Plants for teas

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Listen to That's Garden with Scott Berline. That's me.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm here with Mark Wessel and we're we're going to
wrap up some favorite plants right now because there's a
lot going on in the garden now and plants that
deserve mentioned. It's just that way, speaking of deserving mention.
I don't think I mentioned this to you, but I
I got an invitation to the Taylor Swift, Travis Kelsey. Yeah,

(00:25):
apparently they're big fans of the show and they sent
something out and then.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
It's probably tough, but they're probably listening right now.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I mean, yeah, bed right, they're just listening in bed together. Well,
they might not be together because this is their wedding day,
you know.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I don't know how that works. Oh today's their wedding day.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yeah, today, Madison Square Gardens are supposed to be there.
But my commitment to the show is so great. Okay, Anyway,
some more plants Scuttle Area and Canada. This is one
most people don't know. It has an awful, awful common name,
hory h o a r y hory skull cap. No

(01:07):
one's going to buy that planted. It needs a name change.
But it's a great native perennial blooming right now. It's
in the sage family, I think, And it has a
beautiful blue flower in the middle of summer like well
yeah now now, and and a great seedhead afterwards.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
It just grows with a well. I think it's.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Mostly dear proof and a really good one for pollinators.
So this one people should seek out if they can find.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, it's nice. I have one that's finishing up blooming
in there. Then that I guess that genus has been
burdened with odd names, because then there's mad dog, skull cap.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
The skull cap in the beginning. I mean, well, it.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Has that skull cap, the thing it looks like a
skull cap.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I don't like the words skull skeleton. I don't like
any references. It just reminds me of my own mortality
a little bit. Yeah, Verona castroum for Verginicum Culver's route.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Nice, nice to native, really beautiful spiky flowers right now.
There's a variety I think, only one that I know
of called fascination.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Good one, good grower. I like it.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
It's one of those that the Europeans, you know how
they loved a lot of our natives. Yeah, I saw
that a lot over in Holland.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Really, yeah, it's in the Germans and Dutch in particular,
seemed to have really latched onto a lot of great
American plants and you know, make them popular, bring them
down to size, sometimes find good cultivars, send them back over,
send them back over and charges twice the price. Also

(02:55):
right now, not in bloom, but my Viburnum placatum tomatosum
double file viburnum shasta is just alive with fruit that
It's a beautiful red fruit that turns the black and
rose right down the entire stem.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
That's as showy, a nice orientation, branches and fruit, very horizontal,
very horizontal. Yeah, and a pretty tough plant. Yeah. And
it's one of those plants that often gets misplaced in
the landscape. And yeah, and then yeah, you have to
do things to it that.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Yeah, people try to bull it up and it just
it's much better.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yeah, it does you have anything left?

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well? Did you want to talk about my favorite weed?

Speaker 1 (03:42):
I was going to spring that on you, but I
brought it up during the break. Yeah, what's your.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Exact Like, we didn't even talk about it.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's like weeds, Yeah, sometimes they are very attractive plants,
you know. And I thought this week, hey, let's start
asking people what their favorite weed is right now?

Speaker 3 (03:59):
So what is your Well, there's two and it's on
the edible because they're edible as lamb's quarters.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
It's just when it's fresh and young. The tender tips
are very good cook green. They have an odd, gritty
texture if you and then portu lac I mean person
lane versus a per porti laca just so crunchy and
a city and it's good.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Any of the weed portu lacas or purse lanes you
can just munch on.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Well, the purse lane that we know as a weed,
I don't there's other members. I don't know if you
can eat all person lanes. But and then the Mexican coworkers, uh,
they just love it. And when at the research farm,
you know, newly tilled beds, we had a lot of
it and they'd come and just collected by the garbage bake.

(04:53):
Do they cook it or just they do cook? They
cook it like in other climates or countries. Yes, often
eaten raw as a salad type thing.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
I was going to mention bachelor's button. I think it
is along the roadside, the scruffy looking weed, but the
flowers are so beautiful. That blue it's so nice. Yeah,
what's it? What's the other name for that? Bacher's button.
And there's something else, chickory wild chickory.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
No, those are two different things. Come out. They're same family,
but okay different.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, and then I just want to mention a couple
of annuals and we'll get out of this. Dali Mystic
illusion is just one we've always had great. I know
you guys love it at the Sinsi Botanical Garden and
it's on our Hall of Fame list. It's always always
a good performer. And that dark foliage and that big
yellow flower such a good match.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Great plant, great plant.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
And finally, Verbina boniensis or tall verbina is maybe one
of the best polony or plants ever. It's also a
great companion or pairing plant in the perennial beds.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
It just sticks up through and it does work.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
It doesn't demand, you know, not much foliage on it.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Really, no, it just yeah, it kind of it's I
think it's better if it's going up through other perennials.
And then you just have the reasonably tall flower spike
maybe to almost waist high. That's popping up, and talk
about the pollinators and there may be no better pond

(06:29):
air plant than that.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
It's right up thet top at least.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
So was that around when you first started gardening?

Speaker 1 (06:34):
No, uh huh.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
I don't recall that until ten years ago. I mean
people were obviously we're growing up, but I only became
aware of it maybe ten years ago.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
It seemed to get popularized.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
And there are cultivars now that are shorter, so maybe
easier to work in some gardens.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
But the tall one works pretty yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, and there you know, it's a receding annual uh
and it's going to revert to the taller form if
you let the seedlings grow. You can always buy it new.
And you know, but I think the tall versions just fine.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
A few tasks I thought of to get through real quick.
I edged my beds the other day. I've got a
really nice power edger. It's like a big flywheel that
cuts a really nice edge. And what a difference that
makes when you do that. You know, the grass was
spreading in, leaning over into the beds. That creeping charlie

(07:31):
was working its way in and I just went along
and just gave it a nice clean edge, and it
looks so much.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Wow, maybe I can borrow your edge or edging isn't
one of my strong suits.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
It makes the job easy.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
It's heavy, it's a very heavy tool, but you don't
have to use it for very long either. Standtype your tomatoes.
Tie them up and they're growing like weeds right now.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
They are, and some diseases are starting to set in
their early blight.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah, maybe losing leaves at the bottom bottoms. Yeah, what
can you do about that?

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Well, they say you can cut them out, get rid
of them once you have it. I mean you can
spray fungder sides. But yeah, huh.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
If you have one bad tomato plant and the rest
of yours all look great, do you want to remove
that bad one?

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Absolutely? I have. I had to do that. I don't.
I don't even know what this one tomato plant had,
but it was serious looking and I just ripped that
thing out and you got rid of it.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Burned it, burned it, stomped it, spread it, put it mark.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
We Uh.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
We're already at our next break, so we'll finish out
a few more things a task when we get back
we also want your calls. We wanted to talk about
fourth of July in plants and founding fathers and red,
white and blue, anything that you can contribute that ties
in with today, which is the fourth of July Independence Day.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
So come back, give us a car. We'll be back
in just a minute.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Scott Berlin in here with Mark Wessel, chief w Culturistic
Gardens Alive, and we're just gonna wrap up a couple
more tasks.

Speaker 1 (09:10):
You had one that you wanted to leap in.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
With well, and I wish I would have done this.
At the beginning of the year. We I grow a
lot of Salvia's, like the black and blue types in
pots for the deck. That's our hummingbird feeders. We don't
put out feeders, and they're just beautiful. And so we
had one last year and I got the pot out
of the root cellar and just put it on the

(09:33):
deck and I didn't do anything other than that. But
I wish I would have taken that out and kind
of roughed it up, put a little bit of new
soil in, because now it just it doesn't have the
water holding capacity. You know, when you're watering something so much,
you do lose something. It just doesn't hold water and

(09:54):
there's not enough soil in there, and I'm going to
try to it's a big plant. Now, I'm going to
try to del luckily get it out of there, and
good luck with that.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yes, is our great plants. It's funny too. It's a
very drought tolerant plant. But like a lot of drought
tolerant plants that are drought tolerant in the ground, right,
just can't handle it in a pot as well.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
It's it's very interesting. A lot of plants are like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, give them perfect conditions and then they become these
prima donna fussy that's right.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, and you get angry, frustrated, reasonful. If you haven't
mulched by now, it's probably a good time to start
thinking about it. This is the time of year when
plants can really benefit from multima.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Yeah, I was multing yesterday.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
It's a hard job to do in the heat. And
speaking of that's my last task. Is if you ever
need an excuse to not work in the garden, this
heat is the.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Excuse you need.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's it's unbearable, and don't don't put yourself in a
situation where you can get hurt.

Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah, and I witnessed a heat related thing. Yeah, the
community garden lady. You know, I won't mention her name, oka,
but she was she was working in her garden, said
she wasn't going to stay long. Well, she goes to
stand up and just collapses. And thankfully, you know, there
were a few of us down there. If she was

(11:19):
just like flopped in her garden and nobody was there,
who knows what would have happened.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Nothing good, right, something, You know, it just starts to
become very very scary at that point. Yeah, you imagine
you're passed out in the heat.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
And I was feeling kind of you know, I had
been working for like three hours down there. That's too long,
and I was feeling bad. But I felt better. Once
she had this episode, I'm.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Like, oh, well, adrenaline rush.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yeah, you kind of perked me up.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, all right, where are we here?

Speaker 1 (11:50):
We finished our tasks.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Let's start talking about the fourth of July, and again
we want your calls. Anything related to Fourth of July
and gardening or plants and red, white and blue, those
kind of things. Give us a call. Eight hundred eighty
two three eighty two fifty five I'll just start it out.
I did a little bit of looking. I had this

(12:12):
book by Andrea wolf It.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
I forget what it's called.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
It's about the Founding fathers who are all gardeners and
or agriculturists, and it's really interesting. I can't I could
not find it. I looked everywhere around the house and
just could not find it. But anyway, I do recall
from him looking at that book that Thomas Jefferson, of
course a great horticulturists all across the board botanist. He

(12:43):
had his own You can go visit. Is it Monticello
or Monticello?

Speaker 3 (12:48):
I always say Monticello too, but I think it might
be wrong. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Well, but anyway, he planted a lot of great trees
around his property, to the poplars I think are supposed
to be amazing in there.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
No, I haven't.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Oh it's really cool.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, I really want to go. It's definitely on my list.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Right, it's up on a hill.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh, and apparently his vegetable garden is just unbelievable too,
right right, and a big fruit grower too, Okay, area.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
To grow uh well, some fruit trees at least humidity.
The further you go South. Yeah, it's just there's more
disease and insect pressure.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
What what orchard crops did you have there?

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Oh, lots of apples and you know, your general tree fruits, peaches.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I don't think the fruit quality mattered to them as
much as far as like my marks and spotting, and
because they were using it for cider a lot.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
A lot of It's interesting you bring that up because
he's associated with two apples in particularly the orange Pippen.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Well that's really okay.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, yeah, he loved that apple and as Spitzenberg, both old,
old varieties, and but he loved them. They're great, both
of them, great apples, especially the former. But disease prone.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Yeah, what were they do for disease at you know
in colonial times?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
I don't know what they did. They sprayed some heavy
metal on it, I don't I'm not sure, but uh,
and and their needs were different, they were they liked
a good storage apple anymore, you know. Yeah, I store
apples away, but most people don't think of yeah, you
know the long term. Probably cooked a lot of them too, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
George Washington was a bit more of an agricultural kind
of grower, but very very passionate about his his gardens,
and he had formal gardens, botanical hothouses, and.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
The fruit orchard. Again.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
John Adams h spend his retirement experimenting with innovative agricultural
methods like maneure composting and crop rotation in Massachusetts.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yeah, yeah, not a new thing.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
It's interesting how many of these founding fathers they were
politicians second, you know, they were mark merchants or farmers
or something else first and sort of morphed into by necessity,
into sort of a political situation.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
Well, there weren't as many bribes and graft.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
And so much money, so much money in politics. In fact,
there was probably zero money in politics. I imagine a
lot of them took financial hits just to be a
founding father. James Madison once called the father of American environmentalism.
He also played with crop rotation and promoted a lot

(15:53):
of conservation ethics and interconnected nature or balance with nature.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Visionary, visionary, these people.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Benjamin Franklin, you know, maybe the most visionary of the mall.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
You know, renaissance man.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Across the board, lifelong long promoter of botany and agriculture.
He actively exchanged seeds across the Atlantic and is credited
with soybean and rhubarb to the American.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Rhubarb yeah wow yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
And of course he was good friends with John Bartram,
after which John Bartram named the Franklinia. Oh yeah. And
Bartram of course had his garden home in Philadelphia, and
he traveled around the Eastern US finding unique and cool

(16:40):
American plants to send to English gardeners who were just
eating up anything new they could get from North America
the right. So that's all really cool stuff. You are
listening to. That's Garden with Scott Berline. We'll be taking
a break. You can check out the podcast wherever podcasts
are sourced, so any show, including this one, we'll be

(17:00):
available to listen to immediately after this one ends. Check
out Ron Rothis and friends on Facebook. Following along in
the Garden. We'll be back in just a few minutes.
Stay with us, Scott Berlin. I'm here with good friend
Mark Wessel and we want your telephone calls for the

(17:22):
next half hour at least to talk about patriotic plants red, white,
and blue found great American gardeners, all these things.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Or plants that salute that would be amazing.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Maybe, I mean some might have.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
That look, yeah, kind of sure, which ones?

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Reminder, Joe Boggs will be joining us at eight o'clock
to talk about bugs and insects and and things like that.

Speaker 1 (17:52):
But he's always he makes it fun.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
He's fun.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
Got pretty amazing, pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
So we do want your calls call us at eight
hundred eight two fifty five. Anything to do with the
fourth of July and plants, Mark, are you getting It's
always that big deal. Get your first tomato by the
fourth of July?

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Do you have I will have a cherry tomato. Yeah,
I don't. There's no competition with me to get out.
But I do have this one heirloom that last year
was well before the fourth Oh really, And it's a
very It's a small tomato. It's called early Annie. Really

(18:31):
delicious for an early tomato.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
Is it better than Wessel's Purple Pride.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
No, No, that's a fine tomato. Wessel's purple it is.
But it's a darn good tomato Early Anie. But it
is so disease prone it's already half to foliate it
by so by early blight, I'll i'll soon, you know,
after the main season stuff comes in, I'll rip that
thing out and get it out there.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Where can people get Wessel's Purple Pride.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
You have to go online and get seed. I don't
even have it this sea.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Yeah, yeah, you don't even have your own tomato.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
No. A friend of mine grows tomatoes and I get
plants from her and we just didn't connect this year.
But it's being grown all over the world.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Now, it's really cool. How did you find it? Tell
me that's true.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
It was when I lived when I moved back to
New Richmond, I was renting this little house with great
soil man. It was at the bottom hill, but I
had limited space at that time, and I was growing
multiple tomatoes in one cage. And I collected the seeds
and grew this on the following year, and I get

(19:40):
all these you know all. I got about twelve different
types of tomatoes out of this one. And it turns
out it's a cross between Cherokee purple and a sausage.
An old heirloom my tomato growing thing grew and I
selected Wessel's Purple Pride out of it, which is it's
a long taper has a little point at the end. Yeah,

(20:02):
it's super juicy. And because of the Cherokee purple, it
has very thin skin. You just look at it wrong
and it breaks. But it's just juicy sweet, And well.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
How did you stabilize it into a seed stream? You
just grow it out several years like with itself.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah, and just right. Because mostly tomatoes are self pollinating,
you don't have to. Yeah, that was a chance cross.
But then there was another one, Meg's passionate pink, that
was even better. Really, it was a light pink Meg
as your wife. Yeah, but I fermented those seeds and
then I forgot about them on top of the refrigerator
and they went a little long.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
And you're still married. Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
Let's talk about red, white and blue plants. There are
very very few plants that have red, white and blue flowers.
And I'm talking like Petunia's where you can get a
blue variety or red one in a white one. It's
very rare to find that, mostly because blue is such
a rare color for flowers. So that's where I started looking.

(21:05):
I looked for a list of blue flowers, and then
from there I was like, okay, that that has a
red one and a white one too. So the certain
things you just for roses, for instance, they've been trying.
You've got reds, and you've got whites, and they've been
trying for years to get a blue and they just
can't make it work. So you're looking down the list

(21:27):
of blue flowers, you don't see roses. So it's easy
to go from there. It's sort of like my Sherlock
Holmes moment. That's exactly so. Anyway, like pansies are another
one where you can get red, whites and.

Speaker 3 (21:43):
Blues, reds. Okay, yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Now that might be across a couple.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
Well, those are all hybrids, so you know they're bringing
in colors from all over the place.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
But a few other things. I think iris, maybe maybe.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Red is a problem, the big challenge.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
There's a rusty kind of orange types. But are true
red I'm not sure.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Not a true red ye, not yet. I don't think
some laboratory there's yeah, working on.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
It, sending seeds up into space and bringing them back
and rosa. Sharon, I think you can get red, white
and blues. There's red and not one of those.

Speaker 3 (22:19):
You are striking out.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I am man see this is this is hard to do.
There's not many that have this. Danny's paying attention anyway,
hydrange or macrophilla. If you do all you need to
do to make a blue, then reds come easy and

(22:42):
the whites are there.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Okay, I'll give you that one. But leah, oh yeah, yeah,
those red ones they're striking.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
They are striking clematis. Yeah, though that might be across
different species. Oh sure, yeah yeah yeah, but yeah, morning glory.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Mm hmm, beautiful flower. I like them in the roadsides
and I know other people.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
They seed so badly.

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Years after you've stopped growing them and letting them go
to seed, they just keep coming and coming. It's amazing
how they just get into a seed bank and stay there.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Columbine, all right, there a red columbine.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
You know, I'd say some of that, like the canadensis.
There's some redder one a little.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Bit red in there.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
What have you got, You got anything you're thinking of?

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Well, there's you know, lobilia. You have red the cardinal flower, yeah,
blue Lobilia syphilitica. And then for white there's like pale
Indian plantain, and sometimes you get a white cardinal flower.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah, different species. The blue wind is of
course named Lobilia syphalitica because they thought it would cure syphilis.
I have found that it's never worked for me. I
always just have to go get a shot.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
That's right, I know, you get kind of after that
sets in for a while.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I would explain a lot, but unfortunately, or fortunately fortunately
I was just joking.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
I have never ever had Let's move on, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Let's move on.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
So yeah, going back to blue flowers, I looked a
little bit into it, and plants primarily rely on pigments
called anthrocyanins that create the colors. And an amazing how
out of sunlight, water, and soil that plants can create
all these colors and really intense and credible colors, a

(24:37):
full range of colors.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
And nature in general is amazing. We don't even know
how amazing it is.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
No, we're just scratching the surface. So anyway, these anthrocyonins
generally produce red, purple, and pink hues, and from that
they make the others, and so it's it's really rare
for blue to come about out of that process, but
when it does, it's really really nice. Some of my

(25:03):
favorite flowers are blue flowers.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
Yeah, everybody loves the blue flowers.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, Brenera, what is it called Himalian?

Speaker 3 (25:10):
All the Himalayan poppies.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Can I grow? Yeah, it's so beautiful.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
I wonder if they're really as good as they all say.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
They probably not, say I'm assuming not because it makes
me feel better, because the just can't grow them.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
They're probably only like an inch wide.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Motor shopping going on. But yeah, go figure the plant
that grows in the Himalayas wouldn't do that great in Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
It's just kind of weird.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
But anyway, says to get blue a blue hue, plants
must alter red anthrocyanins using specific enzymes, metal ions, and
the exact acidity of their sell fluid. If this delicate
shift or balance shifts, the flower defaults.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
The purple or violet.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
Oh man, so complex. Yeah, it's just.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Uh, you know, and I'm trying to think, you know,
we know a lot of you know, hummingbirds and pollinators
are drawn like red flowers, and I and I and
I think that might be as much morphology.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
The shape of the flower is the color. But offhand,
I can't think of any insect that's drawn specifically to
blue flowers. That could be wrong, but I'll be there.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, Uh, we are trying to make this red, white,
and blue Fourth of July themed segment.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
There's blueberries, blueberries.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
And RedBerry cranberries in the same that's the same genus.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah, yeah, same genus.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Do they have white?

Speaker 3 (26:41):
There is there's some white. Yeah. I saw one last year.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, I had something else here. I'm trying to find
it real quick.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Well, while you find it, one. I love the annual
lobilia's there, just especially when other people grow them.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Well yeah, yeah, well they like it cooler, I.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Guess particularly Yeah, when you go north, they look better better.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, And they look fine in the spring and then
again in the fall. They just kind of have a
period in the summer where they struggle a little bit.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
But yeah, those are beautiful plants.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
They are.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
I looked up famous plants of the American Revolution, and
there are some that are pretty cool. The Liberty Tree,
the moment most famous tree of the Revolution, is a
big elm in Boston, where the Sons of Liberty gathered
to protest the Stamp Act and organized resistance.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
That still there.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
I don't think it is. It was an elm.

Speaker 3 (27:39):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Other colonies had their own Liberty trees, such as the
famous Tula popular at Saint John's College in Annapolis. Is
pretty common for a tree to be sort of a
central meeting place in the colonies at that time. I guess,
you know, part of it would be in the summer
that any assembly hall would be way too hot and
you would just all go out under the shade of

(28:01):
the biggest tree.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
There was, or the one they left.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah, yeah, well they did that mostly in the farms,
not the communities, I guess. I don't know, I don't
know a good point, but some of those years and iwa, yeah,
I was, but still a little late for it. Hanging trees,
that's not such a nice thing, but they were there.

(28:25):
Liberty teas so in response to the Tea Act where
a boycott of teas happened, uh Colin has found whatever
they could to make their own tea out of using
native North American plants, one of which is cee this
Americana's New Jersey tea.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah, and also sweet golden rod, solidago odora.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Have you had a tea from either of those? No, me, neither.
And then there's Labrador tea, which is a dog plant
and they like related to Mountain Laurel and the whole family.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Usually that's a poisonous type of plant, but they were
making twa out of it. I think so, huh labor
and I'm sure that would.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Be like Maine and North Borel regions.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, let's take a break. We're talking Fourth of July
and plants. Give us a call eight hundred and eight
two three eight two five five. We'll be back in
just a couple of minutes. Back to listen to X
Garden with Scott Berline.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
I'm here with Mark Wessel.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Joe Boggs will join us in about ten or fifteen minutes,
and we're just going to wrap this up talking about
the Fourth of July and plants and gardens and gardeners.
I looked up famous American gardeners, famous Americans who garden, okay,
and one of the most fascinating was Audi Murphy. Are

(29:47):
you familiar with him at all? I don't think most
people anymore are. But he was a big, big deal
following World War Two. He grew up as a sharecroppers kid,
like a like a kids in the family or something.
Father left when he was young. His mother died when
he was fourteen. Yeah, he kind of raised, you know,

(30:07):
helped raise his brothers and sisters, you know, like a
lot of guys did. Went to the army younger than
eighteen when World War Two started.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
After Pearl Harbor, he fought in Italy or North Africa
first and then in Italy and France, and he earned
every medal you can earn in the army, multiple campaigns,
multiple times injured off he held off an entire German

(30:40):
company by himself in some past.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, yeah, to make a movie about it. They did, and.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
He starred himself. So he.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Came back to America and went to Hollywood. They made
a movie about his life using him as the star.
And then he went on too a career being a
cowboy or doing a lot of cowboy movies well into
the fifty forty, well into the forties, and I think
into the fifties.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Well when you said his name, I had this cowboy.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Anyway, you know, after all that he was suffered PTSD
and his PTSD Awareness Month, I think if I remember
right from earlier, and they.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
Probably started that he was very proactive.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, he had.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
He took care of his rose garden to sort of
overcome PTSD. That's pretty cool, you know that World War two. Also,
we're talking about the Victory garden generation. So many people
grew their own vegetables, you had to with rations and
everything else. Yeah, yeah, you know, interesting time it was,
you know, and we were feeding so much of the world,

(31:49):
both during the war and after because I imagine, I'm
as a great percentage of the crop lands and Europe
were not productive during that time, and if they were,
nobody could transport them.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
You know.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
So interesting, awful time. So hopefully we never see anything
quite like that again, no doubt. Eleanor Roosevelt was a
great promoter of the Victory gardens.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
That was kind of her thing.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
She advocated for food self sufficiency, sustainability, and community gardens
across the country good for her. More recently, Michelle Obama
had her gardens at.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
The White House.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Are they still there?

Speaker 2 (32:33):
I don't think so. I don't think so. Long history
of gardening at the White House. Tree planting was started
there by Rutherford Hayes in the eighteen seventies, planting commemorative
trees that were saplings from Washington's Mount Vernon and also
Madison's Virginia home and white oaks grown from acorns of

(32:55):
the Charter oak in Connecticut. Oh yeah, and that started
I think a lot of tree planting that I think
each president usually plants at least one tree. Nellie Taft,
the wife of William Howard Taft, is credited with planning
with the planning of cherry trees around the Title Basin
in Washington, d C. So the Japanese gave those as

(33:17):
a gift, and I didn't realize, but she was involved
somehow in the negotiations or in the process there. And
I vaguely remember a story where the first group of
trees that they sent from Japan were infected with some
kind of disease and were all destroyed. And then a
few years later Japan sent more and what a legacy

(33:40):
that's left in the Washington d C.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, these were planted in nineteen twelve, so very early.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
I think the I think there were cherries from Japan
donated to Cincinnati, weren't there.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah Park, Yeah, Eden Park and maybe All Park. Maybe
they did that to a lot of cities that I
don't know about, but yeah, the ones, well, both Eaton
Park and Alt Park have just beautiful plannings of cherries
and you know, they're probably none of them are the

(34:17):
original trees are not generally long lasting.

Speaker 3 (34:19):
No, but.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
You know, seilings and so forth, and carrying on and
scions and cuttings and crafts and stuff. Jacqueline Kennedy, of
course started the rose garden at the White House.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Wait a minute, Miller, probably a rose named after her?

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Oh yeah, I'm sure there must be. I'm sure there is.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
Apparently a woman named Bunny Mellon designed two White House
gardens for Jacqueline Kennedy, the second one completed after the assassination.
And then Lady Bird Johnson of course is known for
wildlife or wildflower restoration in Texas so much.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
Yeah, Lady Bird Johnson Center.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
Yeah, yeah, and she's still alive. I think she is, really,
I'm not sure. But if she died, it wasn't that
long ago. Yeah, what else, Mart? Oh no, yeah, we
got Phil a few minutes here, No, only one minute,

(35:26):
thank you, Danny.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
Danny came to the rescue.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
So yeah, we will be back with Joe Box in
just a couple of minutes.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Always fun to talk to Joe.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
I've missed him terribly. I talked to him on the
phone last week. It was it was a lot of
fun and it's a lot of fun to talk to
him on the.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Radio as well.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
You are listening to That Guarden with Scott Earline. You
can find all the podcasts of all the past shows
on well at any source of podcasts, and this one
will be up posted pretty much right after the show
is over. The number eight hundred eight two three eighty
two fifty five. If you have any questions for us
or Joe, give us a shout and we will be

(36:06):
back in just a few minutes