

When are you gonna go back?"

And I said, "As soon as I have to take "that little road again."

Well, the hurricane hit us in between.

And I went back and the trailer was gone.

And the first, like 30 rows of corn that I could see were blown to the ground.

And I went, "Oh, thank God "he's got the stuff in the back."

So then I started going every day.

And after day three, he had plowed it all under.

It was just a total loss.

I have found Amaranth to be very individual in its habit.

Some of the plants seem to fall over before there's any good reason.

Some of them remain upright all season.

Now, if you want to give yourself some insurance, you can go out and buy plant stakes and you can put the stake in the ground next to the plant so that the loop is holding the stalk.

And they're your best bet for tall, skinny plants.

I grew my tithonia in a kind of protected area.

It's almost growing into a rose of Sharon.

So, you know, the bees can't figure out where to go.

And that protected it from the wind or a protected area.

You know, this is why farmers, in the old days, used to have hedgerows - to stop those howling winds.

But Tennessee, you were not spared at all from, at the time of this taping, the most recent hurricane we had.

It hit you and Louisiana hard, right?

- Now, we didn't get hit as hard, but... - Nobody got hit as hard as... - Nobody got hit as hard as poor Louisiana.

- Yeah.

- But this is going to happen.

What you can do is, you know, you can salvage the season to some degree by making these things into cut flowers.

If your amaranth is like mine with a giant colorful seed head, I have brought those inside and put them in large vases.

Half filled with water.

And they would remain in stasis for maybe six weeks.

The tithonia, I would definitely harvest the flowers that are there.

Leave them outside in some sort of vase situation and you might have time for a little bit of regrowth, depending on what kind of weather we get in the fall.

You might get some more flowers.

- OK.

Sounds good.

- Good luck, sir.

- Thank you, Mike.

- Bye-bye.

All right.

It is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling... And season number three, namely the fall, may be the easiest of them all.

You don't have the cool, wet soil of spring to deal with, nor the sometimes ungodly heat of summer.

Grow the correct plants and fall gardening will deceive you into thinking you're actually good at this.

OK. First up, garlic.

Yes, we've been talking about it all year, but now we can finally do something about it.

Obtain your planting garlic from a neighbor, a reputable online source or a local farmer's market that's producer only, meaning the people selling also did the growing.

Do not use supermarket garlic.

Carefully break the heads into their individual cloves and place each clove about six inches deep, heiny down and six inches to a foot apart in your loosest, richest soil.

Don't plant in heavy clay or in areas of poor drainage.

If all goes well, and it should, you'll harvest a full-size head from each planted clove next June or early July.

Pansies, years ago, you could only buy flats of these cool weather lovers in the spring, but then we began to see special pansies appear in garden centers in the fall with names like Icicle Pansies and Winter Pansies.

They're the same damn pansies they sell in the spring.

But if you plant them now, they'll pump out blooms until heavy snow or ice slows them down.

Then they'll bloom again when the weather is halfway decent, bloom like crazy in the spring and keep pumping out those edible flowers until summer heat shuts them down.

Yes, pansy flowers, not the leaves, are edible, nutritious and delicious.

But unless you're certain the plants were organically grown, pull off the first couple of runs before you begin to use the flowers to adorn your salads.

Speaking of salads, let us move on.

"Lettuce" move on to salad greens!

I didn't do that deliberately.

Don't blame me.

The soil is still nice and warm this time of year, so the seeds of lettuce, spinach, kale and other greens will sprout rapidly at this time of year.

I grow all my lettuce and such in big containers on my patio, half whisky barrels, big grow bags, my brand new raised bed on legs and smaller containers placed on tables.

This prevents rabbit damage and makes harvesting super easy.

The higher up your greens, the more you're going to enjoy growing them.

This is also the best time to grow cut and come again style greens instead of spacing out your seeds as you would to harvest whole heads sow them thickly, almost as if you were seeding a lawn.

When the greens reached three to four inches high, snip off a row with a pair of scissors, leaving the roots and about an inch of greenery in the ground.

Continue giving your patch a haircut until you've done a complete snipping.

By then, the first row should have regrown enough for another harvest.

And after that, it's lather, rinse, repeat.

Plant a big enough area and you can enjoy tasty baby greens every day.

And if you have a mild winter, the roots will survive and grow a couple more harvests for you in the spring.

Bonus!

Greens harvested in cooler weather will always taste better than greens that were sown in the spring.

The cool nights of fall greatly concentrate their sugars and nutrients.

Double bonus!

Use a season-extending device like row covers or grow tunnels, which are road covers with built in hoops, and your plants will enjoy temperatures four to eight degrees warmer than the outside air.

Four degrees for lightweight covers, eight for the heavyweight fabrics.

New trees and shrubs.

Newly purchased trees and shrubs have a much better rate of survival when installed in the fall as opposed to the spring.

When you plant in the spring, the plants often don't have enough time to acclimate before the heat of summer hits.

Plants installed in the fall are already going dormant and have plenty of time to acclimate to their site before the growing season begins again, and nurseries normally heavily discount plants in the fall so they don't have to care for them over the winter.

Now, when you buy these plants, don't listen to the so-called professionals who tell you to leave the burlap on, fill the hole with nice soft amendments like peat moss and perlite and then mound chipped up pallets that have been spray painted the color of a Burger King around the trunks.

Instead, remove all wrappings of any kind, dig a wide hole, not a deep one.

Position trees so that their root flare is visible above ground.

Shrubs should be planted slightly higher than they were in their pots.

If the plant is grafted, always make sure the graft is visible above ground.

Refill the hole with the same soil you just removed.

And if you must apply mulch, start six inches away from the plant and extend the mulch lying out as far as you estimate the longest branch will extend.

Never apply mulch deeper than two inches and never touch any kind of plant with any kind of mulch.

We finish up with your instructions for fall pruning.

Don't!

Nothing needs to be pruned in the fall.

Nothing should be pruned in the fall.

And pruning in the fall carries a high risk of plant damage and or death.

Prune your spring bloomers after they finish blooming in the spring, prune roses and summer bloomers a couple of weeks after they begin growing again in the spring.

Well, that sure was a solid look at what you should be planting right now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, the question of the week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website, where you can read it over at your leisure or, if you prefer, 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 will always find the latest Question of the Week where?

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 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 lightning struck a small UHF station, broadcasting an episode of Double Chiller Theater featuring The Amazing Colossal Man and The Incredible Shrinking Man, and he got caught in the middle.

Yikes.

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

We must be out of time.

But you can call us anytime at... Or send us your e-mail.

You're tired, you're poor, your wretched refuse teeming, teeming towards our garden shore at... You'll find all of this contact information, the answers to hundreds of your garden questions, audio of this show, video of this show.

Audio and video of old shows.

Oi!

Oh, and our podcast.

It's all at our website.

YouBetYourGarden.org.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

Planting garlic, making garlic powder.

Sauce and tomatoes.

Giant hot peppers and just plain harvesting and processing my little rear end off.

Well, it used to be little.

Yeah, it really did.

And cute, too.

Maybe it's still cute.

But I'm only sitting down so who can tell?

Anyway, cute or not, it'll be back to see you again next week.