- From the forgetful studios of Univest at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA., it's time for another "hey, look at what I found" episode of chemical-free horticultural high jinks, You Bet Your Garden.

Are you one of many who just found a bag of unplanted spring bulbs in the basement?

How about perennials that never got planted?

Perhaps a bag of grass seed that should have been spread in September?

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and on today's show, we'll reveal how to handle these out-of-season orphans.

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

Potential guests are busy searching the cellar, so we will take that heaping helping of your telecommunicated questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and immensely important interpretations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than you having tulips in July right after this.

James, welcome to You Bet Your Garden!

- Hi.

- Hi, James, how are you?

- I am great, and I'm calling about invasive species.

- OK, well, we got plenty of them.

Where are you, man?

- I am in Lower Alsace Township, which is right outside of Reading.

- Oh, OK. - And Reading was blessed with two beautiful...

I guess they're actually hills, but we call them mountains.

Mount Penn and Mount Neversink.

And I'm part of a group that manages the mountain preserves, and we're trying to do something about the invasive species that are all over both mountains, and especially the Japanese barberry.

So...

It's everywhere, and it crowds out the understory.

And, from what I understand, it's a good home for deer ticks that carry Lyme disease.

- I would say no better a home than any other.

I mean, not to spiny plants, and people are not going to rub up against it as much as they would a tall grass.

- Right, yes.

But maybe the deer and the mice would rub up against it and, you know, carry it to... - Now, you've seen this in quantity.

Ain't nobody rubbing up against it.

- No, it's pretty painful.

- Yeah!

- And these are the kind of plants that were used as living fences to separate properties and prevent children from running next door.

You know, unless they want to get all bloody.

So, Japanese barberry is a medium-sized shrub, right?

Three feet to six feet.

All kind of prickly, and it has really nice berries in the fall.

But we can't use them, but birds eat them, then they poop them out someplace else.

And boom, there's more Japanese, yeah, barberry.

- There was a native barberry, I believe, and I looked up some information on it, and it seems to be hard to find these days, called American barberry.

Maybe the Japanese just smothered it out.

I'm not sure, Japanese barberry smothered it out.

- Well, there's also a European that helped with that, too.

So, you know, as we move further and further to extinction, I think these imaginary lines between planting areas mean less and less.

Now what do you want to do with the mountaintops?

That's always the first question.

Well, we want to preserve it in its natural state, but also make it accessible for people for hiking and mountain biking, birdwatching, you name it.

We're really blessed with these two mountains, and they're beautiful.

And right now, it's just rugged, all these stickly plants, and you want to do something... - What's happening is that people are getting their yard waste and throwing it on the edges of the mountain preserve, and a lot of the yard wastes have invasive species in them, and they're starting to spread onto the mountain.

So we're going to try an educational program for the neighbors to have them recognize what an invasive species is and not to dump it.

- I don't know.

- But, you know, eradicating them just seems to be impossible, and I was wondering if you had any ideas.

- Well, again, it depends on what you want to do.

I mean, I presume this is a blank slate.

You want to put in bike trails and walking trails, and things like that.

- Well, there's a lot of those already.

It has a history of being developed over the last 200 years, and we just want to preserve what is there.

There's a bike club, the International Mountain Biking Association has a local chapter in Berks County, and they do a great job of maintaining the trails.

- So is the barberry invading the trails?

- It will!

- It will be, it's moving up the mountain, and it's just everywhere.

- OK, well, one answer is selective flame weeding.

You know, flame weeding.

- Flame weeding, OK. - Like right about now, I think it's beginning to set flowers, inconspicuous ones and then, they'll grow into fruits by the end of the season.

Well, if you burn the flowers or even in between, during a dry stage, there won't be any fruits, so that will slowly move you in the correct direction.

Have you ever investigated goats?

I'm serious.

- No, but...yeah.

- Yeah, take a look.

- We need a lot of them.

- Well, they come in numbers, they come in numbers.

But obviously, you're going to have to get financing for this.

- Right, yeah, we do have some financing through the American Rescue Plan.

- OK. - You know, and you have some money that we can spend on trail improvement and preservation, and education.

And there's other things that would help the... - My two answers are, well, first of all, you've got to protect the base of the mountain.

People can't keep dumping there - Right, yeah.

So, you've got to work with your...

I don't know if it's EPA, Park Rangers, something like that, but you've got to stop that.

And then, I would think selective flame weeding, which is a lot of fun.

Very effective, would do a good job.

And if weed-eating goats will eat barberry, then you're set.

- That's a good question.

- Yeah, they show up by the hundreds and they fence them in, they eat all the invasive plants, and then, they move them along.

Good luck to you, sir.

- Thank you so much, Mike!

- My pleasure.

Zana, welcome to You Bet Your Garden!

- Hi, Mike, how are you doing?

- I'm good, Zana, how are you?

Oh, I should say, how am I doing?

I'm Ducky!

I'm very Ducky, yes!

- I'm calling from Lansdale, PA., a bit south of you.

- Okay.

And I'm calling, we have a rose bush that we planted in honor of our son's birth two years ago.

And we're about to move into a temporary place.

We're planning to take the rosebush with us.

But the problem is that there is not a place to plant it in the ground.

We might be there for up to six months.

I have not had luck keeping roses alive in containers before, so I'm hoping that you'll have some tips.

- OK, do you have permission to take the rose bush?

- I do.

We included that in our contract when we sold the house, that we were definitely going to take that rose bush.

- How tall is the bush?

- It's about two feet tall.

- OK. And you say you're going to move to an in-between place?

- Yes.

- And then, do you have that next place settled out?

- Not yet.

We've been trying to buy a house, but it's a pretty crazy market right now.

- I hear that.

Well, you know, this is a good time.

Why don't we try to leave that thing in the ground and make this a lot easier?

Roses are incredibly good at rooting.

So what I'm going to suggest is when the new growth appears pretty soon, wait two weeks, and then cut off whips, like a foot long of the nicest new growth.

How many roses do you want to try to make?

Four?

Six?

- Oh gosh, I hadn't thought of taking cuttings, so... - Oh, yes, this is the easier way.

Get a bunch of pots.

And fill them with a combination of potting soil, compost and Perlite.

And, using a pencil, good-sized pots, make a hole in the potting soil mixture, and drop the cut end of the rose bush in, recut it right before you do this, and drop that in, don't shove it down because you'll injure the tissue.

Drop it in.

Let's say, you're going to put three whips in each container, and then, you water them really well.

And ideally you set up a humidity tent, you know, like the bags from the dry cleaners and stuff.

You know, to keep everything moist in there, and you should continue to see moistness on the inside of the bags.

So if you don't, mist it, keep it misted, but don't overwater it.

And you can take the bags off when you see new growth.

And then, eventually, you can choose which of those three you want to keep.

And you can do that many times.

It's remarkably easy if you don't go off script.

You know, just Perlite, compost, and potting soil, organic potting soil, and make sure they stay well-misted, and then, take the bag off, you know, when you see new growth, and then, just put them somewhere in dappled light where they're not going to get, you know, burned up, and they're not going to get too cold.

Just, you know, morning sun, afternoon shade would be ideal.

And because they're in pots, you can do that.

And then, you should have a great variety of the same rose.

And you know, if you screw up, you can always go back and ask for the plant, right?

- Right.

Or, you know, steal it in the dead of night, and just take some cuttings.

- Yeah, yeah.

And if you want to read up on it, there's articles on rooting roses on our website at Garden Answers section.

But figs and roses are, to me, two of the easiest plants to root.

- Okay, well, thank you so much, Mike.

- All right, good luck to you.

- Mike, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you, Mike.

- Well, thank you, Mike.

How are you?

- I'm pretty good for an old guy.

You know, I won't ask how old because I'm there, too!

And where is Mike doing pretty good for an old guy?

- Georgetown, Delaware.

What can we do for Mike in the other Georgetown, let's call it?

- Yeah.

Well, about a year, a little over a year ago, I found my favorite tree.

And it's called a monkey puzzle tree.

- Ha ha ha ha ha!

They are crazy looking things, aren't they?

- Yes, they are.

I had seen... We had seen them in England, but they grew.

It was about 40 feet tall, the one I saw.

- Wow.

-But there were some smaller ones, and my daughter in Eugene, Oregon, had them growing in her neighborhood.

So I said, I have to have one.

So I did grow one and it had... ..we purchased one two or three, four years ago and it had scale and it died.

And this one is about eight feet tall and the bottom branches are turning brown.

And I had some oozing, like, clear stuff coming out at the ends of a couple of these branches, I don't know what it was.

I sprayed them with neem oil, RTU.

- OK. - And also, I have horticultural and dormant spray.

- Mm hmm.

- But I haven't sprayed that one yet, but I just want to know, is there a way to save this tree because the bottom two branches now have turned almost totally brown.

- Well, you know, this is an evergreen.

And all evergreens will eventually turn brown at the bottom if they don't get enough sun down there.

So... - This one's out in the sun.

- Yeah, but I mean, from all sides.

- Um, pretty much, I mean, it doesn't really get shady because where it's planted, it's planted in... We have about an acre of grass and it's planted.

There are a couple of trees near it, but it's not in the shade by any means.

- What is it... What is it in?

Is it growing out of the lawn?

- Yeah.

Mm hmm.

- Do you keep the grass away from it somehow?

- Uh, a little bit, you know, there's no grass close to it, but, you know, there's a little bit of when we planted it, I kept the dirt there.

We didn't put anything around it, no mulch or anything like that.

We put mulch on the hole.

I have my own... ..mulch pile that we make, you know?

And I put some in the bottom, and that was pretty rich, and it did well, I mean, it's doing well, except we got this oozing stuff at the ends.

I did cut the oozing stuff off, figuring that whatever was affecting it...

However, it looks good from the top down to the last two or three branches on the very bottom row.

- Yeah, that's typical, unfortunately.

- It is?

- Yeah.

One thing I want to correct you... when you plant a tree or a shrub, you do not improve the soil in the planting hole.

You make the plant grow in the soil that you have and then you "mulch around" the plant with compost.

But improving the soil in the planting hole only makes the roots want to stay tight in one spot.

When the new growth starts, wait, like, three weeks and then if there's no sign of anything happening on those lower branches, trim them off.

If there's some brown and some green, just trim off the brown.

Mulch the plant really well with two inches of compost and keep it evenly watered during dry times, if they ever occur.

But I don't think there's anything really wrong.

- Good.

All right, well, that's saved me because, like I say, it's my prize tree, it's one that I.... - Oh, I love them.

Yeah.

- And when I found it, you know, it was at a place that was going out of business, and so they sold it to me for a lot less than they were asking.

- Oh, right.

- It was $300 for the tree.

- Yeah, well, a good tree costs... A good tree costs good money.

I think you made a good investment.

- Yeah, it's a beautiful tree.

- Exactly.

- Thank you.

Thank you for your advice and we'll see how it works.

- OK, very good.

You take care now.

- Thanks.

Bye.

- Bye bye.

- Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

- Well, it is time for the question of the week, which we are calling... Now, Scott Johnson on Winding Brook Manor, which is somewhere near me here in Easton, PA, wrote on my Next Door site, which is a great program... Well, you should certainly plant those sprouting perennials.

Wait for a somewhat dry stretch and install them as you would normally.

They should react the same as if you bought them yesterday.

Note, as I pound these words into my defenseless keyboard, it is sopping wet, with a wetter week to come.

And it's never a good idea to work in wet soil.

So be patient, you got them this far don't screw it up now!

The spring bulbs are a bit dicier.

If you had written back in January, I would have urged you to pack them up in organic potting soil and place the pots in that energy wasting beer fridge you got in the basement.

After 12 weeks for daffodils and 16 for tulips, the pots can be taken outside, and there's a good chance these pre-chilled bulbs will flower nicely.

But that's only if they're in tune with the season.

Forcing them to bloom outside of spring requires special equipment, lots of knowledge and lots of luck.

But it is a great option if you move aside some Christmas lights and you find a box of forgotten bulbs back in December.

Move those bulbs in the pots into a fridge that contains no fruit.

Wait 12 weeks for daffodils, 16 for tulips, put them outside and you'll have a darn good chance.

But alas, it is not just temperature and timing.

The necks of the bulbs must emerge at a certain period of celestial events to induce flower formation.

You can't sidestep this one, but I notice that no tulips have yet emerged in my garden of wonders.

I wonder why anything can grow there.

So I would plant those leftovers ASAP, and they may decide to flower on time.

Your locale is definitely warmer than mine.

So for this to work well, I suggest you fire up the Wayback Machine and drop back to mid-April.

But you got nothing to lose.

They won't wait another year, so plan them now.

Even if all you get is leaves, don't cut those leaves back this season.

Let them turn brown naturally, and you should have flowers the following spring.

That grass seed store in a mouse proof container until August.

The soil is much too cold to do anything with it now.

And finally, we move on.

with apologies to David in Alexandria, who received one of the most mixed up, bollixed answers I have ever delivered on the show a couple weeks ago.

He wrote: Ah, but those congratulations certainly came from you before you received the first run of bogus advice on our radio and TV show, David.

I was watching that show first run a couple of Saturdays ago.

Your call came up and I was quickly screaming at myself on the TV.

"Make up your mind.

"Tell them to plant them or pot them.

"Or at least tell them to run them over "with a pickup truck and get it over with!"

Anyway, without delving into my normal bag of pointless excuses - sunspots - David knew exactly what to do.

Glad one of us did!

When you receive bare root plants in the spring and don't know what to do with them, or they're impossibly small, you first sit each bare root plant in a bucket of water for an hour or two, then pot them up into a mixture of organic potting, soil, compost and pearl light.

If they're really tiny like those Arbor Day sprouts, place them in medium sized pots.

Otherwise, make sure the pot is twice as large as the root ball.

If you drop those pots into a big pile of mulch, you won't have to worry about watering them so much.

Otherwise, just put them in dappled sunlight and wait till September 2nd.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about planting a procrastinator's garden now, wasn't it?

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

To read it over again at your leisure or your leisure, just click the link for the question of the week at our web site, which is still and will forever be youbetyourgarden.org Gardens Alive supports the Adventure Garden question of the weekend and you will always find the latest question of the week 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 delivered to you weekly from the Universe Studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media 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 when he solved the riddle of time travel, went back to the age of the woolly mammoth and accidentally stepped on his great grandfather 20 times removed.

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to re-hide my recently discovered spring bulbs if I don't get out of this studio!

We must be out of time.

But you can contact us any time at 8888-492-9444 or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at ybyg@wlvt.org.

Please include your location.

How hard can it be?

You're giving me conniptions.

You'll find all of this contact information at our website, youbetyourgarden.org, where you'll also find the answers to many of your garden questions, audio of this show, video of the show, audio and video of previous shows in our internet and our popular podcast.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And, yes, I is still on the air and I'm brewing some hard compost tea so I can celebrate International Compost Awareness Week properly, and so I will see you again next week.