in Bethlehem, PA, it's time for another fall planting episode of chemical free horticultural high jinks - You Bet Your Garden.

They call them spring bulbs, but we have to plant them in the fall to see those springtime flowers.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, we'll reveal how to have spring bulb success with tulips.

Perhaps the most difficult bulb of them all.

Plus endlessly evasive answers to your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and titanically tedious trepidations.

So keep your eyes and or ears right here, cats and kittens, cos it's all coming up faster than you seeing your tulips in person instead of in a picture.

Right after this.

In life, we have many kinds is providedour Garden 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 espoma.com.

Support for Yoke McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, we're going to tell you exactly how you can plant the most delicious spring bulb of them all - delicious to everything that tries to eat your plants, that is - and get to see the flowers the following spring.

But before that, lots of your fabulous phone calls.

At... Leon, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hello, Mike.

- Yes, sir.

- Such a pleasure.

- Well, I hope it will continue to be a pleasure, by the time we're done.

How are you doing?

- I'm doing great.

It's a magnificent day.

I'm getting some sun, doing some work, drinking some cocoa.

- OK. - Tastes good.

Yeah.

- OK.

So, where are you getting sun?

- In Pittsburgh, PA. - All right.

What can we do you for?

- All right.

I have like two questions.

I believe they're connected, but they might not be.

- OK, we should do charades.

- Number one.

Sounds like... - Number... Yeah.

Number one is that I have this black bamboo that I love.

It's great.

You know, the bamboo's coming in.

It's in a pot, and I definitely need to repot it.

- OK. - But whenever the leaves grow in, they start to yellow really quickly and then the edges and the tips start to brown.

- Right.

- And, you know, I don't know why.

I have been fertilizing it.

It might be root bound, but I know that, like, on the bottom of it, I have these purple clovers, oxalis, and I love putting them in all sorts of my planters.

I just... - Right, cos you can't kill them.

- You can't kill them!

They come back.

They're beautiful, they're great.

And the color just complements everything.

- I have a pot of oxalis outside for the summer.

And I think in two or three years it'll be eligible for Social Security.

All right.

Now... - You can't do it.

- Now, black bamboo is a tropical plant.

So do you bring it in in the winter?

- I do, yes.

- OK. What kind of a pot are we talking about?

- It's about ten inches deep.

It's rectangular and two feet long and about a foot wide.

- Oh, that's interesting.

Made of?

- Uh...plastic.

Honestly, it's not the best quality.

- Well, no, no, no, I mean, plastic is good in one sense cos it retains moisture and tends to drain well.

But, you know, when you bought this thing, there were knockout holes in the bottom for drainage, right?

- Yes.

- And did you knock them all out?

- I did.

- OK. First, I'm going to suggest that, you know, since you have a rectangular pot, the bamboo should actually be pretty easy to just lift out.

And I would suggest you take it out and examine the roots.

It sounds like it's being over watered.

If the roots are rotten or just don't look good clean them up, rinse them off, prune off anything that looks bad.

Turn the thing upside down and knock more holes into the bottom and make sure it's set up on something so that water drains out instead of being flat to a surface and get the oxalis out of there.

- OK. OK. Gotcha.

So that's onto my next question, if that's all right.

- Go ahead.

Number two.

- I have way too many plants, some would say.

I don't think so.

But because of that I house them a lot together in the same pots.

And, you know, I know that in nature, you know, through like fungal networks and such, you know, plants can kind of be beneficial for each other.

And I'm wondering if this oxalis is harming, you know, the bamboo or where I can kind of learn more information on kind of what... - Oh, boy, yeah.

- What plants I can house together.

- Now you're into mycology.

Yeah.

Well, I would suggest you start with fungi.com - fungi.com That's the website of my good friend Paul Stamets who runs a company called Fungi Perfecti.

And he is the mushroom man.

He knows everything about the above ground growth, the mycelium, all that kind of stuff.

So the only reason I'm saying get the oxalis out of there is the main plant isn't doing well so we need to change something.

And what I want you to do is back off on the watering a little bit and just stop feeding it for a while.

And when it's outside, is it in full sun or dappled sun?

- It's on my porch, so it gets morning sun.

- Oh, OK. That's not bad.

All right.

And how does it look inside over the winters?

- It generally loses a lot of its leaves.

- OK. Bring it in gradually.

Make sure it's not near a heater or heat vent of any kind.

When the plant comes in for the winter, it's very natural, if it's stressed, to drop its leaves.

So, it's telling you something.

And, you know, I'm sure, like the rest of us, your space to put these things around is limited.

But it's a big no to have them near any kind of heat vent.

- Cool.

- All right, man?

- Yes.

Thank you for helping me speak to my plants a little bit better.

- Yeah.

I think the bamboo will do just fine in the future.

- Cool.

- All right, enjoy it.

- Thanks.

Take care.

- You, too.

Bye-bye.

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

- Thank you.

Hi, Mike.

How are you?

- I'm just ducky!

Thanks for asking.

And how's Kathy?

- I'm just peachy.

Thanks for asking.

- OK. - So, where are you peachy?

- I'm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

- So what can we do for you?

- So I was standing at my kitchen window looking at my garden and it appeared like there was an earthquake beneath one of the tomato plants.

All of a sudden, a squirrel popped out with a tomato in his mouth, went over to the nearby tree, sat down and happily ate my tomato.

- Yeah, because the evil squirrel knew you had a good view of this.

- Yeah.

Yeah!

So... We live on a one acre lot.

The garden is all the way at the bottom of the lot.

Very, very far from the hose.

I would love to have one of those motion activated squirters.

- Sprinklers.

Yes.

- Yes.

But I fear that my husband is going to squirt himself.

Plus, you know, hooking it up and unhooking it every time we mow the lawn is sort of a drag.

I notice that they had one of these that you just put the water in it.

But I can't buy it anywhere.

It's discontinued.

So I thought about those owls that make noise and have flashing eyes.

- Nah.

- What do you think?

- Nah.

No?

OK.

However, my friend Lee actually kind of invented a similar thing.

It's motion activated.

But instead of shooting water when it's activated, it plays a radio station that you've preset on the thing and it has a bright light built in.

- Oh, that sounds cool.

- Yeah.

I forget if he called it The Deer Chaser or something like that, but it's green plastic.

I'm trying to, you know... Not too big.

Not too small.

And it takes a couple of D size batteries, and I tested it and it seemed to work well.

But I will tell you that squirrels are evil.

They have a lot of time on their hands to figure stuff like this out.

I wouldn't be surprised if they actually stole the batteries for use in their transistor radios, in their squirrely homes.

Now, your tomatoes.

What kind of support do they have?

- They're on tomato towers.

It's not cages, you know, conical shaped towers.

- Right.

If the Deer Chaser thing doesn't work, and by the way, the ones I had were all AM radios, and what I tuned mine to was the local sports talk channel that during the day or, when there weren't games on, could be like a talk show about sports or it could be Rush Limbaugh or somebody like that.

But I found it very effective because, you know, when those things - they're yelling at each other.

And then when you got a ball game on, everything is different.

The crack of the bat.

You know, it's constantly changing.

It's not like you're playing dinner music for them.

- Yeah, I think it sounds wonderful.

But if that doesn't work, you're going to have to go out and make cages of welded wire animal fencing.

- Yeah.

- You know, these things last forever.

You make a little top that you can twist tie on top of them and then the evil squirrels have to figure out some way of getting in there or they'll go eat the neighbor's tomatoes, really.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- So... Go ahead.

I don't wish the squirrels on anybody, but yeah, they can't have my tomatoes.

- Yes.

What did we do?

We had something up on our Facebook page.

An evil squirrel story.

And we got dozens.

"Oh, my God, they ate my tomatoes!"

"They ate my tomatoes!"

"They ate mine, too!"

You know, they're fiends.

- Yeah.

- So, like I said, I think it was called the Deer Chaser.

You can probably still find it out there.

Sound and light, you know, but the sound would always be different, which I think is really good.

When I was the editor of Organic Gardening Magazine, somebody rigged up one of those things by itself.

They bought a motion activated sensor and rigged it up with a radio that they kept to an AM station.

So every time, in this case, it was a groundhog came in, the radio would start blaring.

So I think I think that's going to be effective.

But if not, go to our website and click on the link that says "answers to all your garden questions" and there's real specific instructions on how to make my tomato cages.

- Thank you so much.

I love your show.

It's just great.

- Oh, thank you so much.

It's a pleasure doing it.

- Have a good day.

- You too.

Bye-bye.

- Ron, welt Your Garden.

- Thanks, Mike.

- How are you doing, Ron?

- Good.

It's a sunny day, a good day for watching my butterflies out here.

And it's a good day for the monarchs to head down to Mexico.

I just tagged one a few minutes ago.

- Oh!

I know.

I don't have to ask you where you live.

You live in Pottstown.

- Pottstown, PA, Montgomery County.

- Now, Ron, we try to talk to you every year at this time because you are part of Monarch Watch.

You tag monarchs.

You grow a lot of milkweed for them.

And you and I are both huge fans of Tithonia, a Mexican sunflower, for this time of year.

So I know you count butterflies.

You probably... Do you do the thing with the chrysalis and the cages and raise them?

- Yeah, I have two drying right now outside here.

I hung them up on one of the Mexican sunflowers.

- OK, boy, and we got to tell people out there, if you've never grown the plant called Tithonia, Mexican sunflower, grow it for yourself as well as the butterflies.

Right?

- It's a monarch magnet.

If you want to witness the migration, you have to be careful cos the same monarchs are not here all day.

So right now, they probably spend maybe close to ten minutes.

But on down the road they're only going to be staying for 60 seconds.

- Right.

- As we get closer to October.

- So now, as you just mentioned, you capture and tag them.

- Yes.

You know, which, I think, blows my mind, because the concept of tagging something that I would think of as so fragile almost seems impossible.

But there's people who do it all over the place.

Right?

How many taggers do we have up and down the East Coast?

- Thousands.

Really.

I know they were making 300,000 tags.

The company that makes them.

It's a round sticker with a code on it that comes from Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas.

And you record the data and you mail that in to them.

You have to go on the web to see if your butterfly was recovered, though.

- So there are people down in Mexico who check the incomings?

- What happens, the third week of March, Monarch Watch takes $10,000 in $5 bills down to Mexico.

- Wait a minute, Ron, is this going to be suitable...?

And can I get in on this?!

- And they pay the Mexicans $5 for each tag recovery.

- Oh, that's nice.

There's a lot of volunteers now from the United States going down there, too, with them.

With the Mexican natives.

- Now, OK, so here's Ron, here's Tithonia.

Here's a monarch on it.

How does Ron get the butterflies safe?

- I was gonna say they're very resilient.

The monarch has those black lines on.

It's like a skeleton.

- Yeah.

- They're the strongest butterfly that we have in Pennsylvania.

And you really can't really damage them.

I've even knocked them out before.

- What?

Like, give them a shot?

- With a net.

When they're really migrating, you've only got a few seconds to get them.

- Right.

- So you've got to hustle.

There's about three different ways that use that net.

They don't get damaged.

You can even pet 'em.

You can pet a monarch.

I do demonstrations showing that.

They have stronger wings than, like, the swallowtail.

- Right.

If you did that to a swallowtail, the wings would be on the ground.

- Oh, OK. - You can't do it.

So, this is the best butterfly to tag?

- It is.

Yeah, it's the only one.

- And then where do you put this little tag?

- It goes on the back rear wing.

There's one big cell on there where those black lines are.

They call it the disco cell.

- Yeah.

- And you try to attach the tag to that.

And I always say not too light, not too hard.

It's a big guessing game.

The tag is so sticky, you know, it's going to stick.

- And how many tags have you used over your butterfly lifetime?

- I've been doing this since 2002...

Roughly about 100 a year.

Quite a few.

- So you get good at it, like anything else repetitive?

- You do.

You can grab the monarch right behind its head.

You're not going to hurt it.

When people first watch me do it, they really get nervous.

Afraid they're going to cry or something!

I say, "Relax.

Relax.

"I'm gonna have you pet this monarch in a minute."

And then the feet are so strong they'll pull the hair off your arm.

I mean, they're really a nice butterfly to work with, they're easy to raise.

- All right.

Ron in Pottstown.

Thank you so much for checking in.

I presume you're going to send us photos that we're going to put up as we're having this chat.

Thank you so much, Ron, and thank you for the important work you're doing.

- You're very welcome.

Have a great day.

- You too.

Bye-bye.

As promised, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling how to tip toe your tulips to spring bulb success.

All right.

This past spring, Barry in Voorhees, New Jersey, wrote... You should definitely plant new ones, Barry, because in the famous words of Star Trek's Dr McCoy, they're dead, Jim.

Now, tulips were never meant to be grown in a lawn.

In the god-forsaken mountains of Turkey and Afghanistan, where they and other spring bulbs were originally found growing wild, the winters are bitter cold and the summers blazingly hot and dry.

And so spring bulbs like tulips, daffodils and the rest evolved to emerge right after winter disappeared, thrive in the short but perfect climate of spring and then hide deep underground when the sandstorms struck.

Planting them in a lawn meant that there would be a lot of root competition.

Plus too much moisture, especially if you water that lawn.

As Brent, of Brent and Becky's Bulbs, has famously noted, dormant bulbs like to sleep in a dry bed just like us.

It's entirely possible that your tulip bulbs died from an excess of moisture or simply smothered by competition from the lawn.

However, tulip bulbs are also the most edible members of the spring bulb family.

Evil squirrels dig them up like we harvest potatoes.

Deer browse on them after they emerge in the spring.

Rabbits are always ready to feed on the flowers, but the number one enemy of tulips is, or is that are, voles.

That's voles with a V, not moles with an M. Voles are about the same size as mice, but have shorter tails, smaller ears and their beady little eyes are beadier than the beady little eyes of mice.

Voles feed on the underground roots of plants and are famous for devouring spring bulbs.

One source suggests that they can burrow down a full foot into the soil to reach your tulips never to be.

Even though they travel above ground, you rarely see them, but you can often see their distinctive trails of tamped down grass.

Now, the easiest response to having voracious voles around is to simply plant non-edible bulbs like daffodils, fritillaria and ornamental alliums.

If tulips you must plant, follow this plan.

When you plant your bulbs in the fall between Halloween and Thanksgiving for most of us, plant them in their own dedicated bed, surround each bulb with a lot of small sharp stones or something similar.

There's a commercial product called Vole Block made just for this.

When you're done planting, remove all of the tulip trash like browned out wrappers and such from the surface of the bed.

Then spray the bed with a castor oil-based repellent designed for mole and vole control.

Or, even better, mulch the bed with several inches of dog fur, which repels evil squirrels as well as voracious voles.

Don't feed the bulbs when you plant.

The spring flower is already formed inside the bulb when you plant it.

The time to feed spring bulbs is right after their flowers fade in the spring.

That's when they're actively growing the following year's flowers.

Remove any wood mulch from the area.

Never a good idea horticulturally.

This ridiculous trend of covering everything a foot deep in trash wood that's been chipped and painted some God awful color, never seen in nature, makes a perfect home for voles.

You might as well build little condos for them!

When the bulb greenery emerges in the spring, spray more castor oil or freshen up the dog fur mulch to deter dastardly deer.

When the flowers fade, clip off the little seed head that forms at the top of the stalk.

But don't cut it down low or molest the green leaves in any way.

They're absorbing the solar energy that will grow next year's flowers.

Now is the time to give your plants a gentle feeding with an organic/natural food designed for bulbs.

When the greenery turns brown, then you can clip it off.

Or, for the best results, dig up the bulbs and store them in onion bags in a cool, dry spot indoors until fall.

Then the bulbs won't rot from watering and you can safely grow something else in their spot.

Or just grow daffodils.

OK!

Now, what we have said so far about planting, feeding and leaving alone greenery applies to all spring bulbs.

But I'd like to address Barry's planting in a lawn, which was only a bad idea because of the type of bulb he chose.

It has long been the fashion in Europe to plant spring bulbs in lawns.

But only the small early flowering ones, which used to be called minor bulbs but are now called special bulbs.

I guess they grew up.

Things like snow drops, and glory of snow.

These bulbs emerge in winter, often justifying the snow in their names, and produce greenery that fades by the time the lawn needs its first cutting.

Well, that sure was some good information about actually seeing the tulips you're about to plant, now wasn't it?

Luckily for you, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website, where you can read it over at your leisure, or your leh-sure.

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 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 by Rodale Institute Television and Radio 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 by Max Bialystock, Leo Bloom and Mel Brooks with book and lyrics by Franz Lipkin and a special appearance by Dick Shawn.

Yikes.

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

We must be out of time.

But you really can call us anytime at... Or send us your e-mail, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at...

Please include your location.

You will 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 and our podcast, it's all at our web site, youbetyourgarden.org I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

Planting more lettuce than we can possibly eat.

Harvesting more potatoes than a small village could consume.

And waiting patiently for my tomato plants to die so that I can be done bending over a hot sauce pot.

And if I don't fall into that hot sauce pot, I'll see you again next week.