Your Gardening Timeline

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm retired, so he is enjoying his best life on

(00:03):
weekends now and you're stuck with me. So I am
here today with my good friend Mark Wessel. We've known
each other a long time. Mark is one of those
people that I really admire, not for his morality or
anything like that, but because he knew from an early
age that he loved plants and gardening, and unlike a

(00:24):
lot of people in this industry, he knows the full
gamut for everything from vegetables and fruits to any ornamental
all the way to all those plants you see when
you're out hiking around, and that's pretty incredible. Good morning, Mark.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
How are you doing, morning Scott. I'm doing just fine.
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Good tell us you know you've been in the state gardener.
Give us a little lowdown on your life.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Okay, Quickly. I grew up on a small farm in
New Richmond, and after college I started doing kind of
finer gardening for private estates in the Cincinnati area. About
in two thousand and fourteen, I started working for the
gardens Alive company. Gardens Alive is the umbrella to a
company to many brands. It was a brand itself that

(01:09):
sold environmentally friendly products to the home gardener. Back started
back in the eighties, and we also have you know,
Gurnies seed and nursery, rex bulbs and spring Hill Nursery
under our umbrella, and several others. My main role with
the company is going out meeting with breeders looking for

(01:29):
new products. I focus primarily on edibles, but I do
the whole range. So one day, you know, I might
be tasting blueberries in Oregon, and then a week later
I'm eating blackberries in Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Or in Europe at the perennial. Yeah, you never know. Yeah,
the good fruit everywhere. Yeah, it sounds like an amazing
job when you describe it to me, but it's kind
of hard to wrap my head around all that you do.
It's it's pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's a fun job.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
I like it.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
I have to utilize many of my skills. So yeah,
it's a great job, probably the best job in the company.
But I don't really tell my workmates.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
That you don't. Some things you just keep to yourself,
that's right. So I like to begin the show with
timely tasks, what I call things you should have done
last week. So, Mark, what are some of the things
that you should have done last week.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
Literally, I'm way behind on my task everybody. So trimming
hellebores is you know, I'm behind on that. I liked
on the orientalis, the lentin roses. I like to trim
that old foliage off before the new blooms even start
coming up. And they're already coming up, but that old
foliage gets all tattered and brown over the winter, especially

(02:46):
if it's very cold. So that's a big project right now.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
I got online early. Yeah, yeah, you love that because
then you don't you're not tangled up in the new
and the oldie. Yeah, hit it with a string trimmer.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
I tried the lawnmower and that didn't work out so well.
But pruning fruit trees, it's just starting to work on
pruning fruit trees. And you know, we all have heard
Ron talk about spraying your peach trees for peach leaf curl,
which is very timely. You need to spray before any
growth starts, else you will not prevent that fungal pathogen.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
So yeah, and timely. An application of of fungus sides
and different things on fruit trees is vital.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
It's critical too, I mean, and you don't have to
spray a lot, but timeliness. You're correct, it's really important
to hit those windows. The other thing, you know, any
infrastructure work. I have a rock wall that I thought
i'd make progress this winter, but with all this snow
and cold, I haven't.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
And it all probably got worse because of the snow. Yes, yeah,
And you know that goes for pavers. A lot of
times you'll find pavers of sunk or come up, and
now's the time to to get at them before you
have guests and everything that are at a trip fall and
sue you for everything you're worth. And then some.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Not only that spring hits and then the floodgates open
and you're over your head and all the garden.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
To those things. What else you got? Oh?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
That was about it? Was?

Speaker 1 (04:19):
That was about it?

Speaker 2 (04:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, yeah, you know what about you're the vegetable guy,
the best vegetable guy. I know what, what are you
starting inside it this time? Well?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
I am never too anxious to get going because I
don't want a three foot tomato plant, right, So I was,
and I was out of town. So I have just
started my onions and I'll be my early spinach. I
do in individual cells. So stuff like that germinating sweet peas. Yeah,

(04:52):
I wait on things like tomatoes, peppers, I'll be starting
soon because they're kind of slow.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Yeah. What about cold weather vegeta doles out in the garden?
Is it too It's still way too early?

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, right, too early. I mean, you know you need
that proper soil temperature. Plus that's another I'm not real anxious.
I do get an early start, but if you you know,
it can turn cold and wet and things will just
sit there and not really grow too much.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
What it is that perfect soil temperature in your mind?

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Well, it depends on the crop, but forty and up
depending you know, spinach.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Carrots, and that's an area it's not the first day.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah, yeah, right right, because that can drop yep, significantly.
Yeah so, but some of the first crops will be spinach, carrots, arugula, beats,
things like that in the ground.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Have you sharpened your mower blade yet? Not a few years,
I mean neither. Last week was tool maintenance week and
and yeah you're gasoline mower. Check it out because it
might not start. That happens a lot over winter. And
I just saw a great video online. It was from

(06:05):
that home show that's on National Public Grady, I can't
think of the name right now, but a segment from
that National Public or PBS actually where they were showing
how to sharpen your mower blade, which is both remarkably
easy and also you got to do it right. I

(06:26):
noticed you know that you could just grind it, you
can file it, you can be as tedious with how
you sharpen the blade as you want, but in the
end it has absolutely got to be balanced.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh boy, I've been there before. I generously sharpened mind
and it rattled me to death.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, probably beat your mower into submission, maybe took some
years off its life even I don't know. And also
a good time to sharpen all your other tools, your pruners,
shovel size. You get out there and do that all
the time.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Well periodically. Yeah yeah, yeah, it makes such a Yeah,
makes a huge difference. Such a sharp tool. Yeah, it's
safer too, I think. I mean it seems ironic or
you know, opposite of what you think. But because the
blade's sharp, you know it's more dangerous. But wielding an
unsharp tool and having a bounce and making everything harder,

(07:19):
I think in the end makes life more dangerous. Yeah,
say that about your kitchen knives as well.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Yeah, a good time to prune find well, really kind
of getting towards the end where you can prune on
your woody plants, so you're anything you've got shade trees,
food trees down to your shrubs. Yeah you agree, Yeah, yeah, right,
it's important to prune your shrubs appropriately. You always use

(07:49):
the right pruning cuts and look at lists for the
ones that you can prune this time of year versus
the ones you want to wait on. There's a lot
of shrubs that bloom on old wood, and you really
don't want to get after those until after they've bloomed.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, you could ruin the whole flowering season.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, you know, life is short. One whole year of
no flowers on your shrubs is you know? That's a
percentage you want to avoid.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, yeah, you do. And then you know you're no
playing to people and yeah, I've shrubbedn't for your calling, Scott.
See what the problem is?

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Right? No one knows how long they're going to live,
so you know, you you may only have a few left,
and here you've ruined the whole year of bloom on
your fragrant vibe Burnhams and you never know, you never know.
On that note, let's go to break. You're listening to
Let's Garden with Scott Berlin. We'll be back after this.

(08:47):
You are listening to That's Garden with Scott Berlin. I'm
here with my friend Mark Wessel and we're talking gardens.
And this is a thing I like to do. I
think it leads to good conversations. Is kind of go
through the days, months and weeks of the national days
of so on and so forth. So March is Red

(09:09):
Cross Month. I think that's important. Yeah, everybody should support that.
You never know when you're gonna need it, so you
may never need it, but when you need it, hopefully
it's there. Hopefully it's there. National Noodle Month combined, well
not combined, but it's also a National sauce Month. I
think you can't have noodles without some kind of sauce.
That's just my opinion.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
I love noodle, Scott. I think they're one of the
greatest foods. Plain so many varieties of noodles.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
Ye, sauce or cheese. What else can you put something?

Speaker 2 (09:40):
Dress ramen? And you know there's a fun and is
Every culture has a good noodle.

Speaker 1 (09:46):
Everyone should know that Mark Wessel is not only a
great gardener, but he is an amazing cook. And you know,
sometime we'll bring on just to talk about cooking. With
National Salary Month, we talked about that LAS week, but
in National Peanut Month, National Nutrition Nutrition Month. You're a
big guy about nutrition.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, I like to stay healthy, so we can hang
out in good form together for many years.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
It's kind of ironic because I'm not one to stay healthy,
so you're always badgering me to do better and it
makes a dent. But it's you know, a lot of
years of bad habits.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
That is ironic. And most of our behavior together is
not conducive to good nutrition.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
That is true. Yeah, I'm a bad influence on you.
I think I am. Anyway, March the week of March
fourteen to twenty, Girl Scout Week, we all like the
Girl Scouts and cookies are out there speaking of nutrition
and bad habits.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
I'm sure they'll be boosting the protein content on them now.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Yeah, I'm sure they will. It's also Introvert Awareness Week.
Did you know that you're kind of an introvert, not
a little bit, a little bit a little Yeah, So
I would seek I would say, seek out the introverts
in your life and heap upon them all the attention
they really don't want. It seems like a good plant.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, yeah, we would love that.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
Poisons Awareness Week, that's important, right right, yeah? Yeah. Plants, yeah,
and poisonous plants and all the garden pesticides they tend
to accumulate. I think in a lot of people's garages,
the ones that they no longer use or don't need,
I think proper disposals great idea. You want to figure

(11:28):
that out. I've cleaned out a garage before that had
a big bottle of.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
DDT in it.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
DDT. That's a bad one, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Worked oup, What.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Do you do? I think you talk to your fire
department about the best way to dispose of things like.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
That fire department, oftentimes your county has a disposal day.
There's you know, various routes depending on where you live.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Sometimes when I look at somebody's garage and it's full
of that stuff, I just say, you know, usually like
somebody has died and you're you're cleaning out their garage
and you see all these things. I think, you know,
if that garage were to catch on fire. That's exposing
firemen to so many things. You know, just get rid
of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Right, right, don't it laying around.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Now we'll go two days of March fourteenth is National
Learn about Butterfly's Day. I think that's a great one.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Butterflies are having their day. There's a lot of us
who want moths to have their day.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah, you're right, that's a great point. So let's make
it National lepidopter A Day.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
But if you want to learn about butterflies, look at
North American Butterfly Association dot org. They have a lot
of good information. March fourteenth is also right down your
story days. You should do that. Your story would be
pretty interesting. I should March fifteenth National Everything you Think
is Wrong Day.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
That's pretty cool, huh.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
I know. And it's followed by March sixteenth, National Everything
you Do Is Right Day. Oh boy, So that's a
big transition. One day you're thinking everything wrong, in the
next day you're doing everything right. I only I can't
wrap my brain around Aboutay Scott. Yeah, Tuesday's March seventeenth
National or Saint Patrick's Day, and National Corn Beef with

(13:11):
Cabbage Day.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
That seems appropriate, big holiday with my wife and family.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Here's the one I really like. March eighteenth, National National
Awkward Moments Day. How well yeah, yeah, well huh are
you gonna say something? Well, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
I've been there before, Scott. I think you have.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Too oh many, many, many times. March nineteenth, National Backyard Day.
That's a good one for gardeners.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah. It's also National's National Let's Laugh Day, and I'm
thinking maybe you get out there and laugh at your
backyard rather than.

Speaker 2 (13:47):
You can hire a laughing coach. You can if you
have a hard time with that. M It's just like
in the Yellow Pages. Yeah, I think so. Maybe the internet.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Maybe the internet these days. March twentieth, Friday, Stave Spring. Yes,
that's cool. It's also a National Proposal Day. That seems,
you know, like it's a line there, what.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Are you proposing?

Speaker 1 (14:11):
I'm thinking people you know, proposing for marriage. Oh, which
which is cool because it's like April Fools Days right
around the corner. So if you have your regrets, if
you think it might have been a bad idea, you
can come back a week or so later.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
You're always thinking to have Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
And hey, I was just full and yeah, that could
be big, big trouble. I guess I want to circle
back to National Peanut Peanut Month because there's a lot
of history to peanuts, and I know you know a
lot about peanuts, So tell us.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Well, I know a little about peanuts. But well, first
of all, I eat a lot of peanut butter. It's
a staple, it's a legom, it's in the bean family.
And the other reason I like peanuts is because of
George Washington Carver. You know, he is an early nineteen hundred,
late eighteen hundreds scientists agronomist who has written many great

(15:05):
bulletins on gardening, and he promoted peanuts to cotton farmers
to add nitrogen to the soil because cotton is very
depletes the soil of many things. And people were just
grown cotton crop after cotton crop.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
And that's pretty cool because where you can grow cotton
is also precisely where the weather and the soil conditions
are really good for peanuts.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right right right right in the southeast. And one of
the unusual things about peanuts is they bloom above ground.
You'll see the little yellowish orange blossom, pea like blossom,
and then they form this peg that goes down to
the ground and it roots in and that's where the peanut.
The peanut grows underground after starting above ground.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
And there's many different products that are made for peanuts.
I hear they're really good, excellent nutrition, very high environment,
E and B six magnesium iron zine. Have you ever
heard that They they help you absorb other foods and
nutrition from other foods.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
Well some of the oil based phito chemicals and vitamins.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
You know, it's good to have a good amount of
fat in your system, so they say.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
And you know, I've also heard that peanuts were brought
into the United States by slaves or slave traders who
who brought it up, you know, during that time, and
that a lot of uh, you know, the idea of
eating peanuts came from that culture. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Interesting since it is a South American native plant, that
made it South American, Yeah, And it made its way.
It eventually got to West Africa via Europeans, I think,
and then it came back to the States and.

Speaker 1 (16:52):
And then George Worth Washington Carver found it and turned
it into something that's right, that's good.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Georgia Georgia's are biggest producer of peanuts.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Have you ever tried to grow here?

Speaker 2 (17:03):
I've grown a plant here and there.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
Yet any luck at all.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
It's an easy plant. You just need a long season.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, which if you plant it right, we can do.
Oh yeah, that's very easy. Yeah. But pretty much the
entire south you probably, like anywhere from Zone six south,
I would think that you can.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, and apparently it prefers slightly acidic soil.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, and it's good to grow them in a sandy soil.
It's easy to harvest. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
And then you know when the plants start to yellow,
that's when that's your signal to go ahead. Yeah. All right.
When we come back, we'll have Diane Blaze it come
from the National Gardening Bureau talk about their work. You're
listening to Let's Garden with Scott Berline. We'll be back
in just a few You are listening to Let's Garden

(17:52):
with Scott Berline. That's me. I'm here with Mark Wessel
from Gardens Alive. Mark. Spring is starting to have spring
is happening. It's all out there. It's going on really
fast as it usually does, creaming into season. What plants
are out there that you're you're really enjoying right now.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
There's a group of plants I'm totally loving. They're kind
of unrelated, but they bloom together. I crave, you know, color.
I like the plant ultra early thing. So you know,
you pulled up my drive and saw the crocus and
snowdrops and winter act night. I love them all together.
They depending on the year, they can start blooming late January.

(18:34):
This year it was late February then and explode it
with this abnormally warm temperature. And I have them decided
on different exposures, so it kind of extends the bloom.
But I just I have them along my drive and
they're about eye level, and I just love just walking
up and down the drive, just gazing at all these

(18:54):
beautiful flowers. I like them in mass. Snowdrops are They're
all easy. The one croke I really focus on for
early is the Tommy crocus Thomas sense and against That's
why I don't ever want to pronounce.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
That Tomas any whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So the kind of lighter, lilacky pink
colored one, it just freely receeds everywhere. And then there's
other great darker colored like bars, purple and ruby giant.
So I love the Tommy crocuses and there. I have
several species of snowdrops that extend the season, and then

(19:33):
of course the winter act night is almost weedy.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, you know you mentioned you know, you have them
at eye level pulling up your driveway, and that's worth mentioning.
People always think of the minor bulbs. You're looking down
on them, right, But if you could put them on
a slope or up a little bit higher so they're
easier to see, it really just makes it a lot better. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
And also for hellibores, the same same thing, especially with
the you know, those nodding flowers.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
It's good to be able to look up into them exactly. Yeah.
Well you had some of those growing along your drive too.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Oh yeah, yeah, lots of hellebores on the other side
of the driveway there. And one other plant is the
hardy cyclemen that I'm getting into. I don't have many,
but they really add a different color and texture and
nice foliage.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
I really like the foliage on the Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
Yeah, they're beauties.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
I keep I have some or had some. Uh. And
I was telling you earlier. I think, you know, because
they go dormant during the season that I forget they're there,
and I always plant on top of them. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, and they need they don't they need to open
they don't like a bunch of taller perennials around them,
right yeah, so yeah, and good decent drainage.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Oh you know the red maples, silver maples you said,
are bloom and now the reds have got to be right.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Around them, I would imagine.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And people undervalue or don't think of maples
for flowers, but that is actually a pretty good flower
if you're looking for it.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, you know, maples are subtle, even the Norway, the
dreaded Norway maple that some people don't like because of
its possible invasiveness. Well, when those catkins are hanging down
that lime green, you just it's just a beautiful color.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yeah. I liked the flowers on the snake barks, which
are unusual but very different for maples, right. Yeah. And
a cool thing about both silver and red maples is there,
even though they're wind pollinated flowers, the bees can feed
on the pollen. Yeah, and it's a very important food

(21:40):
for them for their early forages.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
It is, and it's very abundant, I mean, you know
how Yeah, silver maples. Maples are so prolific.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yes, indeed. You know, one of the things I think
I mentioned last week, but one that I really really
want to stress is this is a cool time of
year to get out and look at the little parts
of big plants. So look at the flowers on the
look at the flowers on oaks when they start to
come out because they are really cool. And some of

(22:12):
the other big trees opening buds. There's a lot going
on if you're willing to get out in the garden
and look up.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Close right, And you know that's a good thing in
general to do, to look close at everything. It's astounding.
Even a fly looks pretty cool if you look some close.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Some do. That's a funny thing we've we've been learning,
you know, as we do more with with pollinators, is
that flies are such a big group of insects and
a lot of them are great pollinators and also predators
of insect insect pests. And you know, people think of
flies as house flies, and but some of these are

(22:51):
really cool looking insects and extremely beneficial.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, I took this why people think some of or geeky.
I took this weekend bristle fly. It's just this particular
group of flies. This weekend study of bristleflies and looking
at those through magnification is quite scary.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, and that is pretty geeky.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Mark, Well, I'm a geek.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
What else is catching your eye right now? Oh?

Speaker 2 (23:19):
Just this morning I was looking out the window at
our pulmon areas. Oh, you know, there's many new varieties,
the classic old ones. I love them all. They're just
tough plants, nice foliage. Some you know, you can get
straight green or you have stripes or silver spots and pinks,
pink flowers, blue flowers, just brilliant blue flowers, bloom really early.

(23:43):
They're on the verge of blooming right now.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
One of the best early spring plants. It's a great
one every way. Yeah. Yeah, that reminds me of Seruma,
which has no common name, Saruma, Henry I. It's out there,
but you have to look for it. But one of
my favorite perennials, absolute favorites. It comes out of the ground.
Now that's not starting yet, but it will. It comes
out of the ground, I think with blooms chess as

(24:09):
it emerges, they're there already, and then of course the
plant sort of almost shrubs up in the high really
good form, holds it all year, and just a long
series season of blue on that one.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, that's interesting. I appreciated that in many gardens, including yours,
but I've never had the it's not in mind, so
I've not seen it blooming. But given the nature of
that group of plants, I can understand they do bloom early.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, very early, very early. So a group of plants
that I've been thinking about lately and never thought about
before are violas and pansies, And that's primarily because I've
never done early or late season containers. I don't do
containers much at all. I'm getting more into it, but

(24:54):
those are primarily plants that you use for spring and
fall containers. But man, I'll tell you what, every time
I see those, I am just blown away by the
beauty of those flowers, the colors, the form of the flowers.
They're so amazing.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
They are amazing. They are beautiful flowers. I'm particularly fond
of the viola's, and if you have a good spring man,
you could, boy, you get a long bloom season out
of them. Sometimes if it gets crazy hot too early,
that shuts them down early. But they're a great, great
group of plants.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
You know, I did a little bit of a deep
dive on on viola's and pansies, and I was shocked
to discover that the common uh violet that you see
in your in your lawn, Violas soria, is a native plant.
I assumed it was right.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
It doesn't act like a so called native, but certainly
made its home in our our yards.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Apparently a good host plant for fritile areas and some
of the moths.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, yeah, I don't mind it in the yard.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Well I don't either.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
I don't have as much grass as most people, No,
very little, a lot of Even where grass grows, it's
more wheats that I don't want to call them weeds. Yeah, yeah,
my neighbors would call them weeds.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, my neighbors would too. But you know, it's a
green lawn and I'm fine with it. So I found
out pansies, Now, these are the ones most likely to
be found in containers and the great big flowers that
you find at the garden centers. Those are hybrids that
sort of happened in the early nineteenth century. Came out

(26:33):
of Viola tricolor and some hybrid hybridizing with Viola lutilla
and altaika, but all together these are lumped into Viola
X with trachyana. So that's the Latin. If you're out
there buying pansies and you want to like not impress
the garden center employee, but what you know, the development

(26:58):
of these plants are for the purposes that they serve
and containers is pretty phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
It is, Scott. You know, Pansy's good enough for me
when it comes to the big ones. I don't get
too wrapped up in all that hybrid stuff. But yeah, great,
great performers, and I love them late. But you know,
I always want to start my own, you know, for
a fall crop, but I never get around to it.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Well, apparently they're easy from seas most people do it.
I'll tell you what I think. We need to take
a break, Mark, and when we come back, I think
we're going to talk about a few chores we missed
earlier on. So we'll be back in just a few minutes.
You're listening to Let's Garden with Scott Berlin. We're back.
You are listening to Let's Garden with Scott Berlin. I'm
in the studio with Mark Wessel, my good friend who

(27:48):
works at gardens alive. And we had talked on the
phone a bit about some things that we're working on,
some chores that we didn't mention earlier. Let's get back
to them. These tasks, I say, we you know, things
we should have done last week. You were working on
your on your water garden. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Every every time this time of year, it's time to
clean out the garden. And when I say clean out,
I just scoop out a lot of the dead leaves
that have fallen into the pond, and you know, they
break down and create all that muck along with the
fish detritus and all the organic matter that goes in.
But what you don't want to do is empty your

(28:28):
pond and scrub it clean because you want to leave
some of that muck because it's part of the natural
ecosystem of the pond.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Uh biology that Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, back in it was during the beginning of COVID.
It was a year much like this really warm year.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Is that where COVID came from from your water? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, it was from that wet, wet farm in my
water garden, right right. So, Uh, it was a warm day,
like it was crazy warm like we have now, and
you know, I don't think our names can see us.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
So I stripped.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Down to my underwear top. Yeah, well, let's not get
into that, okay. And so I'm on the edge of
the water garden. I step in and I feel this
searing pain in my foot and I know exactly what happened.
I stepped on a ball canning jar cork jar that
I had some flowers over the previous summer that were

(29:23):
on the edge of the garden. They fell in and
uh uh, So I my foot was cut up really bad.
So I get out and full of bacteria. Yeah, yeah,
that's good thing. It's like letting your dog lick the wound.
You know, that's fine. So I'm like, oh crap, because
my my wife, she's not the best with blood, and

(29:45):
I just I, well, maybe a little I consider fainting sympathy.
So I yelled into her. I'm like, prepare yourself, there's
blood and uh and we got all. I got close
back on and went to the emergency room and it
was when you know, they had it segregated. COVID people

(30:06):
went this way, oh yeah, and you know other things
went this way, and they were really thrilled to have
some non COVID thing. They were actually to stitch up
my foot.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
I'm glad you were able to provide that, you know,
that change for them, you know, yeah, yeah, that was
a hard time for medical people and to give them
something positive, something different to work on is yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
And you know you talked about the bacteria, but it
healed incredibly fast.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Probably because of the bacteria. Yeah, you never know, right,
So I got out this weekend and uh and started
doing some clean up. You know, our fall came hard,
winter came fast, and it just stayed. So I thought
I had a good jump on all the leaf removal,

(30:58):
or in my case, I don't. Actually no leaves leave
my property. They either go in the compost heat, but
more often than not, I actually, you know, blow them
all into the lawn, chop them up with the mower,
and they can either stay in the lawn if there's
not too many, but if there are, I blow them
back into the beds and so that usually works pretty good.

(31:21):
They don't matt down so bad that way, They work
into the soil pretty good and create nice organic matter
for the plants. But you know, I did those late
leaves I never got to so, especially the ginko in
my backyard and my neighbor's pinoak, which blue leaves in

(31:42):
over a prolonged period of time. Now, the oak leaves
are kind of messy, but they're not a lot of
They don't do a lot of harm, and we're easy
to still chop up with the mower that when I
got out there this weekend. But man, those ginko leaves
they matted down, and they madded down on hard. I'm
talking at least an inch some cases three inches of

(32:04):
matted down leaves on top of my beds, and that
isn't good. You know, people talk about leaving the leaves,
but when you have leaves matted down like that, that's
creating total anaerobic conditions. And the plants underneath were suffering.
When I rolled back those leaves, I saw several things,

(32:24):
including mostly alliums, that were starting to emerge but couldn't
push through. And we're getting all curly and blanched. And
I think it was really lucky I got on it
just when I did, because I don't think some of
that would have lived or recovered.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, in general, I don't worry about leaves too much.
I like to get them out of the more intimate
areas right around the house just for looks. But you know,
usually the perennial beds and I can all devour them eventually.
But ginko are kind of special. They're so flat and
the structure and they lay one on top of another.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
There's no yah shingles, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Maple leaves
can be like that too, a lot of them.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Yeah, and they're prolific leaf producers.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah. Prolific is is you know, putting it lightly. You know,
you can still get out there and prune. You know.
The other thing that occurred to me when I was
out there is like I had this intense feeling of
being late, of urgency, of having so much to do.
And it's true my garden was somewhat neglected, but it's

(33:31):
only it's only mid March. We're really not late. It
just felt like that because the weather was nice and
there is a lot to do, but we still have
you know, what is it a month and a half
to almost two months maybe till Mother's Day? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
That's the trouble with these warm spells. They get you
all anxious. We don't need to be any more anxious
than we are anxious.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, yeah, you know, you think, oh, I'm so anxious,
I'm so busy as everything is, Like, I'm gonna go
in the garden and relax and feel good and you know,
and you get out there and you're like, oh my god,
I have this to do, that to do. But you
can stretch it out. You got to stay with it.
You don't want to really get behind. But you're gonna

(34:16):
have some fun out there. You know. It's like that
chill pilly there, take that chill pill yeah, yeah, and
kind of relax and say, you know what I'm doing,
I'm gardening. I shouldn't I shouldn't be spassing out.

Speaker 2 (34:27):
That's right. Gardens are for enjoyment.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Exactly. That's what they're for. What else you've been doing
out in the yard.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Just finish pruning a couple of peach trees in my
community garden and that was fun. I find pruning for
the trees very rewarding pruning in general. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and I will I needed to get them prune so
I could then do the control for the peach leaf curl.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Oh yeah, that's yeah. I hit that spring schedule around.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Right right, because once they start growing, you missed your window.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Now you were you were talking a little bit about
some things that you were thinking about with boxwoods.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Well, with the you know, with the new moth, the
boxwood tree moth. I'm we have some big boxwoods and
some are critical, but you know we're rethinking our whole
boxwood entirely.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Yeah, but I'm going to prune a lot of them
back really hard and just so they're easier to spray.
I mean, I'm not talking trim and I'm talking pruning down.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
Down to three or four inches. Yeah, big branches, now,
you're a big birder. What's happening with birds this time
of year?

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Well, you know, early migrants are starting to move through
Phoebe's Tohees tree swallows. Yeah, the early migrants are moving through.
Things are picking up. There's some courtship displays going on
with hawks and whatnot.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
You know, I miss all the courtship displays. I wouldn't
know it if I were looking at it. I should.
I should learn from you a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Yeah, yeah, well it's I'm a wealth of information. Scott
should hang out with me, I know, I.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Try to, but you you don't answer my phone calls.
You yea. All the thing hurts my feelings.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Sometimes you're sensitive.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
What can we do for birds in our yards that
are migrating through.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Just good habitat, that's one of the best things. Yeah,
what about bird feeders. I like bird feeders. It's one
of my enjoyments. Keep them clean though, right, yes, good
to disinfect them every time a year to do right.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Now, Yeah, well, I'll tell you what. We'll go ahead
and take a break and we'll talk some more when
we get back. Right to let's guarden with Scott Burline.
We'll be back in just a couple of minutes.