Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the comfy confines of Studio ay Here at
Proven Winters, Color Joy Shrubs. It's time for the Gardening
Simplified Show with Stacy Hervella Me, Rick weisst and our
engineer and producer Adrianna Robinson. Well, Stacy, we need to
eat more plants. Everybody needs to eat more plants. And
I had so much fun at the greenhouse this past
weekend with the spring season kicking in, selling some of
the Proven Winters edibles like Splendid Blue blueberry. And to me,
a blueberry plant is the perfect example of a plant
that can be functional providing food, but also be esthetically
pleasing with gorgeous fault color.
Speaker 2: It's true. They are eminently landscape worthy, beautiful foliage in
the spring and flowers in the spring, and then you
got the fruit, and then you've got amazing fall color
and then those nice red stems, As anybody who lives
in West Michigan and drives literally anywhere can tell you,
they're fabulous even in winter. And Splendid Blue is one
of our newer varieties. It's a blueberry. The blue, of
course comes from the blueberry, but also the foliage is blue.
I mean you've seen it at the greenhouse, isn't it
just absolutely gorgeous?
Speaker 1: Gorgeous and people were very excited to see that on display.
Right next to it, Taste of Heaven, thornless BlackBerry, easy
as pie bush cherry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited about this.
Speaker 2: You know, so a bush cherry. It's not a plant
that a lot of people are familiar with. Now, if
you fear like a hardcore food gardener, you probably know
of bush cherries, but the average person doesn't. You know,
they grow weeping cherry, flowering cherry. You can't eat those,
they don't produce any fruits. But the bush cherry easy
as pie is a shrubby cherry does not need a pollinator.
It's great for an edible hedge, and it gets bright
red fruits. Now they're quite tart, but not like I wish.
I wouldn't have eaten this tart. They're still good enough
to eat and you don't need pollinator. They're pretty much
pest and disease free. It's just a great way to
have edible fruit at arm's length. You know, in the summer,
I agrease.
Speaker 1: They see it's a This is a shrub that I
would plunk smack dab right in the middle of my
landscape and be very happy to do that.
Speaker 3: And of course we were.
Speaker 1: Busy selling pesto besto basil and a masal basil. To me,
it's just basil instinct, one of the most popular annuals
that you will sell in a greenhouse. Of course, you
think of the versatility in cuisine like manute, while many
dishes like Italian pesto salads thaie cuisine. So you know,
all these great plants essentially add to the landscape. Esthetically,
we want to eat more plants, but at the same
time it brings up the point that we also enjoy
these plants many times for what they visually give to us.
Speaker 3: And when we.
Speaker 1: Get in a vegetable planting season, that's an intense time
of the year at the greenhouse or a garden center
because it's a short it's similar to the Christmas season.
It's short, it's compact, it's intense, and if you live
in Northern States or into Canada, we have what I
typically call the do over planting season. Some years we
have that where you get very excited about putting out
vegetables and getting your vegetables season starting because we want
to maximize the.
Speaker 3: Yield in the garden.
Speaker 1: But if we plant a little too early, we get
one of those zinger frosts. People come back and plant
a second time some years.
Speaker 2: Which you should do. I mean my all is if
you got overly enthusiastic, you know, I mean, everyone has
their first your vegetable gardening. But if you live in
a cold climate, you're pretty familiar with those cold snaps
come in somewhat time in those two weeks first weeks
to May Mother's Day typically without fail. Last reason, I
have a Mother's Day frost, but that was the rare
Mother's Day they have a frost. But yeah, it's never
too late to start again. I mean, it can be
a little disheartening. You could also protect your plants if
a frost or freeze is called for. But you know,
I think most gardeners who have a little experience under
their belt definitely aren't putting out anything super tender tomatoes, peppers,
egg plant, basil, any of those cucumbers, delicate plants. They're
not going out until third week of May at best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I agree, And I love planting oregano and chives.
As long as we're talking about eat more plants and
edible plants. Of course, chives mind come back year after years.
Sometimes just let them go to flour and they're beautiful.
Same thing with oregano. Sometimes I just let it go
to flour and it's gorgeous. And I just added to
my landscape drops of Jupiter ornamental oregano chartruse yellow leaves
top with mauve pink flowers.
Speaker 3: What a great plant.
Speaker 1: Again, Stacy, The point here is when we're landscaping, gardening,
whatever it may be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we look at a plot.
Speaker 1: Where we want to maximize yields, and there's methods of
doing that, and we can chat about that today. But
to me, edible plants, well, they're just plain beautiful.
Speaker 2: They're beautiful, and you know, it really is I think,
and I've said this on the show before, just the
ultimate and luxury to be able to go into your
own backyard and have a grocery store of sorts. You know,
I think if you're growing the right plants for the
food that you like to eat, you know, with trial
and error and expanding your palate every year, you end
up with plants that, you know, it's just I don't,
I just I can't even explain the joy of being
in the kitchen and going, oh, shoot, I didn't buy
any scallions. Well, I can just go back, you know,
outside and pick garlic, chives, or pick you know, the chives,
or you know, any number of plants, and it's just
there's nothing. I'm gonna say this too, there's nothing like
you're cooking and then you're like, oh wait, I need
something from the garden, and so you get your garden
shoes on, you take a little break from the kitchen,
you go out. It's a beautiful summer evening and you
just go out and you pick the stuff and you
bring it back in, and it's just that's what I
wait all year for. That's just the most magical moment
in gardening for me.
Speaker 1: I agree, stay see one hundred percent. It's like the
salary said to the carrot, you have a point, and
the point well, and the point is this is that
many people talk about adding edibles or vegetable gardening because
Adriana likes that it was a good one, well thank you,
but many people will think about, sorry, it just came out.
Speaker 2: It was good.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, as a cucumber said to the tomato,
you threw me for a loop.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, we're hot today.
Speaker 3: I don't even remember what the point was that I
was going to make it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So the deal is you'll see people on YouTube or
wherever it may be talking about the fact that you
need to grow a vegetable garden because it will save
you money. I'm not so sure about that, because by
the time you've bought the soil, the plants, or raised
bed containers, fertilizer, everything else, those tomatoes can get a
little bit of expensive. I personally believe that edible gardening
and edible landscape is important, not only for the esthetics,
but in addition to that, the health factor and the
taste factor. You're so right, Stacy on a summer day
to be able to go out there, clip a few chives,
grab a tomato plants, some basil leaves.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's just a thrill.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I am a knitter in my spare
time when I'm not gardening, and knitting, similarly, is very
much not about saving money. You know, you buy yarn
for a sweater or a pair of socks. It costs
well more than a sweater or a pair of socks
that you'd buy, but it's about the hobby time, which
is so important if you enjoy this having that time.
And it's about the quality and selection because you can
make when you're knitting, you can make everything exactly to
your taste. And similarly, when you're vegetable gardening, you're not
limited by the tomatoes that happen to keep well on
the grocery shelf. Yes, you can go and buy those cheaply,
and they're of course better in the summer. But you know,
I this year am growing eight or nine different tomatoes
that I've never grown before, really unique varieties, and I
am just super excited about having them. And yeah, the
electricity I'm spending right now to have my heat mats
and my fan and my grow lights on everything I
spent to have the plants ship because of course, once
I started shopping for seed, then you get free shipping
at a certain amount, so then you got to add
more till you to that amount. It's not about saving money.
You may save money, and if so, that's awesome, but
it really is about the joy and the satisfaction. And
if you love to eat, and I should love growing
vegetables too, Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I agree.
Speaker 1: And when you approach it you have to think about.
I'm going to do this in quotes, your root print,
your root print. In other words, as we've talked about
with landscape plants going vertical or fastigit plants, we can
do the same thing with vegetable plants. I have a
picture for our YouTube viewers of a cucumber that was
trying to escape the compound last year. Oh no, in
my vegetable garden. Yeah, and he got stuck in the fence.
But I grow my cucumbers at a forty five degree
angle allow air underneath. And of course you want to
have lots of flowers around your vegetable garden too, because
it attracts pollinators to the garden and it benefits the
vegetable garden so so much that we can talk about.
We will also in segment four give you some pointers
on achieving this a more edible garden. Let me mention
the eat more plants limb a rick before we go
to plants on trial.
Speaker 3: Here. It is my diet.
Speaker 1: I need to enhance, not leave my health to chance.
So I might fantasize about a drive through burger and fries,
but my goal is to eat more plants. Some foods
have a real downside. I admit sometimes I backslide. Just
mix up some batter and some oil to splatter because
I like.
Speaker 3: My onions and Okra deep Fried and I.
Speaker 2: Do yeah, and that's some good stuff. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: Plants on trial. Coming up next here on the Gardening Simplified.
Speaker 2: Show, beautify your home and community with proven Winner's Color
Choice Shrubs. With over three hundred and twenty five unique
varieties to choose from. There's a flowering shrub or evergreen
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distinctive white container your local garden center or learn more
at proven Winner's Color Choice dot com. Greetings gardening friends,
and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, where we're
talking all about vegetable gardening, because especially if you are
in a cooler climate, it is time to start planning
and planting. Still a little too early for tomatoes and
eggplants and peppers and the like, if that is your
inclination in these colder climates. But of course our warm
climate friends are probably going gangbusters with their tomatoes and
peppers and everything. But it's not too really to do
things like radishes, carrots, lettuce, parsley, all sorts of wonderful things.
And so we want it to be timely and inspire
you to think about growing something, because you know, I
think there's just so much benefit to growing your own vegetables.
You don't have to go crazy, you don't have to
like cord an off a huge part of your yard, exactly.
You can just grow one to mate. Oh, you can
just grow one cucumber, whatever you like to eat. It
changes the way you think about food, It changes the
way you think about plants, It changes the way you
think about gardening. And it's just a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: And when I was a kid in the nineteen sixties,
kids then, you know, people had big plots, big garden plots,
and boy, on a summer day you'd spend your time
picking beans and shocking corn and working on the you know,
you'd be laboring out there, and you didn't like it
so much.
Speaker 2: Well, no, And you know, also, just like when we
have talked in the past about how you know, flowers
and gardening was very different because of plant breeding. Vegetable
gardening is very different because of plant breeding. You know,
you no longer need to worry about diseases even some
pests have. There's been varieties developed to be resistant, stringless
peas and beans and all of these things that you
no longer have to labor over, although there is something
to be said about a summer afternoon shelling beans and
that kind of thing, but it's gotten a lot easier
from what you might think back in the day. Now,
I need to change gears here because I want to
share something that I heard last weekend in a video
on YouTube. It just happened to catch this. It was
in a video about an architect in a house that
he had designed, and he says in the video, his
name's Jim Cutler. Creating habitat is a high calling and
that just really stuck with me, and I've been thinking
a lot about it over the last week ever since
I heard that. Because when you garden, whatever your goal
in gardening is, it's because you like flowers, it's because
you want to grow vegetables, it's because all of your
neighbors have plants in your yards looking kind of barren.
Whatever your reason for planting something, you are creating habitat.
Because animals, for everything from birds to bugs, to beavers
and everything else, they are interconnected with plants at some level,
I mean, are all of life depends on plants. So
when we when we plant anything, we are planting habitat.
Now we can make our choices to be habitat for
you know, better habitat for things that we want in
our garden, or we can you know, make them worse habitat.
But there's always going to be something, some birds, something
taking advantage of that habitat in your garden. And when
you are a vegetable gardener, your vegetable garden is habitat too,
and very often it's habitat for things that you don't
necessarily want in there because they are competing with you
for the very vegetables that you are trying to produce
from this garden, and so sometimes those need to be managed.
But very often, you know what I aim to do
in my garden, because no one really wants to use
a bunch of pesticides on that vegetable garden. You want
to look for you know IPM Integrated pest Management alternative
methods for managing it. And one of the ways that
you can do that is to create habitat for beneficial insects.
And we've talked about beneficial insects here and there kind
of name drops some things like lace wings or minute
pirate bugs or parasitic wasps. There's lots and lots of
them out there. Ladybugs of course, probably one of the
most famous praying mantis. Little non discriminating in what it eats,
but still an effective predator. So a beneficial insect is
an insect that eats insects that eat plants at one
of its life stages. So lots of beneficial insects will
only eat insects in one of their life phases. So
you know, insects can undergo complete metamorphosis like a butterfly
where you go caterpillar larva to butterfly, or incomplete metamorphosis,
which is something like oh, a grasshopper, right, so you
would see something a baby grasshopper. It's just a little grasshopper,
and then the grasshopper gets bigger through the season, sheds
its skin and gets bigger and bigger. So sometimes in
that case it would be the smaller versions of that
will eat the insects very often the larger the adult
insects need to feed on nectar, sure, so they are
attracted to nectar in your garden, not the pest insects.
They're eating the nectar, they're eating flowers, their larva, they
lay their eggs if the habitat looks suitable. So what
we really want to do when we're vegetable gardening is
to think about the larger habitat in and around our
vegetable gardens and have plants in it that attract beneficial
insects so we can rely on them to do some
of the work. Not only is that going to help
us from a pest control perspective, but it's just delightful.
I know, you know, I'm a big advocate for insects.
It's the reason why a garden. I love to see
insects in my garden. The more the better. They're endlessly fascinating,
and so to me, this is all a very good thing.
Even if you're a little squeamish about them, I think again,
once you start vegetable gardening, your attitude towards everything just changes.
Speaker 1: Super important to educate ourselves on these things mentioned in
the first segment. My frame of reference to nineteen sixties
working in the vegetable garden with my dad. But if
you think back to the nineteen sixties, you have Silent Spring,
which came out in nineteen sixty and the decade culminated
with Earth Day. April of nineteen seventy was the first day.
So yeah, getting a familiarization with these types of things
and these methods and using beneficial insects to your advantage
super important.
Speaker 2: We become a participant in the ecosystem. So today's plants
on trial are those pollinator plants that you know, again
we're not just doing it because we want them to
pull into our vegetables, although that is important. A number
of vegetables are self fruitful in that they don't need
an insect to come along and move pollen from one
flower to another. But you know, having more pollination in
the vegetable garden is always a good thing. And again
it attracts these beneficial insects, so they will stick around,
have babies in your yard, and they'll give you that
free pest control. Now, I will tell a lie. The
majority of beneficial insects sustaining plants are not shrubs. It's
just no two ways around us. And this is you know,
proven winter's color choice shrubs. So we talk about witty
plants a lot. The best plants that you can plant
for beneficial insects are in the apac family, which is
also known as the Umbelliferae or the umbel family. So
we're talking things like dill, parsley, anything that has that wide,
beautiful kind of flower. Queen Anne's lace is another great
example that people may know and love. Also plants in
the Astoraci or the daisy family. Now what you'll notice
about both of those plants is the flowers are made
up of lots and lots of teeny tiny little flowers,
so these little insects can get in there and get
that nectar. And the other great thing about these is
there great plants to have around the vegetable garden. To
have dial to have parsley, to have sunflowers, to have
zinnias in your vegetable garden. It's just it's beautiful and
it's beneficial. But on the outside of the vegetable garden,
your landscape, any flower garden that you have, there are
actually a number of shrubs that you can plant that
are going to give you a similarly long bloom time
and serve as a really really good source of nectar.
So again, when we think about the choices that we
make in our gardening, you can opt for these plants
create more habitat to create a better environment for everyone.
So my number one choice here without question. If you
live in a cool climate, it's Happy Face Potentilla bet Now,
potentilla's in general are a great plant for pollinators, especially
the herbaceous, but the woody ones are as well. The
Happy Face Potentilla from Privenvener's color choice shrubs, very big flowers,
wide open, tons of pollen and nectar. And what's great
about them they bloom NonStop all summer long. So there's
always going to be that sustained food source. Because when
you're attracting these insects to your garden, you know you
don't want them to say, oh, well, hey, this thing
isn't blooming anymore. I guess I better move on. This way,
you're going to always have that supply of flowers. So
Happy faced Potentilla comes in four colors, yellow, which would
be my first choice for pollinators, white, and then there's
also two different pinks. Very easy plant to grow, full sun,
super deer resistant and very cool deer resist, very dear resistent.
Not your vegetable garden so much you're gonna need to
fence that off if deer resistance is a concern. The
other one that people might be surprised to think about
is roses. Any rose where you can see those interior parts.
All of that pollen and nectar will attract beneficial insects.
There's lots of it in there for them. And similar
to the to the potentilla blooming all summer long, so
you're gonna again have that sustained food source. Another choice. Now,
I know that butterfly bush can be very controversial for
lots of people when we're talking about pollinators, but the
fact is butterflies are not the only insect that can
use a butterfly bush. And much like the last two
plants I mentioned, you're going to have that can consistent
flowering all summer long, absolutely full of nectar. So there's
going to be all sorts of bees and beetles and
all of these wonderful things that will help you out
in your garden and invite more diversity. And the more
diversity you have in your garden in plants in insects,
trust me, the better off you are all going to be.
I could go on and on and on about this
topic because I am so passionate about flowers and insects
in the garden, but we have to take a little break,
so we will do that and when we come back,
we're going to be opening up the mail bag, so
please stick around. At Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs, we
know that a better landscape starts with a better shrub.
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Proven Winner's Color Choice dot com. Gre Readings Gardening Friends,
and welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show, where it
is our opportunity here to help you with your garden questions,
quandaries and conundrums. And I know they are numerous at
this time of year, so if you want to reach
out to us, you can do so at Gardeningsimplified on
air dot com. We do get a lot of questions,
and of course not every question is suitable for answering
on air because we're limited in our time, but we
do always want to help you, so we are going
to leave you hanging. You can always also reach us
at proven Winner's Color Choice dot com. There's a contact
tab right there that will go to one of our
horticultures and you'll get a personal answer, not from a robot,
but from a real person. And ditto forprefone Winners dot Com.
You can just go to the feedback at the bottom
there and get an answer for your garden questions. So
before we get into some things that Rick has to share,
we have an important event to commemorate. It kind of
slipped in last week but you may not have noticed it. April,
which we're just past right now, commemorates Rick's fiftieth year
in the garden center industry. That is amazing, Thank you,
thank you very I mean, that's hard to believe, right,
we've seen it all. Yeah, you've had the opportunity to
so congratulations on serving the West Michigan gardening community for
fifty years. That's truly incredible.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's been It's been a fun adventure and I have
so many stories that I can share with people interacting
with people in the garden center. It's just been a
great experience for me.
Speaker 2: Well, unfortunately, you've had your excellent sense of humor to
sustain you through even the most maddening moment.
Speaker 1: You have to have a sense of humous if you're
going to be in the garden center retail business.
Speaker 2: Yes, so what do we got here?
Speaker 3: So lotus pods?
Speaker 1: Just want to mention we're talking about edible plants today
and I'm walking the beach on Sunday, so live along
the lake shore here in West Michigan, Lake Michigan, and
thousands of these lotus pods. Our YouTube viewers can see them. Yeah,
and they're rattles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're getting sand all over me.
Speaker 3: But thousands of them.
Speaker 1: So I took some pictures, a little bit of video,
put it in social media.
Speaker 3: It was picked up by the media.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the NBC affiliate here in
West Michigan, Ellen Baka, the meteorologist at Wood TV eight,
picked up on it and people just jumped all over
This number of people had no idea what they were.
They're American lotus pods floated out of the marsh. With
the heavy rains that we had in April into Lake
Michigan and the storm pushes them up on the shore
whil you have these rattles all over the place. And
it was interesting to me. Two things that were interesting
to me, Stacey. One, a lot of people have a
phobia of lotus pods or honeycomb or sponges.
Speaker 3: It's quite interesting.
Speaker 1: The other is that the seeds within the lotus pods
are edible.
Speaker 3: I did not know that.
Speaker 2: Yes, the seeds are edible, and also the roots of
lotus are highly edible and delicious. Now I can't speak
so much about the American There are North American native lotus,
but in Japan it's very popular. It's known as rain
rain colon, and I actually ate at a restaurant in
Tokyo that was devoted exclusively to lotus, and so it's
really crunchy, really tasty. You can put it in soups,
there's all sorts of different things that you can do
with it. I'm not sure that the North American lotus
is quite as seculent for its roots, but the seeds
are absolutely edible. And it's really cool that you've seen
these whole because normally when these wash up on the shore,
they're pretty beat up right, and these are like perfectly intact. Yeah,
and now is the time you see so many come
up on shore. So if you are anywhere in the
vicinity of Lake Michigan on the east shore or the
west shore, you'll probably see some of these and beautiful plant.
The problem is, you know, we don't really get to
see lotus plants blooming or growing because they grow out
kind of in the middle of the bayous and marshes
around here. So unless you're a kayaker or canoe or
you're not going to get a good look at our
beautiful and amazing native lotus.
Speaker 3: And they are gorgeous, you bet you.
Speaker 2: And you know the flower, like the inside when it's
a fresh flower is so interesting because it's like a
little miniature green version of this and then it expands
into this. So just a beautiful, interesting plant, symbolic in
North America and super symbolic of course in Asia as
it's associated with Buddhism.
Speaker 3: Fantastic.
Speaker 1: Let me mention also Stacey for the mail bag. I
had someone stop me the other day, a person who
listens to our podcast, and she said that she goes
to Florida for three months in winter. Her husband does
not want to go. He stays home and she put
him in charge of taking care of the plants. And
under the sink is the water soluble fertilizer for the plants,
but he instead grabbed the bubble powder for the grand kids.
They used to make big bubbles using a wand fed
the plants all winter while she was gone with the.
Speaker 2: Bubbles, so it wasn't a one time.
Speaker 3: Thing and the plants survived it.
Speaker 2: Wow. He must have been a good water then, so
he was like rinsing away all of that soap residue
that would normally not be so right for the plants.
Speaker 1: So that's typical of those kinds of stories that I've had,
you know I've heard in the garden center.
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's water soluble. For how did it not
bubble up like crazy?
Speaker 3: He just used it.
Speaker 1: He was instructed to use it, and he grabbed the
wrong container.
Speaker 3: And there you go.
Speaker 1: And you know, a picture for our YouTube viewers of
those big bubbles you can make with this a picture
I took on the beach last summer. But I just
found that really amusing. And that's what I'm saying, Stacy.
I have hundreds and hundreds of those kinds of series
through the years.
Speaker 2: Well, we are glad that you do. Now what we
got in the mailbag this week.
Speaker 3: Deb Rights.
Speaker 1: I had my yard professionally landscaped a couple years ago.
Speaker 3: Three now, I guess.
Speaker 1: And a lot of my plants are planted in rocks,
medium sized rocks. I keep losing plants. Is it because
they're planted in rocks?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. One of the banes of my existence
is a horticulture. So the answer for Deb and anyone
else who is struggling with a similar situation, it's probably
not the rocks. But nine times out of ten, probably
nine point five times out of ten, landscape rocks like
this are paired with soil separator, landscape fabric, weed barrier,
call it whatever you want. It is all bad news.
And I don't know why the rocks and a landscape
separator always seem to go hand in hand. But what
happens is those even though those are well intentioned, you know,
everyone thinks that they're doing a good thing and this
is going to keep weeds down, they do not. What
they do do, however, is they prevent oxygen from reaching
the plant roots and from carbon dioxide from going out
of the plant. Roots, and they create a really unfavorable environment,
especially for sensitive plants. So I have seen so many plants,
especially lilacs in panicle hydrangeas, which are two plants that
are quite sensitive to this situation. Many many plants killed
this way. So the solution, if you have the landscape
fabric underneath, if you're planting into it for the first time,
pull it well away from the plant. You know, I'm
talking a good two foot circle around the plant, so
that there's plenty of open soil for the water and
air to you know, exchange there. If you already have
plants in there, I would just go ahead and cut
away even more. It doesn't hurt.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The other thing, even aside from the soil separator landscape fabric,
you very often have rocks holding on to a lot
of heat.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it.
Speaker 1: They generate a lot of or they absorb heat and
they reflect and it creates real problems for the plants.
Speaker 3: Stacey. I've always called them riot rocks.
Speaker 2: Riot rocks, riot rocks.
Speaker 3: You know, the riot rocks.
Speaker 2: They're not much of a riot. And you know, no
one thinks about what happens when you're done with the rocks.
And then you've got to somehow wheelbarrow away whatever's left
of the rocks. The rocks are in your lawn. It's
you know, there are certainly plants that can withstand it
just fine. And you know, we've actually talked about doing
a gravel gardens segment in the future, which which we
will we shall probably do this summer. But you know,
the landscape rocks as a kind of mulch can definitely
be problematic. There are plants that will have no issue
with it. So you can either change your planting to
have as that are going to be very tolerant of
that intense heat, that are maybe potentially going to be
tolerant of some drainage issues if you have a lot
of rain and there's that, you know, layer of soil
separator underneath. That's kind of a rough combination, but it
is possible. But really remedying the whole situation favorably is
going to be a very uphill battle. So you kind
of are going to have to work your way through
a combination of proper planting choices that can withstand the
conditions as well as again pulling away that separator, pulling
away the rock. And I have found that you know,
even if you're looking down on the landscape from your home,
you're going to be able to see those big holes
when your landscape is viewed from the street. It doesn't
you know that foreshortening that you have doesn't really make
a different. So it's not like people are like, why
is there a huge moat around that plant with no
rock around it? From the street going perspective, it will
look pretty similar. So definitely keep those well away from
the base of the plant, and you and the plants
will be happier. I know rocks seem like a low
maintenance choice.
Speaker 3: But they're not a low maintenance.
Speaker 2: They are not a low Speaking of your fifty years
in the industry, aren't you glad that lava rock is
barely a thing anymore?
Speaker 1: Oh, my neighbor just brought in a five yard load
of lava rock no landscape. I said, why didn't you
ask me first before.
Speaker 3: You ordered this?
Speaker 2: I didn't even know it was still around enough to
get five yards. All right, On that note, we are
going to take a little break and when we come back,
we are continuing our conversation on vegetable gardening, So please
stay tuned. Thanks for listening to the Gardening Simplified podcast
brought to you by Proven Winners Color Choice Shrubs. Our
award winning flowering shrubs and evergreens are trialed and tested
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Gardening Simplified Show as we try
to eat more plants and Stacy. My dad taught me
at a young age working in the vegetable garden with
him that planting depth, properly drained soil, organic matter, and
sunlight were the keys. And my dad is now ninety
six years old at a retirement village and he's very
picky about the vegetables that he eats. I find it
really interesting because edibles in the garden, vegetables you can
steam them, roast them, microwave them, saute them. He wants
them boiled, and he wants them boiled to the point
where they boil the life out of those things. Otherwise
he won't eat it. And I think it's just strange.
And I think back to that time, the fifties and sixties,
the big thing was the invention of Lipton onion soup. Mit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and everybody used that.
Speaker 1: When there was a radio personality called Arthur Godfree, and
eventually they began to call it the Arthur Godfree dip.
But that revolutionized the way people enjoyed vegetables at that time.
And I just find it interesting that my dad wants
them boiled.
Speaker 3: Or he doesn't want them.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So interesting.
Speaker 1: Now using fish as fertilizer with our edibles, oh yeah,
or fish emulsion fertilizer.
Speaker 3: Have you used that? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about that?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it is an excellent fertilizer source
if you want to stay away from quote unquote industrial
fertilizers that are made from minerals in that kind of thing.
It does stink to high heaven, So depending on your dog,
it may or may not be a great choice, but
it's immediately available nitrogen. It does cost a little bit more,
and yeah, mixing it up is not for the squeamish
or weak stomached. But I do think it's an outstanding fertilizer,
and I think, you know, fish fertilizer is much more
common and affordable in areas where there's a lot of fishing.
So if you're on the West coast, if you're on
the East coast, it's going to be very different than
if you are in say the middle of Michigan, where
there's not a lot of that, and it's all going
to have to be shipped in from somewhere else. But
I mean, I mean people used to bury fishbones around
their plants and you know, that kind of thing. And
as long as you aren't gonna, you know, accidentally dig
it up before it's time, that is perfectly fine. But
I have used it before, and yeah, I'm absolutely a fan.
If you want an organic fertilizer, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I think composted manures or fish emulsion fertilizer make great
fertilizers for edible plants. If you think of the Native
Americans and the first settlers, you know, they taught them
to use fish. Another important aspect of an edible landscape
or edible garden is that what you plant or try
to grow has to make sense.
Speaker 3: For example, I love celery.
Speaker 1: I love celery, but it doesn't make sense to me
to try and grow it in the vegetable garden because
it's like one hundred and twenty to one hundred and
forty days to maturity.
Speaker 2: It's not the easiest crap to grow and it's crazy.
There was a day in American history where celery was
the height of luxury, like exactly. You know, you can
buy Victorian celery vases, like it was like the thing
that you did to show everybody, like how wealthy you
were and how yeah that you serve them celery. And
now it's like almost like a punchline and it's so
inexpensive at the grocery store. But yeah, growing it is
not easy. Yeah, I'm actually growing some this year, but
I'm growing leaf celery, okay, So I'm not trying to
get the big stock celery that you have at the
gardens at the grocery store. It's more like a leafy
fin stock for Chinese cooking and for soups and that
kind of thing. So I'm exciting.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: You know, the bulk of the celery like we see
in stores is grown in California. You have to have
a coolish environment some areas in California because it takes
so long to mature. I guess that's the whole point
for me. I love it in tuna fish, and I
love peanut butter on celery sticks, and people use them
as stirs and bloody Marry ay's.
Speaker 3: I think it's a fantastic plant.
Speaker 2: Have you ever grown lavage?
Speaker 3: No? I have not.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I'm starting lovage. See it's for Adriana
this year. And did you know that they say when
you have a mature lavage plant, it's a perennial that
tastes like celery. Once it gets bigger, stems are hollow
and you can use it as a straw for a
bloody mary and it has that celery flavor. So it's
going to be a few years. Some my lavage plants
are at straw level, but I am growing lavage for
a select few bloody marry connoisseurs on staff here at Choice.
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 1: That's great, you know, so you take those things into
consideration because I also believe some plants grow better in
containers than in the ground. If you look, for example,
at flowering annuals like a calibri CoA much better in
a container than it is in the ground. And I
think the same applies to vegetable plants. Growing tomatoes in
containers is huge fun, but you may want to steer
towards a determinate or semi determinate tomato rather than an
indeterminate tomato unless you have an absolutely huge container.
Speaker 3: So my point here.
Speaker 1: Is this, a vegetable that gives a continual harvest of
something to eat like peppers or tomatoes makes sense to
me in a container, but certainly not celery or our
good friend, the carrot really doesn't make sense in a container.
Speaker 2: Not ornamental enough either. Now, of course, if you're an
apartment and you love carrots, or you found a really
cool carrot and that's your only way to grow it,
by all means, do that. But I agree, when we
are looking at containers, we should be thinking of plants
that are going to give us a better harvest and
have significant ornamental appeal. And you know, I said earlier
that I went a little bonkers on the seed purchasing
this year. I bought everything from Adaptive Seeds out in Oregon,
and their selection was just insane. There's so many cool
things that I've never seen. So I could not hold
myself back to the point where this year, probably like
ninety percent of my containers are going to have to
be hot peppers, because really I bought so many, but
I think they're beautiful enough to merit that. I mean,
because they're so colorful. You know, I'm not just buying
like jalapenos, which same like the cellary, like, you can
grow jlapenos, and it is very nice to have an
abundant supply of jalapenos in your backyard, but you might
want to use that space for something a little more interesting.
So I have really cool hot peppers from all over
the world pink, I mean red, orange, yellow, chocolate, purple
color and I'm super excited to see what this is
all gonna look like.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought this up because I think this
is important. You know, last year you shared some peppers
with me.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the habanadas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the.
Speaker 1: Color in that orange was gorgeous. And it helps put
an exclamation point on what we're trying to say today,
and that is we all should eat more plants. But boy,
aesthetically they are incredibly pleasing.
Speaker 2: They are. And you know, I'm glad that you kind
of made that connection to you because for me, you know,
it was a big moment in my personal journey to
grow my own tomatoes and see them get cat faced,
to see them get crashed, and to say there is
no way I am not eating this beautiful tomato I
know where this has been and that really changed the
way that I look at food at the farmer's market
and at the grocery store as well, because it is
a challenge to grow food. If food is too uniform
and two perfect chances are you've given up something in flavor.
So I think it really helps to increase our tolerance
for quote unquote less than perfect produce, which is important
for food waste and everything.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be interested to see and I'm sure
our listeners and viewers also the development of your pepper
plantings this year, because you've really gotten me excited about
that and growing peppers for the esthetic value of it.
It's it's a pretty neat thing. Another plant that we
could grow in that way, and it's a perennial, and
that would be rhubarb.
Speaker 3: Now, rhubarb is the term rhubarb.
Speaker 1: Is tied into a New York sports writer or a
broadcaster in the nineteen thirties who coined the phrase that
a fight or fisticuffs or a.
Speaker 3: Brew haha would be called a rhubarb.
Speaker 2: What. Yeah, it wasn't called before that?
Speaker 3: No? What was no? No?
Speaker 1: No, the plant was called I'm saying a fight an
altercation was called a rhuburb gotcha, but what a great
ornamental perennial plant. Many people referred to it as pie plant,
and Rhubarb's popularity grew to a peak before World War Two.
But a lot of people feel because of sugar rationing,
that its culinary use dropped dramatically during and after the war.
So that phrase came along before World Working.
Speaker 2: I was real confused. I was like, were they using
the botanical name or.
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 1: Of course, if we're talking about edible plants, and we
mentioned it in the first segment, I mentioned how much
I love oregano and chives, but Stacey herbs are one
of those plants that, in my opinion, are perfectly suited
to grow in containers.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I grow herbs everywhere I can because I love them.
I grow all my basilin containers because I don't want
to have to unlatch my vegetable garden and get in
there into the enclosure the compound, my little compound to
pick that basil. And it's deer resistant. And how lucky
are we that the deer never touched basil?
Speaker 3: That's exactly it. So it's beautiful, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So have some fun out there enjoying edible plants, eat
more plants, and enjoy the esthetic value of.
Speaker 3: Those plants in your landscape. Stacy, this has been fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks been super fun. I am ready to get out
in the vegetable garden.
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, me too ready to go.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Adriana, and thanks most of all to all
of you who tune us in on YouTube every week,
or tune in the radio version of our show, or
look for our podcast. Have yourself a gray week.