Hello, thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain.

And joining me in the studio today are two of our old friends.

Chuck and Shane are here and we're going to be talking about all kinds of stuff today.

They brought in things to show you chuck even brought in a snack, we've got a lot to cover.

So before we get into that, let's have them introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their specialty and what they love to do.

Chuck, we'll start with you.

Okay.

Well, I am Chuck Voigt and I was in various departments at the University of Illinois because of mergers and name changes and whatever.

Basically, I was in horticulture.

My specialties were vegetable crops and herbs.

And I did that the university for 27 plus years, and now I've been retired for seven.

It's kind of amazing.

No way to brag.

We were just talking about retirement before the show and I can't wait to here's a newbie.

Yeah, just grinning ear to hear.

Shane, if you wouldn't mind introducing.

I'm Shane cultura.

I'm one of the family owners of country offers nursery in Urbana.

I've worked there for 27 years as one of the family and I grew up in the business.

been on the show since I think 1995.

So I actually grew up here as well.

So I pretty much spent my entire life answering questions about plants and gardening.

And I think over 27 years, I've learned a couple things that I could share.

You know, we've got to find some footage of you from 95 I haven't taken you aside videotape my room but so guys at night guys at Irani, again original cast member, we had this idea that we were going to be like this old house but of gardening.

So PVS allowed us to take a camera out and record us, Hey, I said your day and it was fantastic.

But it must have not been super fantastic.

And let us do it on the cutting room floor and I had a lot more hair there.

I was probably a little bigger.

I've actually gotten a little better you're gonna have to do, but it was Yeah, side by side and 27 years.

It's it's just this is what we do for fun now that I'm retired, I actually do it for fun, and I used to do for business.

So good.

Awesome.

Well, welcome to both of you.

I know folks are excited to have you here.

So let's jump right in.

We've got a question off the top that we're going to ask and both of you are going to kind of talk about this one.

This was an email that came in bear with it's kind of a long question.

I had three large black walnut trees cut down I would like to place two raised garden beds and they list the dimensions there.

Over the area where the trees were the black walnut trees were located by a cement driveway on the other side of the driveway, flowers, ferns, grasses, volunteer tomatoes, and an Easter Lily grew fine.

I had another raised bed that had flowers and the large tomato plant there that grew fine across the cement driveway.

Let's see there's a little typo there.

I am aware that black walnut trees send out a poison or toxin to deter other plants from growing close to them.

What is your advice regarding placing my raised beds on top of where the trees grow?

That was a mouthful.

So Chuck, this is one of your well it's best reality Shane and I were discussing this ahead of time.

But yeah, I'm the as of last year I'm the black walnut king so and as I was as I was doing research last year I found out that that the roots of the black walnut trees even though they're cut down as they decay, they're going to they're going to release juglone ju GL o n e which is the the Leela Pathak chemical that helps walnuts establish space within a woodland you know, it just discourages competition which which is why they've had you know are fairly successful shading I think I agree that that in a in a raised bed as long as it's a fairly deep raised bed you probably can grow things there.

You wouldn't want to try to grow them in the soil because as those roots decay you're gonna get a lot of juggling maybe more at once it's cut down it seems to release a little bit more but it as we said earlier, I don't think it comes up it's going to leach down so I think getting things above that level you're probably going to be just fine and the more distance obviously the better that's why things across the driveway that divider has done that as well right but the positive is that wood was probably stunningly beautiful.

So whatever got cut down hopefully shared in that little little bit.

And the trade off is it doesn't like competition just like you said and so that's the toxins that are in that ground and so I was kind of joking with Chuck that we always used to recommend to plant underneath that is to start with something cheap something that just to test the waters put the canary in the in the mind first and do it that way.

But last time I was on I brought the the rolling pins that my friend turned from from holiday walnut tree that the super durational snapped off.

Yeah, I'd love to tell my grandfather had one outside I have his house and his he has an entire room that the panels it's paneled all in black walnut that he did all himself.

I bet that whole tree the whole room.

So anytime you walk in anytime I hear black walnut, that's all I think of is my grandfather took down a tree and made a room is stunning.

The only thing that scares me is the 1000 cankers disease that's that's threatening black walnuts.

But for an hour, we could have shows and shows over things threatening.

Let me ask you this.

I know there are a lot of feelings and opinions about weed screen.

Would you use any in this instance in the raised bed?

Yeah, we said this earlier, I think to divide it up to have something that breathes.

And yeah, absolutely.

I do that kind of anyway, just to line the bottom something allows water to go through but not things to come up because we know that perfect soil draws roots so I always tell the story I planted this I couldn't get nothing against underneath a maple the Maple is always taking all the water roots growing out.

So I planted a pot.

And all of a sudden I noticed the pot was even going dry.

The maple had gone in the pot and completely filled the entire pot.

So that kind of screen will prevent anything else from coming and taking that perfect soil.

Kind of like Willow seeking out septic systems.

Yeah, absolutely.

They're not gonna break up the system because they will find they're gonna tap in there.

We'll find a way.

Okay, we've got lots to cover.

So Chuck, we're gonna start with you.

It's mid to late January, we're thinking about seeds.

We're thinking about winter sowing.

You may have already done some of that.

So my favorite type of gardening is inexpensive gardening.

I love when you can you know the lunchmeat containers Ella talks about those all the time.

I love when you can just find things at home and grow seed in them.

So Chuck's gonna talk a little bit about that.

Okay, well, I brought in some some what I like to call garbage can horticulture.

I didn't bring any pineapple tops or avocado pits, but that we can do that another day.

But just things that you would throw away or, you know, it's good to think of some way to reuse them.

You know, you can you can plant seeds in a garden.

These are are fantastic maybe for starting seeds, but also for cuttings.

I'm sure it's deep enough to have a have medium down here.

As you're starting, you can have this on fairly tightly and then and then gradually loosen it up until until the cuttings are routed and ready to go.

Certainly something like a Chinese carry out container, we've all got them right.

If you're gonna use something like a jiffy, seven peat pellet that expands, you can stick those in there.

I did, I think a dozen of those peat pellets in a coffee cake, clam shell.

You know, even even milk containers you can you can use.

Now do you do much winter sewing I know a lot of people swear by the milk dogs outside.

Not Not really.

But certainly you can use those for early season when you you cut out the bottom and put them over a tomato plant.

And then you can you can loosen the take off the lid during the day and maybe put it back on at night to try to give a little added protection.

But they're just all kinds of things.

People are sowing seeds in half egg shells.

Yes.

And the perfect container for that would be to sediment in there.

The one thing you have to be a little cautious of is drainage.

Because if you put it in in one of these with with no drainage, then you have to be more careful about how you water because you don't want them sopping in water.

The same thing.

You'd sow seeds in here and put that on to keep them nice and warm while they're while they're starting.

But then as soon as they come up, you kind of need to loosen that up so that they don't get damping off because it's too humid in there.

But I like this because it you know it encourages people who may be just getting started.

You don't have to have the latest and greatest and everything you know from the catalogs to grow seeds and grow plants.

We've all got this stuff sitting around.

So if you don't have those things, you know, we all eat eggs.

And yeah.

The other thing is if you're worried about the plastic that you get when you when you go out and buy bedding plants or whatever, you can reuse those in most cases, you want to clean them up and give them a like at least a 30 minute soak and a 10% bleach solution.

That's they're not a good resource.

So many products now are blown plastic that you can't recycle them so you might as well recycle them or reuse them, right because especially if you have like like the, the solid ones as opposed to the ones that break up into fours or threes or whatever.

Those those clean up very nicely.

But you can do the little ones as well.

And the nice thing about the little ones is you can you can soak them in a smaller thing.

So you don't need to, you know, a gallon of bleach and nine gallons of water to do them in a horse doesn't cost you $1,000 Like this goes right now.

Maybe not.

Right now right containers you'll ever buy.

Yeah, speaking of the latest.

That's right now she actually brag about how cheap they are here and champagne as compared to California.

Another thing yeah, my sister's friend in Washington State.

That's the first thing I saw.

That's what I thought I looked at the eggs and go, that's a lot of money sitting right up there.

Not to brag, but I do have him.

And I've gotten a lot of calls from relatives.

Hey.

So Shane, since the last time you were on, we've gotten a lot of questions about your lights, people loved them.

I think Chuck called them the Medusa, the Medusa lights, octopus.

But here's here's one question.

This is from Christine, she sent an email, can Shane give us more information about those LED lights, I can't find the one that he has.

And then like I said, just on Facebook and other places, people were really intrigued by your setup, it's a real game changer, you know, we're talking about covering the tomatoes with that, that can or with a milk jug.

You don't have to do that anymore, like you're trying to get a jump because you can't grow anything inside very well.

With this, you can so this is a 40 watt full spectrum light, so are 200 Watt rather 200 Watt is in full spectrum.

And so full spectrum means it's getting all the different colors of light that you need.

So for instance, there's red light and blue, right, and the red light is for your flowering and your fruiting.

And the blue light is more foliage based and growing roots.

And in the old days, you used to have to actually change the bulb, you would buy the blue or you'd buy the red, or you buy the full spectrum but it'd be full expense really expensive in the bulb itself would be more than $30.

A really good grow light that you'd use here at the university was 300 to $1,000 a professional setup.

So it was very, very expensive.

But then LEDs came out.

And the cost is way down.

But you do have to run these a longer time so people don't realize it to to do just like I have a pepper plant that I get peppers off every day.

And it it needs to run 12 to 16 hours a day.

So it is a long period of time.

But it's led, it costs nothing it costs pennies a day to run.

And then as far as the wattage, you're going to find some that might be a little bit lower 240 to 200 this is tend to be more and that's just because there's more lights, but it also means you can have more plants.

So that means you can put it around that and you can turn it on any size you want.

You can like I have a really tall plant I face it up.

So it's super versatile.

They're on sale for $30 I saw on Amazon so this is still on there on Amazon.

Amazon obviously change the world as well and we like to keep things local.

But it's pretty hard to beat these prices when it comes to growing plants.

I've got variegated Monstera, which is one of my favorite plants and a cutting is two or $300 It's putting on one every week now last winter it was just like trying to keep it alive.

Same with high viscous and on this one again, there's a timer this one I spent a little bit longer because it has a timer because like I joked before if you forget to turn it off your house glows like you're the old marijuana grower for seven days you know where their house is always glowed.

Beacon set now all good and there's actually more money and growing really good peppers right now.

But it is again, it's it is available it is you want full spectrum.

I'm sure there are ones that you can probably get that you can change the light if you want more fruiting, but it really is full spectrum does that does the trick now.

And it's it's super cheap.

And you know, I saw when I went back to the nursery I was going in looking at they're doing some work inside and I look and the employees all have different forms of these in their windows now because before we put them in the window, but some people have less or light offices.

Those people all have these in there and yeah, it's just really a game changer.

I got a question when I saw you do this the first time do they come in, in other formats?

Yes, like something more like the 100% so there's longer ones that you can put underneath a shelf.

So there's some people like to grow on shelf.

So there's the long bulbs, there's some that are a hanging one I know some people want more decorative so they'll actually change out the lights that are above their countertops in the kitchen.

So the other other ones will look a certain type of ball but this LED will actually be a full spectrum so it looks the same as the rest but it's actually giving the pot the good light for their plants so they can have a plant in the middle of the kitchen with no windows growing there.

Jennifer Nelson talked about those she had them installed underneath her cabinets where all of her herbs are growing on the countertop or lighting ambiance and it's actually functional.

Yes, and it's actually so preform have led LED.

Again, I've got these LEDs in my garage, or they look like a helicopter.

They're all lights, you're blind.

When you go in there, my wife said her garage is so dirty.

It's always been that day.

And my plants, I mean, I have a lime tree.

It's never been so lush and green.

During the winter.

Again, we all have these high viscous and lime trees and all these things that we're trying to just barely keep alive.

No longer 30 to $50.

You got it covered.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

Another question.

This one is about shaping up some hydrangea.

This is from Peggy.

She says I have a row of Limelight bushes that are very tall.

Let's see big clusters of blooms are beautiful.

But when there's wind or heavy rain, the stems bend over.

And they do not ever straighten back up.

Every spring I prune the bush to about a foot high and every summer it grows back the exact same way.

Never branching are becoming Fuller and less vulnerable to being bent by the weather is there any way to encourage it to branch and become less tall and more full?

Yeah, so she's kind of causing that length Enos by taking it back so far.

So every year, she's bringing it so low, that it's going to grow all those long limbs right back again.

So my suggestion is, as soon as what I like to do, as soon as spring comes in, you start seeing little buds.

To trim it more to shape in that three to four foot, it's gonna get to six or seven regardless.

So if you trim it to one foot, it's getting the six foot and lanky if you trim it to four foot, it's going to six foot and less lanky.

So mine is to get a better stable frame to it.

So take it three or four feet, trim it to shape and get a nice heavy structure so that you just have smaller, thinner branches so it won't flop nearly as long you know, still bloom, it'll still do all those things that she wants.

It just won't be coming from this tiny it's imagined like holding a stick from up here or down here.

If you're holding from down here.

It's wobbly.

If you're holding it from up here, it doesn't move as much.

Excellent analogy.

Okay.

All right.

So we are talking seeds the catalogs are rolling in, if you're into that sort of thing.

Some people are strictly nursery, some people are seed people or both.

But we need to talk schedules, when to do what when to start what so Chuck is going to tell us what we should start and when Well I kind of went through and and I'm sure I missed something that's not that somebody starts and transplants.

One time I started beets and transplanted those and it came out pretty well but probably not a normal thing.

But we're kind of in the middle of January as is as we do this and and the first group that I have would be from from mid January to through mid February kind of timeframe.

Things like salary and celeriac, the roots salary, they're just the seeds are small, they germinate so slowly the plants develop so slowly, and they probably should go out in April.

So you need to get those going.

Same thing with parsley, onions, shallots, leeks, and chives, those things also are very cold already.

So you can get those out sometimes in in many parts of Mid America in March depending on when we get that first warm dry spell.

So that's that's the first group, probably mid February.

If you're going to try to grow rosemary and lavender from seed, again, they develop really slowly.

So I'm starting those in in mid February.

With with the caveat that you'd be better off to get a call DEVAR of a really superior plant.

Because from seed, they're okay.

But but they're not.

They're not like the super cultivars.

It's like hidcote is a is a lavender variety and it's in sometimes it's available as cloned material.

Sometimes it's it's from seed, and the differences are very much.

Alright, we're getting to march 1 Or to march the first to the 15th.

Then you want to get things like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, collards, kale, all of those cruciferous crops that that you want to hit that that small, early cool weather window with they develop fairly quickly.

So you don't want them too far ahead.

But you want them ready you know by late March, early April when when that window opens.

Same with with lettuce and oregano if you wanted to transplant lettuce and and start oregano.

Oregano comes a little faster than rosemary and lavender but it's still not especially quick.

middle of March to the end of March, Florence fennel, the bulbing type deal and then I would start peppers, eggplants, maybe sage at that point sage is larger seeds, they come up, they're much more robust seedlings, so that doesn't take as long plus they can take more cold wants to go into garden, April 1 to the 15th I would I would delay tomatoes until then.

Because if you start them when you're starting your peppers and the eggplants, tomatoes developed so much faster, you're gonna get unless you have superior lighting, you're gonna get long leggy things that you need to bury most of the stems and, and you might you know, if you had a couple of them, you might get the earliest tomato in the neighborhood.

But for really good production, what you want to set out there are small little vegetative plants that then attach and, and grow like crazy.

Yeah.

All right, you're getting into the middle of April to the beginning of May, then things like cucumbers, muskmelons watermelons, you don't want those to be in a in a pellet for very long.

Because once they get up and start to get the first true leaf, that's the ideal time to transplant them.

So maybe two and a half to three weeks from seeding to transplanting.

So you want you want the garden to be nice and warm by the time you do that.

So depending on where you are and how you anticipate the season breaking, you can hold them a little longer than that.

But but but not a lot.

Same thing if you're going to do zucchini or squash or pumpkins if you want to transplant them.

And the last one in the spring then would be basil, I would start that may 1 15.

Because they grow pretty quickly.

And you don't want them out before Memorial Day, most most most places.

And then here's one that that's my pet peeve don't start brussel sprouts from seeds until June 1 to 15th.

Okay, because they're a fall crop.

You can't grow them successfully from those plants that are available in March and the garden centers.

They're gonna they're gonna they're not going to make tight sprouts.

They're going to develop lots and lots of that nastiness that that brussels sprouts kind of interest the best brussels sprouts have that in moderation.

The worst ones that I always say platinum platinum in March and get them out there through the heat of the summer if you wanted absolutely discourage the children from ever liking.

So plant clams up first the 15th transplant them in July and then they grow in September and October as things cooled down usually you get a little bit better moisture.

And you know by the by the mid to the end of October you have these wonderful tight sprouts that that are sweet and and minimally nasty.

And then going forward from that July 1 of 15.

That's where you know, I go back to your broccoli, cauliflower, the late cabbage, maybe Chinese cabbage, collards, kale, especially like flowering kale or flowering cabbage.

Those are those wonderful, you don't want to get them out too, too soon or they get too tall.

And then I've had some success in that time period with Florence fennel, again, getting that to grow in the cool days of fall.

Doesn't stand really cold weather very well.

But you can get some really nice ones.

And then a little later August 1 to the 15th and kohlrabi maybe some lettuce.

And if you want to grow big, massive amounts of dill weed, just the foliage.

First August 1 to 15th.

Plant some dough seeds then, and hopefully the day length is going to be right so you hit it and they don't want to try to flower late.

They just make these big super fronds of of wonderful.

Can I get my hands on a copy of that?

Thank you sounds like it sounds like we're gonna plant seeds.

I was just getting more and more excited with the schedule.

It doesn't you don't have to do all of those things.

You can just do some of those things.

Whatever those things that your favorites, you know, it's like, I'm spoiled because I cut down to four or 5000 foot vegetable garden.

Cut down.

Yeah.

This is from like, one to two acres.

That's a big cut.

Yeah, but, you know, if you're dealing with a little little patch in the back, you can't do all of those things.

But you certainly can do some of those snacks.

I did bring snacks.

Those are Marang my sister made they do have pecans in them.

So if you have a nut problem I thought they were spring bulbs that had dried up.

Thank you Donna once again.

She spoiled me rotten Can we still plant these delicious row.

She's She.

She wants to ease you along.

She spoils me a couple of other things on the list.

So you gotta keep I'm always ready.

I'm always ready.

Excellent.

Oh, sorry.

Now, my mouth is full.

We've got about two minutes left.

I want to ask real quick.

Are there any there's a question here about best plants for growing on a trellis.

So when A minute or so, are there any things plants that you guys love on trellises?

Or that you know, clematis is one I can think of if we're talking decorative not Yes, yes.

Yeah, I mean, I have a big trellis and I needed to cover a lot of space.

So I actually used hops, it was really fast growing.

And I planted a golden one.

So it actually had some color to it.

And I got hops on it if you're gonna make any beer, but it was one of the easiest to grow best to get a screen you know, you don't get any any flowers on it or anything like that.

But then I would just make Miss mix annual vines on there.

Like a winter Thumper, just the Rebecca it's the one that looks like a Rebecca flower, but it's got oranges and yellows.

So I've mixed that in an annual flower in these in these hops.

And it's stunning and it was super quick.

And I really I really loved how it covers to stay in the in the vegetable here.

Malabar spinach is wonderful.

I forgot about that.

Yeah, interesting picker.

And it's edible was when it gets a little clusters of flowers.

It turned into little little berries in it.

And it's both decorative and edible.

So there's kind of there you go have a full purpose.

All right.

Well, we're out of time.

It always goes so fast.

Thank you guys so much for coming in and sharing your time and talents with us.

And thank you so much for watching.

My mouth is watering.

If you have any questions, please send them into us at yourgarden@gmail.com and we'll get them answered for you and we will see you next time.

Good night.