Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S2:E10 Carnivorous Plants
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:Up Beat Music:
Rachel
Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland Extension presents the Garden Thyme podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Rachel.
Mikaela
I'm Mikaela.
Emily
And I'm Emily.
Rachel
In this month's episode, we're talking about carnivorous plants. Crisp fall weather's, underfoot, and Halloween is knocking at our door. Houses are adorned with spooky decorations, spider webs, and bubbling cauldrons. Did you know, right here in the MidAtlantic, we have our own version of spooky plants lurking about? There are a lot of spooky plants, and it's been a bit of our fall tradition for us to talk about some in October. And this year, we decided to zero in on some of the neatest ones, which are carnivorous plants.
:Up Beat Music:
Mikaela
So what is a carnivorous plant? So these plants are actually predatory flowering plants that have to kill animals in order to derive nutrition for their bodies. And they share three attributes that operate together and separate them from other plants. So in order to be a carnivorous plant, they have to, number one, capture and kill prey. Number two, have a mechanism to facilitate the digestion of that prey, and number three, derive a significant benefit from nutrients assimilated from the prey. So to put it in more human terms, carnivorous plants eat things like insects, spiders, crustaceans, other small vertebrates, as well as small vertebrates such as lizards and mice, which is a pretty scary thought. Those are pretty large species to consume.
Rachel
That is pretty scary.
Mikaela
Yeah. Carnivorous plants pull off this trick using specialized leaves that act as traps. And many of these traps lure prey with bright colors, extra floral nectaries, guide hairs, leaf extensions. They have all sorts of kind of attributes. So once caught and killed, the prey is digested by the plant and or the partner organism. The plant then absorbs the nutrients made available from the corpse of whatever it is they've captured. Most carnivorous plants will grow without consuming prey, but they grow much faster and reproduce much better with nutrients derived from this extra supplementary prey. Fun fact we actually have 19 different species of carnivorous plants just in Maryland alone. And we will include a link in the show notes to the Maryland Biodiversity Project, which is a great website to use as a resource. But they have a list of these carnivorous plants.
Emily
So the first of the carnivorous plants that we're going to talk about today is one that is not actually native to Maryland, but it is native to North America, and it's probably one of the most well known carnivorous plants. And that's the Venus fly trap, whose scientific name is Dionaea muscipula. Charles Darwin once referred to the Venus flytrap as one of the most wonderful plants in the world. And again, while it's not found in Maryland, it is native to coastal bogs in north and South Carolina. However, it is considered an endangered species, so it's illegal to collect it from the wild. It likes high humidity, wet sandy soils and sun to partial shade. These tend to be rather small plants with their leaves ranging from about three to 10 cm in height. They are described as having a rosette of about four to seven leaves which arise from a very short stem. The leaves are flat and heart shaped with a pair of hinged lobes at the end, which make up our trap, which they're famous for. The leaves are green and they can, in fact, photosynthesize, but the inside of the trap normally has a red pigment.
Emily
The edge of the lobes of the trap are also going to normally have some kind of stiff hairs that I think help give it that kind of creepy vibe. And the idea behind this is this helps it to really close up and seal, particularly when it catches that large prey inside those traps. So, during late spring, from May through June, these guys will produce white flowers on top of a long stem about six inches tall. So again, remember, these plants are only about three to 10 CM in height, so the flower sits well above them. And this will produce a clump of kind of really pretty simple white flowers on the top. And after these guys are pollinated, they'll produce really shiny black seeds by mid to end of summer. Research that came out of North Carolina State University found that there were three really common pollinators of the Venus fly trap, which were the green sweat bee, a checkered beetle, and the notch tip flower longhorn beetle. They also interestingly, looked at the species that were commonly found as prey. So the ones that were commonly found in the trap and found that none of these three species were really commonly found there, they hypothesized.
Emily
This was in part due to those flowers being so high up comparatively, and that the fact that the flowers were white and the traps were red, so they likely were going to entice different insects to them. While we still don't know and understand everything about how this snapping mechanism works, they have determined that the trap lobes so again, those two hinge lobes that sit on top of the leaf to make up the trap go from being convexed or bending outwards, to being concaved or bending inwards in order to capture prey. We also know that the inner surface of the traps are lined with small hairs that cause the lobes to snap close when the prey comes in contact with them. In fact, they've found that a prey must disturb two of these hairs inside the trap within a certain time period in order to cause the trap to snap. This is thought to be a safeguard against wasting energy by trapping objects with no nutritional value, such as rain or insects that are too small to be considered nutritionally valuable. So the trap can snap close in as little as one 10th of a second, which is amazing.
Emily
Once trapped the prey insect must then disturb five to six hairs in order for the plant to start releasing digestive enzymes in order to break it down again. This is just another way to ensure that, in part, the plant, one, captured its prey, and two, that the prey insect that it captured is worthy of its consumption, so that the plant doesn't go about wasting its energy following the digestion of prey, the nutrients are absorbed and the leaf is reset. It can take a Venus flytrap three to five days to digest an insect, and it may actually go months between trapping meals because, again, they do have the ability to photosynthesize and they can get some nutrition from kind of the bog environments that they're living in. So the insects are really more or less meant to kind of supplement them. Each mouth or trap can only snap shed about four or five times before it dies, whether it caught something or not. So the Venus fly trap is considered an endangered species, and there was a few reasons that led to it being considered endangered. The first is that it's a highly poached species because of its appeal for collection and the plant trade.
Emily
I mean, let's face it, these are really cool. Sometimes you see them at the big box stores, and I always see kids, like, getting super excited. So they are kind of fun to have. And if you do want to purchase one, that's great. They are an amazingly neat plant. But what you do want to do is you want to make sure that you're only buying Venus fly trap plants that have been grown from tissue cultured and not ones that have been collected from the wild. Here's a few suggestions on how to help make sure that you're buying ones that were grown in nurseries and not collected from the wild. So first, you want to examine the entire tray of plants. You want to look for things that are uniform in size among the plants. If they're ones that vary in size, they likely may have been poached. You also want to look at the soil that they're in to determine if it looks like soil that would have come from a nursery or if it looks more kind of like soil mixed with gravel or sand means that they may have come from the wild.
Emily
The other thing that you want to do is check to see if the pots themselves look weedy or indicate that there are other plants that were found. If they're wild harvests, they likely may have other weed seeds in them. So those are some few good tips to make sure that the ones that you buy are commercially done and not collected from the wild. So the other great threats to the Venus fly trap are really mainly loss of habitat in general. These guys, again, only really like a very small kind of section. They like these kind of sunny boggy areas that you can find in north and south Carolina. Some of the main threats that the venus fly trap has with regards to habitat loss would include things like fire suppression, land conversion from agriculture and silviculture, and residential and commercial development, which could include things like logging, ditching, and draining. And that's all I've got for the Venus flytrap, I think, one of the coolest plants that we've talked about.
Rachel
So, hey, did you guys know that we have two native pitcher plants found in Maryland? The first one is a yellow pitcher plant, or it's also called a trumpet, and it's one of the tallest pitcher plants found in north America. They have simple noting flowers and leaves modified by hollow pitchers, which function as passive traps for insects. They lure them in with nectar, then they digest them or drown them with their fluids, and later the insects are absorbed by the plant. The habitat trapping insects in modified leaves or trumpets is thought to have been developed in response to nutrient poor soil conditions of wet or frequently flooded areas typical of the Atlantic coastal plains. This method of trapping is passive in that the plant does not eat its prey. Like the Venus fly trap, insect prey are lured into the slippery, waxy portion of the upper pitcher tube by nectar, and then they slide down a coating of ultra fined, downward pointing hairs, hitting the digestive enzymes. That sounds like fun, right?
Mikaela
Like a really bad slip and slide.
Rachel
No, I don't want to go down that slip and slide. All right. Although amphibians can often be found in pitcher plants, the digestive agent doesn't really harm them.
Emily
I honestly think it's super cute when you look and find, like, tiny little frogs in these pitcher plants. It's just adorable.
Rachel
Easily distinguished from other pitcher plants by their tall, upright, yellow and green, sometimes red veined pitchers, they can get up to about three foot tall.
Mikaela
That's large.
Rachel
Yeah, that's really big, right? When we think about carnivorous plants, that's pretty big for the mid Atlantic region, it's true.
Emily
Yeah, that's big for non carnivorous plants.
Rachel
Very true.
Emily
Like a shrub. This is what considered an annual or a perennial.
Rachel
It has rhizomes, so it's more like a perennial, but they can seed cool as well. Trumpet pitchers have large broody reinformed hoods, which lack white patches or windows and arch widely over the column. All right, so the fruit forms in five lobes and takes about five months to mature. And they split and scatter about 300 to 600 seeds, which can be a lot. And the seeds have a waxy, rough outer coating and are dispersed by water. They usually germinate in the spring and begin building tiny little pitchers, which in subsequent years become larger. As a plant grows, they eat all kinds of bugs all summer long, and then they die back in the fall, translocating nutrients from the pitchers to underground rhizomes. So our second really interesting pitcher plant in Maryland is the purple pitcher plant, and this one's significantly smaller than the trumpet pitcher plant. So the purple pitcher plant is widespread in eastern North America. It ranges from the Gulf Coast of Florida to Nova Scotia, and across Canada to the base of the Rocky Mountains. It's primarily a northern species. Isolated populations occur along the Atlantic Coast and in the Appalachian Mountains.
Rachel
The purple pitcher plant grows primarily in sphagnum bogs, although they can be found in any wetland with long periods of standing water, including roadside ditches. So we can find these a lot in Maryland, if you know where to look. The purple pitcher plant is a perennial forb that spreads by short rhizomes plants form an open, spreading rosette of green leaves. The leaves are often tinged or veined with purple and can grow to about twelve inches long. The plants flower in midspring, producing a solitary flower at the top of Escape, which is about 20 to 40 CM tall. The flowers resemble a thick, flat disc ringed with dark maroon petals. It's an absolutely beautiful flower if you look it up. The plants are mostly noted, however, for hollow gibbous leaves or pitchers that give the plant its name. The hollow pitchers fill naturally with rainwater, and they have broad lips. Where insects land, the insects crawl into the pitcher, where a stiff, downward pointing hairs prevent them from leaving. There is antidotal evidence suggesting that pitcher plants capture less than 1% of flies that venture into the traps. But few insects eventually fall into the water at the base of the pitcher, where digestive enzymes excreted by the plant release the nutrients within the insects.
Rachel
Eventually, the nutrients are absorbed by the plant, which supplements the nutrients absorbed by the roots. Interesting enough, there are at least two insects that use these pitcher plants as a breeding location. Isn't that pretty cool?
Emily
That is really neat.
Mikaela
Yeah.
Rachel
There is a larvae of a mosquito and a larvae of a midge that use the pitcher plant to complete their life cycle.
Mikaela
I was going to say, how do mosquitoes survive that of all the creatures?
Rachel
Well, they can survive anything, Mikaela.
Emily
Yeah, like a cool bug that was using it. No, it's a mosquito.
Rachel
Both biting insects, a mosquito and a midge.
Mikaela
They're in cahoots.
Emily
Okay, well, they are. They are.
Mikaela
I wish I had a little pitcher plant garden because they are really neat.
Rachel
I know. I wish I had a bog.
Mikaela
Well, I'm going to talk about Bladderwort, which is actually I think that's like the perfect Halloween kind of carnivorous plant name. But Bladderwort is actually an aquatic carnivorous plant, and it's one of the most highly evolved as well. So much like some of the other plants we mentioned, they can photosynthesize and they do produce flowers, but otherwise they're very, very different from traditional plants. And Bladderwort belongs to the genus Utricularia, and this is the largest genus of carnivorous plants, and it has about 228 species, and I'll talk about how widespread they are in just a second. But utricularia is actually Latin for little bag. So that's kind of where the name Bladderwort comes from because it has these bladder like underwater leaf shapes. So that's kind of where the common name comes from. They have the widest geographical distribution of most of the carnivorous plants and they grow on every continent except for frozen Arctic regions and oceanic islands because they actually have to have fresh water. They don't do well in brackish water. So these are freshwater aquatic carnivorous plants, but they are very adaptable to drought and freezing conditions by going dormant, much like some of our other plants.
Rachel
That's pretty cool.
Mikaela
So common bladderwort is going to be the most common. It has the widest distribution in the US. And North America. In fact, I think in North America, it hits every region except Greenland, if I'm remembering correctly. So these stem and leaf fixtures look very fern like underwater, and it's very similar to many other aquatic plant life, just very ferny and fine textured. But the bladder shaped leaf fixtures capture small aquatic organisms when the hairs at the opening of the bladder are triggered and contacted. So this causes like a trap to spring. And it kind of I don't want to say it inflates itself, but it draws in water, so it uses a vacuum and it sucks the organism in using water as kind of like a passageway. So the enzymes and bacteria inside the plant itself aids in the digestion of those organisms. So it's actually fairly small. So they do go after pretty small organisms, nothing huge like lizards or mammals or anything like that. The flowers do grow above water and they are bright yellow and actually look a lot like flowers that belong to the legume family. So they're bilateral and so they have kind of like a lip.
Mikaela
But the flowers themselves are not predatory. It's the bladder leaf fixtures under the water that are the mechanism for eating things. Insects, mammals and waterfall actually use common bladder wart as a food source. So even though it is a carnivorous plant, it also still contributes to kind of the life cycle by providing food for other things as well.
Emily
This is my first time hearing about this, and this is super cool. Like, I'm looking at a picture of these and they're like star shaped in the water with this yellow flower coming out of them. I think I have a new favorite carnivorous plant. They're really cool.
Mikaela
Yeah, they're very pretty. And I'm only talking about the common bladderwort, but like I said, it has the most species out of all of the carnivorous plants, so I'd be curious to see what they look like in more tropical environments or in other areas. But even the common bladderwort that we would see here is pretty cool.
Rachel
It is a really cool plant. I love their little tiny bladders. They're really kind of cute.
Mikaela
I know they are very small, so the organisms that they're consuming, likewise are probably very small. But in an aquatic environment, you have a lot of those different tiny bacterias and organisms, hopefully mosquito larvae, right?
Emily
Yeah. Hopefully they make up for the picture.
Mikaela
Hopefully it's sucking them in.
Emily
I feel like we need to figure out when these guys are going to bloom and go like kayaking hunting for them.
Mikaela
I was just thinking, and in fact, I'm going to be talking about Sundews in a second, but all of these carnivorous plants really tend to thrive in boggy and acidic peatland wetland environments because nutrients are low and they can supplement their nutrients by consuming other critters. And we have a lot of that kind of environment out here on the Eastern shore.
Emily
So you want to tell us all about Sundews now?
Mikaela
Okay, so I'm also going to talk about Sundews, which is not a very Halloween name. That's actually a really pretty cute name. And this is the genus Drocera. And again, these are going to be carnivorous plants that grow in areas of low nutrient soils. So specifically acidic bogs and fens and particularly fresh water, usually not associated with brackish, but these need plenty of sunlight. And because of the lack of nutrients in these kind of environments, particularly nitrogen, these plants are adapted to using insects as their nitrogen source. So they are supplementing. Now these Sundews, they're named for these kind of tentacles that they have standing up. They're like fine hairs. They look like hairs all over these spatula shaped leaves. And at the tips of these hairs are what looks like sundew, which obviously gives it its common name. And this sundew helps attract and trap prey. So the tentacles latch onto prey and then they secrete digestive enzymes and then slowly curl around the prey and bring them in closer to the plant and then break down the insect for food. And dare I say that a carnivorous plant is cute, but these are very small, very low to the ground.
Rachel
They are so cute.
Emily
These guys are adorable.
Mikaela
They are very adorable. In fact, I'm going to talk about the most adorable one in a second. But these tentacles, ooze, a sticky liquid that I mentioned before, attracts and traps those insects. But many of these are considered rare and endangered to Maryland. Several species have been identified, including one as recent as 2019. Like I said, I'm going to talk about that in a second. The most common is in Maryland. Probably the spatula leaved Sundew. But there are three others that are considered more rare, like, I think Rachel mentioned that Maryland Biodiversity project names the rest of those without sharing their locations because just we don't want to harvest these and we want to protect their locations. So this Maryland native, this rare Sundew, dwarf Sundew, Drosera brevifolia, this was discovered and confirmed in Maryland as recent as 2019. It's hard to believe that we can still discover plant species that are new to our state as recent as that time. But these grow with paddle shaped leaves forming a basil rosette. So that means they're very low to the ground and they kind of grow at one central point. And they're densely covered in hairs that exude this sticky liquid that attracts and traps insects.
Mikaela
And this is insectivorous plant, meaning it consumes its nutrients from insect visitors, not mammals. And this is the smallest native species of Sundue known to Maryland. Originally it was thought to have northern limits of Virginia. I'm wondering if climate change has probably played its hand a little bit in very slow migration. But I have two words for you. It's very cute and it has these small white flowers that maybe about the size of a nickel, maybe a little bit smaller even. But even the plant itself is still fairly small. Easily the cutest carnivorous plant we're going to talk about today.
Emily
They are super cute. I actually knew someone in grad school who their thesis project was looking at the flies that come to visit Sundews.
Rachel
They are adorable. Like how can this cute little plant be carnivorous?
Emily
It's all like NUM, NUM, NUM. Want snack.
Rachel
Exactly.
Mikaela
I know this would definitely be something in Little Shop of Horrors. It'd be an easy seller.
Emily
Yeah.
: Bird chirping: It 's the native plant of the month with Mikaela
Mikaela
So I'm talking about the wax myrtle. So this is Morella Cerifera and it also goes by a scientific name, Myrica Cerifica. This is the most common of the three Morella species present in Maryland and it's probably one of my top ten does it all shrubs and it tolerates just a variety of growing conditions. It's got a lot of great attributes. It's tough, which if things are coming to my property to live, they got to be tough. So this is commonly found in sandy to clay soils with dry to wet moisture types. So right there, you know, it's got a very wide variety of growing conditions. It also fixes nitrogen, that's a nice little bonus. And it has some salt tolerance for coastal sites that are brackish. And this is a very common shrub that we see down in Acetigue and especially in Worcester County with sandy dunes and Atlantic Coast. But you can find it pretty much all over the eastern shore. And it can grow in part shade, but it tends to be more sparse in those shadier conditions.
Mikaela
So if you want a more full, traditional kind of shrubby look, it definitely needs a little bit more sunlight for that to happen. This is an evergreen shrub and other species of Morella are what we call semi evergreen, meaning they lose some of their leaves, but they still retain some during the winter. This is probably the one that retains the most leaves, so it looks the most full through wintertime and it reaches about six to 10ft tall, depending on the site conditions. A shrub I commonly recommend as a native evergreen alternative, but I don't want people to be confused as this doesn't have the same growth as a lot of other evergreen shrubs that are sold commercially. It is a little bit more natural looking. It definitely has more of a leggy growth. If you're looking for something like a dense boxwood or yew that you're going to plan to hedge, this probably isn't a good pick, but definitely for native landscapes, this is a wonderful one and one of its other common names is bayberry. And this indicates the fragrant nature of the leaves and berries, which have just a really nice smell when they're crushed or when they're used.
Mikaela
So if you brush up against a bayberry hedge, it just has a really nice sensory response. And this is a critical food source for many bird species migrating and wintering along the coast because the female shrubs produce waxy blueberries and these end up being critical winter food full of fat and proteins that those birds need in order to make it through that migratory period. And it's also the host plant for many moth and butterfly species. And I just mentioned it briefly, but this shrub is dioecios, which means you need a female and a male shrub. They don't produce berries on all of the shrub or they don't have the male and female flowers on both shrubs. So even though the female shrub is more desirable, of course, because it produces the berries, you still need like one male shrub to kind of pollinate all those other females. And the other common name comes from the waxy substance. So wax myrtle. This waxy substance is produced on the outside of the berries and the fruits were traditionally used to make bayberry candles, soaps, and by utilizing the wax. In fact, cerifera is Latin for wax bearing, and that's the species name for this particular shrub.
Mikaela
So really nice shrub. Can't say enough things about it. It's got kind of all season interest, but particularly in the winter, it's not only useful as far as being functional, but it also is attractive because it has kind of this evergreen look to it.
Emily
Yeah, it's a really cool plant.
Rachel
I feel like I need a lot more plants, but you know how that goes.
Mikaela
I do too. I need more of them. I have a bunch of the Northern Bayberries and I don't like them as much because they're semi evergreen. So they lose like half their leaves and they look kind of like scraggly. So I need more of the wax myrtles instead.
:Buzzing sound: What buzzing? It's the bug of the month of Emily.
Emily
So this month's Bug of the month to stick with our kind of spooky Halloween vibe is a really cool bug. It's actually one of, I think, my favorite bugs, even though you don't find it in our area anymore and that's the American burrowing beetle. So this is Nicrophrus Americanus, and I will put a little bit of a trigger warning. This is a carrion beetle, meaning that it feeds on dead and decaying matter. So if that grosses you out or you're listening to this with young ones, you may want to go ahead and skip this month's bug of the month. Carrion beetles play an important ecological role in our environment by recycling carcasses and ultimately returning valuable nutrients to the soil. The American burrowing beetle is the largest of all the North American carrion beetles. It's about an inch and a half long at the adult stage and it has very distinct coloration to it. So they have a very streamlined kind of shiny black body. But the wing covers are going to have these four scalped orange red markings along them. And then you're going to have this distinct kind of orange red blob and on the beetles pronotum, which is the large shield that's right behind their head.
Emily
Their head itself has an orange marking. And I actually think this is the cutest thing ever. The tips of their antennas are marked with orange as well. So these are very like orange and black stripy, very Halloween, very but it's also super cute because like little orange tipped antennas. How adorable. So historical records have shown that this beetle once lived in 35 states, along with the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces. Now, natural populations are known to occur in only four states, which would be Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Nebraska. It was added to the federal endangered species list in July of 1989. Biologists are still unsure on what caused the populations to climb dramatically. Some hypothesize that it's habitat loss, others think that it's habitat fracturing and or lack of their ability to find small carcasses, which is what these guys feed on. So these are not going to be beetles that you're going to find on large carcasses such as some of our other native carrion beetles. These guys tend to try to find small carcasses that they can dig out from underneath and bury. So think of things like songbirds, doves, chipmunks, small rabbits and stuff like that.
Emily
So these guys are not going to necessarily be on deer or raccoons or possums or larger mammals or birds. As a part of the ongoing research and attempt to establish these beetle populations, they've recently reared out some in the lab and released them on Pekinese Island in Massachusetts, which was part of their historical habitat, to see if they can reestablish them there. Current information suggests that this species is actually a habitat generalist and found in many habitats, although it definitely has a preference for grasslands and the understories of oak hickory forests, particularly ones that have sandy and or soft soils, because again, they're digging in the soil, they're burying the carcass. In this case, however, they are carrion specialists that need a carrion of a. Particular size. So carrion availability may be a great factor in determining where the species can survive. So as you have a decline in kind of small mammals and songbirds and so forth, you're also going to see a decline of these guys, because that's the main food source. Now, I know that we're in a very spooky vibe right now, but let's not forget that romance is not dead.
Emily
The American burrowing beetle is actually really unique in that the male and females stay together and actually raise their young together. So the male burrowing beetles will normally locate a carcass first, and they can fly for over 1 km to hunt for a carcass. The beetles will oftentimes fight over the carcasses, with the largest male and female becoming the winners. The victors will then work together to bury the carcass, and then the pair will mate and the female will lay her eggs in a tunnel that's adjacent to the carcass. Within a few days, the larvae will hatch out and will develop over time, with both parents taking turns ripping off some of the carcass and feeding it to their young. The brood sizes of these beetles can range anywhere from one to 30 youngs, but on average, they have about twelve to 15. The larvae will spend weeks feeding on this carcass, and then they'll crawl into the soil and pupate to develop it normally will take them about 45 to 60 days to pupate, and then they'll emerge and the life cycle will start all over again. And they found that the American burrowing beetle, normally the adults will live for about a year.
Emily
A very cool, very appropriate bug of the month.
Rachel
That's really cool, Emily.
Emily
I think it's really neat.
Rachel
So do I. I love to find them.
Emily
Yeah, I almost went with the one that you could find around here, but this one's just so perfectly colored for Halloween.
Mikaela
The one around here is pretty cool, too. It's the one with the yellow shield on the back.
Emily
Yeah. I feel like that'll be another bug of the month. I didn't want to do all carrion beetles together because there's too many cool ones.
Mikaela
I know.
:Horns: Get your tip of the month here with Rachel.
Rachel
So I'm pretty sure I say this every month, but October is like my favorite garden month of the entire year. It's not spring.
Emily
I mean, it's definitely got the best weather.
Mikaela
It's kind of the best.
Rachel
It does have the best weather. So typically in the fall, I really like to take inventory of my garden and move things around. Especially the plants have outgrown their respective area, and it's a perfect time to add additional plants for the next growing season. So I think that's why I like October. The most top priority for my garden is to plant more spring flowering bulbs like daffodils, crocus, tulips and alliums. And like I said last month, don't tell my husband I ordered 100 tulip bulbs. I have no idea how I'm going to plant them, where I'm going to plant them. I add more varieties each year. I love bulbs. I love bulbs in the spring. Hashtag I love bulbs.
Mikaela
Hashtag I love bulbs.
Rachel
That's going to be our next sticker. Hashtag I love bulbs. So if you haven't preordered your tula, daffodil, crocus, allium, bearded iris, you can probably still get some, but you want to go ahead and do it now and get them in, because we like to get them in before frost. So you can order them online or you can find them at home garden stores locally. When selecting bulbs, quality is better than quantity. Select high quality spring bulbs, and that's important because the flower bud has already developed before the bulb is planted, so size is important. Look for plump, firm bulbs. Also, check the root base to make sure that area is firm and intact. If you can't plant them right away, make sure your bulbs stay cool until planting time, so around 60 to 65 degrees. And like I said, October is the best month of the year to plant your spring bulbs, because your bulbs need to establish a healthy root system prior to the onset of winter and before we get a hard frost. Some of our spring flowering bulbs are pretty tender, and they need to be dug up and stored when the leaves of the plant turn yellow.
Rachel
You can use a spade fork to lift those bulbs from the ground and wash off any soil that clings to the bulbs, except those that are stored in pots or with soil around them. So spring flowering bulbs that you want to leave the soil intact is things like begonia, arcana, cadlium, dahlia, and you want to store these bulbs in clumps on slightly moistened layers of peat moss or sawdust in a cool place. And then you can just rinse those clean and separate them next spring before you plant them. October is the ideal time to divide perennials that have died back. I prefer to do this in the fall, rather in the spring, because it allows plants to set a good, healthy root system before that summer heat. And like I said, with bulbs, you need to do this at least four to six weeks before our heavy frost. And on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, that can happen anytime between like, October 30 and November 30, depending on our weather schedule. In October, I love to plan out new garden beds. And you can establish new garden beds by cutting the grass really low and covering it with sections of newspaper or cardboard, wetting it down, and then applying some organic matter such as compost and leaves, and then topping it with a thick layer of mulch or straw.
Rachel
We consider this like lasagna gardening. You can plant right through it at that time with some of your divided perennials, or you can let it sit for the duration of the winter and then plant in early spring. It's seed collection time. If you have any annual flower beds that you want to keep the seeds for next year. So this would be zinnias, cosmos, marigolds. Cut the seed head back when the plants are dry and put the seed heads in a label container and then place them in your crisper of your refrigerator for next year. I've done this for about ten years. The key is just to make sure that the plants have dried all the way down so that you don't grow mold. If you haven't planted a fall vegetable garden, it's time to clean up your vegetable beds. So rip out any of your diseased plants and don't compost them. You don't want to add diseases back into your compost pile. Disinfect your tomato cages. So I like to remove all the dirt and debris. You can spray that down with a hose. And then I spray on a bleach solution, ten to one, nine parts water, one part bleach, and then wipe it off your cage.
Rachel
If you're using wooden steaks, you need to soak them in that bleach solution for about 30 minutes and then let them air dry. Always make sure your vegetable garden soil has been covered with a cover crop or lasagna garden so that you're not losing soil in the winter, because soil that you lose from erosion can harm our bay and our streams. I also like to organize my garden tools in the fall, take inventory of them, make sure they're cleaned and sharpened, drain my hoses or pull up my irrigation lines. I know I have a really hard time doing this, but October is a good time to get rid of those tools that are rusted or have broken handles or holy gloves. I have a hard time letting go of tools. They're expensive, they're a big investment, but you really don't want to get tetanus from your garden tools and holy gloves are just allow soil to get in under your fingers and then it's kind of a pain. So get rid of your stuff. Spring cleaning in the fall and it gives you something to add to your Christmas list. Lastly, put pots and containers that are not subject to freeze fall cycles in your shed or garage.
Rachel
Throw away any pots that are damaged or broken. Discard any of your potting soil in your compost pile if your plants aren't diseased, and get ready for the next season.
Emily
Awesome. Those are some great tips.
Mikaela
Yeah, good advice. October is always like rush time for tips of the month. Perfect time to do everything.
Rachel
It is the perfect time to do everything. And you run shorter on days because it's getting darker earlier. The weather can be a little iffy. It can be rainy or cold one day and then 70 degrees the next day. It's a really hard time to gauge and get things done.
Mikaela
But although I I do find I'm I'm really enjoying doing stuff in November as well, but then you start to get into the holiday season and it's harder to get all that stuff.
Rachel
Yeah, it is.
:Upbeat Music:
Mikaela
Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener we hope you enjoyed it, and we'll tune in next month for more garden tips. If you have any garden related questions, please email us at umegardenpodcast@gmail.com or look us up on Facebook at gardenthymepodcast that's garden T-H-Y-M-E for more information about the University of Maryland Extension and these topics, please check out the University of Maryland extension Home and Garden Information Center website at go.Umd.edu/HGIC. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden. Goodbye.
Rachel
The Garden Thyme podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland extension. Mikaela Boley, senior Agent Associate for Talbot County, for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes, agent Associate for Horticulture in Queen Anne's County. And Emily Zobel, senior Agent Associate for Agriculture in Dorchester County.
Emily
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