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Fall Is For Planting!
131 Plays2 years ago
In this episode of Hort Culture, we'll talk about why planting trees, shrubs and bulbs in the fall is a smart move. We'll also share some tips on how to choose the right plants, prepare the soil and care for your new additions. Tune in and learn how to make your garden more beautiful and resilient with fall planting.
Article: Fall is for Planting!
Publication: SPRING FLOWERING BULBS FOR KENTUCKY GARDENS
Questions/Comments/Feedback/Suggestions for Topics: hortculturepodcast@l.uky.edu
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Transcript
Introduction to Horticulture Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Horticulture, where a group of extension professionals and plant people talk about the business, production, and joy of planting seeds and helping them grow. Join us as we explore the culture of horticulture.
International Audience Engagement
00:00:18
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to an episode and welcome to our 14, I'm assuming 14 people who are in different countries. I don't know if we have more than one person in 14 different countries, but shout out to our international audience that we have learned that we have. There's at least one in all of those countries, including the US, at least one person.
00:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's exact. I wish we knew the states. We don't know. Do we know that? Can we find that? I know, not the states. We know the country statistics, but not the state. All right. If you are outside of Kentucky, find us on Instagram at Hort Culture Podcast and comment what state that you are in our post. How about that? Anyway, if you have a more specific geographical location you'd like to give us for where you're at in your own country,
00:01:02
Speaker
If you want to give us your own at personal address, just send us a check.
Audience Interaction and Gratitude
00:01:14
Speaker
That would be great. Thank you. Just the vital stats.
00:01:17
Speaker
We're happy that people out there listen and like to hear us talk about whatever it is we talk about. They love Brett's voice, his deep voice, his radio voice. I wouldn't say my voice is that deep. What's happening here?
00:01:38
Speaker
All of a sudden, we're all going octave. What do you mean, Alexis? It's fine. It's fine. I just assume every man when he enters the phone or answers the phone, his voice drops an octave.
00:01:53
Speaker
It depends on the stress level. Mine actually goes higher. It goes the other way. Yours does go higher. It does when you talk to me. So I guess that means I stress you out. We're resonating. It's a harmonic vibration.
Office Work and Winter Preparations
00:02:06
Speaker
Just slowly over the podcast, voice gets higher.
00:02:09
Speaker
He's our friend Sean saying that he has his extension voice because long and kind of talking like this and then if somebody has a question like well the cultivars we I Have my customer server service voice that's for sure What's the difference? Hi, this is Alexis. How can I help you? Oh
00:02:30
Speaker
Oh. That's not the voice I get. Hey, what do you need? What do you need? What do you want? What? Yeah. What do you want? I'm talking like she answers when I call. I want it in bullet format. Do not give me full sentences, people. Because it's not a bad text. Have a good time. Yeah. I swear to God if this could have been in email. You were a new trick. Okay. All right. So what's going on right now in like extension office landia?
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah. It's October. What kind of stuff are you all doing? All the things. Getting ready for winter program. And you know, and I've had surprisingly a lot of disease questions here lately and it's late season disease questions, but I guess that may be a function of more people with protected ag or high tunnels, low tunnels. If you don't have powdery mildew, do you even grow things? I mean. No, or you're just trying to hide it. Yeah, my zinnias succumbed to that long ago.
00:03:25
Speaker
I've been doing, um, we just had a beginner farmer program, uh, last night. So I've really excited about that and how that's going. And then we've got a beekeeping series, uh, that's been going on. Yeah. So that's gonna continue on. And, and yeah, really this time of, this time of year is just kind of falling fall. Everything falls into place that you put into place because it's fall, right? That's why I think of it as auditing into place.
Kentucky Events and Local Updates
00:04:05
Speaker
This is a point truly a serious point in the future we're gonna try to do a better job of keeping particularly folks in Kentucky up to date I think we talked about that demo guys
00:04:15
Speaker
as far as like statewide or regional events coming up because there's so many going on all around the state and I for one have to admit that on this platform, this podcast, I have not been good about bringing up like all of these awesome programs that I know that's going on both within our organization and other organizations that we work closely with. There's always something great going on
00:04:38
Speaker
And that's a common question I get at the office because people know when winter comes on that we do a lot of winter series programs and into early spring. I mean, that's particularly heavy time for programming. So we're going to try to do a little bit more of that, I think, in the future to kind of keep the listeners up to date, particularly those listeners that are a little bit closer and a little bit more local here in Kentucky.
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of like November through March, I would say is kind of like conference season. And some of those are online. Um, some of those are, you know, in person. And so we'll try and keep you updated, um, really quick. I've got some pulled up right here and these are all zoom. Uh, so if you're interested in them, um, reach out to us and we'll send you a
Horticulture Webinars and Resources
00:05:21
Speaker
link to them. But we have.
00:05:23
Speaker
Something called horticulture webinar Wednesdays and they're really short like less than 30 minutes usually October 18th and these are all at 12 30 East PM Eastern Standard Time and so October 18th is tree ID in the winter and so And then October with your buds October 25th is holiday cactus. So if you have Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter cactus
00:05:53
Speaker
Those are some coming up and then there is one in November and hold on let me open my calendar. These are all the horticulture webinar Wednesdays. And these are all open correct? Yeah those are open to anybody is anywhere. It's an open link and you just need to follow it and then there is one November 6th which is our
00:06:17
Speaker
webinar for our cut flower short courses and we're going to have Lindsey Beal with Wild Root Flower Company in Ohio and she's going to be talking about kind of budgeting with an accounting for flower farms, so very flower farm specific.
00:06:33
Speaker
So if that's something that you want to do, again, that's free to sign up. It doesn't matter where in the world you are, but that is 630 Eastern Standard Time. So if you are interested in any of that, reach out to us and we will get you a link to get signed up for free on those.
00:06:49
Speaker
And the cut flower short course and some of the other trainings we've done in the past, I say we, other people besides me, but we're all a team, especially when I get a piece of the credit. Or no credit at all. They're available on the CCD, the Center for Crop Diversification YouTube channel, so our handle everywhere for that.
00:07:11
Speaker
first the ccd is at ccd uky so instagram facebook and then also on uh on youtube we have a couple of the the cut flower short courses that are uh you know up in the tens of thousands of views uh since they've been posted very popular
00:07:27
Speaker
sharing perspectives from famous people in that niche world of, I find that myself, I'm like, in the bonsai world, there's like these celebrities and it's like, you know, 8,000 total people know who they are in the world, but- But they are really- But it will be Tom Graham's. Yeah, exactly. The focus is intense on those people. Exactly right. Yes.
00:07:51
Speaker
Awesome. Well, what we're going to get into, speaking of flowers and fall things and the aliens and all that and celebrities, obviously, talking about some fall planting.
Benefits of Fall Planting
00:08:01
Speaker
So we've kind of already hit on this really specifically with talking about fall cover crops, but we've also talked about like garlic as a fall planted crop. So today we're kind of leaning in more to the ornamental side.
00:08:13
Speaker
spring flowering bulbs that you're going to plant right now, trees and shrubs. Just overall, this idea that fall is a planting time at least in the state of Kentucky and a lot of people that are in this kind of zone six, zone seven
00:08:27
Speaker
area of the USDA planting chart. For most of us, it's going to be that. Now, if you're much more north than us, spring is definitely our ideal time, except for, again, those bulbs and things. But here, we like to tell people to plant their trees and their woody perennial shrubs, things like that in the fall. So that always surprises people, I think, because spring just seems like an obvious time to be planting.
00:08:52
Speaker
I've always wondered why, and particularly in our area, why there's not more deciduous trees available at, you know, the box store nurseries in the fall. But that's typically when you can get some really good deals because they're clearing inventory, I think, to make room for Christmas decorations. Oh, I'm going to the box stores after this. It's a great time to pick up sales and put those in the ground at a great time of the year.
00:09:14
Speaker
So I mean, I love it, but I'm just surprised that there's no, I guess more wide availability of some of these, uh, this plant stocks at the time of year when they should go on the ground, there's more available in the spring. Yeah, it is kind of counterintuitive or strange just because like, I think the biggest fruit tree planting I'd ever been a part of was like, somebody had gone to a couple of big box stores and basically they were clearing everything out. So they got like a great deal, but it all just, I mean, it's when they were supposed to be planted anyway, it was kind of perfect.
00:09:45
Speaker
Yeah and here folks are trying to get rid of inventory instead of providing a water selection inventory. Yeah usually I have found that the local nurseries you know not the big box stores but the local nurseries have been doing a better job. I was at a local nursery the other day and they had just got a fresh shipment of
00:10:04
Speaker
woody shrubs and small like container sized trees in for this purpose. And I was like, thank you for doing that. So we're pushing that. And for those of you who are like, why do I want to plant and fall? It seems so counterintuitive. So for your trees, your shrubs, at least in our area, we, we want them to settle in and be able to put in roots while the soil is cool, while we're getting hopefully some precipitation. And then when we get those spring rains, you know, leading us into summer,
00:10:33
Speaker
They can really get established before the heat and the drought of summer hits. They roots, you know, we always say trees kind of go dormant, right? Our deciduous trees at least are going dormant, but they're not, not working, right? They're just not, they don't have above ground stuff. So they store a lot of energy throughout the season by photosynthesizing. They drop those leaves and then they push that energy out into root development and doing a lot of those things underground.
00:11:00
Speaker
at a much slower rate than they would if it was warm, but they are still working at that time. Yeah. Hopefully during the fall, I mean, you mentioned it is, hopefully they have a more available moisture to take advantage of. Now that's not always the case. Sometimes we go through extended dry spells in the fall and I tell people when they're seeding lawns or planting trees, you have to take that into account. It's more for like, I mean, we're towards the end of the lawn seeding.
00:11:26
Speaker
Window now, but it matters more for like things like that than it does for trees trees typically you can put in the ground Mulch heavy and just just remember that if we go through a really long period in the winter time that it may be Necessary to water even a deciduous tree especially evergreens if you decide to do that it's not my favorite time in the fall to do an evergreen in plant planted and
00:11:49
Speaker
But just remember that it may take some water in the fall even though the plant is not a lot going on with the plant like Alexa said. Don't forget to water if you go through like four to six weeks of just absolute drought. That plant as long as the ground is not frozen and you can get your water hose out. I know it's not very convenient and very rarely I've ever seen homeowners do that.
00:12:11
Speaker
you know, go out when it's kind of chilly out, 30s and 40s, particularly like 40 degree days is a good day to kind of go out and water if your tree's not gotten any water. Just don't forget about that and do mulch, you know, a good, you know, two to four inches of mulch on that tree. I think I've said this before, but something I've come across in my study of trees is that there are some people who actually think of conceptually think of
00:12:36
Speaker
the season, the perennial season in particular, but in general, starting in the fall because it's the point where seeds are produced. It's the point where if you think about you're gonna go on a trip, well, does the trip begin when you get there and have fun or does the trip sort of start when you're packing and preparing and gathering all the things you're gonna need for that trip to be successful where a lot of that process of storage both within the vascular tissue and within the roots happens in the fall for these plants. And Alexis, you were talking about that
00:13:06
Speaker
We think of, because we see the above ground stuff, this big flush out of leaves and stuff, and then the pulling back of leaves. In reality, if you could kind of see up and, you know,
00:13:18
Speaker
below ground and above ground, it's almost like this push and pull bellows kind of thing where it's taking energy from the roots to build those leaves, photosynthesizing and putting the energy back. And so it's this kind of flow back and forth. And so fall is a really cool time of year. And I know for me, I feel like almost
00:13:36
Speaker
more of a birth rebirth feeling in the fall than I do in the spring. Yeah, no, I completely agree. For me, like my brain is, fall is the beginning of my season. I think I've said that before, but like even, and I mean, I do a lot of like, quote unquote, cool flowers. I mean, they're cool, but they're also cold weather flowers that they're not going to bloom until May.
00:13:59
Speaker
But and then all like I do big plantings in the fall, you know, perennials, all that kind of stuff. So bulbs, corns, tubers, all that jazz, which we could talk about. So even though I do put a lot of plants in, you know, around Mother's Day, I feel like my season really begins because I'm getting my seeds and I'm going to be starting them. I'm getting everything prepped.
00:14:19
Speaker
fall is to me a beginning of the season. And it's kind of nice because it's almost like you're starting with a blank slate and in fall, which is very like exciting to me. And I can let everything go. That sucked that I didn't do well at take good notes on what I did do well or whatever, and then start fresh. And that's what fall feels like to me. And it's very invigorating and it's not hot as hell outside. So it's just like very invigorating.
00:14:46
Speaker
And I'm a strange one. I love like landscape bed cleanup when I'm blowing out all of the refuse. And if I'm swapping mulch, which I don't do, but every three or four years, I try not to let the mulch build up. But just when I'm blowing out beds and I've already, by this time of year, I'm already done with all of my pruning, my late summer pruning, because I don't want to de-harden the plants this late in the season. But I enjoy doing all of that stuff. I mean, when I go to like, you know,
00:15:12
Speaker
clean up him or callus or day lilies and all that stuff. I just have always enjoyed that. And that's a flip time for me where I'm just kind of cleaning up, putting to bed, getting ready for spring. But now I say all of that. But one thing I'm never good at, I guess because I don't plan far enough ahead in my own home landscape is I'm just not good at putting in the spring. I always forget to put in the spring flowering bulbs now.
00:15:36
Speaker
I know, and I love mass plantings, just big mounds of beautiful flowers, but I'm terrible. So many bulbs. And like yesterday, and they're coming more across. Oh my gosh, my arms are flailing. I'm so excited. How many bulbs? What'd you get? Well, many pounds of bulbs. Remember, this is like my third season of putting in bulbs. So it's not nearly as many as I bought like the first two years, but yesterday I got a hundred narcissists.
00:16:03
Speaker
and some fritillaria like the big fancy fritillaria if you've never okay listen if you don't know what fritillaria is i want you to look at your phone that you're probably listening to this on and i want you to google it there are so many different kinds i'm amazed that they're all called fritillaria because they look so different they're super cool they're a little bit more expensive but they're fun so anyways i got some of those i got
00:16:24
Speaker
a hundred of a daffodil that I didn't have. And then I've got about a hundred peonies coming in and amaryllis. Just curious. Wild, wild tulips. The botanical tulips. Do you do anything with those? I think 1500 tulips come in, which is like tulips or the other type of tulip. I'm just curious. I'm starting to see some wild tulips or what's called botanical tulips show up now. I've always loved those.
00:16:52
Speaker
I don't think I know what those are. Look them up. They're amazing. The Latin is Dua Lipa. Oh, yeah. There you go. I like it. I like it. It's got a dubstep kind of beat to it. But no, no, I thought that you would be into those. And they went out of style for a long time, but they're great to put in this time of year too. Oh, you're talking like an old fashioned tulip. That's what I call it. I don't know why they're called botanical tulips, but they're called stools.
00:17:19
Speaker
Not one of your newfangled tulips. Not one of your fancy cultivars, your cultivated varieties of tulips. Parrots and yeah. You've got a lot of fun stuff it sounds like, which I would expect from you, Alexis. You have lots of great stuff. What else, what else you were, you were expanding on your list before I derailed you with my wild tulip come? Peonies. It's a great time to plant peonies. If you have peonies, actually this week reminds me, I need to split some.
00:17:45
Speaker
So if you've got a peony that maybe has been dying out or just not blooming very well the past couple of years, Iris or another one, you can divide those this time of year, share that with your friends, move it around. It's a great time to do that, get you a nice shovel out there and just pop that baby across and you will freak out and it's okay, it'll be fine.
Planting Techniques for Spring Blooms
00:18:05
Speaker
So that's a you know that perennial planting and then I've got corms ranunculus and an enemy corms as well as just Snapdragons in general like plug cool weather annuals that are going in but it's a good time to be planting so if you really love spring flowers you like having that
00:18:29
Speaker
you know, hellebores, things like that in the spring when we're all kind of in need of color. Now is the time. Consider your zone for planting those Alexis. I have heard from now through like Thanksgiving. Is that right? So for, it depends on what it is. So something that's super, yeah, it depends on what it is. So something that's really cold hardy, which is going to be like your tulips, your narcissus, anything that'll essentially take a freeze.
00:18:55
Speaker
I mean, you can plant those until the ground is frozen. So sometimes that's like January, as long as they're kept cold because they need those cooling periods. Actually, I spent a lot of time yesterday learning about what individual species of tulips needed, how many cooling weeks and how many days to force bloom and all that kind of stuff.
00:19:14
Speaker
For some of your other things, your cool annuals, a lot of them don't want to freeze solid. Like they'll take cold temps if they've got some remay or some mulch maybe over some of these. Do you mulch any of those tenders?
00:19:29
Speaker
I'm growing in a high tunnel situation. Those two more tender things. Yeah. So it's a little bit different. If you've got, if you're planning them at home, uh, like an enemies or an unculus, you can plant those at home. You can do them in pots and put them in your garage. Uh, you can also plant them like in a landscape up against like a brick house or something. They usually will do okay. And then mulch would be good for those and just be aware that they're probably not going to show any signs of life until February.
00:19:57
Speaker
So Mark make some sort of like notation so that you know where they are and you don't weed them out and then you should get blooms probably mid to late April on those if they're just kind of plan it out and left to fend for themselves, which is a nice time of year. I guess we should back up for homeowners out there. I know commercial scenarios are a bit different.
00:20:20
Speaker
But for homeowners, maybe we could just take a second to talk about bed prep and the general soil conditions that are best for the fall planted bulbs. Because in their set of conditions where they're going to do better and you're going to ensure better success, I mean, what's your process when you're preparing an area for these things? Fertility, soil structure, drainage, everything. Well, like we talked about for garlic,
00:20:45
Speaker
drainage is key. Like water will rot your bulbs faster than anything else. And then as far as like nutrients go from a lot of these things, we're treating them more like annuals. So like tulips are an example. We, I really tell people act like they're an annual. If they come back and bloom the next year, cool. But if you want tulips from year to year, plan on planting new ones. And so just perfect beds go up to like three to four years, but that seems really rare.
00:21:14
Speaker
Yeah, and it depends on the kind of, so I think the ones you were talking about, those kind of old fashioned botanical ones do usually do better, but we tend to, in this zone that we're in, in Kentucky, not have the best of luck with them for carving.
00:21:30
Speaker
just because we don't get cold enough. Are you fertilizing when you are preparing beds, if it's a new bed for the fall plants? I don't do tulips. I don't do anything I'm going to treat as an annual because that bulb is a storage structure for nutrients. So everything pretty much it needs is right in there. As long as your pH isn't like really wonky one way or the other, if it's relatively close to neutral.
00:21:53
Speaker
Yeah, you'll be fine. And, but like daffodils, which is something that's going to come back that narcissists year after year, you're going to amend. Um, if you're doing, you know, an enemies or an unculus or any of those annuals that are, you know, really, really quick, uh, they do need some, some fertilizer and nutrients like a pre-plant like broadcast over an area, just like a general 10, 10, 10 for the homeowner. That would, a slow release is usually plenty.
00:22:20
Speaker
Okay. Get that soil test, you know, see how things are looking. Can you guys recommend or have you used personally like bone meal? I see that recommended a lot as a general nutrient source in the planting holes sometimes, just depends on what you're doing. Yeah, bone meal is pretty safe to use. It's not going to burn, um, like you would something like a, even Osmocote, I won't like put right in the hole because it will, it can burn, um, anything like that. And I also get lots of questions on like depth.
00:22:47
Speaker
Doesn't that kind of depend on the, what you're putting in the ground? Like a tulip's going to be a little bit different, different than like a grape hyacinth. Rule of thumb kind of same with seeds is twice as deep as the bulb is tall. Um, so take like the maximum height of a bulb and twice as deep. Four to seven, four to eight inches, something like that. The bigger the bulb, the deeper you can go with it. Sounds like.
00:23:08
Speaker
Unless you're doing a little area of balls really as big as this picture. I'm going to look them up. Yeah. Some of them, I literally like just re like transplanted some, um, out of an area the other day. And I mean, it's a softball, like it's crazy. How deep are, is that when you're pulling that up, how deep are they in the ground? I'll do softballs deep. There you go. Those actually weren't pro weren't that full double. I'd say like they were.
00:23:34
Speaker
kind of just under the soil surface because that bulb is so big that like in order to get that basal plate which is where the roots are going to come out of it's the bottom of the bulb in order to get it deep enough that it's going to have plenty of you know
00:23:47
Speaker
soil to use, you don't necessarily have to plant that deep, but you certainly could and it would be fine. I just kind of like, I don't know, shove my soil knife down in there and I'm like, yeah, that's about right. And then pop it in. And you're, you're hoary hoary enough. Does it have the gradients on there? Or do you just kind of know, I know you know. Yeah. Yeah. And how about fertilizer? Uh, as far as in the spring, are you putting fertilizer a second?
00:24:12
Speaker
application on anything in the spring as growth begins. I've seen it done both ways. Yeah, I really don't. I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but my soil is pretty high in nutrient level and overdoing nitrogen can hurt your blooms. But yeah.
00:24:32
Speaker
It's hard with some of these to go wrong as long as you mentioned as long as the drainage is good. It's hard to go wrong. We're pretty fortunate in this area, particularly in the central part of the state with pretty fertile soils.
00:24:43
Speaker
So yeah, it seems like they have a pretty good tolerance as long as your pH, like you said, is not anything crazy high or low. So as far as from a homeowner perspective on how I've done stuff in the past, something that I've done, you know, I don't necessarily do a big block of all one type of plant. So there's not necessarily straight rows or that kind of thing. I'll prep a big kind of, I don't know, four by four or four by eight area.
00:25:12
Speaker
and kind of dig it out more or less of the depth that I'm working with and then arrange a bunch of different bulbs in it to kind of lay out what it's going to look like, where I want, you know, taller stuff and pay attention to the height of the bloom pattern and stuff like that. And then fill the whole thing back in and kind of plant it that way as just a way of, if I knew exactly where I wanted things to go, I could just dig a hole and put it in there, but that allows me a little bit of a reconfiguring opportunity.
00:25:39
Speaker
And I've seen some pretty interesting planning techniques by professionals and I think it was the Cincinnati Botanical Gardens, but they double stack their bulbs. The larger bulbs go eight inches. The more shallow bulbs, and they knew the bloom period, of course, they were stacked on top of
00:25:57
Speaker
at four inch depth on top of the ones that they had just planted with phenomenal results and it was so beautiful. Lasagna bulbs. Yeah. I mean, and I was so into that when I saw that bloom and then they described the technique and I thought that was really cool. So I am anxious to try that sometime probably this fall. I'm going to see what I can, I think they call it double stacking, but what did you call it, Lexus? I call it like lasagna bulbs. Okay. Because I've seen it done. Have you tried that? I'm just real curious about that method. I've never done that.
00:26:26
Speaker
a lot of cut flower growers who are trying to extend their season into winter. And so one way they're doing that is with these lasagna containers of bulb gardens. And so you plant your biggest bulb, which is usually, in this case, is often your latest blooming bulb in the bottom of the pot. And then you go up a couple inches and you plant the next smallest bulb, which, so it's like tulips are in the bottom. Then you'll do daffodils.
00:26:53
Speaker
Then you'll go up and do hyacinths, and then you've got muscari, which is grape hyacinth on top. And you just kind of stagger who's on top of who so nobody's really pushing on anyone. And it blooms. It's the coolest thing to see a full garden in a container. Yeah. And so that's in containers also, is what you're saying. Yeah, that's really cool. I guess the next question I have, I get a lot on
00:27:19
Speaker
fall planted bulbs. When you fast forward that in your mind, as far as placement, let's think about landscape bed versus in your lawn area somewhere. And you guys probably know where I'm going with this. Aren't certain types of bulbs, aren't they better for if you're going to put things in a lawn area that are going to be perennial possibly? Like crocus or something? Yes. And some people, they wonder, they see crocus in a lawn and it does fairly well.
00:27:46
Speaker
So they apply that logic to the later growing bulbs and they don't do so well. Like naturalizing an area. Yeah. And it's in your mowing patterns more than anything. If you put your light growing bulbs that break dormancy light, what you're going to have to do is actually not mow those off if you want them to be perennials and act like perennials because you're mowing off the energy factory, the leaves. Just kind of keep that in mind. You're really early.
00:28:14
Speaker
plants like your crocuses tend to do better in scenarios like that because by the time you mow them, it's not going to have such a big impact on the plant, but you can't apply that logic to everything as far as placement of bulbs. Some bulbs, to me, just do better and should be kept in the landscape beds. And some can actually be affected. What else could have I seen out in lawns? I mean, I've seen little things that they're typically not plant like star Bethlehem, which is considered weed in some cases.
00:28:45
Speaker
Occasional daffodil. Yeah. Y'all seen some of those kind of mixed in, but they're, you know, they're hit and miss, I think. Yeah. And those, I try to mow around. I have some of those down by my little garden area and I try to mow around to at least let them make a little bit more energy because sometimes they get into my mowing season, but there's the smaller daffodils I've noticed they work better. They work more like a crocus. Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah, they're more of like, uh, I think they're like botanically more like a paper white, which is paper whites. Everybody thinks of them as Christmas and there are paper that are not hardy. Uh, but there are, they are a narcissist. What am I thinking? The glorious snow and the dwarf hours super early. Yeah.
00:29:27
Speaker
Would you call it glory of the snow? Yeah. I think that's Luca Jim. I don't know if I pronounced that right. It is. If there are people out there who are interested in our house, we have
00:29:43
Speaker
I would say 90% of what was once lawn is now not lawn. It's landscaping and other things. And I always get uncomfortable when people say that it makes them feel bad or negative or in any way about themselves, but there is something cool about doing that. But you should feel bad. Some people, well, yeah, I don't want anybody to feel ashamed. I have a lot of lawn. As a growing up Catholic, I can say that
00:30:07
Speaker
Shame doesn't always produce outcomes of action, just sort of stew in it. Not that we have a corner on the market, but we are very good at it. But if you are interested, you don't have to go, and we didn't, go wholesale one year you have lawn, the next year you have landscape, you can do it. I think of it as literally like biting big chunks out of the lawn.
00:30:33
Speaker
And so put in a little, and it kind of has, it has a cool effect over time because it creates these little like pads that expand outward and you can kind of redo them or you can let them rock. But one good way to do that is if you have some landscaping now that's not grass, add, you know, a little chunk on the outside of it, you know, a little circle or something or a square or whatever, you can put stones around it or whatever you want to do and put some bulbs in there. Let that go and mulch it heavily.
00:31:02
Speaker
Let that go for a year. You can decide if you want to add more bulbs or if you want to do something different. And then the next year, add another one. And I'm talking like three feet by three feet. If you really just want to go and you would be shocked how after a couple of seasons and you start liking it, that's exactly how we've done it is. You're trying to stick with like things that perennialize or come back year after year after year. Depends. Depends on what you like. So we have sections of ours that we do more annual. We have sections that are kind of a white wildflower seed bed that's been established. So there's.
00:31:32
Speaker
some biennials and other stuff that comes up and recedes. You've got like an herb section. And if you start from a place where you have pretty decent control over the weeds and expand outward from that and kind of just bite the weeds and the grass back over time, it's a way more enjoyable process, I'll say, than trying to just like convert way too much into weeds. And I mean, trying to turn way too much from sod into plants or whatever. But bulbs have always been
00:32:02
Speaker
Well, not just bulbs, some corms and some tubers as well have always been a part of our strategy in doing that. And I'd be curious, Alexis, if you could just give us a quick rundown of the differences between those things and maybe some examples, bulbs, corms and tumors and tubers.
Understanding Plant Storage Structures
00:32:18
Speaker
It's not a tuba.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, just because not that, you know, it's a little bit academic to some extent, but there's a practical aspect to all that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and you'll sound super smart when you talk to people.
00:32:37
Speaker
So a bulb is essentially like if you think about most of us have seen like a tulip bulb, but tulips, staphodils, hyacinths, those are all bulbs. A lot of the time they have a like a paper like covering that's going to be on them that you can remove. But I usually tell people don't like there's no need to. But if it comes off, it's not a big deal. And that bulb consists of the flower, like parts of the flower.
00:33:02
Speaker
and leaf leaves down in there. So a lot of time you can think kind of like an onion, right? Like an onion has those scales. Um, those are modified leaves. Uh, it's sort of kind of like that in a tulip. And so if you were to cut a tulip in half, you would see some of those like scales, which ended up being the leaves. And you're also going to see the pieces of the flower that are very, very immature at the time, but that you can tell that they are just an immature flower. So that's all talked down.
00:33:32
Speaker
into a bulb and then a corm is very similar. It's a storage, what's the word I'm looking for? Storage structure. Storage structure, thank you. Yeah.
00:33:43
Speaker
And so there are not visible rings when you cut into that one like you would with a bulb. And so a quorum would be something like a gladiolia, crocus, renunculus, anemones, all are quorums and they don't all look the same. So quorum is, I always feel like if it doesn't look like an obvious bulb, it's probably a quorum because they can kind of come in different shapes.
00:34:04
Speaker
And so they have, they're more of a storage structure and you're not going to see those same floral and leaf things down in there. Uh, and then a tuber is different from both of those, uh, caladiums are example of a tuber. And then of course a potato is, uh, and it is a modified root structure. And so, uh, you get shoots and stems that come out of that and then those are what form.
00:34:29
Speaker
your floral pieces. Dahlias are even some, they're a tuberous root, which is yet another different weird structure. And then you've got rhizomes and stolons, which is more like irises. And you jump into all of those, but most of the time when we talk about winter planted bulbs, we talk about corms and bulbs.
00:34:56
Speaker
And we kind of lump those all together. If you call a ranunculus a bulb, nobody's going to be mad. We're going to know that you don't listen to the podcast, but we're not going to be mad. Just a quick note, you can tell if the flower is immature, if it laughs when you say stamen and pistil. Yes. The sexual reproduction jokes. So did you touch on or maybe reinforce some of the... Ray, you mentioned the practical
00:35:25
Speaker
implications of the different types with dividing. Yeah, like by division or just going out and chopping things up with a shovel. I mean, are we talking hours here or what kind of practical impact does this have as people are dividing these things going through division processes? So I would say the the easiest and most bang for your buck comes from when you divide a
00:35:48
Speaker
a tuberous root. So that's that dahlia or even peony or you divide or you like take cuttings from like a tuber or those rhizomes that we talked about, because essentially you are taking one giant plant and you're dividing it into a couple smaller plants, clones, clones of them. Exactly. They're clones of themselves. And
00:36:11
Speaker
you're getting, you're going to get more of an instant impact out of that. So bulbs and corms will produce as well. But the difference here is, is that most of the time, like when you go buy ranunculus or you go buy tulips or gladiolias at the store, those bulbs that you're buying at the store, those bulbs and corms,
00:36:38
Speaker
are specifically have been treated to sell as a bulb and a corm. And what I mean by that is that most of the time the flowers have been cut off early in the season. So that plant focuses on developing that underground structure and less on the flower.
00:36:55
Speaker
So if you bring that gladiolia corm home and you plant it and you let it bloom It's gonna take a lot longer time for you to get more gladiolia corms. It does happen They're called like
00:37:27
Speaker
So if you've ever gotten a tulip and you see what looks like a tiny little dewdrop coming off of it, it looks like a little tiny mini bulb. That's a bulblet. And eventually that would be big enough to form a bulb.
00:37:40
Speaker
you would be sacrificing the bloom in order to get it to that stage. So most of us are not going to do that and we just let things happen over time. So I usually don't tell people to
00:37:52
Speaker
plan on getting more bulbs or quorums, right? You can dig those up if you want and move them and plant them somewhere else, but you're not going to get, you know, double the amount from ear to ear.
Perennials and Propagation Methods
00:38:02
Speaker
But your two, your peonies, your more herbaceous things, dahlias, things like that, those you can divide with abandon.
00:38:11
Speaker
And they benefit from dividing them every so often, don't they? They get crowded, man. They don't like to get crowded. And you look down on some of these irises and things, you see no soil. You just see the tops of plant parts bulging out of the ground. Yeah.
00:38:27
Speaker
If you, um, if you, if you're not sure if something needs to be divided or moved, and this is also true with like things like your daffodils. If you see like the inner ring is dying out. And so you kind of almost have this circle of live stuff on the outside. That means that you need to divide. It's getting too crowded. Hmm. Yeah. Fun fact. Is there, I mean, is there, uh, this is a little off, it's not really off topic, but is there, is there like a.
00:38:55
Speaker
Is this just because these are cultivars? These are things that have been been bred for this particular thing. I'm just imagining, like, is there some sort of natural cycle that would create, like, induce that or need, like, I mean, you know, the dieback? No, the dividing, like the process of the dividing needing to be, you know, needing to be divided. It seems like a reproductive strategy for an area that's getting, like, heavily disturbed, right?
00:39:22
Speaker
And I believe the reason, one of the reasons we, you know, want to divide things is our ornamental expectations are a little higher than mother nature's. Sure. And then I often wondered about that breath. That's a great point because I think that we, we know what that plant looks like at its peak, you know, performance, and we want to keep it performing, you know, because we value it for the way that it looks, its ornamental value.
00:39:45
Speaker
And I think that's one of the things. Now, I guess in nature, yeah, like Josh was saying, were you leading to the fact that the way it spreads or creeps or, you know, when you talk about rhizomes and stolons and things, and these mechanisms that plants have of outward expansion. But for me, like Iris's, like Alexis was saying, yeah, it's just, I want them to all look really nice and really uniform. And the only way I know to do that is to give them space and divide them. So each one, each section of plant, each clone is performing at its peak.
00:40:13
Speaker
I mean, if you think about it right there, these storage structures that are like really starchy, so it's animals digging them up and tearing them apart and pieces are being left that can reproduce the plant. Exactly. Yeah, like dahlias are edible. And yeah, I mean, if you can cut a dahlia tuber in half, if you want it as long as there's an eye on there, similar to a potato, it'll grow, you know, and it'll form roots and it'll
00:40:40
Speaker
It'll be fine and rhizomes are a modified root structure and so they can pretty much just be moved and dug up and put anywhere. I would say it's just, yeah, that expansion part of it. How about when folks go at their local purchase place, place of purchase, box store or nursery and go to purchase bulbs? What should they be looking for because not all bulbs
00:41:06
Speaker
are created equal. I mean, things can happen in shipping and stuff. What are folks looking for when they're selecting and purchasing bulbs? Based on what Josh just said, I might do a taste test. You might have to. People choose Jeff. We are not telling you to eat any of these things. But you're telling me personally, just not our audience. Yeah, just not our audience. You pay for whatever poison thing you want.
00:41:30
Speaker
It gives you gladiolus. It gives you acid reflux. It was a good bulb. I would say look for ones that like visually, if you can't touch them because sometimes they're in boxes and the windows, you can't necessarily touch them. Look to see if there's any like mold growth on them. You don't want anything with mold growth that's going to be, you know, pythium or different stuff like that.
00:41:59
Speaker
So you don't want any fuzzy green, white, anything like that on there. Uh, if you can like physically handle the bulbs, you want them to be like heavy and full. So if you can just think about like garlic as well, if you've ever gotten garlic and some of them are, um, it's like, there's nothing in there. It's like, there's nothing in the shell, so to speak. I don't want that with bulb.
Selecting and Protecting Healthy Bulbs
00:42:20
Speaker
You want them to be nice and, um, lush and full. I'm guessing, I'm guessing mushy is not a good thing.
00:42:29
Speaker
No. It's really tough for me when I see things are in a box. I want to see them. I love them. I straight up open the boxes. I'm not telling you to do that, but I'm telling you what I do. I have been instructed not to open the boxes. Do as I say, not as I do. I open the boxes. Sometimes if they're really bad, you can smell them. I think that was what you were getting at, Alexis, right? It smells very distinct.
00:42:52
Speaker
It is great. Have you ever lost some potatoes in your house and they've gotten rotten? Oh, that's a good one. It is the worst smell. I remember when I lived on my own, I first moved to Danville.
00:43:08
Speaker
I forgot about this weird little cabinet in this apartment. And I put my bag of potatoes down in there and couldn't for like two weeks was like, what is that smell? It was like, I mean, it was the worst, could not figure it out. And then finally, I just started opening everything. I was like, it's in this kitchen somewhere. And I opened every single one. And I finally found this weird little cabinet off the side and opened it up. And I almost vomited on the spot. And there were like maggots everywhere. Yeah, I know they're bad. That reminds me of like
00:43:37
Speaker
you know if you hand dig potatoes there's like the seed potato down there yeah and like so you're digging and you're grabbing potatoes they're all like healthy and nice and then you hit the seed potato and it just like pops it's just like soup inside oh yeah good smell to be on your hands and knees you know you smell it but you're marinated
00:43:58
Speaker
We do that. I do that with dahlias, like the mothertuber is what it's called. And sometimes it's just, yeah, it's gross. And it's usually cold and wet when you're digging dahlias and you're like, and it's your muddy and it's miserable. It's miserable. I thought you were setting up for like, uh, your, your tails as a pioneer from the frontier when the family would gather around and play hide the potato.
00:44:36
Speaker
We're having all this discussion on like fall planted things but I want to ask you guys and bring this up and it's going to invoke anger in a certain amount of listeners but that
00:44:51
Speaker
With the interface between all of these fall planted plant materials and squirrels and bulls and things like that, is there any way to protect these things from critters that would like to dig them up and eat them or otherwise destroy your hard work?
00:45:06
Speaker
Do you guys have any secret? Got much one too under the bed. Okay. Well, that certainly is an option, I suppose. I'm just kidding. A nice warm sleeping bag for sleeping out in the field. Yeah. A pack of hungry distraught cats. Well, I have a pack of cats. That's actually a good point. Yeah.
00:45:28
Speaker
I'm very excited because when I was out for a nice walk the other morning or evening, at some point in recent history, the past four weeks, one of my neighbors had
00:45:45
Speaker
decided to jettison their supply of chicken wire and they also had to use hardware. Yes. But I wasn't only able to carry one, so I grabbed the chicken wire. It was morning because I was going to go back in the evening and the hardware cloth was gone. Oh, yeah. I would have grabbed that. Spreading it out to all the people. And you just use that, I guess, Brad. So I put, when I was talking earlier a little bit about the
00:46:09
Speaker
My dig out an area you know three by eight or four by eight or whatever whatever size i'm planting.
00:46:16
Speaker
put the bulbs in, put the soil, kind of pack it nicely so that there's good soil to bulb contact. And then once I'm at the soil level, I take and put some chicken wire down and kind of pin it over there and then put mulch on top of that. And we did have, I don't know, $400 worth of bulbs completely eaten and taken up by squirrels a couple of years ago.
00:46:40
Speaker
That has that has worked for us at least that down and just let the plant material grow through that or do you take it up or you leave it down gotcha and the chicken wire is the holes it's not like the smallest chicken where you know it's got a hardware cloth or tiny tiny little openings in some wire gotcha right and that.
00:47:00
Speaker
That's been how we've done it. If you're doing an annual thing, you are going to have to pull it up and plant under it and then put it back down.
00:47:10
Speaker
It is well worth it. And the number of people in our neighborhood who tell us how happy our spring flowers make them is like, always like shocking and like catches me off guard. And it's like, okay, this is definitely worth doing. I mean, the squirrels can do an enormous amount of damage in a short amount of time. $400. Wow. And that just totally, I could see that over just probably not that long of a period of time, they could really do some damage. Yeah. Yep.
00:47:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty wild. So great, great tip there. I love it. I love it. Has anybody ever done that? Just the different types of wire and things, but that's a good point, Brett. The good thing about chicken wire is it's big enough to where most things can go around it and it doesn't hinder anything. I've seen some people put things down that are so fine, they do a good job, but then they have to pull that up before spring growth begins if it's tiny little openings and whatever. Yeah. Like a tiny mash, but yeah. Definitely didn't want it to grow up and then like girdle it and kill it.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, it worked. It worked. It's worked great the last two years. It's invisible. Cool. Nice. Thank you. I have a pack of cats. And do you have some corgis? Do corgis go after any little creatures in the ground or running around? They should. Have I told you all this story before about that? I'm a major haven't heard it I bet.
00:48:33
Speaker
Raiders. So, so Courtney's are her dogs, right? So I really don't expect them to be like little hunters. Um, I have a friend who has a pack of wiener dogs that I need to have come over. I'm afraid they would destroy too much just in vengeance.
00:48:50
Speaker
I've talked about it before. I put silage tarps down on a lot of my stuff as I rotate things around. I think I was starting a new bed and I had the silage tarp down all summer and pulled it up for fall planting. That's exactly what it was for, for my perennials. It was pretty big. It was like a 50 by 50 foot silage tarp.
00:49:13
Speaker
So we pull it up and we have voles, of course, on the farm. And so those of you who don't know voles, they're kind of like a field mouse, but they have short tails, but essentially imagine it sort of like a field mouse. But they love to eat like the bark around your trees and your corms. And I mean, they'll eat all of your bulbs and stuff like that.
00:49:33
Speaker
So we had, I have three cats. And so they know when we pull the tarp up, those voles are going to be right underneath there. The toys are coming out. And so kind of together and they wait on the outsides as we fold this tarp back. And, um, my oldest Corgi,
00:49:51
Speaker
like, doesn't know what he's doing, right? And he's like, I'm her dog. Just confused by what the cats are doing. But he just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And the cats kind of chased it to him. And he swallowed the picked it up, swallowed the thing whole. And I was like, Oh, my God.
00:50:08
Speaker
Bones and all. I mean, it was like, I was like, no, and it was down. Like it was in the stomach before I could even get close. But a part of you had to enjoy him doing that because I was really proud of him. Yeah, I was like, well, at least there's that. But then I was also like, this is going to be a rough night.
00:50:26
Speaker
How long did it take for you to take him to the vet? Did that happen? Oh no, nothing happened. I don't know when it came out, but I'm sure it did at some point. Yeah, but this dog is also allergic to chicken, so we didn't know what to expect. After that bowl, his coat was glistening. He actually caught another one.
00:50:50
Speaker
Uh, on it, like later that like the next year, um, kind of the same thing, the cats were working with him, but he like had figured it out at that point and he did catch one and he did put it down. And I was like, thank you. And I took it and got rid of it, but, uh, yeah, the cats actually are in the mornings. I can see them out in the fields, like hunting.
00:51:09
Speaker
And I think that's what they're going after is the voles and the higher grass. So give you a pack of cats and feed them, but maybe just like a little bit less and they will take care of your squirrels. Yeah. Squirrels, voles, whatever. Moles, moles, and moles. Well, I think that that.
00:51:28
Speaker
basically covers it i mean i could for one talk forever about bulbs and corms and talk to you about days and cormels freezing weeks for tulips each individual one give you resources on that i'm gonna try and force some tulips for valentine's day this year i'm probably gonna fail miserably but i'm gonna give it a shot
00:51:49
Speaker
All that to say, experiment, you know, like bulbs can be expensive, but you could buy some less expensive ones. Same with seeds, like in the grand scheme of things, they're not that expensive. So experiment and you may be the person who's figured out something new and cool. Plant your trees and shrubs, divide your peonies and your iris.
00:52:11
Speaker
mulch your stuff. If you want to be inspired by tulips, check out the planting at the Botanical Garden in Cincinnati. Yeah. Or as they like to say, Cincinnati Botanicals Garden. Just Tanicals. But yeah, their planting is insane. They also have animals there, but yeah.
00:52:32
Speaker
animals but it's no big deal. It is beautiful yeah Josh I agree it's amazing place to visit there in the spring it is absolutely gorgeous there in the spring if you want to hear a deeper dive on any particular type of flower plant etc that we've covered you know generally as categories today let us know we would have be happy to do a tulips episode or a
00:52:57
Speaker
you know, small shrubs episode or, you know, whatever you want to hear. What's that? We should, when it gets closer to Christmas briefly, talk about amaryllis and how to like care for them after the holiday and stuff. We could talk about that if you want to do that.
00:53:17
Speaker
I don't know, I just, this is a fun topic and we hope that you all had fun with it, but yeah, if you've got anything more specific. We just try to cover it broadly and so if there's something more specific that you want us to hear, want us to talk about, we'd be very happy to do that.
00:53:30
Speaker
And if you want to let us know, you can find us on Instagram, Hort Culture Podcast, and you can send us a direct message there or a comment on a post if you would like to. We'd love to get that. You can also shoot us an email, hortculturepodcastatl.uky.edu. You can let us know through that. We've got some people who send us some emails and we are grateful for them. They give us some great ideas.
00:53:55
Speaker
and let us know what we're doing good at. And I guess what we're doing bad at, I don't know, they've so far been positive. There probably isn't anything. You can also leave us a review and you can put it in there if you would like to. We'd love that. It helps other people find us. It pleases the algorithm. So let us know where you're from in there as well. If you want to shoot us a review on that and maybe we'll figure out some cool stuff to talk that are both Kentucky and
00:54:23
Speaker
one of these other 14 countries relevant. Or, you know, Ohio, Tennessee, you guys are welcome to. It's fine. So you can contact us there.
00:54:34
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you and we really appreciate any feedback that you have. We hope that as we grow this podcast, you will grow with us. Join us next week. We're going to talk about a little bit of spooky stuff on the podcast, a little bit, a little bit of plant lore for you. So thanks for being here. Have a great day. Have a great rest of your week. Have a great time.