Little Shop of Horticulture

Scary plants in your landscape - A Gardening Simplified Preview. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And this is West Michigan's Morning News Steve, Kelly, Brett, Kata,
Lawrence Smith. There he is Rick Weist with Gardening Simplified.
As we get ready for the show tomorrow at nine o'clock,
we have a preview, Rick, thanks for doing this as always, Hey,
good morning, as a preview and thought starter little shop
of horticulture. And I'm guessing you're talking about those things

(00:23):
that are attempting to get inside that usually live outside.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Well, that's part of it. I mean, isn't it amazing
how a fly can get into your house through the
smallest of openings, but then once it's inside can't find
its way out. Even if you blew a four foot
hole in the wall, it can't seem to find its
way out. It's just amazing. And of course it's that
time of year, yes, when we have insects that work

(00:49):
their way into the house, but more so Stacey, Adrianna
and I on tomorrow's show, we're going to talk about
plants that are scary in your landscape. Let me give
you an example. In our West Michigan landscapes, we have
a weed called dotter. It's a parasitic vine, so the
seeds germinate in the soil, it grows a little bit,

(01:12):
and then once it's reached about one foot tall, it
will look for a place to penetrate its hostoria, which
basically sucks the life out of a plant, creates these
threads throughout the plant that are yellow and orange. It's
called dotter, and it's a parasitic weed. And we have

(01:35):
that in West Michigan, more so down to the south,
but we do see it from time to time. So
weeds like dotter or bind weed, all of these scary
plants in our landscapes is what we'll cover on Little
Shop of Horticulture tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Hey, Rick, speaking of scary plants, are there plants that
maybe attract the less than desirable insect or wildlife to
yours landsat?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh yeah, no question about it. I mean, you know,
all of us in West Michigan in Kent County deal
with plant material that brings in either deer or rabbits
big time. And yes, there are plants that will attract
certain types of insects. For example, when I'm out and about,

(02:23):
I'll see tree of Heaven. It's this nasty, weedy tree
that you'll see growing in the ditches or woodland areas
or wherever it may be. It's a huge attractive for
spotted lantern fly. And spotted lantern fly hasn't made it
to West Michigan necessarily yet, but when it does, you're

(02:45):
going to know it in summer, Lauren, because you'll be
sitting out on the patio. It's a big bug. It'll
be crawling right up your neck. Intros look it up,
Google it, or use the search engine of your choice.
Spotted lantern fly nasty. We'll talk about that tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
Too, Rick. My question to wrap things up is the
fact of we're one week from November. Steve just saw
the photo by the way, one week from November tomorrow. Obviously,
first and with all the rain we've gotten and now
the drop in temperature. You always talk about soil temperature
and where we're at. Have we gotten out of that

(03:23):
kind of drought.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Stage, Well, we're close to it. Boy, that rain was
super helpful. So we're busy planting in the landscape. We're
busy moving plants. We've got plenty of time to do
that yet now and you're right, Brett, soil is warm,
air temperature is cool. Great time to relocate some plants
if you need to.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
You will hear the program tomorrow, starting at nine o'clock.
Gardening Simplified on air. Dot Com is the website Rick
Weist always great stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
Thank you, thank you very much,