(00:00:00) Programming is supported by Arctic Glass and Window located east of st. Paul off I-94 and Hammond, Wisconsin and offering a full line of Windows patio doors and velox skylights 6 minutes now past eleven o'clock and you're listening to midday on Minnesota Public Radio Mark zdechlik here in the st. Paul Studios this morning along with University of Minnesota extension horticulturist Jeb Brown a long time. Midday guest thanks Deb for coming in once again, and I'm sure the lines will be lighting up. (00:00:25) Well, you know when I said I'd come in I had no idea it would be the day after a snowstorm. So it's nice to be here though. (00:00:32) Thanks for coming and we hope to hear from you today. We'll be talking about gardening for the balance of the hours flowers vegetables. You name it, wherever your interest lies in the area of gardening. We hope to hear from you with your questions for Deb Brown. If you're listening in the Twin Cities area, you can join the conversation by calling to to 76 thousand. That's 2276 thousand in the Twin Cities outside of the metropolitan area. If you have a question about gardening or maybe about snow removal or something, you can call toll-free with your Jen one eight hundred two four two two eight two eight toll-free number. Once again for your question for Deb Brown one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight. Well, I had to adapt start this off to ask you about the snow. Lots of people are out last week buying in planting flowers when it was 80° out bulbs were shooting up out of the earth. It looked like spring was here and that winter would be something to look forward to months ahead. And then we get a half a foot of snow is all this stuff dead (00:01:27) now or oh, no, fortunately the snow doesn't do that much damage. People are always really worried when it snows late in the spring, but in fact the main damage is from the weight of that heavy wet snow Ben's a lot of things over now, if people had really jumped the gun and planted Frost tender plants things like impatience or petunias or tomatoes or peppers and they didn't bother to cover them then they could be in trouble because those those plans they really don't belong out in this this early in the spring when the temperatures can be quite cool. But all the other plants that are out the perennials and the the bulbs that have come up the worst that happens usually is they get bent over and if you have the sense to leave them alone, they generally come up on their own without too much difficulty over the next few days. They may never be quite as upright as they were to begin with but the the snow per se should not hurt them. And in fact it helps to insulate the plants against the really cold air temperatures. (00:02:26) Okay, so it's not a total loss at all. Not at all the (00:02:29) print not not at all and even some of the early annuals that you can plant things in the Cabbage family are peas or radishes or pansies for instance the snow melted off my pansies. They look just fine. (00:02:43) Okay. It's about nine minutes past eleven and you're listening to midday on Minnesota Public Radio or accidentally cure with U of M extension horticulturist Deb Brown and let's go to the phones right away. Good morning Beth and Minneapolis Hi, how are you doing? (00:02:56) That's fine. I have a question. I'm moving into a new house in the middle of May and the backyard is just gorgeous. It has beautiful gardens all over the place, but it doesn't have a vegetable garden and I don't really know what's in any of the guidance yet. And should I just plan on skipping the idea of a vegetable garden this year or is there a way I can move out some of the floral plants and stuff and start a vegetable garden? (00:03:22) Well, I think we've if you're going to start a vegetable garden you need to make sure that there's a place that gets really good sunlight most of the day and if you assess that backyard and you do see an area, that's really mostly sunny. Then there's no reason why in mid-may you couldn't move out some of those perennials and find other places for them. It would be better if you could do that before mid-may, but actually I guess this is early may already it's I'm really disoriented with this this cold snow and everything the ground is so wet and Soggy now because of that snow melting into it that you couldn't get out to move anything even if you wanted to until the until the soil Dries a bit. So mid-may might be just fine. If you have contact with the owners or can check with the owners to see what they've used in that Garden. There are some pesticides that can be used in ornamentals or flowers that really are not cleared for use in gardens or at that have edible plants and I'll give you a good example. There's an organic fertilizer called Milorganite now generally that's used in lawns and not on guard. I'm not on flower gardens, but it definitely should not be used where you're going to grow edible plants because apparently there are heavy metals a very small percentage mind mind you but there are heavy metals in that so you you really might think about talking to the previous owners to see if in fact they've used anything in those Gardens that that you need to be concerned about. Otherwise, the main concern is are they sunny enough? (00:04:53) Okay. Steve is listening in Brainerd. Good morning. (00:04:56) Yes. I have a two-part question. I had one large spoon. About 12 feet in Arbor Vitae White Cedar approximately 15 feet moved into the yard about a week and a half ago with one of those large digging machines that they have nowadays now. Just wondering what's the potential for those things to grow? And is it just a matter of watering them quite a bit and my second question is excuse me. The flowering crab is actually have has leaves on it with his colder weather. Will it survive? (00:05:30) Okay, the second half is very easy that this Colder Weather should not kill flowering crabapples. If we get extreme cold down into the low 20s or the teens, you may in fact lose some of those leaves and certainly the flower buds if they're if they're getting swollen and about ready to open those will probably be damaged Beyond repair, but the tree has the capability of sending out new Leaf buds. It won't send out more flowers this spring but it certainly will send out more Leaf, Buds and I wouldn't worry about the long-term health of the crab apple tree or the flowering crab. Now as far as the trees that you've just moved in a 12-foot Spruce is a very large Spruce particularly. If you're talking about a Colorado Spruce, which has a somewhat limited lifespan in our in our area after old 15 20, maybe 25 years in the landscape. They tend to come down with a disease called site Aspera canker where the branches are killed off usually starting at the bottom, but not always kind of one by one and you have to start removing branches. Well by putting in a spruce, it's already 12 feet tall. You've got maybe half of its lifespan is gone already. So I would I would question moving Evergreens that are that big I really like to see the moved at a smaller stage. Perhaps no more than five or six feet tall. Now your question was really what do you do with them? The soil is very wet. You don't have to worry about doing any kind of Special watering now, but as we get into warmer drier weather once a week, you should set the sprinklers out around those trees and give them a really good soaking the common myth is that to get Evergreens through the winter in good shape you water them in the fall. The reality is they must be watered straight through the summer to get through winter in good shape (00:07:21) as you well know there are almost an unending supply of products. You can buy for your lawn and garden one of which are these spikes you can drive in the ground these fertilizers, but it's right on your trees. Are they worth investing in and is that something we should be doing now (00:07:35) fertilizer spikes are a very easy way to fertilize but they're not a very usually you don't put down enough to make it really terribly useful. They're not going to hurt anything. But I think that you can probably do a better job of fertilizing by using a crowbar or a soil auger making a lot of holes as you go out, perhaps two and a half feet from the diameter of the tree. Then do concentric circles every couple of feet punching holes and then putting a small handful of fertilizer in each hole now. Now that I've said that it's not necessary to fertilize all your trees that that isn't needed either particularly. If you have lawn if the trees are in a yard where you have lawn and you fertilize the lawn once or twice a year, the majority of the tree's roots are up in that upper. Oh, perhaps 6 8 10 inches of soil and as that grass or lawn fertilizer filters down it also helps to take care of the tree. The reason that you would fertilize a tree is if you maybe have a young one you want to give it an extra push to get it going perhaps you have a tree on sandy soil with the doesn't have a lot of nutrients. You might need to fertilize that more regularly, but it's not true. If you have healthy normal-looking normally growing shade trees that you need to do special fertilizing on any particular schedule the lawn fertilizing will Really give them everything they need a (00:09:01) real good idea though to take care of those trees. I was almost had a heart attack the other day. I was at one of these lawn stores and I was looking at a two inch maple tree and it was $279. (00:09:13) Well, you know when you're looking at that tree, it's really got a lot of care and it took a number of years to get it to that point including overwintering it and pruning it specially now if you are looking to get by for a lot less money than that what you should be doing is buying bare root trees. They're not going to be that big in diameter. They're going to be smaller and thinner trunk trees but the bare root trees that are available first thing in the spring right now. They're going to be a wonderful bargain compared to the big bald and burlap tour container grown trees and they will grow people, you know tend to forget the fact that these young trees grow very rapidly. So if you if you want to save some money on trees and shrubs, this is a Time to plant bare root and you only have a short window of opportunity. Once the weather gets warm and windy it's not going to work. You've got to get those bare root trees in the ground when the buds are still nice and tight and when the cool weather will just gradually work to open those buds. Once the leaves are wide open. They're losing more moisture than that little root system can supply (00:10:22) and can a person find bare-root trees and shrubs virtually anywhere (00:10:26) or well, I'll certainly all the larger nurseries will have them they're not going to have as much selection in bare root stock as they as they will and container and I certainly don't mean to be negative about container rootstock containerized plants, either they're great. But if you're really looking to save money, this is an (00:10:42) opportunity. Okay, let's go back to the phone lines Deb Brown is here on midday. She's using an extension horticulturist from the University of Minnesota. And I bet the Lion's Share of listeners have probably heard her advice about gardening before Mark is in Minneapolis. Good morning. (00:10:56) Good morning. I have a question about composting. Okay. I'm going to To begin composting this year and my specific question is is there a way that I can recycle my dog's manure and use that as (00:11:09) compost. No, it's a very bad idea. I have a good friend who's in the school of veterinary medicine at the University and they just say unequivocably that dog and cat feces should not be put into compost or into Gardens. They can carry parasitic worms that will not necessarily manifest themselves into into bad symptoms on the pets and they can be very dangerous for humans. So I would say just bag that up and get it hauled away in the trash. (00:11:38) What's it easy quick starter to get the compost process going. I read in a book the other day or something and said take a shovel of swamp tour and put it on your compost pile to introduce. (00:11:48) Oh you did, you know, you don't need to do that Mark any any kind of greens. If you have a little bit of garden soil, there are so many microorganisms in the garden soil. Every time you put down perhaps a foot to 18 inches of just vegetable material whether it's vegetable or fruit peels from indoors or whether it's lawn clippings or debris from the garden that you rake up in the spring every time you get a foot or so put a thin layer of soil from your own garden in there just sprinkle it lightly it reintroduce has more organisms. And if you put in a little bit of nitrogen fertilizer, one of the grass fertilizers that's high in nitrogen but has no weed killers in it just sort of sprinkle that in lightly to that helps to drive that process and make it go (00:12:37) faster. If you have a question for Deb Brown and you're listening in the Twin Cities, you can join our conversation by calling to to 76 thousand. That's 2276 thousand if you're listening in the Twin Cities anywhere, you can hear the broadcast outside of the Twin Cities and call toll free with your question at one eight hundred two, four two 2828 that's toll-free once again at one eight hundred two, four two 2828. Karen and Hopkins. Good morning. I think we have Karen. Yes. Okay, you're on the air. I (00:13:05) have slightly a strange question. I made an Easter Bush out of pussy willows this year and they routed and they sprouted and I happen to like pussy willows. I'm wondering if I put them in potting soil. Will they survive number one and number two? What conditions do they like? I have a swampy Corner that I need something in and I'm wondering if these might (00:13:25) help. Okay. Yeah is it's amazing how rapidly branches from willow trees will route. They're just unlike anything else. You can grow. If you've got roots on them. Definitely pot them up with some good potting soil get them growing in a container for a while. And as soon as we're past this really cold weather, I would put them out just as you would put out bedding plants, perhaps a little bit during the day and bring them back to the garage or the porch at night get them accustomed to the conditions outdoors and then try planting them that swampy area sounds like a perfect place for a pussy willow and Only the only potential problem is that some of the pussy willows that are sold in Flora shops and that are gathered for decorative purposes are not necessarily terribly Hardy here. There are just literally hundreds of different willow trees and many of them with the really attractive little pussy willow catkins on them. Excuse me. And so whether you really got one that's going to be good for Minnesota or not. It's going to take you a couple of years to find out. (00:14:29) Okay, let's go back to the phone lines. Chris is listening and Duluth. Good (00:14:32) morning. Hey, how's it going? I have a question about hops. I found a hot Bush that's growing native across right across the street and as part of another hedge and I want to transplant something off of it and see if I can get it get it get it going in. My guard would be the best way to do that. (00:14:48) Well, you kind of got me stumped on that one. Hops is not generally grown as an ornamental plant in the garden and if you're growing it, you know 244 the Hops itself. I'm majan you could plant it. Seed also by collecting the seat at the end of the summer and planting at the next spring if it's just coming out of the ground now and it hasn't grown very much. You certainly could try digging it out and transplanting right now the sooner the better in spring when the weather is still cool. Keep in mind though that you don't want to be mucking around in the garden soil when it's still so wet wait till the soil dries a little bit more because you're going to compact the soil the soil will turn into clods and it'll kind of dry into concrete and it'll be very hard to get the plants to grow. Well, so give it a few days to dry out and then see if you can't dig it up if it's already gotten quite a bit of growth on it be sure that you prune it back perhaps to one third of its size when you're when you're digging it out. That way you're not going to overwhelm that reduced root system with too much top growth. (00:15:51) Okay. Let's take another question for Jeb Brown, Ron and New Brighton. Good morning. You're on the air. (00:15:57) Hello. I have a question regarding perennial bulbs such. Daffodils and tulips and actually lilies the last couple of years my daffodils have basically died off and I was wondering if there's some type of fungus that's been occurring and is this going to affect my lilies which are easy attic and Oriental (00:16:18) Eliza? Well, I'm not aware of any one particular fungus. It's been a problem. We've had such cool wet Summers the past two years that a number of bulbs have had trouble just from a various assortment of different diseases primarily because they've been kept too moist and I don't think you need to worry about something like that spreading I think if you do have like little little bits of daffodil or tulip foliage, you know, where you're not getting any kind of flowers. They've really petered out I would definitely dig those up and discard them and replace them in the fall with fresh bulbs. But as far as it's moving around the garden into other plants, I don't think I would be too concerned and we're going to hope for a dryer year this year. I may eat Words Minnesota it can be real dry (00:17:04) as you watch the plants grow Deb Brown. Do you have any sense that this year might be a little bit different than last year's earnings. Are there any signs that you see or is that asking you to yeah, the crystals, you know, it's (00:17:14) too early Mark to really tell I remember very distinctly Rebecca Cole's who's the weather woman and a master gardener on Channel 4 talking to me a couple of years ago and saying that she thought we would have about three years of this kind of weather and she was attributing it to I don't know El Nino or volcanic action. I don't know what all but each year was supposed to be not quite as bad as the year before. Well, it seemed like the second year was was colder and wetter than the first year, so I don't know how much Credence to put into that. But certainly it shouldn't be as bad this year and we're really hoping that we have a more normal year. I guess there's nothing wrong with the kind of year. We had last year for gardeners in fact We had some of the most beautiful flower displays the past two summers that that I can ever remember in Minnesota because the cooler temperatures especially the cooler night temperatures give you very brilliant colors. And so actually if you kind of know what to plant, you know, if we knew ahead of time what kind of a year would be. I think that people would be just thrilled to have this sort of weather on a more long-term basis speaking of Gardeners, of course, not not everyone but it said unknown factor. Do we plant the things that are going to go well in cool moist weather or are we going to go back to the the sunflowers and the zinnias and the the plants that really like it kind of hot and dry (00:18:42) diversify, right? That's right. Okay, let's go back to the phones Becky's listening and Minneapolis. Good (00:18:47) morning morning. I have a pyramid Arbor Vitae in my front yard. That's about 30 years old and it's been doing fine until the spring when we realize that there were large clumps of green falling off it particular round the top. Around the base and their know if it's animals or insects or disease or what might be doing that. (00:19:09) Well, you know that I'm afraid that just isn't enough information for me to give you much help. I will say that if it's that old, I think you can you know pat yourself on the shoulder and say that you've done real well with the plant and not feel too terrible about replacing it. One of the things that happens with arborvitaes is they tend to get overgrown and you can certainly share them back and I wouldn't say to get rid of this one yet. I would wait until you see the flush of new green growth that should take place later in May and see if in fact you get enough New Growth to more or less mask these areas where you're losing a lot of growth. It's also possible that the wet weather has had a part in this a lot of plants especially in heavier clay soil have had problems with the roots rotting and of course, even though they may not kill the plant it certainly is going to show up in a lot of Different problems with die back but really from the information you gave me I couldn't Venture a good guess as to what's causing it. (00:20:09) The phone lines are jammed and have been jammed since we started the program that brown maybe we should get the dial you number out there too. So people who don't get through to this program and who really have a question have a resource there. What is that? (00:20:22) Yeah, that would be great. Well, we're open at the University from 9:00 to 5:00 every weekday and our number is a 900 number which means you do have to pay to call in. The number is one 909 880500 and there's a flat $2.99 charge not not per minute, but just a one-time flat fee when you call in to talk to us and it's automatically added to the phone bill from the phone you call from (00:20:52) so you have to save up and have a bunch of questions together. (00:20:55) Oh, no, no, no, we can't just do that or we'd be out of business in no time. This is really on one. One question one subject area the people, you know people do sometimes questioned us on this $2.99 charge. And in fact, it is kind of a drop in the bucket in terms of trying to recover costs, but we were faced as many other departments at the University with trying to bring in some of our support or or being phased out. And so we chose to put the charge on (00:21:28) it's 28 minutes past eleven o'clock and you're listening to midday on Minnesota Public Radio Jeb Brown is here. She is a University of Minnesota extension horticulturist, and she's taking your calls about gardening today's. Midday is supported by Augsburg College where learning is rooted in service to others. Let's go back to the phones Patty in New Brighton. You're on the air. Good morning. (00:22:01) Grapples with the gloomy stuff on it and last year. We got a lot of apples but they all fell off during the year. (00:22:09) Okay. Well, let me talk about the cutworms first because you shouldn't have to use chemicals for cutworms on peppers and the band Tomatoes any kind of a tube that you can plant them in will work fine. So if you have cans from vegetables peas or corn or anything like that, you just take both ends out of the can and use the can as a collar around the seedling plant so that you poke it down a couple inches into the soil and let it go up a couple two three inches above the soil and that will prevent the cutworm from getting at it by the time the plant gets enough bigger. The stem will be thick enough so that it can withstand cutworm chewing and you can also use things like an orange juice frozen orange juice tubes. I've even seen people use tubes from toilet paper or cut up the the Tube from paper toweling and again those tend to deteriorate over time. But by the time they deteriorate the plant is Tough Enough so that it can take care of itself. Now the other question about the Apple maggots, we really like to see people using those those sort of sticky traps the balls that you paint red or black and then and then cover with tangled trap to attract the maggots. If you had a very large large crop of apples last year many of our apple trees go into what's called a biennial bearing pattern where they are fairly sparse one year and then fruit very heavily the following year. If you don't get up there and actually thin out that heavy crop it's often times more than the tree can take care of and the tree will thin it for you and drop most of them now that maybe the all that's going on. There may be something as well that I'm not aware of and certainly it can be a problem with insects again. We just about have to see the apples to give you a good answer on that what (00:24:00) types of fruit trees So do well in this climate in Minnesota (00:24:04) apple trees do very well. There are a number of plums a number of hybrid plums that that grow quite well here sour pie chair is not the sweet cherries, but this our pie cherries do well and we have a few pairs that will grow. All right here it's not grown as commonly as Apple's I would say that apple is certainly the number one fruit tree that people grow. It's an awful lot easier to grow raspberries or strawberries though. If you ask me blueberries do well to (00:24:34) can you start a strawberry patch this spring and harvest strawberries this year. Is this something you have to wait a couple of years ago? No (00:24:39) strawberries. You can you can harvest the first year particularly. If you're using the strawberries that will produce throughout the summer rather than the ones that just are the June bearing strawberries. (00:24:51) And what is the difference? What do you lose? If you have that the benefit of having the production all summer, what's the (00:24:57) drawback? Well on a typical year you probably don't have a whole lot more. Our berries it's just that they're spread out over a longer period of time whereas the June bearing you have a very heavy crop earlier in the season and then they don't require as much maintenance the rest of the summer so there are trade-offs. But if if in fact you're planting June bearing strawberries, you would definitely want to pick off those first flowers and that means it's chances are you're not going to get much of anything this year you really would be planting for the future. But once you get them going you kind of renew them periodically and there shouldn't ever be a time when you have no berries, what about grapes? Well grapes are grapes are a little more marginal here and there's been a lot of work at the University on grapes and there's been a very active breeding program. Some of them still need to be protected. We're looking mainly at wine grapes were not there yet with table grapes or fresh eating grapes. The the grapes are primarily used for for wines and juices. There are some I'll grapes and there's a grape called beta that is just like the Wild Grape but you can get it at a nursery and they have little tiny tart fruit that people make very good grape juice out of but we don't have anything that compares to the grapes that you're going to get at the supermarket for instance that are shipped in from California or in the winter from from Chile or (00:26:25) Mexico. Okay, let's take another caller Joan and Park Rapids. Good (00:26:28) morning. Good morning my questions about tomatoes and what can be done to prevent the lower leaves the portions of the Tomato from falling off turning brown. Is there something that you can use to treat the soil or treat the plant (00:26:44) itself? Well, if you're getting spotting on those lower leaves where they turn brown that is a fungal disease and one of the things that we tell people to do is to mulch the plants so that where the leaves do hit the ground or where the Rainfall splashes up, you're not going to have as much Splash coming up from that mulched area as you would from from the soil and the fungal organisms live in the soil from year to year. It's also a good idea to clip off those very lowest leaves that would be draping down on the soil. There are some fungicides that can be used in a preventative sense. I would say to look for tomatoes that have some kind of disease resistance that that's probably a really good idea. But if your tomatoes have disease problems year after year, the only way to really get around that is to start a garden in a different part of the yard or plant your tomatoes in large containers in a different part of the yard get completely out of that area and rotate different kinds of vegetables into the area where you had your tomatoes and none of them should be relatives of tomatoes. So you wouldn't want to put peppers or eggplants or potatoes into that area, but you would go in with something like lettuce. Herpes or carrots or onions or corn something that that's completely unrelated because they would have different kinds of diseases and pests and once these disease organisms organisms have nothing to live off of after a certain number of years and unfortunately, sometimes it's a very long number of years. They're going to just die out in the soil because they have nothing to live on. (00:28:23) Okay. Let's go back to the phones Al good morning. You're listening and Ellsworth, Wisconsin. (00:28:28) Good morning. I've got two quick questions for you. The first one we are trying to establish a new Garden in an area that was basically pasture land here. And I know you know, we have to put in organic material and stuff, but I'm kind of interested in what strategies you might recommend as to, you know, we control them so on and then the second one is that we just ordered some bare-root Trillium and it showed up already and I don't want to plant it yet and I'm wondering what I should do with it until until I have a chance to put it in the ground. Holding up a (00:29:02) bank sure. Well on the Trillium. I hope you're planning to plant them very soon. As soon as that ground is is dry enough to work because the sooner you get those in the better until that point if they're in a plastic bag or put the put them in a plastic bag with a few little perforations in it and just put it in your refrigerator and they'll keep for a while in the fridge until you can get them into the ground but Trillium makes a lot of growth early in the spring and in fact, you know, they are a spring blooming Wildflower and so I wouldn't wait too long on planting that if you can possibly do it as far as weed control in a brand new Garden, I think that mulch is probably going to be one of your Best Bets. Now, some people will turn over a new Garden in pasture land and just leave it fallow and just run a rototiller through it. I'm assuming you're kind of out towards the country where you might have those kinds of tools or a large enough space to make it worth your while to get a tiller and just till it for a year so that on a regular Basis you're getting rid of the weeds. If in fact, you've got a lot of perennial weeds like quackgrass, even the tilling isn't going to help because what that does is it just chops it up and actually propagates it. So you've got more more coming up than you had before if that's the case then I think this is one of the times that you might want to use something like glyphosate which is the active ingredient in Roundup or clean up probably a couple of other different brand names as well. This is a non-selective herbicide and it should kill anything green and growing now, there are two ways to do it. If you're going to leave it fallow this year. You can come through with the with the Roundup as a spray after the weeds are maybe six inches tall be very careful that you don't spray outside or dribble that chemical outside of the garden the nice thing about it is it moves internally down into the roots kills the plants and it's inactive in the So that actually a week after you used it you could in theory go in and plant without any difficulty. The other thing to do is if you plant and you find that you have weeds coming up even though you think you've gotten rid of most of the weeds you can use some of the same material the round up or clean up mix up a little bit of it in a can tie a sponge to the end of a stick and actually da bit or wipe it onto the weeds without spraying it onto the desirable plants and you can you can literally spot kill in that way and that that's a very useful type of weed killer. You don't want to go in with kind of broadly sprays or anything like that because first of all, they're going to damage any desirable plants and secondly they hang around in the soil too long. (00:31:53) What general advice can you give to people who are listening and are about to fertilize their lawns or take care of their lawns some Basics do's and don'ts for lawn care. (00:32:02) How many hours do we have Mark? Is that kind of money one minutes? Is that kind of question? Well, we are getting a ton of lawn care in a questions at the dial you right now and you know people really have firmly in their minds that spring is the time to fertilize and I attribute this to a combination of cabin fever and and adds in the stores and so on and so forth and boy, that's the way we've always done it but the reality is fall is the best time to fertilize and if you fertilize your lawn once or twice last fall, there's really no particular need to fertilize at this time. Now having said that if your lawn is thin if you're on sandy soil, which really loses its nutrients very rapidly or if you're planning to use a crab grass preventing herbicide that's usually mixed with fertilizer. Those are all reasons to fertilize now, I would say use the fertilizer lightly Be sure that you don't fertilize when it's going to rain you want to fertilize and then just water that fertilizer in lightly into the soil so that it makes contact with the soil but doesn't wash off into our storm sewers be very careful when you're using your fertilizer spreader if some of the fertilizer gets onto the sidewalk or onto your driveway get out there with a broom and a dustpan and sweep it up and get it back into the bag or spread it onto the lawn because that's why we're having so much problems with with nutrients. We don't want in that Waterway. It just washes right down into the storm sewers and and causes a lot of problems in the lakes and rivers. So you do need to be careful about that but don't feel it's automatic that you need to fertilize. Now. There are only certain reasons that you would want to if the lawn really badly needs it if you're going to use crabgrass preventing herbicide or if you're on sandy soil (00:33:59) are plenty of other things to do in your lawn and put fertilizer. (00:34:01) On a to (00:34:01) probably well. Yes, that's right. And and it's not that you shouldn't be fertilizing fertilizer is important, you know, sometimes people think that the best thing to do for a lawn is is just to mow it and not put any fertilizer on when you don't ever fertilize it the lawn starts to thin out and that's when you really run into weed problems. And so the way I look at it fertilizing is sort of that ounce of prevention that that's going to really help you from running into terrible trouble, but we are really recommending less fertilizer than we did a number of years ago two or three pounds a year of actual nitrogen, which means you fertilize maybe in mid-august mid-september and the end of October. (00:34:43) Okay. It's about 19 minutes before 12 noon and you're listening to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. This is Mark's it a click and st. Paul Deb Brown is here at University of Minnesota extension horticulturist taking your calls about gardening and Lawn Care and flowers and vegetables and everything else if you're listening to the Twin Cities, and you have a question for Debbie Brown You can join our conversation by calling two two seven six thousand. That's 2276 thousand in the Twin Cities outside of the Twin Cities anywhere. You can hear the broadcast. You can call toll-free with your question at one eight hundred two, four two two eight two eight. That's 1-800-222-8477 alai encourage you to hang up and try again because we're gonna try to get through a bunch of calls. Now. Let's start up in Bemidji with can good morning. Thanks for waiting. (00:35:28) Good morning. Yes. I'm going to be getting 40 white pines and Norway Pines their bare root from our local Soil and Water Conservation District, and I'm going to put some of them in the woods that we have. We have some kind of hilly woods and I wonder what should I use as a fertilizer or do I need that? (00:35:51) Well, I think if you're it would be nice to fertilize and what I would get would be something called osmocote. Osmocote is a slow release. It's a little little plastic pallets and you just mix a little bit of that at the bottom of the hole and that will break down very slowly and release its fertilizer over a long period of time. You don't want to use a standard fertilizer that's going to give you a quick flush of nutrients because really it's going to be hard for those little plants to take to take that in. (00:36:22) Okay, Gene and Cottage Grove. You're on the air with Ted Brown. Good morning. Jean (00:36:28) my name is Jennifer (00:36:30) Jennifer. Good morning. Okay, what's your question for Deb Brown? (00:36:36) I have a problem with Creeping Charlie in my lawn. And I've since I moved here it's been getting worse and I've heard that if you can treat it with like a broad leaf type of treatment in the fall when it's taking its nutrients into the roots that helps and then again in the spring. I know I'll never get rid of it because it keeps coming in from the neighbors, but I just want to know how I can control it so that it isn't going to be able totally get rid of my grass. (00:37:05) Okay, is your grasses sort of sunny or is it in a real shady area? (00:37:10) Most of it's in quite a sunny (00:37:11) area? Okay. You do have a Fighting Chance in the sun. I would say definitely to spray once or twice in the fall and and what you told was exactly exactly right. The the chemical is far more effective in the fall than will be in the spring but you can do a little bit of spraying now to if you want to just be careful that it's not windy and that in fact the temperature is Probably in the low 60s to low 70s, I think as far as its creeping in from the neighbors, if you want, you can go to the property line and make a little barrier make yourself a border that you just have a rock Mulch. And if you watch then you're going to see as it starts creeping over that rock most just go and zap it with a little spot weed killer or pull it out as it goes over that barrier. I don't think because the neighbor has it that you're automatically going to have that as a constant problem, but it's a member of the mint family and Creeping. Charlie is a very very strong and tenacious plant, and so you have to kind of look at it as a hobby. If you really want to eradicate it in the sun. It's possible if you had a shady place, I would tell you that you'd be smarter to learn to live with it because it really is better adapted than most grasses. In fact, then all grasses to grow in a real shady (00:38:28) yard. Okay. Thanks for your call Jennifer now back to Jean and Cottage Grove Jean. Thanks for (00:38:32) waiting. Thanks. My question has to do with our Pagoda Doug would I noticed that it seemed to be literally bathed in moisture where it was weeping from several places on several limbs one area. Apparently there was a branch that had gotten broken in the winter fall or winter that had sort of a long hair where the piece broken pieces hanging down in addition to that. It may be to that we have in the in the winter. My husband had put the ornamental Lifeboat and he took them off the spring and I wondered if those places had damaged the Lambs and whether or not that needs to be wrapped or is the tree going to take care of healing itself, or does it need to be (00:39:24) painted? Okay. There's nothing really that you're going to be able to do II think that it's suspicious at least that the the lights may have done. Damage because they do generate some heat even the smaller lights generate generate some heat in Winter what you're seeing where you're seeing that that sap flow is Nixon and wounds are open areas in the plant tissue and there really is nothing you can do about that as the plant Leafs out and the leaves attain their full size that will signal the end of the sap flow and it will stop weeping the the branch that was broken that has kind of hanging by a shreds or whatever. You need to get us on make a nice clean sharp wound there that's going to be able to heal more readily. And other than that, I think just take take care of it water it if necessary, you might want to give the plant a little bit of fertilizer in the spring and then I I think I probably wouldn't put the lights on it next year. (00:40:22) Okay. It's about 13 minutes before twelve and you're listening to midday Deb. Brown is here and we're talking gardening. Let's go back to the phone Lisa and st. Paul. Good morning. (00:40:31) Good morning. I'm calling to ask. Um, I A backyard Urban vegetable garden that I'm just getting started and I'm wondering about the season here for peppers and tomatoes. Is there any possibility of ever starting them from seed and getting a crop? You have to start (00:40:46) indoor you really should start indoors and they don't take an awful long time. But you want to go at least six weeks possibly eight weeks ahead of when you put them out. And so that means the time to start them is probably early April and I think you might in fact get a tomato or to starting seeds directly Outdoors, but it's nothing we would ever recommend tomatoes are very very easy to do indoors on a sunny windowsill or on better yet under a fluorescent light plus many of the garden centers will sell very tiny little seedlings either in six packs or sometimes individually so you can mix and match and get two or three early tomatoes and two or three midseason tomatoes and maybe one or two of the beefsteak tomatoes that ripen way towards the end of the summer. I I just don't think I would waste my time planting from seed Outdoors. (00:41:37) There are so many people waiting to get through here. I'm trying to ask some generic kind of questions that a lot of people are hopefully interested in but General gardening tips for people who are putting in one to put in a garden this year and given the date, you know, it's basically the beginning of May right now. What kind of things should they do? Should they head over to the nursery and buy the seedlings and when can they start putting that garden? And what do they need to do if they want to get a good Garden this year? (00:42:00) Well, well you see because the soil is still cool in the temperatures are still cool. There are some things that can be grown from seed like radishes like peas like leaf lettuce like spinach if you're talking vegetable gardening. There are a few flowers that can also go in from seed annual flocks California poppies spider spider plants cleome. These are things that you can do right away as soon as the ground feels a little bit dryer again. You don't want to be mucking around in that in that wet soft soil, but the bulk of the plants Go in later round the middle of the month around the third week of the month. We can start putting in things like corn and potatoes and actually potatoes you could do earlier. If you are very careful and have the whole potato or potatoes that have healed over very nicely where you cut them, but the plants that really need warm weather and that means tomatoes peppers eggplants melons. Those really should be either started indoors or bought a small plants and put out in the garden in the Twin Cities area. No sooner than Memorial Day weekend and possibly even a little bit later if you put them out a little bit later say the the very tail end of May or early June with the warmer weather, they'll get a boost in they'll grow faster and they'll catch up with plants that you put in earlier that just kind of sat in that cool soil and didn't do, you know a whole lot of anything the people who are further north we There's about a week difference for every hundred miles north or south you are of the Twin Cities. So those of you on the Iowa border would be a week ahead of us. Those of you who are up in the Bemidji area. You're maybe a couple weeks behind us. (00:43:47) Now. The question I wanted to get in is concerns wildflowers more and more people seem to be catching on to the idea of returning some of their lawns to maybe nature and planting wildflowers. You see different cans of Wildflower seed mixtures they range in price from maybe a few dollars to more than ten or twenty dollars for can if you want to plant some wildflowers and you just sort of do a mixture of wildflowers. What should you do? Should you be buying one of these kits are can you buy the seeds (00:44:15) individually what well the kid is the easiest thing to do but we've had some studies that show that many of those plants are not good for Minnesota. They tend to be very broad mixes and after a couple of years you really don't have much of anything. That's that comes back. I think it would be better to buy in the individual seeds find out what grows here. And of course when you're talking about these mixes of wildflowers in a can you're really talking about Meadow or more to the Prairie plants. And that means it's got to be a very sunny Garden again a relatively Dry garden. So there are lots of other options besides those kinds of flowers. And again Mark you boy, you're hitting on some topics that we really need a long time to talk about. I think there is a trend towards putting in more and more wild flowers, but it's something that has to be done in a in a kind of a manicured and careful way. Otherwise your neighbors think that you've just left the lawn or your garden go to rack and ruin, so there are some real tricks to to doing it and having it look (00:45:20) good Horticulture is Deb Brown on midday today. Let's go back to the phone's dick in Minneapolis. Thanks for waiting. Good (00:45:25) morning. Thank you Mark. And thank you. We have a mulberry tree that must be 12 years old and I want to know about the proper time. To prune that because it really needs it. And also in another part of the yard. We have a sweater Maple that must be 20 years old and I want to know about pruning off little Twiggy branches that I'll hang up and listen to your (00:45:48) answer sure the sweater you can do just about any time of the year when you prune a maple in late fall winter or spring you're going to see a lot of sap flowing but that really isn't a problem for the tree if you want to prune when you don't see the sap flow wait till the leaves are full size and you won't get all that dripping going on. As far as the Mulberry is concerned. I'm going to just guess and say that it probably be should be pruned the same as other fruit trees, which means very late in Winter. Probably March late, February March early. April Mulberry is a very marginal tree here and I think if you've still got a mulberry that's in good shape after this cold winter that we've had you better congratulate yourselves. Because usually Mulberry will be good good good when we get a cold winter and boom they're gone. And so fortunately they grow rapidly and you can always plant some more or the birds will plant them (00:46:44) for you. Okay, let's get another question in Brian and Prior Lake. Good morning. (00:46:48) Hi. I was just curious. We have a pond that's about 3/4 of an acre and it's about four to five feet deep and it gets duckweed on it every year and I was just curious if you could tell us how to treat it or if there's a natural way that we could go about it. Well happen. (00:47:01) Listen. Well, I'm afraid I'm out of my territory in terms of ponds and duckweed. I think that you need to call the DNR there are weed specialist with the DNR who deal with Wetlands specifically and there is a very limited number of things that can be done on wetlands and you need to find out exactly what that is. I just am not up to date on those kinds of things. I would like to say remind people, you know that they can call us at the University on weekdays and in addition to horticulture. Truce we have people who talk about insect problems plant diseases and one subject that we didn't get into today, which is controlling various Critters in the in the garden and Landscape go for his moles voles all kinds of wildlife (00:47:48) thing and we'll give that number right at the end of the broadcast terrific dial you number so if you don't get through with your question get a pencil and paper out will get that number for you. Let's go back to the phones and in Rochester. Good morning. (00:48:00) Good morning. We have a deck along the west side of our house and it's about 4 foot off the ground on the north side of that deck. We'd like to put some shrubs in there to hide that area. So we're looking at a shady area that has clay soil and we're thinking something about four or five foot high and I was wondering if you would recommend Arbor Vitae or you or something else (00:48:25) perhaps. Well if it's a if it's fairly Shady you might get by with Arborvitae and in fact one of the best What is the technique Arborvitae that's Tech9 any why that's a plant that doesn't Brown out very badly. You certainly could plant use there as well. If it doesn't get sunlight in the summer, you need to be careful. Excuse me, sunlight in the winter. You need to be careful because a little bit of sun in summer doesn't seem to damage them. But if they're exposed to much sun in Winter, you will definitely have problems with them. Now. There are a number of deciduous plants that you could use there too. In fact, there are there are a lot of different things like viburnum Zoar burning bush. Each of them has its own problems burning bush for instance, which is beautiful and read in full sunlight will just give you kind of a pale weak washed out pink if anything if it's in a shady location, but it will grow and it can be pruned into a nice hedge or a pretty formal and pretty dense covering to obscure the the bottom part of that deck if you like Again, if you'd like to give us a call, we could probably come up with some other ideas or I would suggest that you drive out to the Landscape Arboretum. The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum has many many many plants growing out there and a lot of times it's easier to make choices by looking at those because you see what they look like after they've been in place for several years. It's a little hard to tell sometimes at the nursery when you just see a little tiny plant in a small (00:49:59) pot. Okay. Let's try to get one more call on Paul. If you can get your question quickly (00:50:05) Paul Goering from st. Paul. I was calling I don't have a yard, but I have a little Terrace and I wanted to try to put a fruit tree in a large terracotta pot something that maybe flowers in the spring are there some obvious pitfalls or is that even a (00:50:17) reasonable? Yeah. They're the real Pitfall is that they can't be overwintered unless you've got just the perfect garage for them or you can dig a trench someplace and bury the whole thing. We find in Minnesota that that trees and shrubs. They just don't Live from one year to the next in a pot. So I think you're much better off going with something perennial or perhaps buying a nice Rose or something like that where you can buy a beautiful plant for twelve fifteen dollars and just toss it at the end of the season. (00:50:51) We got to get this question in from producer Kitty Isley who brought in the beautiful little prop plant today. She wants to know what are the most common mistakes made by new gardeners and we have to wrap this all up in about 30 (00:51:03) seconds. Well, I would say the most common mistake is planting planting things where there isn't enough light, and this is an impatience that she brought in a beautiful little plant. It has no Frost tolerance, so I'm glad it's indoors and not Outdoors right now, but this is one of the really good plants for shady areas, and it can even grow in a sunny place if you're willing to water it a (00:51:23) lot. Okay Deb Brown. Thanks a lot for coming in. Once again. We really appreciate it and obviously from the interest in the phone lines, and a lot of people are interested in the topic. So thanks Deb Brown. You're very welcome University of Minnesota extension horticulturalist Deb Brown on midday today. It's about two minutes now before 12 noon the technical directors for this broadcast have been Clifford Bentley and Brian tonnison. Oh, I want to get this dial you phone number into or I'm going to get in trouble for that the dial you phone number if you have more questions is one 909 88 0500 the producer for the program was Kitty Isley a marks a deck like thanks for listening. Midday on Saturday is supported by the oriental rug company specializing in the sales and service of handmade oriental rugs and located in Minneapolis at 50th and Bryant (00:52:09) it is a minute and a half before noon. Karthik is coming up next here on Minnesota Public Radio five followed by week in review checking the state forecast for this.