Coming up, let's talk about fall, John and Kay bring in lots of goodies from their garden to show and smell.

We learn a new way to save seeds.

And John gives us a history lesson about a deadly native plant that could be growing in your backyard.

That and more next on Mid American gardener Well, hello, and thanks for joining us for another episode of Mid American gardener.

I'm your host Tinisha, Spain and Joining me in studio today with lots and lots of stuff to talk about.

Kay Carnes and John Bodensteiner are here with us today.

So if you could introduce yourself to our viewers and tell us a little bit about your specialty.

Okay, I'm Kay Carnes.

And out.

My specialty is vegetables and particular heirlooms and herbs and everything are herbal, and some flowers and some flowers.

Okay.

All right, John.

I'm John Bodenstenner.

I'm a vermillion County Master Gardener.

And I just I specialize in perennials, flowers, some vegetables.

I don't I'm the vegetables are not doing well in my yard because of all the critters.

But Hostas are one of my big things.

And then I do like fruits and then different generalists.

Just a general call you the generalist, John the generalist.

Okay, we have so much they brought in so much stuff to talk about.

So I don't want to waste any time.

Okay, we'll start with you.

Where do you want to begin with your show Intel's and the theme of this show is fall all things fall, fall, harvest fall, everything.

So alright, have at it.

So I brought this squash.

It's a ramp of contest squash, it's a little bit different than yours, your zucchini is there.

I tie in based and what I like about this one got away from me.

But they all did their shear.

The seeds are in this bald and then all this is solid flesh.

I was just going to ask about that.

And so it's really great for cooking.

Because you get a lot of meat off of it.

And normally I haven't done much with my squash plants.

But this year, I decided to cover them to prevent squash vine borer and squash.

And it worked.

And my binds are everywhere.

Really.

They have grown.

They've taken over everything.

Now you know what work?

Yeah.

So you have to get creative with heirlooms though, right?

I mean, I'm sure.

This is an example of how you can work with nature to sort of get the end result.

Yeah, yes.

Good.

Looks really nice and soft.

So you don't have to skin it or anything.

No, no, no, you will not eat this part.

Are you willing?

I will.

But I'm gonna say I'm gonna let some get even bigger save seeds from very nice, nice.

This is the ramp up content.

It's a little bit different.

It's more of an Italian variety.

Content.

Okay.

flavor wise, mild, mild, mild flavor to like it.

Okay, awesome.

And it's this.

I mean, it's, it's heavy.

Yeah, this is a big one.

Definitely.

Okay.

It's called Sukanta trombone.

Trombone.

See now?

Say that three times fast.

All right.

Excellent.

Okay, anything else you'd like to mention about this?

Now, they're just, you know, they're very prolific.

And they've been I use cattle panels for trellises from my tomatoes and Michael pole beans and these kind of weeds themselves and amongst every made a little spot for themselves in there.

So that plants get really quite large and long.

Did they do well, you said prolific this year did they produced well, that all of your zucchini produce?

Well, I only had this.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

You planned well, so I did it.

Oh, they did.

Fantastic.

Good deal.

Good deal, because it was kind of funny this year.

John, what about you?

Okay, first thing I'm going to talk about.

And Kay, I know does a lot of seed saving, but I am you know if you have a tomato that you really loved, and you know that it's an heirloom type and not a hybrid because hybrids will not be true to form as far as coming back as far as seeds.

And so I've been there's certain tomatoes that I really liked to save seeds on that are expensive or that you can't find.

So what I do is, it's a fermenting type, a three day process, and what you do is you cut your tomato that you're going to save and you just take these the main Where the seeds are, and you just take that out like that and, and just do the whole tomato and put it in in a jar, and or glass.

And what I do is, I fill it with water and stir it.

And it will ferment for three days.

This is one I did two days ago, and I shake it up every day or a couple times a day.

Okay, and as you can see, it's got quite a bit of pulp and, and, and things like that after.

And then if it does start to separate, if I start to see a lot of seeds at the bottom, what I'll do is take and pour the top part off, because that's all none, no good seeds, and the pulp.

seeds that you don't want to save will float is that what I'm hearing.

Okay, so after after a day or two, after they ferment it, especially some of because then it gets gas in those edits tends to float.

After a day, you're going to notice you can see the difference between the two.

There's going to be hardly any pulp left and you shake it up, let it sit for just a few minutes.

And all the good seeds are going to go to the bottom and you keep pouring off, add a little bit more water, shake it up, pour it off, and then let it sit and pour off as much as you can.

And then what I usually do is I'll pour it off into a onto a paper towel.

And as you can see here, I've got the seeds and they'll dry, I'll just leave a minus on in like a wire wire rack or something so they dry a little bit better.

And then they scrape them off.

And then depending on what you're going to put a man, you know, I've got little seed containers, you know whether it's an envelope, or like that, the main thing, and everybody forgets to do this is labeled Yes, seeds, labeled seeds.

And before you put them in this container, make sure they are good and dry.

One of the other things that I like to do is if you get vitamins or or prescription, you get these little silicone dehydrators.

And it's always good to put one of those inside the packet just in case, you pack it up before they were completely dry.

This will absorb so they don't mold or mildew or rot.

Because that's another thing you don't want.

But the main thing then is to put them in a cool dark place.

And you know, in the closet or anywhere you can put them in the refrigerator.

You don't have to.

I don't.

But I usually try to keep all of these that I get a hold of and if I get some seeds that are maybe questionable weather I'm not sure I'll put one of these in there just in case.

Great information.

Save them for the following day.

I forget anything.

I haven't.

I haven't.

So the ground cherry plant or seeds that you gave me.

Can I collect them in this exact way?

Yes, you could.

There's no need to because all you do is put you know if you want I just want to do it.

To save those Yes, you definitely could but I just leave a couple in the bed and Mother Nature 10s Even with the husk and everything I don't care pick them I just and and Mother Nature takes care of it during the winter.

And they'll come back there.

Yeah, this was fascinating.

I didn't know that poor seeds will float.

Learn something new today, you can see that this is already starting to float.

And you can see the good seeds are over at the bottom.

But I will let that just to make sure that the good seeds are at the bottom and the bad seeds are floating.

They're just immature seeds usually is what they are at.

And did you have anything that you wanted to add to that he pretty well covered it.

That was the same technique.

I yeah, I love my job.

Okay, we're back to UK.

Okay.

I brought in some herbs because this is the time to harvest herbs.

And so I want to talk a little bit about how you harvest different herbs.

Some of the this is flat leaf parsley or Italian parsley.

It's one of my very favorites and I use a lot of it.

But this is kind of you don't want to just dry it in the air because it loses a lot of its flavor.

So I dry the parsley.

I cut the leaves off and put them on a cookie sheet and dry them in the refrigerator because you know when you leave something unopened in the refrigerator out a few days.

Yeah, it's all dried up.

Well you can use that to your advantage.

Okay.

I just I'll take the stem and just cut the leaves off.

So you don't have all the stem on it.

And then like I said, I'll put them on a tray and just pop them in the frigerator How long do you leave them in there till they're dry?

I check them periodically.

It takes a few days.

I actually have two refrigerators once in the kitchen for food and the other ones on the back porch for seeds and dry.

The beer fridge is now the seed fridge at Kay's house.

I also brought this as sage.

And basically this I just air dry, I cut the leaves off, like I do with the parsley, and just put it on a tray or pie plate or something and let it dry.

In, you know, kind of a warm dry spot on top of the refrigerator is good, you know, because the heat from the refrigerator.

And that's pretty tough.

So it's not quite as sensitive as a flat leaf.

And finally, we I brought some basil.

And this you certainly don't want to put in the refrigerator, because you'll end up with a black goo eight mills.

Yes.

And same thing, I just cut the leaves off and put them on a tray and leave them till they're dry.

And then once they're dry, I store you don't want a storm, you know the logical places that cabinet above your stove, or near your stove.

Well, that's the last place you want to store your your herbs because the heat and the humidity will take away the flavor Rob.

So what I do is I put them in jars, glass jars, and I keep them down in our basement, which is cool and dark.

And so that preserves them.

And then for cooking, I just have smaller jars that don't have a lot on and then I replaced them from the big jars so it keeps it fresh.

Now this happens to be a Reagan Hill keeps them a fresher, gotcha.

Okay, herbs storage one on one.

That's how you do it, you know, but that cabinet right there next to the always so that's where I'm at, you know where they all are.

But, but that's why I just use small amounts because you use it up before.

A lot of people have windows in their kitchen too.

And, you know, I learned one of the bad things is the A lot of times it's on the south side and the sun comes in beats in for medicine, a lot of people put their prescriptions bottles up on the on the windowsill, well, that's the worst place that you can put them.

Same with one of the herbs, you don't want that because the sun will be dead on.

It'll heat them and you'll lose the essence.

And John was a pharmacist previous lives so he had to get that tidbit in there.

All right, John, we're back to you.

Okay, there's so much you don't know what to do, I'm going to do the pop OS.

Okay.

Pop pods are dropping right now, this is they kind of look ugly right now.

But this is what you want them to look like.

You want them to be kind of like an overripe banana.

And they have a very distinct smell, it almost feels smelled them as soon as you brought them in.

And our kitchen was just really good this this morning.

And they're going to look like this.

When you cut them open what they are, is there's a lot of seeds and soft tissue in there.

And this is what you're going to see.

And what you want to do is take and get that soft tissue and that's what you want to save kind of looks like custard, it's almost like a custard.

And, and this is and there are seeds in there.

And if I never throw the stuff around the seeds away, I always suck that off because it's so good.

You don't want to waste I don't want to waste and you can make cookies out of it.

You can make any anything that you can make like banana bread.

You know, if you want to grow your own papaya tree, I know there's, you've heard the down in the pop up patch way down yonder Chuck and I sing that song, they're gonna pop us putting them in a basket, they're gonna pop us putting them in a basket, they're gonna pop us putting them in a basket way down yonder and the pop up patch where if you go down into the pop up patch and take one of the plants off, you know cut there by suckers.

Take one of those you will never have pop off fruit.

Oh, it's got to be from seeds gotta be from seed.

This is this is one of the seeds.

This is a smaller one.

But this is one of the seeds and what you need to do is take the seed and fertilize it basically what you're going to do is put it in the refrigerator in some moist peat moss and it needs the cold storage and it can not dry out so you need to put it in moist peat moss, it's eventually going to put a root out.

Once it puts that root out then you can plan Do it in soil.

Be very, very careful about that route.

Now, if you want Papa's also, they do much, much better if you have it from two different fruits.

So you want to have, you don't have to have two varieties, people always thought you had to have two varieties just need to have a little bit different DNA and each seed and if you get this fruit compared to this fruit, it's going to be different because the B may have gone from here.

Well, it's not a B, are you talking from the same tree?

Can we do that?

Yes.

Okay, good from the same tree.

And these are pollinated not by bees.

The flowers smell like rotting meat.

So alive.

Yeah, they are, they are pollinated by flies that like you know that you would find around, you know, the rotting meat.

I smell the flowers, I cannot I cannot ever distinguish that odor.

But the fruit or the flies can Gotcha.

So and they pollinate it.

And they look like little tulips hanging from the tree, they're brown.

And they're kind of pretty, but if you ever have a pop hot tree, and you see those little buds on there, early spring, early spring, late winter, you can take in and take a snip of that, take it in and force flower.

Oh, so they're kind of you know, that first 50 is and you know, your other early flowering trees, you can take and force how long from sprout to fruit, I would say about five years, three to five years depending on and they are not a true understory, but they do like some shade.

Okay?

So they don't need them out in the you can put them on the south side, but underneath so that they're not doing that real hot West sun.

So the other thing I brought, we have this is growing in my yard and I'm trying to get rid of it as much as I can.

I flunked the quiz when he asked about it earlier, okay, this is what they call white snake root plant.

If you have cattle or if you have a pup that likes to go and eat leaves or and that is got little ones.

Mainly cows is the one that we are concerned with cattle that are cat when they have a calf, what happens is they eat this the toxin goes they're very toxic to animals.

The traumatol is the chemical that is excreted by by this plant, and it goes into the milk.

And this is what killed Abraham Lincoln's mom, she was not well at the end of her life anyway.

But she was on a strict milk diet and the cows were eating this.

And this is what actually did her in.

Is that native to Illinois?

We know I think it is yeah, we have seen it in our property.

It's really um, once you have and right now it's a perennial.

So it's, if you don't, can't get out there and pull it at least break these off.

So you don't have it everywhere.

And then burn this or bag it up and get rid of it.

So that and if you have pets, don't let them eat this.

Because it is an even the if they if you the cattle that would eat this if you would butcher the cow.

The meat is also toxic, right?

Okay, so, okay.

One of the other things I brought was a lot of people talk about the allergies right now.

And this is this is goldenrod.

And a lot of people think they are allergic to goldenrod.

But as you can see, I'm shaking this there's no pollen falling or sneezing.

So this is very, very sticky.

And so people are not allergic to this.

Unfortunately, there's another plant that flowers and has prolific pollen, and that is ragweed.

And that's what everybody is allergic to.

So this gets kind of a bum rap.

I like to keep it because I have butter small butterflies bees on it.

And so I don't, I don't let this go to seed so to speak, but I let it flower and try to try to curtail it spread as much as possible.

So that was one of the other things I wanted to talk about.

There was a question that came in and I'll kind of pose this to both of you while you're grabbing your next item.

When is it too late?

Or are is it still okay to be planting bulbs?

What are your thoughts?

I think it depends on the ball.

Okay, you know I imagined tulips or daffodils could be planted now.

Because they're gonna Overlander it's early enough, I think I wouldn't wait too much longer.

Okay, because you're gonna get frost and and eventually freeze.

I think they'd be okay, now is still still a good window to get those in.

Okay.

And you guys are bulbs.

Yeah, we've got some ways I like to cook and I like to play in specialty recipes.

And so there's always this one product that was so expensive.

And I knew that it was a crocus from a crocus plant.

So this is crocus sativus.

This is where you get saffron from.

So, as far as, you know, if you've got bought bulbs, and they're closing them out, you know, and you've got them, you're much better to plant them even up to December if the ground is in froze.

Okay, you know, as long as, as long as you can work the soil you can plan for as far as your fall planting now dalias And, and gladiolas and and Cana bulbs and things like that, that you can plant because if they freeze, they're dead, but these as long as you can work the soil.

And usually this is, what is that an inch?

Yeah, give or take.

So three times the depth of the bulb is how you plant those.

So if this is what didn't you plant them a minimum of three inches, if they're a two inch minimum of six inches, so that I just thought I you know, you pick the statements of the flower and their little red threads.

And then I forget how many threads it takes to make an out many, many.

It takes we've got that picture of a saffron field.

And it's that little the red on the inside their little read statement that comes out that little needle like her that most expensive or most expensive herb on the market is saffron and I've got 50 bulbs that I'm going to plant and I may get a dove for one meal.

I'm not sure why now, he puts it in perspective.

It has a wonderful flavor and it if you like that orange or red color to to your food, this is what you use.

Okay.

All right.

We'll be looking for those when you harvest them.

Did you have Hang on just one second?

John, were those seeds that you have there?

Is this for this or is that something separate?

Okay, yeah, I just wanted to make sure we didn't skip over one of your show.

Intel's speaking of dahlias, and now it's now's the time to dig up off.

And cut, cut all the foliage off and so don't let the foliage die back.

While I didn't.

Okay.

All right.

No, it's still one of those people that's figuring it out.

So do you cut it don't dig it.

Yeah.

No, as long as it's it's, it's it's put its energy you know, now into we're getting shorter, shorter days.

So it's put its energy into that route.

You know, Cana Bob's.

Any of those bulbs that you hit that tender winter that you have to dig up and bring in.

You can dig.

I usually am so busy.

I frost usually gets there before I do.

They're Messier if you let them frost because then they're weeping wet and, and things like that.

And we're going to talk about irises and yeah, and peonies too.

Well, not finished, but irises going to get those going out to get those now bringing Oh no, now is the time to cut Iris back, cut them back.

Okay.

So what you do is you take the long stems, and I do a diagonal cut on the leaves and leave about three to six inches of leaf.

And it's a good thing to do.

Now because you I don't know about other people, but I have huge eyelash beds.

And so it's also good time to get dead material out to get weeds.

I have a lot of violet squirrel in my iris bed.

So I pulled those out and just kind of clean up the iris bed before but that cutting the leaves put helps put more energy into the root.

Oh, for next year.

This is a good time because their routes are strengthening for coal while they're on a great tip and a nice time to transplant irises and peonies too.

Okay, when you do transplant your irises have a bit of a bed in the bed.

Check the underside.

If you see a whole bunch of pin holes, those are Iris bores and you don't want to keep those.

You throw those away and just keep the good good ones but now and don't plant them too deep peonies and irises are one of those things that you know you don't play it three times deeper than now.

With irises you actually want to leave the top of the return route.

Showing we've got about a minute left to show off you or this is one of my my I know Ella was here with hypertufa this is something else that I've been doing lately.

This is concrete and then I use a metallic paints, what you do is you take a bit of sand, you lay the leaf upside down so that you get the imprint of that because the veins are deeper on the backside and then after three days you pet the concrete or you put the concrete on there after three days.

This is what you get pick it up and then you have to peel that off now that off and let it dry for another two weeks.

And then you can paint them wow that one's I didn't paint my idol I didn't make but I have some in the garden but I never good idea put them out a stepping stone that's actual stepping stones but just decor my wife and I in Danville have a show at the Art League for September in October and I've got about 30 of these show and and she has about 200 works of art.

Beautiful come down every Saturday and Wednesday morning.

We're open nine to 10 or nine to 12 Okay, and all right, that is the show that went fast.

We have a lot to do outside in our gardens everyone.

Good.

Thank you so much for coming guys.

Thanks for sharing your time and talents.

Thank you so much for watching.

Hope you learned as much as I did today.

And we will see you next time.

Good night.