- From the perfectly-enclosed studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another protective episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Do you have a greenhouse that doesn't seem to have the right bells and whistles?

Or preferably, are you thinking of building one?

On today's show, we'll help a listener with some ideas on how to create the perfect outdoor home for precious plants.

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

Yeah!

Potential guests are busy remodeling, so we will take that heaping helping of your telecommunicating questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and seriously serene socializations.

So, keep your eyes and/or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than your plants looking good and fab right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided 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... - Welcome to another spine-tingling episode of You Bet Your Garden, from the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later, we're going to learn you how to make the perfect green house.

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

- Well, thanks, Mike, it's great to be on.

- It's great to have you on, Jordan, how are you doing?

- I'm doing very well, thank you for asking.

How are you?

- I'm just...Ducky!

Oh, you can't even see Ducky!

There.

- I thought you might say that.

- Yeah!

Why would you think such a thing?

I can't explain how these things take off, but, cats and kittens, and Ducky, if I miss it once, you know, I get all email complaints.

All right.

Where are you, Jordan?

- I'm calling from the beautiful hilltop campus of Circle of Seasons Charter School in Douglassville, Pennsylvania.

- And what can we do for you, Jordan?

- All right, so I am the garden teacher at Circle of Seasons, and recently, with a third grade class, I planted onion sets hoping to overwinter them, which is something I've never done, but I thought would be fun to try.

And it looked, from my research, like it would work out well.

So, we planted them about mid-October, right before we left for a small break.

We mulched them with straw, and some of the leaves of the onions did make it up above the straw, which was, like, "Exciting!

Hey, cool!"

We can show the students, they were all into it.

But then, I was inspecting them closely and I saw something that I did not want to see at all, which was the tiny little circle pockmarks of allium leaf miner, who is a longtime enemy of mine.

And I only saw a couple of plants that had this marking on it.

And so, my question is twofold.

One, do you think I'm safe to just remove the ones that I see the damage on now?

And should I do that, like, now in the fall or, like, wait until I uncover everything in the spring?

And second, do I need to remove all of the plants, assuming that the allium are going to be around?

Or do you think I'm still safe to put on, like, you know, the insect netting in the spring?

- Leaf miners travel through plant leaves and make marks like little maps, little roadways through the leaves.

You're talking about holes.

Are you sure you have the correct insect I.D.?

- I am almost positive, because the first year I grew garlic at my house, I saw these same marks and I didn't, you know, I saw it kind of late in the game, and I did end up then taking apart the garlic and finding the little larvae and the cocoons, like, down in the garlic cloves.

So I called the extension service, and they were like, "Yeah, you've got to destroy all that."

So, yeah, it's like a vertically stacked, small...

They're not holes, but they're circles.

- Oh, no, no, no, no.

Never mind.

They're not leaf miners, man.

They're... - OK. - There is a pest whose name is escaping me, which is going to happen more frequently on the show, guys, as I got older!

Oy!

But it is, I believe, a fly that lays its eggs... ..on underground parts of Alium.

Now, I'm not quite sure what's going on with your leaves, but if you've found, essentially, let's be honest, maggots inside your garlic cloves at one point, then I think this is an experiment that needs to be terminated.

Because the signs are there that the fly, which won't be active over winter, has done its job of reproducing by infesting your onions underground.

So, I think you've got to chalk this up for a loss.

How old are your kids?

- Oh, boy.

- How old are your kids?

- These were third graders, so they're nine.

- Oh, it's going to be like Bambi's mother.

Ohh!

You know, now I mean, this is a teaching moment.

As I've said on the show many times, professional farmers, both conventional and organic, and in between budget to harvest 55% of the crops they grow.

That puts them in the black.

So, you know, gardening is not for the timid, it's not for the weakness, not for the easily-disappointed.

I honestly suggest that you abandon this, plant fresh onion sets in the spring, which, in my mind, is the more traditional time, and cover those immediately with insect netting.

You know, Remay, that's the brand name of the most popular type of row cover.

But make sure it's firmly down, held down at the corners, and plant it in a different location, and then, you'll get onions.

- OK. Gotcha.

- If you allow these infected ones to proceed as kind of a, you know, anti-control, then you're just going to introduce more flies, to the whole area.

- Yeah.

- So, when you order onion sets, they've been inspected, they're fly-free, so you get them in the ground and you cover them immediately with insect netting that's firm at the corners, and... You know, it may be hard for a third grader to understand, but we learn so much more from failure than we do from success.

- Absolutely.

- Success may have been an accident.

Failure?

"I'm not going to do that again!"

All right?

- All right, Michael, thanks a lot.

- Good luck to you, sir.

Bye-bye.

Patsy, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- And thank you, Mike.

- Well, thank you, Patsy, how are you?

- I'm doing well here in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

- What can we do you for?

- Well, I have two small fig trees in my backyard which produced very well this year, but we had a lot of spotted lantern flies that left their honey dew on the leaves.

And that, in turn, turned into that black, what I guess is, mold.

It did not affect the fig production.

But my question to you, Mike, is, it's time to wrap those fig trees in burlap and the some of the leaves remained on the tree.

Should I be picking those off?

Because it would seem like it's not a good idea to put something around a fungal, sort of, thing.

Or if I pick them off, will it cause the tree to start having premature budding?

And that makes the problem for it?

So, what do you think?

- When you wrap the fig tree, do you wrap the tree itself?

Or do you have framing you put around it?

- I have framing around it.

An old tomato cage, frankly, and then, looped so it's loosely around there, including the top.

- Excellent, excellent!

Good job.

What I would do, and now... What you described, professionals call frass, F-R-A-S-S. That's a $20 word for bug poop.

Now, you say you still have leaves on the tree that have the frass on them.

Is that correct?

- Yes, but far fewer than even two weeks ago.

I went out to check today before I came on the program and, of course, I hadn't thought of this, a bunch of them have blown away.

And there's new growth that I didn't have anything to do with it I guess, because it's in a sheltered part of the yard.

- Oh, no, no, Pats.

It's...it's crazy.

I was hanging suerte cages for my local birds, and one of them emptied so quickly, I was afraid a raccoon or something had gotten into them.

So I have this, you know, million-candle power flashlight.

And I checked it before I went to bed last night, and then, I turned it to the right.

My crab apple tree is flowering.

- Oh, no!

- Yeah, it ain't just the polar bears, kids, we are spiraling into the sun, and we're doing it to ourselves.

So, there's...I mean, it's Mother Nature.

Mother Nature is fed up with our nonsense, and she's going to put a beatin' on us.

I can't tell you what to do with the new growth, other than just leave it alone and pray to the gods that... "I don't burn coal!

Don't hurt me!"

So, I would inspect the tree, however, for those splashes of mud, if you see any egg cases, and remove those, scrape them off with, like, a credit card or something like that, and drop them into white vinegar or rubbing alcohol, and then, do your tree as always and, you know, unwrap it, and we'll see what's happening.

Change is coming faster and faster, and we all have to adjust.

But keep doing what you're doing.

I'm glad you got figs.

Wrap your tree, get rid of any eggs.

And next year, if you want, if the lantern flies show up again, just spray them off with sharp streams of water from your garden hose.

- Well, thank you for hazarding an answer, and appreciate your show and everything you do.

- Thank you.

- Bye-bye.

Number to call... Is that too many fours?

I don't think so.

Tracy, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike, thank you for having me, I'm very excited.

- Thank you for being had.

How are you?

- I'm just fine.

And yourself?

- I'm...Ducky!

- I knew you were going to say that.

- I know!

And everybody on TV can see the Ducky dance.

Where are you, Trace?

- I'm in Binghamton, New York.

- Oh, OK.

Very good.

What can we do you for?

- Well, I have two questions for you.

If we get to both of them, great.

If not just one's fine, too.

I have two raised beds in my backyard.

They're a pretty decent size.

And every year, at the end of the year, I get advice from, you know, lots of people.

Some people say, you know, you should use a cover crop.

Some people say just throw your leaves on top.

And I'm just curious as to what you think is best?

Cover crops are an amazing and important part of large-scale organic agriculture.

Two kinds of cover crops.

One set of different plants is considered, we call it winter kill.

You'll put the plants in in August, which is really inconvenient because your tomatoes aren't ripe yet, and they will grow to a certain height, and then, they'll die.

And then, the following season, you punch holes in that mat of dead plants to plant your new plants.

And that mat of dead plants prevents weeds and eventually degrades and adds nutrients to the soil.

The other is much trickier.

These are cover crops that are planted in, again, August, September, and harvested in the spring so they don't die over winter.

And it can get very confusing.

I don't advocate it in a home garden unless you're a rocket scientist.

Now, your other friends are wrong.

You should never cover your beds with whole leaves.

You should get a leaf blower with a reverse setting and a collection bag, shred the leaves, and then, put those on top of the bed.

So, the whole leaves would mat down, they'd get all moldy.

Yeah, this way, you've got a great covering of shredded leaves that will stay in place two inches easy, and they will prevent weeds, and they'll degrade a little bit over the winter and slowly become compost.

And, by the time they are, it's time to collect the next year's leaves and do the same thing again.

- So, I wouldn't have to remove the shredded leaves?

- No, no, no!

Just like you punch holes in the winter-kill cover, you would just move the leaves to the side... Actually, you know what?

I'm going to back up on that.

Where you are, in a very cool climate.

I would rake the leaves off and, in March, and put them by the side of the bed simply to allow the sun to hit the soil and warm it up, then install your plants when nighttime temps will not be dipping below 50 degrees, and then, put the leaves back on as a protective mulch.

- All right.

Super.

- All right?

- Mike, thank you so much.

- My pleasure.

You take care.

As always, at this point in time, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling - hey, I'm the one who's calling it... Phil in Jones, Oklahoma, which is near Oklahoma City, writes...

It produces 5,000 BTU's British thermal units, kids.

Well, although highly-detailed in many regards, Phil's treatise left me with many questions.

So, we had a follow-up phone conversation.

But first, I'm going to go against my grain and reveal that the direct answer to his question is an oil-filled electric radiator.

That's what I used in my greenhouse when I grew hot pepper plants over the winter for our major displays at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

There's no flame, no heated coils, just gentle, radiant heat controlled by easy-to-use settings and a built-in thermostat.

So, Phil can now stop buying fire extinguishers in bulk.

But I was, and still am growing in a cold winter area, especially when I was raising a lot of hot pepper plants for one of our displays in 1994 when we were hit by weather so fierce, we had to keep shoveling a path through waist-high snow to get to the greenhouse door.

And Oklahoma has relatively mild winters.

So, I told Phil I was more concerned about his greenhouse overheating during bright, sunny winter days, and asked if his structure had an automatic vent.

"Not exactly," he replied, explaining that he had double doors that he planned to prop open when it got too hot inside, plus his side windows also swung out to ventilate the place.

OK, Phil, so you're going to open all this up on hot days, and then, remember to close everything up tight when it gets cooler that night?

That gets old by day three.

Do the windows open at the top, at least?

"No," he answered.

"They swing out the bottom."

You do realize that heat rises, right?

You need to be able to ventilate excess heat from as high up as possible, which is easily done with an automatic vent.

Where a gas-filled cartridge lifts up a roof panel or an arch above one of the doors when it gets too hot, and lowers it automatically when it gets cooler.

He explained that he and the builder thought about installing one.

And now, he will.

I asked if the green house had the traditional bench or table down the center.

"Nope, we built large shelves along the insides "of the walls."

"Where the temperature changes will be the most extreme!"

I interrupted.

"Cursed be YouTube videos," I yelled.

Well, at least you can put the oil-filled radiator in the center of the room and think about swapping out those shelves for a center-bench next year.

Now, let's end with a few other tips we discussed.

Greenhouse supply companies carry large, heavy, rubber heating mats that cover the central bench to keep the root zone of the plants warm.

Numerous studies have shown the bottom heat protects plants from cold much better than things that warm the air temperature.

They're made for greenhouse use.

So they are, of course, safe to use around water, but they must be plugged into a ground fault interrupter receptacle.

They have a probe that goes into the dirt of one of the plants to keep things at the perfect temperature.

In Oklahoma, this should be more than enough to protect plants over winter.

So, it's likely there might not be any need for an actual heater.

And you can also use those mats for seed starting in the spring.

I also explained to Phil that, when we constructed my greenhouse, we were in conduit underground to carry electricity safely and bury the length of PVC pipe that carried the warm, moist air from our electric clothes dryer inside.

The last thing we did every night was to toss a big load of freshly-washed clothes into the dryer.

And even on really cold nights, we could watch the automatic vent open and look at the beautiful steam come pouring out.

Well, that sure was some good information about greenhouse design, now, wasn't it?

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

Just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be, say it with me, bang my earphones... Ooh, that hurts Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you will always find the latest Question of the week at the Gardens Alive website.

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I think it's kind of strong.

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You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when the price of comic books went from 10-12 cents, and he promised to avenge his precious, but now unemployed dimes.

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to poke holes in my plastic if I don't get out of this studio!

Whoo, we must be out of time.

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I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

I observe every possible winter holiday so I can take time off with pay to eat Christmas cookies, enjoy endless plates of potato latkes, and every other possible delicious holiday treat that requires I buy a bigger belt in January.

And then, they'll roll me back in to see you again next week.

Yo, guys!

Yo!

Great latkes this year!

I think we're going to need a bigger hand truck.