Coming to you from Studio A here at proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs. It's
time for the Gardening Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella, me, Rick weisst and
our engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Today let's talk tools. When push comes
to shovel, you got to have good tools to well take care of your
landscape. And I love talking about tools, Stacey. And one of the
things I think about immediately when the topic of tools comes up is heirloom tools,
tools that have been gifted to you by a grandfather or a great grandfather.
And I think of the great Greek philosopher Plutarch and the ship of Thesis.
Now the thesis paradox is this. They had this ship and they took
all the planks off it, and then they put new planks on it.
When you put new planks on the ship, is it still the original ship.
That's a good question, exactly, something to ponder. And I think
about that my shed because if I have an ax from Grandpa, but I
replace the handle on the ax, is it still Grandpa's end? Absolutely?
In that case, you know the handle's gonna wear out, The head is
still good. The business end is still Grandpa's and that's what matters the business
end. I like that, Stacy. All right, So if you go
to you go on the web and you search garden tools, usually the first
three things you see are tools for weeding, tools for your comfort like knee
pads or clothing, and then tools for pruning. But of course you have
to start with shovels, got it, because a shovel is a ground breaking
invention. Sorry, it is literally and figuratively. Yes, you got correct.
Don't buy cheap shovels. Put your money into a really, really good
shovel and you can get handles of composite, fiberglass, steel, or wood.
You can get open back shovels, close back shovel forged shovels. I
like to sharpen my shovels. Pay attention to your shovels and make sure it's
quality. Well. You know, the fact is that, especially if you're
young and you're just getting started out at your first home, it's very tempting
to buy an inexpensive shovel and just say this, I'll do the job.
But the simple fact is that you will absolutely spend that same amount of money
over time replacing said inexpensive shovel oh you know, because it keeps breaking.
Because shovels take a lot of work. They take they take a beating really
then, especially if you live in clay soil, I mean living in pretty
sandy soil, our shovels don't take quite as much. But you never know
when you're gonna hit a rock or some old concrete down there and it's gonna
bust it. So it's worth it, not just in shovels, but in
all garden tools, to really shell out and make the investment in a lifelong
tool that can be in air loom. It doesn't have to be, you
know, a five hundred dollars shovel, even if you could potentially find one,
even those ones they use it. You know, fake tree plannings and
ground breakings are just spray painted goals. But you know, invest in a
good tool and it will pay you back by not having to replace it every
year. Oh amen, I tell you, when push comes to shovel I
have a propensity for shortening the life of shovels, So spend some money up
front, make sure it's good. You need a good spade shovel for edging,
you need a stainless steel soil knife. I like soil knives because otherwise
you end up using your pruning shears, and that's not a good idea.
I have never Okay, I've got a confess ric. I am a little
disappointed that you've been using your pruning shears in the soil. The only time
my pruning chears see the soil is if I have to cut a root.
Yes, but you know then I'm not like Jabin at it. I'm actually
using them to prune the root now. But I will say this about a
soil knife. One thing that's very handy about a soil knife is it's super
easy to keep in your pocket because it's flat. So soil knife is kind
of like so when you think knife, are not thinking like a butter knife
or a kitchen knife. It's like a flattened trowel exactly with a sharper edge
on each side. So really easy to fit in your back pocket. If
you got one of those loops on your pants, a carpenter loop, if
it's in there. If you got a side pocket, it fits in there.
So it's really easy to have handy, and it's not always like jabbing
into your pocket, so you can't kneel down. Ask me how I know.
I just don't sit on it. Don't sit on it. Well,
I tell you what another tool that you have to have is you have to
have good quality gloves. Now you may debate that gloves are not a tool,
but for me, they're super important. And I wanted to show you
my favorite gloves. I have it on here. They're called West County gloves.
And what I love about these things is that they have kevlar on the
tips, so I can be as rough as I want to be. But
they're gentle soft right here on the thumb so you can wipe your brow when
you're sweating. And they're made of recycled spandex. I don't want to think
of of what they recycled, but they were recyclably, just the cutoffs.
Okay, So this is this is my go to and to prove it to
you for our YouTube viewers, these are West County gloves that I took out
of my car. This is just out of my car. Oh my gosh,
look at that one. It's shreds. This one's it's shreds. Yeah,
which brings up the point when we talk about gloves. Have some leather
gloves around for projects where you're moving stones or patio stones or landscape timbers.
But for gardening. And these people aren't paying me. Okay, but West
County gloves a reciprocating saw for cutting ornamental grasses. Oh we've had some job
ye yeah, who have suggested that a good hand hatchet, safety glasses and
sunglasses to go with it. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates more than
thirty seven thousand Americans suffer a power more related injury every year. Oh that's
terrifying, how horrible. And many of them were cutting the grass bare foot.
Oh gosh, no, never, never smart. I remember when I
first broke into the industry early nineteen eighties, the fly mole was very popular.
It's a more that did not have wheels, but the blade would spin
so fast it would it would go airborne. Oh that sounds safe. Yeah,
And here's the problem. People started trying to trim their hedges with it
and what could grow around? Gosh, yeah, so I never heard of
that. One's something You'll have to look for it in estate sale because I'm
pretty sure they took those. They did. According to the National Safety Council,
there were nearly one hundred and sixty six thousand, two hundred and ninety
four injuries related to yard and garden equipment in twenty twenty one. Wow.
So with that, Stacy, I give you a dangerous tool, limb a
rick. This old tool is a family heirloom. Its sharp blades, my
hedges, groom. But if I'm not cautious, I'm going to be nauseous
when they take me to the emergency room. Each time you prune, you'd
take a chance in appendage. You could lance treat tools with great respect.
If they're used incorrect, you're gonna split your plants. Oh, it's be
careful out there, right. Yeah. When I was in horticulture school,
we had a plan id exam and there is a difference between two very popular
types of Forcythia, Forcythia intermedia and Forcythia suspensa. And the difference between them,
I mean, there's some habit differences, obviously, but is if you
cut open the stem, there's one has chambered pith, so the pith inside
is kind of like in little rooms, and one is a solid column of
pith. So I wanted to be absolutely correct, and I was in a
hurry, and I was bouncing my clipboard and I took my pruners and I
cut up the stem and I cut myself real bad. Oh, and I
didn't want to tell anybody, so then I was just kind of like trying
to hide my bleeding finger and finish the exit I am. And it's you
know, in all, it's just like anything else around the house. Those
injuries happen when you're not paying attention, not giving everything your full devotion,
and that's really important, especially when you're using dangerous tools. It's true,
you got to pay attention. I recommend a good garden krt, a good
watering can, a good wheelbarrow. Wheelbarrows don't get enough respect. They're always
getting pushed around, and you need a good wheelbarrow in your landscape, a
spading fork, and of course my favorite tool is my cherninator where I grind
up leaves in the fall. I love that. It's very handy to have.
We still need a video of that, yes, and speaking of videos,
we are going to have some shorts on YouTube of us telling you about
our favorite tools. So please do check us out on YouTube if you want
to see the tools that we have amassed, heirloom or not just our favorite
tools that we will be sharing in videos on your fantastic I love it head
shears now, of course I love a really good solid head shears once again
for cutting my ornamental grasses. I've got lots of ornamental grasses. But the
point here is with headshars or shovels or pruning shears, where you get a
good quality bypass pruning chears stacy. The quality matters, the heft and the
quality matters not only for how long you own the tool, but just for
how it operates. It really does, and you can tell the difference.
And if you know, if you're shopping for tools, don't just look at
the prices and grab the cheap one and walk by. Take a moment to
really hold and you know the different ones like you would be using them,
because you will notice there's something that happens when you have a really good,
high quality tool in your hands. You can just tell. And that makes
especially jobs that you don't particularly enjoy in the garden a lot easier if you're
using a tool that not only does the job really well, but you actually
enjoy using and that you have invested the time and money into procuring and adding
to your collection. It's a great point with hand trowels or hand cultivators.
I always insist on stainless steel, not the cheapy ones, because you'll go
out there, use it one time and throw it in the trash, and
you know, some things you probably do want to have a little cheaper like
trowels. Maybe if you are the kind of person like me who always has
a big bucket of weeds and you throw your trowel in there and then a
few more weeds come on top and then blam, oh no more trowel.
Blama. Been there a couple times, just saying make sure you've got five
gallon pails, trug tubs. And then finally, real quickly, I just
want to mention an upside down sprayer. If you don't know what that is.
We're going to put the link at the website at Gardeningsimplified on air dot
com. But you need one of those, yes, absolutely. Coming up
next, plants on trial here on the Gardening Simplified Show, Prooven Winners,
Colored Choice Shrubs cares about your success in the garden. That's why we trial
and test all of our shrubs for eight to ten years, making sure they
outperform everything else. On the market. Look for them and the distinctive white
container at your local garden center. Greeting's gardening friends, and welcome back to
the Gardening Simplified Show. We're talking tools today, and you know, I
always feel like I have to. You're doing such a great job in the
first segment. I don't want to interrupt you, but I always like,
I really want to just say this one thing. So so then when we
get to plants on trial, I feel like I need to just say that
one thing. And that one thing for me is, you know, gloves,
I think are the most polarizing of all garden tools. People have very
strong preferences about gloves, as you do, as we just saw, and
I do as well. And for years I did not wear gloves gardening.
I was a gloveless gardener. I like to feel the soil, I like
to be down in there. And then I found myself as a whole culturist
in New York City and there was not a chance that I was going to
not wear gloves digging around in the soil in New York City, where you
know, who knows what can happen, And so that kind of started me
on a habit of using gloves, and even when I moved back to Michigan
and I said, oh, I don't have to use gloves anymore. This
is great. The first day I gardened without gloves, I was like,
ouch, you know, because your hands I get, even if you're not
really doing anything that you know of, they just get like these small kind
of lacerations on them and it's really painful. So to me, you know,
gloves were thinking back to when I was a kid, you know,
in the eighties, and they had those little cotton flower print gloves that had
the little tiny piece of elastic on the back that barely did anything, and
those gloves are terrible. I mean for me, again, gloves are very
personal. You can all if you like those gloves, that's fine, but
those aren't good gardening gloves. They don't give you a lot of dexterity.
And gardening gloves have come so far, and I think your West Country gloves
are a great example of that. My personal choice are the kind that are
elastic, have the knitted elastic and are dipped in the like eurothane or whatever
Latex. Yeah, yeah, so they're reusable. I usually go through one
pair a year because I end up blowing out the fingers because I'm always digging
around with my gloves. But I love those. They're cool, they're easy
to stash in your pocket, they're pretty inexpensive, and they do everything you
need. They give you the grip that you need. They have good dexterity.
So I have totally come around and now I'm a fully gloved gardener and
I wouldn't even think about doing much more than harvesting a few herbs without gloves.
I agree, speaking of fully gloved, I have a tendency of losing
either the right hand or the left hand, so then I'm out there like
Michael Jackson with one glove on. But still, but it's not a fashion
statement. It's not a fashion statement. Well, anyway, that's my thoughts
on gloves, and if you have thoughts on gloves, we would welcome you
to leave a comment on the YouTube version because we know everybody has something that
they really love and we love hearing about that. So the topic of today,
of course is tools. And so since I do like to relate the
plant on trial to the theme of the show, I have picked aphrodite Kelly
Canthus, what an incredible plant. It really is now, this is a
plant that when people see it, they just love it. And a lot
of the plants that we offer in the Proven Winner's Color Choice Shrubs line are
you know, plants that people are already familiar with, that people already love
and know well, and we're just trying to find improved versions of those.
And to me, aphrodite kelly canthus is one of the relatively few plants in
the line that's kind of a plant geek plant. You don't have to be
a plan geek to appreciate it, but it is one that plant geeks look
at and say, oh, now, that is a cool plant. So
it is a kelly canthus, which is also known as a sweet shrub,
and it's a hybrid of our North American native sweet shrub, which is kelly
Canthus floridus, And like so many North American nationative shrubs, it has acquired
a massive range of common names over the years. Sweet shrub is the most
common, but you will also here depending on the region you are in,
sweet Betsy, sweet Bippy, sweet Bippy, and strawberry shrub. I have
only heard sweet, I've only read sweet pippy. I have not actually had
a gardener come up to me and say, you know, get a load
of my sweet pippy. But anyway, apparently that's one of the common names.
So it's a hybrid of our native one and Sino kelly Canthus chinensis,
which is the Asian species, and so in many cases there are similar plants
in Asia as there are in North America, and so this is a hybrid
of the two. And it fits into toy Today's theme of tools because this
is a shrub that you're gonna need probably a special tool if you want to
prune it. This is because it is a big shrub, and a lot
of shrubs that we sell in the proven Winn's line are not that big.
We know people aren't looking for something that's going to overgrow their house are going
to, you know, need a lot of pruning. It doesn't strictly require
pruning, but if you do want to prune this, it's going to grow
big, thick, sturdy branches that are going to need loppers. So lappers
is not something we talked about, but lappers is kind of like a bypass
pruner, but much longer, so it's on a longer handle so you can
really get in there leverage and it's really good for you know, pruning out
large branches from the center of a big mature shrub. You can even use
it on trees to take out you know, branches probably up to like an
inch and a half to two inches in diameter, So it's just like a
hand pruner, but it gives you a little more reach and leverage, and
uh is a lot can take out a lot bigger branches. So if you
do want to prune, if you have aphrodity Caillie canthus and you're going to
prune it, this is a plant that I would recommend you're going to want
some looppers on. But once you oppers, you'll find all sorts of great
uses for them. They're very handy. But this is a big plant.
So it's a five to ten feet tall and wide shrub. And you might
be thinking, WHOA, that's a pretty big range. Do I expect it
to be five feet or do I expect it to be ten feet? And
the answer to that is that the coldier climate, the more it's going to
be towards that five to seven foot range, and in those warmer areas it's
going to reach every bit of that ten feet by ten feet. But if
you have the space for this. I cannot think a few other ways to
transform a spot in your yard from something that you have to mow or weed
or whatever. Just plant this shrub, and all of a sudden, you've
got like ten square feet of yard taken up with something that's beautiful that you
barely have to take care of. That's fantastic. And Stacy, you got
me so excited about this plant by simply telling me to stick my face in
there and take a whiff. Wow. Right, So I do want to
I'll get into the flowers, but I want to kind of give every a
mental image of of what the what the plant looks like. So if you've
seen the North American sweet shrub, the flowers are similar, so they have
that same kind of deep red maroon color. But the Asian heritage of the
the Asian parentage give the flowers a really large size and they're much more open.
So we'll put pictures of both on the show notes at Gardeningsimplified on air
dot com, so you can see our native species, just straight species like
you'd find in the wilds and the Appalachian mountains. And then we'll put pictures
of aphrodite. So it's a hybrid of the two. So if you're trying
to conjure up a mental image of this, I would say, imagine a
magnolia or water lily flower and now imagine it dark red, good descript So
that's pretty much what they look like. Now. The foliage on this plant
is also very very large and very very glossy. So it's a really interesting,
unique plant. Definitely not like something that you know you usually see as
you're walking around, and as you might guess because of the name Sweet Srub,
it is fragrant. Now, fragrance is one of those things that is
highly subjective for people. And our native sweet Srub and we have a version
of our native Sweet Srub in the proven Winner's line called Simply Sensational Kelly Canthus,
and that thing, the fragrance on that will absolutely knock your socks off.
It is the most delicious and unique fragrance of almost any of our shrups
minus al Nino Chetalpa, which I've talked about. It smells like melon vanilla.
This Simply Sensational Kelly Canthus smells like ripe strawberries. Kind of. Oh,
it's such an amazing smell. Now because aphrodite. The one we're talking
about today is a hybrid. Its fragrance is a little bit more elusive,
so it's not necessarily one of those plants. Every single time you walk by
it you're going to go, WHOA, what's that smell? Like you would
with simply sensational. But if you take a flower, especially as it's starting
to fade, so it's gotten a little bit older, and especially later in
the day, and you ask people what it smells like, you're probably gonna
get a different answer from every single person that you ask, because it is
a very subjective fragrance. Now, to me, the flowers on Aphrodite kelly
Caanthus smell like an apple that has fallen off the tree at infall on a
warm sunny day, and that ripe, that kind of overripe apple smell is
just you know, wafting up from the warmth. That's sort of what the
flowers smell like to me in a good way. Great description, and I
think you nailed at Stacey simply by saying delicious. This is a flower that
smells delicious. Yes. Now, again, if you're looking for the best
fragrance, you're going to definitely want to go with our North American native species
Kellycanthus floridus or simply sensational, but the flowers on aphrodite really make up for
that lack of power in the fragrance. So it's not native because it is
a hybrid of the North American native and the Asian. But again a big
plant, so give it space. But if you have space for it,
I would highly recommend it. I don't have a huge yard. I grow
it because I love it so much, so it's definitely definitely worth growing.
It does take well to pruning if you want to prune it, but you
do have to bear in mind that it flowers on old and new woods,
so it starts to flower for us here in Michigan probably late spring, early
summer, so you'd want to prune it after that, and then it does
here continue to flower through the summer. It always has some flowers on it,
really clear through i'd say August, so you get a lot of bang
for your buck with this plant. It does not require pruning, but again,
if you are going to prune it, you're probably gonna want those loppers
because this is a big, vigorous plant. For coverage. Birds love it.
It is also very dear resistant. I have not had any nibbles on
mine, which is really saying something I'm going to knock on wood though,
just to be safe. Hard to do usdas on five heat tolerant through USDA's
one nine and really just a very very interesting, unique plant with some incredible
color. Now, that was a lot to take in, so if you're
wondering what it looks like, please do check us out at Gardening Simplified on
it. You can also check us out on YouTube. Adriana is gonna put
some fabulous footage of Aphrodit kellikanthus into our show, and of course you can
always check us out on Instagram. We got to take a little break right
now. When we're coming back, we're opening up the mailbag, so please
stay tuned. At proven Winner's Color Choice, we've got a shrub for every
taste and every space. Whether you're looking for an easycare rose, an unforgettable
hydrangea, or something new and unique, you can be confident that the shrubs
and the white containers have been trialed and tested for your success. Look for
them at your local garden center. Greetings, gardening friends, and welcome back
to the gardening Simplified show. It's time to open up the garden mailbag.
We know you've got questions, and if you haven't asked them yet, you
can reach us at help HLP at Gardeningsimplified on air dot com, or just
go to Gardening Simplified on air dot com and you can click the contact form
and send us a question that way. I know we're getting into the thick
of it. You know a lot of people are sitting there going I need
an answer now. I can't wait till next week when Gardening Simplified is back.
So you can also reach us. Just go to the Proven Winner's website
preven Winners dot com. There is a feedback It says feedback Questions, We're
listening. You can click there and one of our horticulturists will get back to
We try to get it within the next business day if we can. So
if you have an urgent question, you can't wait a week for it to
be answered, definitely check us out there. So what do we got in
the mailbag this week? Well, Stacey, a question from Lori Anne.
I have a question about my pine trees. They're shedding little branches. Is
that something that happens every few years. I honestly don't remember that happening before.
Did they drop pine cones before? Did you thought you might know?
Thanks Malch, These are the trees in my front yard. She sent some
pictures. Ran into a neighbor walking this morning and their trees have the same
issue. Her neighbors said it was from heavy snow. What in the world
is going on? Otherwise, just filed this in the crazy lady file.
Oh no, absolutely not, Lorianne. You are not crazy. No,
lorian the squirrels are. You are not crazy. But the squirrels certainly are,
and they're hungry. And so when you get to the end of winter,
they'll go up there and soft little pieces of branches, leave them on
the ground, eat the bud and leave the debris. Yeah, they eat
the bud. They'll eat the sap. And we talked about that a little
bit when we had don snowy inc On a few weeks ago. The sap
is running and that includes in those pines and spruces and all of that,
and that bud, yeah, so tender, so full of flavor, and
so they go in there, they snip off that bud and they don't mind
letting those little pieces just drop all over, and yeah, it can look
like a genuine carpet if they really get busy with it. So the fact
that this is happening, Lorienne, and it hasn't happened before, could just
be that some squirrels moved into your neighborhood that weren't there before, or they
just discovered your tree. I also think they kind of do it just out
of boredom. I think so too. They're chewing, they're sharpening their teeth,
and they hack these things off. Lori. Anne sent some pictures for
our YouTube viewers. You're seeing those pictures right now. For those listening to
podcast or radio. Adriana will put them at Gardeningsimplified on air dot Com.
You bet, so, nothing to worry about. The tree will be fine,
The squirrels will be fine. Some of them might make it into their
nests. Some of them they're just they're just that's just the way it's going
to be. It's part of nature, and the squirrels are kind of controlling
the growth. Whether they mean to you or not. It's just one of
those things. But I've seen it happen myself. It's nuts. Randy writes
to us he's he asked before about growing hydranges in containers a few weeks ago.
I remember that follow up question. I'm curious when I start putting your
soil mix mixture in the pot, when and how much of the fertilizer I
should add to the pot, And I'm going to top it with mulch as
you recommended. So Randy is our listener viewer who's putting hydranges in Yes,
So, I thought this was a really good question that was probably not a
lot of people's minds, and we've hit on it a couple times here and
there on the show. But the simple fact is that when you are buying
new potting mix from the garden Center, you don't usually need to add any
fertilizer. And the reason for that is because most potting mixes, just in
terms of like their basic ingredients, the phagnum moss, the bark, the
vermiculite prolate, all that kind of stuff doesn't really have a lot of nutrition.
So if you ever wondered why every single potting mix seems to come from
a fertilizer company, there's a reason for that, and that's because they're adding
their fertilizer to it to get that nutrients in there. Now, if you
are reusing a potting mix, then you're definitely going to want to fertilize.
So what I usually do is I will just film my containers, put a
handful of you know, plant tone, flower tone, something like that.
You know, we like those fertilizers a lot. Put a little bit of
that in, mix it into the to the top, you know, a
couple inches of soil. I don't personally feel like I need it all the
way through through the soil because if it's at the bottom, the roots aren't
going to be down there. The water's going to be working on that fertilizer
and it's just going to go out the bottom without ever being used. So
I like to keep that fertilizer just up in the early root zone of the
plant. But yeah, so new soil, don't worry about fertilizing, especially
for shrubs. If you're reusing old soil, then you definitely want to get
some fertilizer in there and you can continue to fertilize, you know, through
the season to get that growth that you need. So Randy, no cost
or concerns, save that fertilizer for next year, because you're going to need
it. Then when they've been through a whole season, dirty job, somebody's
got to do it. Our friend Jim has a great question about pruning hydranges.
Stacy, if I had a dime for everyone who is right, I
feel that, Yeah, we have a question about high range of pruning.
Despite watching many pruning videos, we can never quite come to grips very well
done. Nice. I like that. With how to deal with the whirls
which emerge from the pruning point, we tend to get whirls. That's a
tough word to say. Have three long flowering stems from every pruning point,
and they can get long and pendulous. So we wonder how to keep the
plant from opening out too much. We figure if we cut it below the
whirl each year, we will be cutting the hydrangea lower and lower and lower
year by year. So you get the idea here, Stacy, Gym's looking
for some detailed instruments. And you know, I understand because I have encountered
this myself. And when your hydrange is young, it might not matter that
much. But as your hydrangees get more mature and you're seeing more of this
world. And what Jim means by a worl, And if you've grown panicle
hydrange is before, you've probably seen this. Usually the leaves come across,
come out opposite from each other on the stem, but occasionally you will see
these worls form, and the worl is basically that there's three leaves around the
stem. So instead of just cutting and having that forked growth, you're gonna
have three branches coming out of that point, and you're gonna get these weird
fireworks like we just talked about in our smoke bush pruning video that's on our
YouTube channel. And you stand there going what in the world just happen?
That's exactly what you do. So first you ask yourself, what in the
world do I do now? And we will try to make a video on
this gym if we can find a good hydrange Probably most of the hydrangees around
here have been prune, but if Adrian I can find a good place to
do it, we will make a video of this. So what I recommend
that you do is go ahead and prune the panicle hydrangel wherever you need to
do. Usually we're recommending, you know, taking off about a third of
the total growth of the plant. Because this kind of splits, the difference
between taking the plant back to where thicker buds were formed earlier in the season,
so you get a lot of vigorous new growth, but also preserving enough
of the old woody framework so that you have a nice, strong and supportive
plant. So usually it's a third, it can be half. It really
depends on what you need to do. Now. If you are pruning to
that WORL, go ahead and make your pruning cut as usual, and then
wait and watch over the coming weeks as that new growth starts to come from
the world. And then at that point I would thin it to just one
or two branches. And I have pictures of this what the owner of our
trialgarden has done to his and you'll be able to see that where those hydranges
usually would fork, what he has done is selected one branch to continue that
growth. It'll be real parent in these pictures. So please check us out
at Gardening Simplified on air dot com and I'll put those there. So what
you're going to want to do is just selectively thin to one or two branches
going in the direction that you want to go, because those three branches are
going to be going three different directions, and so whatever way you want the
plant to grow. If you want it to grow away from your house,
then you would select the branch that's growing away from your house. If you
want it to grow left, you'd select a branch that was on the left,
thin out the other two and then let that one branch take over.
And that way you don't have to keep lowering the height of your pruning and
you keep getting that nice, thick, vigorous growth at that point where you
want it. You are a true pruning expert, Stacy, I am,
you know what, I'm really not a parting expert. The thing is like
I find these myself in these situations all the time where I'm pruning something and
I think, I think, what do I do? But the expertise comes
from you know, really, I think taking the time to think about it
and think about how your actions are going to impact the plant growth. And
you know, of course, as we talked about in our pruning show a
couple of weeks ago, another important part of being a good expert pruner is
knowing and to walk away knowing when to not prune and say, you know
what, I don't know what to do, so I'm just going to leave
this for this season. There's a lot of knowledge you need to apply,
but ultimately the stakes, as long as you're not taking out too much,
are pretty low. It's like a soap opera as the world urns. I'm
still trying to nail that down. Am I saying that right, Stacey war
Yeah, you are say it is a strange word, but it's a strange
growth habit for the panicle hyge rangers because hydrange's, as most people no,
tend to be very strongly opposite. Yep. Most other types of hydrangs that
I have seen have not don't grow into these three leaved worlds. It's really
specifically panical hydrangs that have this unique characteristic. So you know, and I
was asking Megan, our plant breeder here, if she knew why it happened.
I was asking a bunch of people who here if they knew why it
happened. And it's just just one of those things that it just does.
So Stacey, It's what I always say, there's three types of people in
this world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen,
and those who wonder what in the world just happened? Yes, I think
I'm in the latter, so me too. Anyway, thank you all so
much for your questions. If you have a question as well, please don't
hesitate to reach out Gardening Simplified on air, dot com, or of course,
you can always leave a comment on the YouTube video and we will pess
that along and get that answered for you. So we're going to take a
break. When we come back, we have a very very special guest,
so please stay tuned. The Gardening Simplified Show is brought to you by Proven
Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Our award winning flowering shrubs and evergreens have been trialed
and tested for your success so you enjoy more beauty and less work. Look
for Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs and the distinctive white container at your local garden
center. Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show. It's time for Branching News,
and today in Branching News, we have the privilege of talking to Adam
Moseley. Adam's title is Breeding director with wyn Gen LLC. It's a plant
breeding company just south of Austin, Texas. And I'm looking forward to this
interview because I always love talking about plant breeding here in the Golden Age of
plant breeding. But in addition to that, I love talking about super Tuna
because Stacey, they're one of my favorite plans. You know what they are
a plant that has really just totally upended the way people think about Petunia's absolutely
Adam, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us, my pleasure.
Thanks for having me. Adam, give our listeners and viewers first of all,
and idea of what a breeding director does. Give us your vantage point
of the work that's being done in Austin, Texas as well as around the
world in breeding these fabulous plants. Yeah, great question, Rick, So
we do plant breeding. Plant breading is one of those things that I think
is not very consumer facing, and as a breeding director, you know,
there's a lot of different aspects that we have to deal with, and so
you know, my job here in Austin, Texas revolves mostly around sowing out
speed and making selections and making those selections go into what we call trials or
plant trials at different propagator companies that we work with, and then helping to
facilitate getting that plant from from the breeding concept into the market. That's fantastic,
and as it relates to supertunias. I guess the question that comes up.
You know, I grow supertunias. I've worked in the garden center industry.
I know the value of a supertunia. As a matter of fact,
I was looking at Proven Winners website and it basically describes it as the best
petunia period and I think they're right. And I'm super excited about the Supertunia
Hoopla vivid orchid coming out this year. Give us an idea of the process
here as you developed new varieties of supertunias. Sure. Yeah, Petunias is
one of those crops that's very interesting. It's kind of a numbers game.
You know, you've got to work with a lot of plants to find the
best petunia period and in that particular case, refers to Supertunia visca bubble gum,
which has been just I think a benchmark for for all petunias on the
market. If consumers have grown that plant in the past, they know that.
You know, it's more resilient to disease, it's got better flower power,
it seems to last through the season more than the typical, you know,
less expensive petunias that are maybe grown from seed that you can buy at
the garden center. And I think that's a big distinction between the supertunias and
you know, a lot of what you can find at the garden center that's
grown from seed. These are vegetative petunias that are grown from a vegetative cutting
or a clone of that plant. And the beauty in that is that you
don't have to inbreed to get to a true to type seed. You know,
we can say, all right, I'm going to combine this great petunia
with this other great petunia, and I'm going to make a selection from that,
and it's superior now. But if I start to ingreed that plant down,
say I needed to be pink, I needed to be this size,
I needed to bloom in you know, March twelfth in the Midwest, because
that's when the retail market center wants it to be in flour for the for
the consumer bench to come and buy it. You shoul start to lose a
lot of that you know, wild species, bigger and and and the things
that make a petunia really resilient and great for a consumer. And so you
know, we make our selections and we send that particular clone into trials.
That's the same exact plant that we're gonna that you're gonna buy, even if
we reproduce it a million times or ten million times or one hundred million times,
it's the same plant. And supertunias are all vegetatively propagated hybrid petunia that
have superior performance. And I think that's part of the special medicine that that
makes them so great. Yeah, And and what that means, I think
for a lot of PEO people is that no matter when or where you buy
it. Say you bought supertunia one year in New York and then you move
across the country to Oregon and you want to grow supertunia again. Well,
sure there are climatic differences between that, but the plant itself is the same,
and so you can expect that nice consistent performance. And I have to
wonder, well, hey, this this time it did great, and this
time it didn't. And that consistency is so important in building that trust that
now I think Supertunias really has I agree, Yeah, I feel like Suportunias
have made you know, proven Winners has done a really good job of marketing
to the consumer. You know, brand recognition and name recognition is something that
you know, you want to have trust. If if I'm a consumer and
I'm going to the garden center and I've got a five hundred dollars budget and
i want to buy, you know, one hundred plants, and I want
to get some soil, and I want to get some fertilizer, and I
want to do my garden. You want to make sure that those you know,
five six seven dollars four inch containers that you're planting are going to give
you the garden that you're expecting. You can do all these other things right.
You don't start with good genetics. It's hard to have a good green
thumb, for sure. Now I have a question several several years ago,
I was in San Antonio, Texas in spring, right about this time of
year, and they were using petunias as I think this was even probably before
supertunias were a thing. They were using petunias as a spring annual. Now,
would you say that even in warmer climates like San Antonio or Austin,
that supertunias can actually continue to be a summer annual or are they still going
to be more of a spring and fall performance kind of plant. That's a
really good question. You know, if you're a great gardener. I think
you can do well with supertunias in most regions most of the summer. The
thing about Texas, especially where we are here, is is all plants and
especially things like annual they need you know, good watering, right, and
I think outside of the keat that we get here in the summer, we
just get really dry, and so it can be difficult to keep you know,
certain annuals that do like to drink on a consistent basis alive through the
summer in climates that are drier like we are here in Texas. You know,
I know, I did a planting of them last spring in my front
yard here in Austen and I had super nas pink cashmere and super tunia.
This the bubble gum, and I planted them in about February twenty fifth,
maybe from a four inch container and they look yeah, I know, right
from the northeast in your garden of February. But we have to take advantage
of those cool nights in the spring, and you know, you hope you'll
get a really hard late freeze. But we planted those in March or at
the very beginning of March, late late February and they lasted all the way
through July. Fourth of July. But at that point I got into water
restriction and I'm trying to water my grass and trying to water my garden.
I end up with a seven hundred dollars water bill one month, and I'm
like, that's it. I'm done, you know, I gotta shut it
down. So sure, you're in some places that have better, better consistency
with moisture, you know the Carolina, you know, even North Florida,
you can you can grow them all summer long. I mean, that's huge,
that's a huge advancement. Absolutely. We're chatting with Adam Moseley. He
is breeding director at WinGen LLC. It's a plant breeding company just south of
Austin, Texas. Talking about supertunias. Adam, I, you know you
mentioned bubble gum. I love that plant, the whole Supertunia Vista series,
and I think that this is a These are petunias that are ideal for hanging
baskets. Uh years ago in the garden center industry, we'd put petunias and
hanging baskets and they'd get long and leggy and stretched, and we're pinching and
we're chopping. My experience with the Supertunia Vista line, bubblegum or whatever it
may be, is that they create this massive ball of flowers and just keep
blooming. I think it's the ideal plant for a hanging basket. Yeah,
I would agree. We definitely look at the Vista series as well as the
many many Vista series, and and your traditional Supertunities is being great hanging basket
plants. The Vistas I've noticed, you know, they mixed really well,
especially with each other. They've got this special recipe to them. You know,
they're they're tall, you know, in the landscape. You'll find that
they'll grow to you know, twelve to eighteen inches tall off the ground,
which is atypical for a normal petunia. And they'll make almost these little,
you know hedges. So you think about the branching, the superior branching that's
there, and the flower power. Combining them with other plants that maybe aren't
quite as strong, you know, they tend to we used to say,
and trials be like, oh, it's just gonna eat that. You know,
it'll eat it by the end of the spring trial season and all you'll
see is bubble bump but if you mix it with Vista silverberry or this the
snow drift or this the usha, you know, then you get this really
nice combination of the three of the three colors coming out. And that's because
they just they've got high, bigger, they've got grape branching. Uh.
They really like to fill that container. And they don't have a bald top.
They don't like to flit when you get too much rain or wind or
these inclement weather, it'll hold its shape and it will continue the flower.
And I think that that's your point about the hanging baskets. You know,
having something that you know is going to continue the flower and not crack all
open and look weird or you know, it's important. It's what you expect
from you when you spend the kind of money that you want to to get
the plants in the gardens. If you go to proven Winners dot com.
Of course, at proven winters dot com, there are a lot of recipes
for combining some of these supertunias. Like I saw one a blend of Supertunia
honey and Supertunia royal velvet in combination. It's called Hypnotic post Boy. The
variety in supertunias just continues to expand. Adam, you must be working to
continue to develop more and more varieties, from raspberry rush to honey picasso in
purple latte, A lot of interesting varieties. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean,
we go through about four hundred families of petunias a season, which we
sell at least one hundred seeds of each one. So we're looking at about
forty thousand plants every year. From those forty thousand plants, we pick out
four hundred or so to go to trial. After we do our first internal
trial here in Texas and with our company, we end up with maybe two
hundred and fifty to three hundred that actually go in and get trialed with proven
winners. From there, they pick maybe three to go to market. And
so if you think about forty thousand down to three, you know, that
plant's got to be pretty special. It's got to have you know, good
branching, it's got to be easy to produce, it's got to be you
know, the foliage has to stay nice and green. The flowers need to
hold up against rainstorm, you know, preferentially. You know, it's not
like, oh, I need to be fertilized all the time to keep growing.
There's just so many different things that go into picking these plants, and
that trial process can take up to two or three years. The breeding process
itself can take four or five years. So when you see a new plant
in market and it's something like a Supertunia honey or a supertunia that's the bubble
gum, you know that plant has six, seven, eight years of growth
and production trials and all the things that go into making it a supertunia before
it'll ever make it for the retail market. And Stacey, I think that
that's important to note. I appreciate that, Adam, because for the shopper
in a garden center or they may not fully understand the work that went into
developing these plants. And like I mentioned Adam working with Kevin Hurd at Proven
Winners, or someone like yourself working with Stacy Adriana and the great people here
at Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Stacy, there's a lot of work research
boiling down and the ultimate goal. They always have that goal in sight.
How's this plant going to perform in the consumer's yard. Yeah, it's R
and D. And you know it's so funny. I've often you know,
commented to other people that people don't realize that it's as much research and development
as goes into an iPhone or something like that. It's the same kind of
level of dedication and trialing and ideation, and people just think, oh,
it's a plan. It just happened, And so it's really good to hear,
you know, that whole kind of story of what it takes to actually
bring that plant to market. So, you know, I know people in
this R and D there, they're looking for the next big thing. And
obviously supertunia vista bulgum has been around for a while and people love it.
But I'm sure a lot of people are like me, and maybe like me,
they aren't a pink person, or they're just wondering, Hey, what's
next? Can I grow another supertunia that is this vigorous, that performs like
this that I don't need to deadhead? What other colors are there? So
in your experience, you know, what are some of those other varieties,
whether they're new or have been around a while, that people can expect that
similar performance from, but aren't visa bubble gum. The breeding that it takes
to make a vista requires us to use, you know, particular plants that
have a strong dominance for a purple pink color, and so making the performance
of a petunia do what we want it to do. To be called a
visa, that name to us is a sacred right. We say, okay,
there's only five or six of these that are truly visas, and a
lot of them, that's not all of them could be said to be within
that pink spectrum. Now you have this the Snow Drifts, which is a
white which, honestly, if you want a color that will combine with almost
anything else, a white is a great color. I always used to like
making these recipes and it would be like, oh well, let's use super
being a white out, or let's use this the snow drift or you know
super Tuni Mini Vista white, and it just brings that color. It combines
with most other colors and gives you a really nice fresh pop of color.
And I love white because at nighttime, when I'm at home, you know,
that's when I get to enjoy my garden. You know, something like
Royal velvet or these sueper darker colors, they don't really pop in the evening,
you know, whereas a white flower really seems to stand out in my
garden, so I've always been drawn to that. You know, for other
colors of petunias, it's difficult to breed and stay within that first or second
or third generation of hybrids and get away from the pink and the white color.
We have this the Paradise, which is as a as a bright,
you know, kind of electric sort of prink color with a little bit of
sort of cherry tones in it. That one is probably the most different from
the the traditional vista colors. When I look at the many Vista series,
there's uh several in that that would give you a different color scheme. Like
many this the violet Star is a fantastic plant. Many of this the Indigo
is an awesome, awesome plant, and that sort of lilac blue color.
Many just the scarlet is a nice red that's probably one of the best reds
that has come out of onto the market. Maybe this the yellow is a
great color. So it seems to me when we breathe these plants, you
know, giving giving us the true big vista style plant is that's the code
that we're working on breaking. Right when we get into the mini vistas and
we've got. Okay, I can get I can get a little bit tighter
habit, I can get a little bit smaller flower, but I still get
the same landscape performance. I still get the same disease resistance, the ability
to grow in multiple climates with the same kind of performance. You know.
Then I get many of this, the scarlet many, just the yellow many,
this the red midnight, many of the the indigo. You know,
all of those ones become that colored palette becomes much wider, and so those
are a lot of my favorite. So the mini vistas are basically they have
everything that the vistas have, but just smaller. Just like the name says,
yeah, absolutely yeah, And honestly, like in my garden, the
minivisas, I use them almost more than the visas because it's like, you
know, yeah, I can have I have a whole place for pink and
white, like I'll use this the snow drifts quite a bit. But yeah,
if I want to use yellow or blue or something like that, the
minivisas are a great second option, you know. They just have a slightly
smaller flower and a slightly more compact have it. But otherwise the brand,
the branching, the color, coverage, the bigger you know, all of
that stuff is very similar to the to the traditional distoce. That's really good
to know. Yeah, I actually did know that, So I will definitely
be looking at those because you know, those of us who maybe aren't quite
a pink person or doesn't go with our house color or our container colors,
you know, we want that performance, but just a couple more options.
I yeah, absolutely, I get excited every spring to plant the supertunia vistas,
and I wanted to mention for our listeners and our viewers and mentioned to
you, Adam that I love combining them with something that has a little height,
So I like to I think they're the perfect combination with a two can
cannas, truffle of pink, Gamprina sun credible sunflowers, the rock and salvias,
or the meteor shower of Verbinas. Any of those really make good partners
with supertunias. You have a blast of color by July and August here in
the North. Yeah, definitely, I totally agree. You know, we
used to learn in school, what was that you have your thriller, your
filler and your spiller, right, and so you know, you know,
having having these recipes that proven Winters has developed in your wheelhouse and having those
plants available at the garden center. You know, that's another big tricky privately,
Oh well, I want to plant this recipe, You've got to be
able to buy them, right, And that's why I proven winters dot Com
is a really good resource for folks that are looking for very specific varieties.
But yeah, those those plants work really well together. You know. It's
the biggest thing about making a good recipe is are they all similar watering requirements?
Are they all similar fertilizer requirements? Is one plant can they eat another
plant by halfway through the season? Or is it powerful enough to keep past
it? And you know, what do I what do I want out of
it? Do I want? Is a particular color scheme that I'm looking for?
Or is it I'm trying to, you know, give some structure to
the side of my front door, or I wants this hanging basket to spill
and trail down the side of my my patio or something like this. You
know those are it's anybody's it's a playground, and I think they do a
really good job. I used to run the R and D department at Pleasant
View Gardens, and there's a woman man named Jessica Tatro, and she just
does a fantastic job building and designing these recipes and trialing them, you know.
And I think it comes down to that at the end of the day,
when when you find a recipe in the proven Winner's handbook or on the
proven Winner's website, you know, you can be sure that those three plants,
those three plants have been grown together so many times that we know that
that's gonna work, you know, and it's going to keep the color on
it, it's going to you know, it's going to work. And I
think it can be really tempting for folks to go to the to the garden
center and be like, I'm going to take this, you know, this
pogonia, and I'm going to take this petunia, and I'm going to take
you know, this other plant and plant them together. But the begonia doesn't
like a ton of fertilizer and he needs full suns, but the bigonia needs
a little bit of shade, and you know, and so you just get
into this scenario. It's like, well, why my begonia die with my
petunia's great let's sig Overridge puts the basket right, and so that's why the
recipes on the proven Winners dot Com site are so valuable. Adam, As
we wind up here, what are you as as a creator of supertunias?
What are your must know tips for someone who is maybe growing supertunious for the
first time or wants to make sure that they are getting the most from the
plants that they buy. Sure, good question. Okay, So vistas and
many vistas will work fantastic in the ground or a container. A lot of
the supertunias. There's a few exceptions, but most of the supertunias are going
to prefer to be in a container versus being in the landscape. That's kind
of tip number one. Number two is bed preps. You know, get
in there, get the weeds out. If you've got hard packed soil,
kill it up. You got to. You got to create some air pockets,
create some drainage in that soil. You know. I like the backfill
here in Texas with chocolate loam, you know. So if I'm building a
new bag, we'll cut all the grass out, We'll get rid of all
the weeds, We'll pill it up a little bit, We'll add in three
or four inches of chocolate loam. We'll pill that in Bedprep is so important
for getting the plant established and being able to grow out from there. As
a home gardener, I don't fertilize a lot what I do for fertilizer.
I really like slow release fertilizer. I don't have the time to always mix
up liquid feed at home. Now in the greenhouse with research growing producers,
yes, we're going to use liquid feed pretty constantly. And if you're a
home gardener and you can give it an extra shot of liquid feed every couple
of weeks, it's not going to hurt it. It's only going to help
it. Follow the label directions and go for it. But if you put
out at a high rate, something like you know, proven Winter slow release
or any slow release fertilizer three to six month release something like this, the
general US, you know, go at the high label rate. Put that
down. If you're like me, you don't water frequently, you go through
and put a soaker hose in something like that. That's what we used here
in the gardens in Texas. You know, just put wind a soaker hose
kind of around, not not perfect, but through the bed somewhere where I
want it to irrigate and then cover it with mulch. Try and hold that
moisture around the root zone, you know, for us about two three months
after we do that. So we'll do that all at end of February,
beginning of March, plant the garden and then just you know, set it
to irrigate for thirty minutes every other day something like that, you know,
and let it run, let it run, do it things. It rains
and rains, you know, so be it. Put the water on there
anyway. And then around the fourth of July we come back and we top
dressed with more slow release. That's that's the best way to do it in
a container garden situation. You know. We did a lot of trials with
different types of fertilizers when I was at Pleasantviy Gardens in New Hampshire, and
we found that liquid seed like if you take that grande and you plant that
grande into a larger container, and we would take three grandees of Visa bubble
Gum or many of our other proven Winner's annuals, put them into a five
gallon container and top dress with the high rates of slower release. Fertilizer.
We compare that to liquid feeding one hundred, one hundred and fifty parts per
millium every watering. You know, six weeks later, those plants were very
comparable, very comparable. Eight weeks later, ten weeks later, twelve weeks
later. You know, you're starting to see a little bit better performance out
out of the liquid seed than the slow release. But it was fully acceptible.
So as a general rule of thumb, I'm a I'm a slow release
fertilizer kind of person, Like I want to set it and forget it in
some way as long as I can irrigate well, which I think is you
know, as much as you can hope for out of most gardeners is just
give it water when it's dry. That's what you should be able to do
and be successful. And if you combine proven leaders genetics, slow release fertilizer,
piece of bed prep or container prep, and just you know, irrigation
on a basis that is acceptable for you, you're going to have success.
Can't beat that. I mean, that's what summer is all about, is
doing the work at the beginning of the season and then letting he reap all
the rewards for the rest of it so well said. His name is Adam
Moseley and he is breeding director with wyn Gen LLC, a plant breeding company
just south of Austin, Texas, and we've talked about Vista Super Tunas.
I can't wait for spring to start. Adam, thanks for your time today,
your enthusiasm, your work, and looking forward to spring twenty twenty four.
Absolutely y'all have a great spring up there. Thanks Adam, Thanks Adam,
well, that was great. I am ready to go annual shopping all
the way. No, it's a bit too early, still, I cannot
wait. So we want to thank Adam Mosley for his time talking to us
about suprtunias. Thank you Rick, thank you Adriana, and of course thanks
to all of you for listening. We hope you have a wonderful week ahead.