Advertise on podcast: Homegrown Horticulture

Hi all, This episode is for those still subscribed. It is just a compilation of voiceovers I have done for KSL Newsradio and Utah Public Radio.

Taun Beddes 0:01 Hello everyone and welcome back to the Homegrown Horticulture podcast. On today's episode we talk about what's wrong with Kwanzan Cherry. Then also we have two interviews from Savannah Peterson, a horticulturist with the Central Utah Water Conservancy District. She talks about irrigation and programs to get money back for re-landscaping your yard. I was recently called to look at flowering Kwanzan Cherry at a neighbor's house. The tree was 78 years old and in the past has looked relatively healthy. And when it bloomed in the spring was quite pretty. But this spring, only about half the tree flowered. And once it was done flowering, it only had a couple of healthy branches. And so when I look at a tree or a shrub or another plant, I have a rough checklist I go through to help me narrow down what might be wrong with whatever I'm looking at. Oftentimes, just look at the yard in its entirety. How well is it maintained? How green is the grass? Are there weeds everywhere? This can give me some clues as to what might be going on. The first thing I noticed is that the grass is very green as compared to the neighbor's. It was recently fertilized but I don't think this has much to do with why the cherry is struggling. The next thing I noticed is that there's dandelions in the lawn, and so they haven't used a lawn weed killer. This can be important because a lot of times we see problems with trees and lawns where a weed and feed or another lawn weed killer has been applied. The next thing I checked was irrigation. The lawn is very green, and when I knelt down by the tree trunk, both of my knees were wet. This could indicate that the tree is getting too much water. When that happens, the water penetrates into the soil and drives oxygen and atmosphere out. This is bad for roots and can make the tree unhealthy and more susceptible to a number of root diseases. I next looked at the overall health of the trunk and branches. The first thing I noticed was that there was a lot of Southwest winter injury. This is where the sun heats the trunk up on the south and west side of the tree in the winter. As the bark heats up, it causes sap flow and at night the sap freezes and bursts the cells in the conductive tissue and over time the bark will start to slough off. Even though the bark hadn't fallen off yet, I noticed that when I cut some of the bark off that the conductive tissue underneath was in fact dead. I also cut some of the bark off at a very shallow angle on a couple of different spots in the tree. In both cases, the conductive tissue was either brown or light green, which wasn't a good indication that the tree was really healthy. With how many branches that had not leafed out, the Southwest winter injury, and the condition of the conductive tissue underneath the bark, I recommended to the homeowners that they might give it another couple of weeks to see if it forms any more leaves. I really don't think it will. But if it doesn't form any leaves, the silver lining is that fruit wood, especially cherry wood, makes great wood for smoking meat. And so the next best use for the tree will be smoking some meat for the summer so that the neighbors can enjoy it. I recommended to the homeowners that they dial back their irrigation a bit, especially since we're in a drought. Should they want to replant the tree, there are many species that would work. But some off the top of my head included many varieties and cultivars of crab apples because they're so adapted to our soils and they bloom so beautifully, and newer ones actually don't produce a lot of fruit. Or hawthorns because they have the same characteristics in being very strong trees. Thanks for listening, and I hope we do it again sometime. And there's certain things you recommend that people do so that they can be successful. And the first one starts with the sprinkler clock. Savannah 4:17 One term is...

Hi all, there's been a lot of concerns about water restrictions coming this summer and I think most people are going to see them at least along the Wasatch Front. And if it's going to be possible to actually grow a garden with severe water restrictions. I know that Weber Basin water has announced you will only be watering once a week, and that includes both your lawn and your garden. In a garden situation, you can't just water once a week, once you put your vegetables in, because they need a month to six weeks to get established. What I would recommend doing is on the day of the week that you water, that's the day you plan to and you get some containers whether they're Rubbermaid containers, five gallon buckets, or even something bigger like a rain barrel, if you can find them, and fill those up on the day that it's your turn for irrigation. Those seeds a new plants that you just put in can be hand watered then on the days that is not your turn for irrigation. new plants actually don't require a lot of water to get established where something like a new pepper or a new tomato would be fine being watered three or maybe four days a week with around three or four cups of water. And over a period of a month or six weeks as the roots expand into the soil, you will need to water less often and things like tomatoes, and peppers, especially with use of some mulch of some sort will only need to be watered about once a week in most soils. I wanted to talk briefly about how to use mulch in the garden, you can put it around the plants and in between the rows and it not only helps hold water in the soil, but it actually does a great job of holding down weeds. Now the best free mulch I have ever seen are actually my grass clippings, I'll put two to three inches of fresh cut grass down on the soil and over a week or so at browns out and then it seems to compact just a bit. And it's a great barrier for most weeds. With the exception of something like maybe field bindweed which you're going to have to hand pull, the mulch that you put in will benefit the soil as it breaks down. And as I mentioned earlier, hold water in. And so with the use of mulch like grass clippings or bark, then you can get away with watering once or twice a week and your garden will actually be in really good shape. And that's assuming that it's established. I wanted to give a brief mention to what's called plastic mulch. And this is where you see gardeners putting down drip irrigation or drip hose stretching plastic over a row. And then they will go ahead and grow their plants up through the plastic by putting holes in it and then putting the seeds or transplants in there. The black plastic is very available from local hardware stores and box stores. You just want to make sure that is UV resistant. You also made need some landscape staples to help peg the hose down that you put under the plastic and to help hold the plastic in place. After I get the plastic placed. What I will do is then put soil on the sides of the plastic to hold it down. Now some concerns about plastic mulches. There are a few concerns about plastic mulch one is is that the plastic is not recyclable, and so you do need to send it to the landfill at the end of the season. The other concern is irrigation. Let's say you have drip hose underneath your plastic mulch but you need to water more than once a week. In that situation, you'd have to have that saved water in your rain barrels or five gallon buckets or whatever. And you'd have to be able to water through the plastic and so you might need to make a bigger hole and even then make some sort of a basin around the plant. So as you carefully poured water in during the period, you can't irrigate, it's just a little bit more difficult to do. My other concern with plastic molter in the areas such as Sandy in the Leighton bench that have really sandy soils, this would include Clearfield and that little...

In today's show we have Michael Caron and Samantha Hansen. Both are experienced horticulturists. Mike talks about maintaining gardening tools, and Samantha growing ranunculus (Buttercups).

Hi all, I hope you have a happy holiday.

https://extension.usu.edu/pests/uppdl/files/factsheet/Billbugs.pdf

Thousand Canker Disease of Walnut: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1729&context=extension_curall https://extension.usu.edu/pests/ipm/ornamental-pest-guide/arthopods/scales/pine-needle-scale

00:09 Elm Seed Bug 08:43 Dr. Kelly Kopp on Lawn Watering Elm Seed Bug https://extension.usu.edu/pests/caps/files/elm-seed-bug-2017.pdf

https://slowtheflow.org/?gclid=CjwKCAjw_o-HBhAsEiwANqYhp05h0lXIari-4Ujsx7zxegLTv6v8_1XiGejvEaXXm8BMy5uCkDobcxoCr3QQAvD_BwE See transcripts. usual.usu.edu

https://extension.usu.edu/pests/ipm/ornamental-pest-guide/arthopods/plant-lace-seed-bugs/sycamore-plant-bug https://extension.usu.edu/pests/ipm/ornamental-pest-guide/diseases/anthracnose https://extension.usu.edu/pests/ipm/ornamental-pest-guide/arthopods/scales/sycamore-scale

Wed, 5/19 · 10:19 AM Taun Beddes 0:00 I wanted to put out a quick apology for missing an episode last week. I've been extremely busy. And part of last week I was under the weather. So thank you again for your patience and thank you for listening. TB Taun Beddes 0:11 Hello and welcome back to the homegrown horticulture podcast. On this week's episode: lawn weed control. TB Taun Beddes 0:19 The homegrown horticultural podcast is specifically for the Intermountain West areas like Denver, Reno, Salt Lake City and Boise, and all points in between. We have unique soils and a unique climate like nowhere else in the United States. TB Taun Beddes 0:35 Several years ago, I worked for a large retail nursery, and one of my responsibilities was helping landscape contractors. One particular landscaper used his home as a showpiece where he would show them everything he could do as a landscape contractor in an effort to land the bid to install their landscape. One thing that this contractor really prided himself on, was his great looking lawn. For a long time when you looked at it, it was totally green, perfectly manicured and there wasn't a weed in sight. After a few years, the lawn started to turn yellow and have other problems and nothing that the contractor did seem to fix the problem. I was sent by the nursery to take a look at the lawn and I found that it was being mowed about an inch and a half high water daily and fertilize six or seven times a year. I told the landscaper to water a couple of times a week deeply raises more blades up to two and a half to three inches and to cut his fertilizer applications in half. I don't know if he ever did or not. He wasn't very pleased with my answer. TB Taun Beddes 1:43 But my reason for telling this story is to introduce the topic of reasonable lawn expectations contract contrary to the belief of many, it's just fine to have a few weeds in your lawn and a few brown spots, especially with our drought situation in many parts of the West. So very briefly, some things you can do to maintain a healthy lawn is to mow at a height of three inches. I know the grass can be a little bit more Shaggy, but it allows the roots to grow more deeply and allows the grass to become more drought tolerant. Additionally fertilize on an as needed basis and not on a calendar. Most lawns in the Intermountain West will survive just fine being fertilized two to three times a year. That would be once in the spring once in late summer and once in late fall, trying to time that last application with a rain or snow storm between mid October and early November. As far as irrigation and an average loamy soil. You should be irrigating once to twice a week over your lawn so that water penetrates into the soil about six inches to a foot deep, heavier clay soil should be watered more often but with less water because the water doesn't penetrate as deeply into the clay. Likewise with sandy soils, you should water more often but with less water because they're so well drained. Water easily penetrates to a depth of six inches to a foot and so add water three to four times a week. Just like keeping our own bodies healthy. Maintaining your lawns correctly, will maintain the lawn health and reduce the number of weeds that actually can invade the lawn. There will always be a few but these will be easily pulled by hand or popped out with a screwdriver or something. And it's usually the overly maintained lawns or under maintained lawns that are more susceptible to weeds which is going to be today's topic. Keep in mind also that healthy lawns that are mowed high, shade out weeds and crowd weeds out because the lawn is so thick. TB Taun Beddes 3:48 The first weed I want to talk about are dandelions. They are native to Europe and Asia but have...

0:03 Intro Hello and welcome back to the homegrown horticulture podcast. Today we're going to be talking all things roses. The homegrown horticulture podcast is specifically for the Intermountain West, an area often forgotten about by national gardening companies. If you just found us or have been listening for a long time, welcome, and thank you again. 0:27 Roses Intro In a former career, I worked at a garden center for nearly 15 years before being hired by Utah State University. While working at the nursery, one thing I always loved was when the roses came out for retail sale, we would have 1000s of roses and dozens of varieties and it was fun to just talk to people about them and ask them what they had grown. One thing that I noticed was that the customers were often confused by the sheer number and types of roses. And it was often confusing trying to figure out what to buy. I attempted to explain to the customers that roses can be classified on how tall they grow, and also how they flower. 1:07 Roses by how tall they grow And so as far as how tall they grow, I'm going to start with the shortest, which would be miniature roses, which I'm not really going to focus on. They don't seem to do very well outdoors in the Intermountain West. The next tallest would be ground cover roses, but they're not super common either. They survive just fine. They flower a lot of the summer, but I think it's just the nature of them being thorny, and trying to have to clean them out or if you lose a ball or something in them that sometimes prevents them from being more popular. Going in ascending order. The next biggest are the bush roses. These can grow just a few feet high and wide to certain species that can grow up to 10 to 15 feet high and wide just depending on the genetics. The final classification of roses includes the climbers, but these aren't really climbing plans in the true sense of the word. They more just grow really long and need to be supported with a trellising system. The next concept I want to talk about are flowering characteristics. 2:11 Classification of rose flowers So the first classification are the floribunda roses. These have been bred to be very profuse where one bush can have hundreds of blossoms on it at any given time. Floribunda roses that only grow to three to four feet high and wide are very useful as hedge roses because you can just give them a light haircut and that will cause a new flush of blossoms to come out. They generally bloom from late spring until after the first hard frost in the fall. Most knockout roses, which is a wildly popular series of hedge and bush roses would be considered floribunda roses. A few other popular floribunda types include Betty Boop, Monkey Business, Sexy Rexy, Hot Cocoa and Lagerfeld. The next popular classification is called grandiflora rose. Plants classified as grandiflora will have larger showier your flowers but will have fewer flowers than the floribunda and these flowers are usually in clusters of three to five flowers. A couple of very popular grandiflora type flowers include Queen Elizabeth and fame. The final flower type I want to mention include the hybrid tea roses. When the flowers appear on a rosebush, they appear on a long stem with a single flower. These are the kinds of roses that you find at the grocery store and at florists that you give to others. They're by far the most popular type of roses that we purchase at local garden centers to plant in our yards. Some of my favorite hybrid tea roses include double delight, Mr. Lincoln, Peace, Rio Samba, and Chrysler Imperial. There are so many others out there that will do quite well though. And don't just limit yourself to these that I've mentioned. 3:58 Climbing Roses I wanted to briefly talk about climbing roses because the flowers can be several different styles, but I...

0:03  Hello everyone and welcome back to the homegrown horticulture podcast. Today I'm going to be answering questions I've received through social media and over the phone about yards and gardens. 0:16  The homegrown horticulture podcast is specifically for the Intermountain West, an area with a very unique climate and very unique soils that's oftentimes forgotten about by national horticulture companies. Because of this, there's a need for local information, and the homegrown horticulture podcast is a source for you to gain that information. 0:38  Our first question is When can I plant warm season crops. These would include things like cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, green beans, corn, eggplants, muskmelons, and watermelon. The first thing I would recommend because this is a regional podcast and average frost dates can vary wildly just within a few miles is to contact a local experienced gardener or farmer. They'll know right when it's time to get those warm season crops in for your specific area. Some other things to monitor are when your average last and first frost dates are, because all of the warm season crops should be planted after the average last frost. For the Wasatch Front in Utah, this is generally early to mid-May. But for our mountain valleys. This is usually two to three weeks later, oftentimes in late May or early June. Along these lines I had somebody ask about a week ago, if they could just go ahead and put all of their flowers and crops in because they checked the weather and we were going to be above freezing daily. And my response to them as sure yeah, you can plan but the temperatures are still too cold for those to actually thrive. And many crops such as tomatoes can actually be damaged if they're regularly exposed to temperatures below about 45 to 50 degrees. So if you're going to plant warm season crops when it's too cool, even if they don't freeze, they generally will just sit there, oftentimes they can get nutrient deficiencies, because the cool weather makes it harder for them to uptake nutrients. If you're going to put them out early, you'll need to use season extending methods that warm the soil up and warm the air temperature up so that they can actually thrive. You need to remember that many of these flowers and crops are native to Mediterranean climate areas, and oftentimes tropical areas where they're never exposed to temperatures near freezing. And so we need to mimic those conditions for those plants to actually thrive in our yards and gardens. 3:30 Our next question is, last spring, we bought some grassy to ove rseed her lawn to thicken the grass up? We never did it. Can we go ahead and put that same seed down. Now, the answer to this is yes, you can go ahead and put that seed down. It will hold for a couple of years and still germinate quite well. I think the more important thing though, is going to be preparing your turf grass so that you can get good germination from that seed you're putting over the top. To do this, you're going to want to ask yourself, why is my lawn struggling? You know, if you're just moving in and it was neglected for a year or two, that's understandable. But if you've lived there and been doing your best to take care of the lawn, and that lawn is still thinning out, then what's going on people oftentimes are sprinkling system is the culprit because it doesn't water very efficiently to where some areas get excessive water and other areas don't get enough. So checking the sprinkling system to make sure that it's irrigating evenly improperly is going to be imperative. After checking this sprinkling system, the next thing I would look at...

00:04 Introduction Hello and welcome back to the Homegrown Horticulture podcast. On today's show we talk about five great plants very adapted to the Intermountain West. The Homegrown Horticulture podcast is for those living in the Intermountain West. These areas have rapidly-growing populations, but they're often times forgotten about by national gardening companies because of our unique climate and traditionally low populations. 00:37 Survey & Prize-Entry Before getting started, I want to mention that I'm including a brief Google Docs survey in the show notes. I would greatly appreciate it if you would follow the hyperlink because it will tell me how I'm doing, and how we can improve the show. I attempt to keep this show quite succinct without a lot of banter. My time's valuable. It takes probably four to six hours to put together a 15-minute episode, and so it's just not worth my time to have a lot of extra junk in this podcast. But if you would go ahead and fill out that survey I would so much appreciate it. Thank you again. 01:15 Hummingbird Mint I have three perennials on my list, and the first one is called Hummingbird Mint. It is also referred to as Anise hyssop or Agastache. Agastache is actually the Latin name. Anise hyssops came onto the market 15 or 20 years ago in force. There are many species native to the United States, especially the western United States. A few of them grow in quite moist areas in partial-shade, but there are a number of them native to the American Southwest that do wonderfully in full sun that are actually quite drought-hardy. Hummingbird mints bloom generally from late June or July until frost, and they have a wonderful licoricey-minty smell to them. Not only that, but they are very beneficial for pollinators and beneficial insects, and so planting them in your yard will draw them in. Another thing with them is that hummingbirds sometimes will visit them hence the name. Most cultivated Hummingbird mints grow to anywhere from 18 inches to two feet high and wide. Many of them have a dusty gray-green appearance to them, though not all of them. Especially if you live in a colder mountain valley you need to check their cold hardiness. Many of the species and cultivars are only hardy to USDA zone six. However, several of them are zone five and actually several of them will be into zone four, you just need to be sure and check. Flower color on the Anise hyssops will usually be yellow, orange, pink, or red, or combinations of these are quite beautiful. The other consideration is they love full-blast sun, so they do really well on the south or west sides of homes or anywhere else that they get at least eight hours of sun a day. Now one drawback, if you can call it a drawback, to Anise hyssop is that they really don't like wet feet. And so as you get them established, you need to let the ground dry out between irrigations. In a sandy soil you can get away with watering them probably three times a week, and in a clay soil or a clay-textured soil maybe once or twice. When they're well established, they will survive just fine if you irrigate them every couple of weeks, maybe even every three to four weeks in a heavier soil. I know that along the Wasatch Front that many of the areas that homes are now being built are on marginal soils that are oftentimes slightly salty. Hummingbird mints are actually somewhat salty-soil tolerant and so these areas are someplace that Hummingbird mint might be an option. There are many cultivars of Hummingbird mint available. They include: Sunset, Coronado, Coronado Red, Sonoran Sunset, Poquito Orange, Crazy Fortune, and Apache Sunset. Crazy Fortune and Apache Sunset or actually hardy to zone four. 04:15 Catmint The next perennial I want to talk about is called Catmint. A lot of times it's referred to as Nuh-peeta or Neh-pi-ta. There's a few different pronunciations. I don't speak Latin, so...

https://forestry.usu.edu/trees-cities-towns/tree-care/preventing-iron-chlorosis