From the pitch Black Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A..

It is time for another candle lit episodes of chemical free horticultural hijinx.

You bet your garden.

Did you ever hear growing rhubarb in the Dark?

I'm Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, we'll discuss a centuries old technique that yields the sweetest rhubarb possible.

Plus your, fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and titanically turpine, trepidations.

So stay right where you are.

Cats and kittens because it's all coming up faster than you listening to the fascinating sound of rhubarb growing to its own distant drummer of darkness right now.

888492 9444.

William welcome to you bet your garden.

Thanks, Mike.

How's it going, eh?

I am just ducky.

I guess I'm also sprout tea.

And I guess this is as good a time as any to identify our new friend, which I am told is a large, plush mushroom gnome, um, made in Scandinavia and sent to me.

Enjoy your gift from an admirer.

So no name or anything like that.

Um, but now Ducky and Sprout have a new plush playmate.

It's so exciting here.

You bet your garden.

I could plotz.

All right, William.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing well.

And where is it?

I'm in Stafford, Virginia.

All right.

What can we do for William in the greater D.C. area?

So my wife and I bought a house in this development a couple months back, and it's about a third of an acre.

And the houses, they dates back to about 95.

So it's a relatively mature area of the development.

And there are a lot of trees on the property.

Uh, there's about 70 trees, uh, mainly beech, red and white oak.

And then, um, so it's fairly shaded and a lot of the property has no ground cover whatsoever on it.

So it's mainly dirt sticks and some rocks.

Well, those are what I want to point out, that those are three excellent trees.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

I don't want to, I don't want to lose the trees at all.

We might have a few branches trimmed here or there to clean things up, but.

But what I'm really wondering about so that the property is also a fairly steep slope, so there's no ground cover.

It doesn't look great.

And there's not really a way to put a lawn into it because it's too steep to kind of mow it.

So I'm wondering what would be a good choice for a ground covered a plant that could survive in the shade, but also kind of keep the, uh, the whole area from eroding with the summer rains.

Okay.

Have you heard us?

Um, in recent shows, uh, discussing creeping time and other plants that are known, uh, as staple bowls.

Step of bowls is a branded name, but it is, it it includes a lot of low growing herbs and other plants.

And that's what we've been recommending lately.

You would have the job of seeing which ones are the most, um, uh, resistant to stygian darkness.

How would you like to have a moss lawn?

A moss lawn?

And they are all the rage.

If you go to Moss Acres dot com, they're a company up in the Poconos that sells at least a dozen different varieties of moss, including ones that have some color and including ones that have, um, that will flower and ones that are very good at resisting foot traffic.

Okay.

Now there are disadvantages.

You never have to feed it and you never have to mow it.

So I hope that doesn't disappoint you tremendously.

No, not at all.

What you would do is you would get a soil test or get something to gauge the patch of the soil in that area.

If it is below six, you're ready to rock and roll.

If it isn't, you can treat it with, I believe, sulfur to bring the page down.

Moss loves acidic soil and moist soil.

So what?

What you would do, no matter where you get your moss, it would probably come in a sheet kind of like sod and you would wet the area and then you would just lay it out and cover the area or, you know, it may be possible to put in plugs or something like that.

But if you spring for enough to cover the entire area, you know, then you're really rockin and it's done.

Okay, cool.

All right.

So that's it, And that's what I suggest.

Awesome.

Well, thank you very much.

I'll look into that.

All right.

Good luck to you, sir.

At eight, eight, 8492 9444 TILGHMAN welcome to you Bet your garden.

Hey, Mike.

Hey, Tillman.

How are you?

Pretty good.

Where are you doing?

Pretty good.

Just north of Nashville, Tennessee.

All right.

What can we do you for?

So I help manage a florist just north of Nashville.

And one of the things I've been noticing is that, uh, my florists tend to, uh, chop up the flowers and throw, uh, the leaves and the stems in the trash.

So I've been working on moving that over and creating these, giving them these tubs and going, Hey, all that flower waste, let's put it in a tub and we'll bring it back home and put it in a compost pile.

Um, so the thing I'm thinking about is and I'm listening to other callers and all the things that do wrong and all that I want to call you at a time and go, How should I be doing this?

You talk a lot about brown matter and compost piles.

Yeah, so are the leaves off roses and the stems.

Is that enough brown matter for this or I need to be adding more other stuff.

Well, you're chopping it up.

Yeah, you do need to add more stuff.

But if this material is left out to dry and it turns brown, that means the nitrogen has left the leaf and it is now brown matter.

Flowers can't become brown matter.

I would think that if you chop the twigs, the stems up really fine.

They could count as brown matter.

But you'd still want to mix this material.

5050 with well, shredded leaves or pine straw or or something like that.

Even old cornstalks, if you ever do.

Okay.

You know, Thanksgiving and Halloween displays, old cornstalks are a great substitute for fall leaves.

What I'm going to suggest is you go out and buy a roll, 50 foot or 25 foot of welding, wire, animal fencing, and you make a circle out of that and then you take a stake in it, just like a regular old garden steak.

And you go back to your roll of welded wire and you roll that into a tube that's around the size of your arm or preferably your leg, the diameter.

And you drop that over top of of the steak and let it rattle around loosely.

So then I would suggest a layer of brown material and then some of your floral material.

And then here you're going to rescue somebody else's trash, a £5 bucket of you said coffee grounds.

So you should have no trouble getting a coffee shop to donate them to you.

Starbucks has a program where they have more wrapped up and ready to go.

And if it's just a neighborhood coffee shop, all you got to do is leave a five gallon bucket there and come back for it.

At the end of the day, they will be thrilled to have it recycled.

And then I wish I would continue that, you know, a layer, a brown a layer of your florist material shop is finally as possible.

And then more coffee grounds.

And then you figure you do that three or four times and then you leave it alone for a little bit.

And if you've done it correctly on a cool morning, you should see steam coming out of that chimney in the center.

That's the sign that you're making hot compost.

And hot compost can degrade a lot of potential problems.

Right?

Sounds good.

Good luck to you.

And thanks so much, Mark.

Well, thank you for saving this stuff from the landfill.

888492 9444 Carol, welcome to You bet your garden.

Hi, Mike.

How are you doing?

You up?

I'm just ducky.

You beat me to it.

And Ducky has a new friend, a mushroom gnome from a unknown admirer.

It arrived the day I made my mind up about it yet, but I don't know.

The Three Musketeers.

They look pretty good together.

If you're listening on the podcast, this is why you should watch the TV version, which you can find at our web site.

Or I just discovered I'm on Passport, PBS.

Passport Art.

So now I'm radio, TV, podcast and streaming.

Is there anything left to conquer?

I don't know.

How are you doing, Carol?

Good, good.

And where is crazy?

Question Oh, I'm from Sudbury, Massachusetts.

It seems in Sudbury where I am, there has been a bumper crop of deer and so I my house is up a hill, but I have an area at the bottom of the hill, closer to the road that, you know, I can it has good sun and I can garden down there in the summer, but I don't go down there very much in the winter and anyway I went down there recently and it was just deer poop everywhere.

And I was really, you know, I had never encountered that before, so I didn't know whether or not it I don't know anything about the quality of deer poop, whether it's a pair, you know, full of nitrogen like other poop, and whether I should try to shovel it and get it out of there, or if I could cover it with compost or, um, something else.

Okay.

Anyway, here's an easy way to remember all herbivore poop is acceptable as manure in a compost pile.

Okay?

The feces from animals that don't have homes, that have soft paws that is totally unacceptable.

And you must stay away from it because they are exposed to parasites through that soft paw whereby you don't get that with a clove and hof animals.

So yes, a deer poop would be good.

I can remember a couple of years ago I was straightening up a lane in my garden, a pathway for the kids to get back to where two streams converge, and I saw all these little piles of round pellets and I went back and got a five gallon bucket and filled them up with it.

And I mixed it into my compost pile and I was certain that it could only improve the contents.

And let's face it, you're getting even that I know that poop came from the plants of yours that the deer ate.

It's the circle of life.

It's like Disney.

Do you have a compost pile?

Yes, I. Yeah.

What's in it?

Um, mostly, you know, shredded leaves and, um, coffee grounds.

Mhm.

I try not to put I have one of those Vitamix things that you recommended.

Oh, good drying thing.

Aren't they amazing.

I love it.

I love it.

Everybody.

The egg shells.

Yeah.

It's great for eggshell for people who don't know what we're talking about.

Vitamix.

Not that long ago, a year or two ago came out with this device that you sit on your counter.

Is it called the recycler?

I think so.

And you fill it with all your kitchen waste and turn it on and then it makes weird gurgling sounds for like an hour.

But what it does is chop it up, then it heats it.

And when it's done and you open the lid, you have a like the finest compost you've ever seen.

It really, really works well anyway.

Yeah.

Um, yeah.

So just mix the deer poop in with your compost.

Don't put it in the recycler.

No, no, no.

Sorry.

Oh, I can't imagine the smell.

Honey.

What's that smell?

Is there a dead mouse under the fridge again?

Um, but, yeah, it's great to add to your compost pile.

You know, make sure you mix it in.

Don't make a layer.

Yeah.

And rub it will improve your compost and.

And for the deer, if you're worried about them getting into your garden, take.

Take a look at the device called the wireless deer fence.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Good to know.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you so much, Mike.

All right.

Good luck to you and your wonderful campus.

Thank you so much.

All right.

You take care, Carol.

Once again, it is time for the Question of the week, which we're calling Dancing in the Dark with rhubarb or the noisy secret, the super sweetness.

Gene writes, What can you tell my friend David in central Indiana, Beach Grove, Indianapolis area about growing rhubarb in the dark?

Have you or anyone you know tried this in the USA?

Thanks.

I love listening to your show on Saturday afternoons on Indiana Public Radio.

Say hi to Ducky for me.

There you go.

You know, I have a growing suspicion that Ducky is becoming much more popular than me.

I mean, he is a heck of a lot cuter, but still.

Yeah.

Anyway, we were originally planning a tag team phone call from Gene and David, but if I had ever heard about this trick before, I had long ago forgotten it.

So into the research rabbit hole I went.

What I learned was so cool I had to turn it into a question or the week so that its wisdom and revelations will reside at the Gardens Alive website in perpetuity, or at least a fairly long time.

The technique comes to us from Great Britain, especially the quote Yorkshire Triangle in the north of England, which is not a place where ships and planes disappear, but a nine square mile area where this type of forced rhubarb is grown in sheds, where no light is ever allowed to intrude.

In fact, the crop is so sensitive it's harvested by candlelight, just as it was in the 1800s.

The website for America's Test Kitchen has one of the best articles on this, as well as a groovy photo of candlelight harvesting.

I just hope the photographer didn't use a flash.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

As Cook's Illustrated senior editor, Alissa Vaughn, these two websites seem to be interconnected.

Recounts.

Quote, Around 1817, a team of workers digging a ditch in London inadvertently sparked a horticultural revolution.

The ditch was in the Chelsea physic Garden on the Bank of the River Thames.

The spark was the accidental burial of some dormant crowns of rhubarb, which at the time was used primarily as a medicine.

While field rhubarb is a warm weather crop, fresh salmon colored stalks started poking out of the dirt mounds in the physic garden.

That winter, the first of many surprises in the unlikely life of cultivated rhubarb.

Now illnesses.

Such a good writer that I quoted that exactly with a few edits in stead of my usual paraphrasing, which will now return a warning.

I have been to that part of England and sources.

Our sources Sorcerers are correct when they describe the region to be as cold and damp as the plant's original home of Siberia.

Leeds was one of the coldest and damp places I have ever been.

This technique, like growing rhubarb the regular way outdoors, would not work in warm weather climates.

Oh, but if you are blessed with weather that is cold and damp, you're in luck.

Well, not really.

But you can grow rhubarb outdoors and you can do this to.

It starts with two year old plants that have been grown outdoors.

Rhubarb, her basest perennial dies back in the fall, but in the right kind of climate will show above ground growth in December, January.

At this time, you need to have your own personal growing shed already.

When that first growth appears, it has to be warm and pitch black inside.

Experts agree that even using a flashlight could ruin things.

The roots you start with must be at least two years old.

The only energy that will be available to these plants is stored in those roots.

And don't force those roots again for at least two years.

Replant them outside in the form so they can recharge.

This can also be attempted outdoors.

This same way you would blanch asparagus to make it white instead of green.

Simply cover the emerging plant with a light proof container.

Washington and Jefferson were very fond of this ancient technique.

Then you have to keep things as warm as possible.

Straw is the recommended, quote, mulch.

But I think that soil compost and or, well, shredded leaves would work just as well or better.

But that's up to you.

And now that I think about it, fresh horse manure might be the absolute best thing to use in this situation.

I would bury the entire experiment to keep things even warmer.

And as light proof as possible.

Just make sure your cover is tall enough to accommodate the final height of the rhubarb, whether indoors or outdoors.

All sources agree that forced rhubarb grows fast, much faster than regular rhubarb.

In fact, many growers swear that you can hear it growing.

Snap, crackle and pop.

Eight weeks is the recommended growing time.

This makes your warm, dark, growing shed superior to growing outdoors because you can sneak inside at night.

Turn off any outdoor lights first and check the growing plants by candlelight, which is way cool.

The point of all this forced rhubarb is much sweeter than when outdoor grown.

The rhubarb grows fast because it's trying to find sunlight.

But without that sun, the plant produces more sugars for growth.

As a result, the stems are sweeter as well as less puff and stringy.

Sources agree that you can greatly reduce the amount of sugar that regular rhubarb requires in recipes.

A final note.

Yes, you still have to trim off every bit of leaf and use only the stalks just like regular rhubarb.

And now for your dining and dancing pleasure, we bring you this sound of forced rhubarb growing courtesy of the Gastro Obscura section of the Atlas Obscura.

Hey, if you like the music, be sure to tip the waitstaff.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about keeping rhubarb in the dark, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for use, the question of the week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

The read it over at your leisure or your leisure.

Just click the link for the question of the week on our website, which is still and will forever be.

You bet your garden.

O. R g Gardens Alive supports the you bet your garden question of the week.

And you always find the latest question of the week at the Gardens Online web website.

You bet.

Your garden is a half hour public television show available on TBS, 39 and PBS Passport and an hour long public radio show and podcast all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A.. 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 a small amount of matter from a fallen white dwarf star gave him the power to shrink inside, which is not exactly what he was hoping for.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to grow me by candlelight if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us anytime at 88849294 44 or send us your e-mail, your tired, your poor, your wretched messages steaming, steaming towards our garden shore.

At ybyg@wlvt.org.

I'm begging you, I'm on my knees.

I'm not actually on my knees because I would have trouble getting back up again.

But please include your location.

I'm your host and I guess executive producer Mike McGrath.

And I'm all giggly about finally starting this season's Maiden.

They'll all be laughing at my seats, starting mics and confusing passers by.

Until I see you again.