(00:00:01) Well, it's been great weather this summer so far for growing lettuce The Lawns are pretty much staying green. However, some people might be running into some gardening problems with this unusual weather this summer. So today in our studio somebody who can offer some help Jeb Brown and extension horticulturist at the University of Minnesota and a regular guest on our Saturday. Midday. Hi and welcome. Well, it's nice to be here. But you better be careful about offering too much help because I can't do much about this whether it's not in my power as much as I'd like to know we had a meteorologist with us with us last Saturday. So you're off the hook for the weather right? I heard dealt with that. I'll admit up front. All I try to grow is is grass and Shrubbery. I leave the rest of it for everybody else in my shrubs are doing fine. The grass is really doing quite nice, but I'm suspicious that the cool weather so far this summer is causing some trouble. Give us a general outline for how things have been. Change by the Summers. Well, first of all, I have to say Mark you're missing out on a lot of fun. You better you better you better start growing more him killed too many more than ours were than a shrubs and grass but it's true. The the cool weather has said a lot of crops behind and where is the farmers may be talking about being a week and a half to two weeks or so behind they've got fields that sit out in full sunlight. That is when we have a sunny day. They are warmed by the sun totally from from early morning to evening. But in urban Gardens, you know, very frequently, we have our flower and vegetable gardens in places where there may be five or six hours of sunlight directly and in a good year that that's fine. It works, you know, but when we have kind of a dicey ear for whether it's not so good. So I think many plants are more than two weeks behind and we're talking about things like peppers in some cases tomatoes that that were started as Very tiny plants which by the way is what we recommend okra, if you happen to be growing okra boy, you're in deep trouble this year pumpkins winter squash all the melons, you know, anything that that really likes a lot of heat and has a fairly long growing season. We really well. We're really having trouble. There's just no way to hasten the ripening of those plants. So those things are doing poorly but as you suggested the lettuce the spinach the Cabbage all the Cabbage family crops are doing just beautifully and flowers are actually gorgeous because the the cool nights are helping to create very very bright brilliant colors. And so we're getting the kind of flowers that we sometimes see in the fall just before Frost and the color is really beautiful. Let's open up the phone lines here. If you've got a question about lawn and garden items you can get in right now in the Twin Cities by calling us. Two two seven six thousand 2276 thousand outside the Twin Cities toll-free 1-800 to 44 28 28. I was kind of overstating the case. Actually. I do have daylilies. Okay on the south and they're going great guns. You're loving every minute. Yes. There's hardly anything you can do to add a lily terrible. That's why I planted them given how far behind we are in the weather so far fall crops. Should we be putting off planting them or give up altogether? Well, I think I think the things that we call fall crops are actually the same as the early spring crops are the plants that develop rather rapidly under cool growing conditions. And that would be things like Garden peas spinach again leaf lettuce radishes. And I think that this will probably be a very good year for fall crops. I don't know if there's any way to really predict how early we're going to have a hard Frost that that's always a factor. Many of these kinds of fast-developing plants can be planted in in early August to develop and mature in September so that so that you're able to pick them in September and going into early that timetable doesn't change much with our well, I don't think so. No, if anything it's going to be beneficial to those to those plants. You probably could have planted many of those just straight along all summer long in a normal year. You never would want to do that. We've got some people waiting already now. So let's open up the phone lines take our first question now for Debra on Highway you calling (00:04:34) from. Hey, let's park and your question. I have an area in the back yard where I had some 40-foot Evergreens for moved there about four of them and the stumps were all ground up in the ground was basically just left as is and I graded it out and planted grass there and some shrubs but a lot of things don't seem to grow very well there because like the peonies and the tomato plants were very withered and I don't know if that's due to the cool weather or the type of All That Remains how long does it take until that soil will kind of become like the rest of the yard and I can just plant normal shrubs or what type of shrubs and best things will grow in that type of area and I'll hang up and (00:05:11) listen Okay. Well, I think there's a misperception that that soil is somehow going to change and turn into soil like the rest of the yard unless he's just talking about settling I think that it would be a good idea for this gentleman to have his soil tested and the way to do that is either to call the soil testing lab at the University at if he's a local person and they will send him out just a little bag and some instructions. I believe there's a seven dollar charge to have your soil tested and it gives you a computer printout based on what you're looking to grow in the area telling you what sorts of nutrients you should be putting in telling you what the pH the alkalinity versus acidity of the soil has and giving you some recommendations along those lines. And I think that that would be a good base point for him to start. This it's really impossible for me to say why he's having trouble with some plants withering it's possible that if he has done some watering or a fair amount of watering and in hopes of getting them established and we've had a very cool rather wet year that the combination may be resulting in some rotting problems. It's also possible that with those chipped up ground up roots and needles that he's looking at a very acidic soil and I think the only way is to really have that soil tested you mentioned watering and I've been wondering about that this year. I haven't watered at all because we have been kind of wet, but then we've had these long stretches of cool but dry weather with this has been the most peculiar year, you know, it seemed as though we were starting out fairly wet and then we did have a dry a dry period and in fact, if you think back a few weeks the lungs were getting rather yellow and then all of a sudden it cooled off and and started to to get wet again, I think with Gardens anytime you have plants that are shallow. Rooted in this includes lawn grasses. It includes very young trees and shrubs and anything just about in the in the vegetable or flower garden. It's a good idea to water pretty much on a weekly basis. You have to temper it a little bit depending on how cool or how warm it is. Give it about an inch as a minimum. Yes. I know on a weekly basis. Give it give it a good soaking anytime we go a week or so without rainfall on the other hand. If you know if the temperatures are really down low the way they have been now the plants are not using moisture very rapidly. You're not getting the kind of evaporation from the soil that you would if we had a lot of really sunny weather and so you can probably go a little bit further but at some point the plants are going to be in trouble from lack of moisture, even if it is rather cool. So you need to keep a close eye on that. The brown is here extension horticulturist at the University of Minnesota, man. Let's take another question. You're next. (00:07:57) Hi. This is Mike in And I just recently purchased a house a few months ago and what I'd like to get are some tips on how to increase grass growth. I've got a lot of weeds and I'd like to avoid chemicals if I (00:08:09) could. Well I'm glad you said you wanted to find out how to increase grass growth because I think when it comes to weeds the the attitude is typically what what can we do to kill the weeds and what you really need to concentrate on is growing good healthy grass. Now if you've inherited a Lon that is just ridden with weeds where you're looking at 40 50 percent weeds, and I know you didn't say it was that bad. But sometimes it is then I think it is only practical to use herbicides to begin with to get the weeds under control at the same time in the fall. You want to be doing some seating you can get rid of the weeds in August or at least start spraying the weeds in August, assuming that the temperatures are not too hot you don't want to spray if Temperature is over say about 80 degrees, but try to get some handle on those weeds and do some fertilizing and overseeding in early September and of course, you need to continue to water the grass, especially with young seedlings coming up and then you want to get on a program of regular watering and fertilizing. I would say probably a minimum of twice a year and that is usually in late August early September and a second time around Halloween in the Twin Cities area. If you're further north, of course, you've got to move that up a little bit and you can maybe wait a week or so later as you go further south in the state. I wonder about herbicides in the lawn. It used to be that you just got something that you hooked up to the hose and sprayed the whole lawn or something that you put in the hopper and and spread. Oh well now they've got these things where you're supposed to just squirt though it the offending plant. That's right. Now you can still buy the products that you use and on the end of the hose, but I've always felt that it's safer to to carry some type of a hand sprayer simply because it's so easy to become distracted when you've got a hose in your hand dog runs through some neighbor waves at you and you know the minute you're not looking at what you're doing. There's the opportunity for that spray to scored up in the air and come down where you don't want it. And of course the weed killers don't discriminate between weeds and good plants. They usually discriminate between a grassy plant versus a broad leaf plant or something like that. So so the potential is there to do a lot of damage now truthfully when you when you spray for weeds in late summer Early Autumn, you're less likely to do a lot of damage than you are in the spring because it's the new growth growing points of trees and shrubs and flowers that are the most vulnerable to herbicide injury and so as you get towards the end of the season the tissue on these plans is more mature. It's tougher. It's Less likely to be affected by the herbicide. So in some sense, it's a little bit safer that way but I think the idea is that when you have a handheld sprayer, you can really Target the weeds or Target the weedy areas. If you happen to have a lawn that is just as I say, you know weeds all over the place. Then you might want to use a product that either can be spread in a fertilizer spreader or sprayed in a hose because you're going to do the whole thing, but you have to be very very careful. We're pretty much about a month ahead of when you want to get serious about that kind of business. Yeah. Well, normally I'd say that's true because you you you don't want to be spraying or using herbicides in hot weather this year. Well why it's been cool enough. I you know, I think you probably you probably could go after some of those weeds as long as the weather stays in this this kind of cool temperature range, but typically we suggest that people go after the weeds in late August Early September and sometimes you have the opportunity to go back in a couple of weeks and repeat the application. If you're dealing with one of the very tough weeds to get rid of like the Creeping Charlie for instance and then lots of times the cold winter weather will kind of finish them off you you weaken them with a with the herbicide and the winter temperatures is at least if we don't get a really good thick snow cover stress the plants further and and that may be enough to to actually get rid of them. Let's hear from another listener now calling into a put a question to Deb Brown. It's your turn. Hi. (00:12:38) Hi, I'm from Minneapolis. And I have really two questions. The first one is I'd like to know when to divide and replant mums my mum's have grown so that they're crowding out my roses. And the other question is I have a sick tomato plant and I have was told that maybe the reason was that it was either over fertilized or over watered and what is happened to groove real well to about two and a half feet stopped growing and the leaves all curled up and there's nothing happening to it right now. It just stands dormant like that. It's a real healthy stock on the tomato plant, but just nothing nothing more. (00:13:20) Well, let me let me start with the tomato plant depending on how its curling that might have actually caught some herbicide Drift from from someplace not necessary. You may not have used any your immediate neighbor may not have used any but when that does get The air and you get a gust of wind it can blow onto the plant and that herbicide certainly does cause kind of a cupping and curling of the leaves the other thing that happens to tomatoes and we're not really seeing much of it this year because of the cool temperatures. There's a growth I guess you could call it a disorder. It's called physiological Leaf roll and it is it isn't really a disease the leaves kind of roll the edges the margins of the leaves kind of turn under and the leaf the plant looks kind of funny because the leaves are all sort of curled but the reality is is it doesn't cut down the plants productivity one bit that the plant will continue to produce to flower to ripen it's tomatoes. So it isn't truly a disease but typically its associated with hot dry weather. So I'm a little bit skeptical that that isn't what's really happening to your plant at this point. The reason that it may not be growing very well could be herbicide. It could be just the Cool temperatures have have slowed down a lot of those plants that really like to have the high temperatures. So again without really seeing it that's about all I could offer. As far as the chrysanthemums are concerned the best time to divide those would be early in the spring when they're still very little dig them up divide the plants and reset them or you can even take some cuttings off of your plants root them and plant them back into the ground. How about moving mums? When should you do that? Well, people do move them in the in the early fall. In fact, a lot of people will buy mums in the fall. If you go to your garden center, you're going to be able to find beautiful pots that that are either just starting to bloom or maybe in bud or may be in full bloom in late summer and Early Autumn and those can be taken out of those containers and planted right in the garden. They do transplant very easily. And so you can move them at that time. I just think that The idea though of dividing them up where you're actually splitting up. The roots is probably a little bit safer. If you do that very early in spring when you first see the new growth. Let's go back to the phones now pick up another question. It's your turn. Now, what's your question? (00:15:51) I have two questions and a comment on the question has to do with trying to get rid of brunette Virginia creeper. It's grew along our fireplace chimney, but now it has decided to grow along the ground and it's taking over my flower beds. And secondly, I also have difficulty with snow on the mountain that I can't control I use Roundup, which is biodegradable. But it doesn't seem to have much of that. Maybe I'm not using enough and the comment and the comment is we live up here in McGregor on Big Sandy Lake. We have a hundred fifty foot lat. We do not like to mull. We do not like the noise the pollution the use of fossil fuels but I've come up with a solution which is going to work for us over the over the years and that is that's Clover on Dutch Clover takes root easily. It has a long route and allotment nourishes the soil it spreads by itself and it doesn't have to be mowed. It doesn't get more than three or four inches high and I'm wondering if if more city house residents who have Lawns couldn't take advantage of this kind of addition to their lives. Very (00:17:20) beautiful. Great lots to chew on that. Yeah that That's a really interesting comment because this is one of those things about you know, what what goes around comes around clover used to be very very favored as an additive to lawn seed mixes now. It is not particularly good as a solitary Lon part of that is because some years is going to do much better than others. It likes moist conditions. And so if you have white clover or Dutch clover in your lawn this year or last year, it's really thriving because of the wet conditions and those those patches are spread out. It's not going to look so nice in a drier hotter year. It's not it's not quite as easy to grow those years as it is this year now, you know if the woman has a Lakeshore property by Big Sandy, my guess is the water table is rather high and there probably is ample moisture every summer and it's probably a wonderful solution for her particular. But in in an urban Lon some people consider Clover to be a very noxious weed. I mean they look at those white patches interrupting that flow of green Carpeting and say how do we get rid of it other people like it and they encourage it so it's kind of really in your attitude. Do you like the looks of it or do you do you really want that pure green? Lon Clover is nice in the sense that it tends to fill in thin areas of the lawn. It is a legume. It's a member of The Bean or pea family and so it pretty much takes care of itself in terms of fertility. You don't have to fuss with it. And in fact as you might suspect it it grows in places where the Lawns are not necessarily highly maintained where they tend to be a little bit thin and poor. So it's a mixed bag in there. It's it's it's tough to get rid of when you don't want it and you can certainly buy Clover seed at and any Garden Center, but not everyone wants it. Okay, and then she's got a couple of problems Virginia creeper creeping where it isn't wanted right in Virginia creeper. Of course is a vine. It's an attractive Vine. It's a native in our in our forests people plant them alongside of a homes and fences and freeway noise barriers and so on and so forth to to get that nice green draped effect of leaves, but in order to get rid of it, you have to use a woody brush killer of some sort. There are a number of different ones on the market, but you need to use a woody brush killer because you do have Woody Trunks and you have Woody roots. Are you able to just go after the part of the creeper that's going in a Direction. You don't want probably not you can always prune it back. I mean that you know, physically you can do that all the time. But if it's if it's really getting out of hand and it becomes too much of a chore that way you got to either eliminate it so it's all or nothing. It's an all-or-nothing thing whenever you're dealing with with a An herbicide of any type, you can't just take part of a plant. I mean it's going to move through the plant we get the question all the time on things like Canada Red chokecherry, which is a very pretty red leaf tree, but it has the suckers that come up all over the place under it in the spring and people want to know can they spray weed killers on the suckers and you can but they're all attached to the original tree. And so that herbicide is going to get taken into the main tree. So that that that's a problem that we deal with fairly frequently with Woody plant and the last one was snow on the mountain. I don't know that at least by that now, okay snow on the mountain is sometimes called gout weed or Bishop's weed. I think you'd recognize it right away markets. It's a member of the of the umbelliferae or carrot family. It is in fact, very similar to a wild carrot in in in looks and there's a solid green one that we find in the forest all You know fairly frequently the one that's called snow on the mountain is variegated. There's a lot of white on it. It's not grown for a showy flower. Although it does Bloom it has kind of a lacy flower but it's really because it's a scrambling aggressive ground cover and it's tolerant of shade and it's quite popular again for covering areas that you don't sort of want to put much work or effort into but the problem of course is containment and with all the these ground cover is when the when they're really good and they really want to spread that that's nice as long as they know where to stop sometimes you can put in a physical barrier when you're planting and you can you can put in a metal or a plastic barrier that this kind of be fairly deep or I want to talk about to go down. I got to go down. What about 600 I would say you have to go more than six inches. My guess is that you want to go down at least a foot probably to get good control and and I couldn't swear to you that that would even do it, but it And we're dealing with with herbicide. If you start if you start using herbicides, it tends to move in and take the whole patch. Although this woman seems not to be able to get rid of it. And I guess that that what I would try is perhaps one of the herbicides that contains try Club here, which again is a woody plant killer and it is is likely to be a little bit stronger perhaps than just using the glyphosate glyphosate clean up. Our Roundup is very very effective. But she needs to make sure that she's using it at the recommended rates and chances are she'll have to use it repeatedly 28 minutes past eleven o'clock. Debbie Brown is here taking listener questions about lawn and garden care of the local numbers are all full but with a couple of lines open in the wats line 1-800 to for to 2828. Let's take another call now another question for Deb Brown. It's your turn now. Oh, hi there. It's your turn what your (00:23:21) questions I have a couple of questions one of which I have a apple tree that has a lot of birds. The apples are dropping at the rate of excuse me, probably seventy-five to a hundred a day and it's kind of a problem. The other thing that I had was I'm having some trees growing between the foundation of the house and the sidewalk and they're hard to get excuse me get rid of how do I take care of (00:23:46) those? Okay, the trees that are growing behind the the foundation in the house. You really need to go in there and cut them off, you know, use a saw cut them off leave a little bit of a stub and use one of the products that is meant specifically for killing roots for killing Woody plants and you you generally paint or spray it directly onto that freshly cut stub. So wait until you get the product in your hand before you actually cut them down in many cases. It's just not practical or Able to pull them out of the soil, but you do need to kill the roots or they're just going to pop right up with a lot of Sucker growth as for the Apple. There's no way that I can tell you for sure what's going on? If you're losing seventy-five to a hundred apples a day chances are the tree is under some sort of stress now, whether that's due to some chilling injuries and winter injury last year when we get our early cold snap or whether the the rain has been a problem if it's in heavy clay soil or whether it needs fertilizer, you know, it's impossible for me to say it's a little bit late just to see them dropping because they haven't been been fertilized, you know apples do need to be cross pollinated and when the we have poor wet weather at the time that the flowers are blooming which actually was the case with some of our fruit trees this year. You don't get good be activity and the flowers will fall and the little fruit Starts to expand it looks like it's going to be an apple or a plumber or what have you but the reality is then that after it gets to a certain point. It's simply drops off the tree because it was never pollinated and when the when the fruit doesn't hold viable seed the 3 tends to abort those fruit. But again, I think I think this is late in the summer to be seeing that particular problem. So I can't help you very much on that. Let me try another one on the trees that you're trying to get rid of my neighbor and I had quite a battle with volunteer Elms back behind the garage and I had been told by somebody to cut the small tree very small 3/4 of an inch or less and and then put a tin can on top of it and just come back two or three times a year and anything you see growing up that looks like an album cut it put a can over it so that no light gets to it. If you ever heard anybody trying that know did you do it? Yeah. Did it work? Yeah. All right, at least with the ohms. We're quite well. You know, the other thing to do of course is to get out there with a hole in the spring and or just sort of Zap them when they're little itty bitty things. It's we tend to overlook them until they get so big they're obnoxious and if you get them when they're small they pull right out another question from a listener. Where you calling from. I'm calling from (00:26:37) Minneapolis your question. I know that red currant berries can be grown here in Minnesota, but I'm curious about black currant berries. My question is can they be grown? And also where could I find (00:26:47) them? Well, I don't know the exact answer to that. I I know that there is not at least I would have to say I don't know of anyone growing black currant here whether that's a question of hardiness or if that's a problem that has to do with some some disease quarantines that were in effect at one point with the currents being an alternate host to some disease problems. I'm not I'm a little bit fuzzy on that but I don't know of anyone who's growing black currant here. You might get Was a call at the University Mark if I can give that number knew you were going to get to it. Yeah, that's a good idea. Well because we can you know, we can look it up. We've got tons of references and we've got the whole Horticulture plant path and entomology faculty at our disposal. We do have a dial you Clinic people can call from anywhere in the state. The number is is a 900 number. It's one 909 880500 and there's a flat two dollar and 99 cent user fee when you call in. It's not a fee that a cruise by the minute. So if it takes a six minutes to answer your question, it's not going to cost you any more than if it takes us two or three minutes to answer your question and that shows up in your phone. It will be in your phone bill, and we're there weekday business hours really 9 to 5 Monday through Friday back to the phones then we'll take another question for Deb Brown. It's your turn. (00:28:13) Good morning. I'm just looking for a general suggestions concerning. The general fertilizing I have a fairly new home the grass and the lawn is relatively good condition nice and thick and I've been mowing it longer than I used to and it seems to be proving successful in keeping it. Well watered and alive, but I used to have a lawn service come and do the fertilizing and I thought to try to exercise and frugality. I'd do it myself and fairly fairly quickly came to the realization that most people do when they try to do that and that is forget it and but I wanted some suggestions what you think of broadcast spreaders versus drop spreaders. My personal opinion is the drop spreader was a disaster. And then also is it my correct understanding that I should probably just use a general weed and feed early spring early summer middle of the summer and late summer or should I use a difference between sometimes a weed and feed or just a straight lawn fertilizer? And then the last question I was going Ask is what your opinion is of these types of fertilizers that come in liquid form that you attach to the end of your hose whether they be a weed and feed constant combination or just a straight weeding combination. (00:29:32) Okay. Well, I think we can turn the phone's off now. I just deal with this man's questions for the rest for the rest of the hour. Well, we'll try we'll try to make it as fast as possible my feeling on the broadcast versus the drop spreader. It's easier you're more likely to get stripes with a broadcast. Excuse me with a drought with a drop spreader and the way that you can work to avoid that is put half of your fertilizer in or or I should say set it so that you're only delivering half of the fertilizer and go in One Direction say a north-south direction and then crisscross the lawn again with a half application East-West. That way you're less likely to have Because what you might have missed in a little strut, you know in a little border One Direction you're going to probably pick it up the other way and that way it looks like the infield of a grass baseball. Yeah. I don't know about that the broadcast spreader you're less likely to get those lines of demarcation. It's certainly going to probably if you're careful, you know, give you a much more even application the thing that you need to be very careful about with a broadcast spreader is it's going to broadcast into your garden. It's going to broadcast to the base of your trees and broadcast sometimes onto the foliage of Evergreens where it might conceivably burn the foliage if it's not washed down it's going to be broadcast on to your driveway and your sidewalk and one of the things that we are increasingly conscious of is the fact that we do not want any kind of fertilizer rolling down into the storm sewers and ultimately into the rivers. So if you do Is a broadcast spreader and there's certainly nothing wrong with them. You can get nice results make it absolutely imperative that you go out with your big broom and and sweep up the excess fertilizer that lands on any concrete or hard surface and go out if it's gotten into the gardens or or onto your trees or shrubs go out and wash things down. So it's always a good idea to wash fertilizer or water it lightly into the soil. Anyway, because once you water it lightly into the soil, it's going to be much more firmly in the soil. And if you do get a heavy rainfall within a few hours, you're going to have less problem with it washing away again into the into the water system. How about his question about liquid versus granular? Well liquid versus granular II think that there really is no significant difference in terms of how good it is for the lawn. It's a question of using it at the proper strength. And again watering the product in you know, you always think well, how can I tell exactly where I've been with that hose? I think if you have trouble with stripes with a drop spreader, you might have even more trouble trying to do it evenly with the hose, but I presume that's a skill you could learn now that the third area that that this fellow brought up is using a weed and feed and he was saying that maybe that's what he should be doing three or four times a year. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, he said that he's got a nice lawn that doesn't have many weeds. There is absolutely no reason to put down weed killer when you don't have many weeds that's a perfect example of where you ought to have a little hand sprayer and go and attack either individual weeds or weedy areas in the lon rather than spreading herbicide throughout the lawn when it isn't necessary if you do have stubborn Needs and you use a weed and feed product. You can't come back in two weeks to repeat the application because you're over fertilizing. So use a weed killer weed killer only where it's needed and use the regular straight fertilizer on the rest of the lon. Now, the one exception might be in the spring you might want to choose a weed a fertilizer that has a pre-emergent herbicide in it. And that would be if you've had trouble with a lot of crabgrass and foxtail and annual weeds. And and if your lawn is rather thin and you really have had this kind of problem develop even even a pre-emergent herbicide shouldn't be necessary on a regular basis. If you've got a nice thick Lon now, there's just I know you'd like to get on to the next question but there's just one more thing I need to say about this this weed and feed business or how frequently he's talking about. There is no one way to fertilize the lawn. Some people are going to be happy with the law and that's Lized once a year in which case it should be in September. Some people will like a little bit more Lush Lawn and they or perhaps they've got a lawn they're trying to rehabilitate they're going to want to fertilize twice in the fall. Some people are really into the golf course type lawn and they might want to fertilize three or four times, you know twice in the fall once in early spring once in late spring or early summer assuming it isn't hot and dry. It just depends on what your expectations are and how much you want to put in in terms of inputs. The more you fertilize the more you're going to be mowing the more rapidly you're going to be building up a thatch layer in many cases the more often you're going to have to be doing some core aeration and perhaps dethatching. So it's not a nice easy way to say fertilize three times a year fertilize twice a year. You've got to match up what you're looking for from the lawn with the particular regime that's going to give you that kind of a result but 15 minutes left here at aren't Position with Debbie Brown and many many people waiting on the line now. So let's get back to the phones. Thanks for waiting. You've been very patient with us. What's your question (00:35:27) this past may I sold a home that had a very healthy raspberry patch. And before I left I took about 200 of the runners that came up this spring and I didn't have a place to put them because we're building a home this summer. So I planned them at a friend of mines home and they don't seem to be coming up very tall and I've been told that the first year they develop root systems the plants seem to be alive. I'm just wondering if if my plan was to get a healthy plant or a crap going there and then next year or the year after take the runners and plant them at my new residence. Is that a good plan or should I just be buying canes and planning new? (00:36:06) Peris. Well, no, I think that's a perfectly good plan. Assuming that your friends Garden or raspberry patch is in a nice sunny location with some decently draining soil and that Or your friend is making are making sure to fertilize the plants in the spring with the ten ten ten or twelve twelve twelve fertilizer. There's no reason that that patch will not be successful there and within another couple of years you should be able to take Runners off. It does take a while though. Okay dispatched without one quickly. So let's move on now take another question for Deb Brown. It's your turn. (00:36:43) Oh, thank you. I have a question which is kind of backwards here. I've got a strip along the garage which actually is closer to the neighbor than mine, which I would love to prevent things from growing on. I live in Southeast Minneapolis to the university. So I got like three feet of Pete out there. It's wonderful for growing any suggestions on what I can do to discourage this 18 inch strip from growing things that go up and eat my garage. (00:37:09) Well, that's a tough one, you know because I just love to Garden. I think. Oh, I would give anything for that 18 in maybe you should give me your address off the phone and I'll come and plant something one of the one of the ways to deal with that would be to plant something that will not come up and eat your garage for instance of a ground cover or a low growing shrub that that is not going to grow very rapidly. If you really want nothing to grow you. Can you can you can use weed killers you can put down a mulch of wood chips several inches deep that will you'll get a few weeds coming in here and there but you'll have minimal problems with that you do have to add to it from time to time because it does pack down and it does start to decompose where it's touching the soil, but the wood chip route would probably be the way if you wanted to and you know, really look clean and without Vegetation that would be the way to go and you don't even have to pay for wood chips because there are places where you can go and get free wood chips in Minneapolis. I think that that you can get them. There's a there's a big pile of them by Minnehaha Park that you can just drive up and haul them away. So I guess those would be the things that I would recommend but I wouldn't I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of planting something nice back there. All right, let's take another question for Deb Brown. It's your turn. What's your (00:38:39) question? Yes. I'm calling from Plymouth. I wonder why it seems that this year more than any other we see so much of a bird's foot true bird's foot trefoil growing along the (00:38:49) roadside right? Isn't it? Gorgeous? I just think it's (00:38:53) beautiful. I am a few years ago. I don't remember (00:38:55) saying well, it's been there all along but this this has been a wonderful year for it and it's the same reason as if you were listening earlier and I was talking about white clover bird's foot trefoil is a legume and It really responds to these cool cool particular the moist temperatures the highway department uses bird's foot trefoil as as a cover crop on embankments. It's also used sometimes as a forage crop for for farm animals and I think bird's foot trefoil in many ways is much nicer than Crown vetch because it's it's a shorter more compact plant it it does many of the things that Crown vetch does without getting to be knee-high and and we really quite so so puffy and maybe blousy looking at least if you're thinking of using it in a home now just like Clover some people think it's terrible and want to get rid of it. I look at it and think it's beautiful. So it's kind of in the eye of the beholder check with your neighbors before you planted me. Well, if you want to plant it as a ground cover again, you know, if you got a steep Hillside or someplace where you don't want to mow the lawn and you want something that's going to Come in and sort of colonize that area. This is a real good plant, but you'd have to you'd have to be sort of vigilant about it's not seating out into everything else. Okay, let's hear from another listener. Find out what you're thinking about your on now with Deb Brown. (00:40:25) Yes, I recently bought a house and there is a half inch or so tree stump in the backyard about maybe nine inches to a foot in diameter. Neighbor says that the former owner had I think a crab apple or something like that there I would like to put a spruce tree or some Evergreen in that same place and I'm wondering how completely I have to remove the stump and what would have to be done to put a tree in that approximate area. Also if she knows where I could get free wood chips in the st. Paul area. I'd like to know that thank you. (00:41:03) Well, I wish I wish I could tell you for st. Paul. I have a feeling that Probably are some and you might want to call up the Ramsey County extension office. I think they would be able to tell you they're located on White Bear Avenue. Either that or the folks involved in the in the lawn and Grass Recycling effort in st. Paul. Those people might know as well. Okay, the tree stump itself. The best way to get rid of it is to look in the classified ads in either in the big newspaper or if you have a little local sort of Shoppers news or something like that and find someone who has one of these machines that will grind the stump out. They'll come in they'll grind the small one. Well, it's it it's not that small. It's she said it was perhaps a foot across it's only an inch tall, but you see there's a root system. There's some big Woody Roots under there and if she wants to really go in and put another Tree in very close then she probably should grind that out if you can avoid that by several feet And then there's no problem. Just leave it there. And if you don't want to go to the expense of having someone come in with a machine to grind it out. You can cover that stump with soil and keep it moist and that will help to rot it and then every so often you go out and attack it with an ax or something like get you get your aggressions. I want about leaving it to rot twice now. I've run into a situation where I moved into a place and I've become convinced that there was a stump at some point in the lawn because I've got mushrooms growing out of this little depression. Is that something that the one should just accept when you run across something like that or should you do some about it? There's nothing you can do about it Mark A lot of times the the trees come down. They almost make him down in the Boulevard or in the lawn. And even when you go to grind out those those stumps, there's only so much you can remove and a lot of times they're wood chips that are left behind and and certainly there are going to be roots that are left behind and it's sort of Nature's Own Recycling system those those those roots are inhabited than by or that that dead wood is inhabited by decaying fungi and the mushrooms. You see are of course just the reproductive bodies the fruiting bodies that tend to pop up and moist weather. And so unless you can get that substrate or that that organ in the the the would that the organisms are really living off of it out of there. You're not going to eliminate it. It just has to take its own sweet time until it's all broken down and return to the soil and at that point you're not going to see the mushrooms anymore. But there's There's no practical way to do that. Okay, five six minutes left in our conversation. You've been kind enough to be patient with us. But now it's your turn. What's your (00:43:52) question? Okay. I have a problem with dear. This is an urban whole city of environment. However, there are deer in the vegetable garden from time to time and they true Off the tops of tomatoes even and I'm wondering if there has been any research or anything anything that I can plant that is repulsive or will repel the dear. Sorry. She's already shaking your (00:44:22) head. I wish I could give you an answer to that. There's no plant that will repeal the deer that we know there are some plants that deer is less likely to eat than others. And if you're growing ornamentals, you know, we could give you a list from the dial you that would suggest which plants are less favored by dears, but they're by dear but there's nothing you can put you know, like an edging of marigolds or an edging of something nasty around your garden to repel them. They just are not repelled that easily the old yourself an eight-foot fence a big fence. There are these electrified fences that that really are very good. Now that just have I think a high voltage is they kind of hum? And the animal just gets up close to them. And and and here's that our senses that that humming and vibration and they move away but they do have to be fairly tall and that that's about the only thing that really truly keeps them out. There are some repellents. There's something called Big Game repellent and you know, their their various things that you can do like hanging hair on the fence and human hair dirty human hair from the barbershop floor or something like that. Some people say different soaps that there's a there's a whole list of those sort of home remedies, but the reality is if the deer are really fairly hungry and you've got this nice succulent garden, you know full of goodies. They're not going to be that easily determine that some for them to let's go back to the phone now are from another listener with a question for Deb Brown. Hi there. Hi. (00:46:02) Thanks for taking my call and Iran from Roseville. I have to pest problems one. Is moles or voles? I don't know which it is but they're tunneling through my neighbors and my yard. The other problem is a big infestation of boxelder bugs that seem to be eating up all my hasta. Thank you. I'll hang up and (00:46:20) listen. Okay, I can tell you a little bit about the box elder bugs, but I'm going to have to suggest that you give us a call at dial you to talk about the moles in the voles. We do have a wildlife person who comes in Monday Wednesday and Friday afternoon. So if you'd like to call at that time, you'll be able to talk to the person who really has the the information on the the wildlife pest the box elder bugs. They generally don't do a lot of damage. I know you say that they're they're eating they're eating your Hosta and I have seen them on Hosta and I have seen hasta look kind of crummy they are not all that difficult to get rid of with a soapy water spray. There are insecticides that are that are labeled, you know that you can use on those we Really tell people that they don't do all that much damage and that there it's not it's not necessary to control them what most people call up about actually is when the box elder bugs congregate on the west or south side of their house or garage and they have like a plague of boxelder bugs in the fall when it's starting to get cool. They'll go to that sunny side of your house and some of them inadvertently find their way in through cracks and crevices and they may in fact get into the walls and then they come and visit you in the winter again fairly inadvertently. They don't they don't feed on anything indoors. They don't damage your clothing or your draperies or your Carpeting and they don't reproduce indoors. And so we try to get people not to be too excited about those insects. They're they're more of a nuisance than anything else. We're not going to get to everybody here. My apologies to those we won't get to but we will get your question in here before we leave the air. So, what's your question for Debra? (00:48:08) Hi, good morning. We're going to build a little Retreat on some Farm their land near Northfield and I'd like large areas near the little house and up the hills and wildflowers. No Mowing and all those other good things. My question is how do I get these wildflowers started where prairie grass is now that staunch and strong and as tall as I am. (00:48:28) Well, there are lots of lovely Prairie wildflowers and there are several nurseries in the Twin Cities area one in the Princeton area that sells either seed or the small plants. I think that you can buy seed start them indoors under lights or if you have a little some kind of a greenhouse hoop house addition that you can build and make your start your own plants and plant them in as small plants or small established plants or you can eliminate that step and by the Prairie plants from these several nurseries. I think that that's really the only way you're going to be able to do it. Well, we're Time to have thanks a lot. And before we go, let's make sure you give out the phone number again, give everybody the details on how to contact you during the week. I'd be glad to it's one 909 a 880500. There's a 299 automatic charge and you can speak to a horticulturist and entomologist or a plant pathologist about your yard and garden. That's Monday through Friday 9 to 5. You bet Deb. Thanks a lot for coming by and we'll talk again in the fall.