S2:E11 Food Safety

Hello Listener, 

The season of  food and eating is upon us! In this episode, we are talking with Dr. Shauna Henely of UME Family & Consumer Sciences, all about how to keep our garden food safe to eat from pathogens,  testing our soils for lead,  washing produce and how to handle leftovers.  

We also have our: 

• Native Plant of the Month (Bushy bluestem) at  33:20
• Bug of the Month (Boxelder bugs)  at 37:05
• Garden Tips of the Month at 41:40

This is our last episode of the year. We hope you enjoyed it and will tune in next year 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 https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcas. For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center and Maryland Grows Blog at https://marylandgrows.umd.edu/.

The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Senior Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture, Rachel Rhodes- Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne’s County), and Emily Zobel-Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

Theme Song:  By Jason Inc

University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.

We currently have an open survey for ALL listeners. Whether you’ve listened to all of our episodes, or this is your first time. We developed an evaluation to determine if the information we share on the podcast has made a difference in your practices at home. We promise that it is a short, easy 5-minute survey, and we even have exclusive podcast stickers to give to those who participate. We are so thankful for the feedback, and we appreciate you tuning in for the podcast! 

You can take our survey here.

 The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. Hosts are Mikaela Boley- Principal Agent Associate (Talbot County) for Horticulture; Rachel Rhodes- Senior Agent Associate for Horticulture (Queen Anne's County); and Emily Zobel- Senior Agent Associate for Agriculture (Dorchester County).

Theme Song: By Jason Inc, 

University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status, genetic information, personal appearance, or any other legally protected class.

Transcript

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript: S2:E11  Food Safety with  Dr. Shauna Henely 

Note: The Garden Thyme Podcast is produced for the ear and is designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.  

:Up Beat Music:

Emily

Hey, listener. A quick update before we dive into this month's episode. This will be our last episode for 2021. It has been a crazy year. We hope that you enjoyed it. We also hope that you all have a great and safe holiday season, or food season, as we like to call it, and we look forward to teaching you guys more about plants and gardening and bugs next year, so we hope you will join it. We also want to give a shout out to Mikaela, who recently gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, which I have dubbed the Little Sprout. She will not be joining us on this episode for our monthly topic, but she did prerecorded you guys a native plant of the month, so stay tuned to listen to that. We wish her and the baby all the best, and we look forward to them returning in January of 2022.

: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 host. I'm Rachel.

Emily

And I'm Emily.

Rachel

In this month's episode, we're talking about food safety in the garden.

:Up beat Music:

Rachel

All right, so we did receive one question for this month, and the question goes hello. I recently bought a home, and I want to put in a vegetable garden in my backyard, but I'm worried about lead in our garden soil since I have two small children. As a parent, as a gardener, we know that there are many dangers lurking in the garden. Can be a bee sting to a cut, even a splinter. But today we're going to talk about food safety and how we make sure the food coming out of our garden is safe to eat. Today we're joined by Dr. Shauna Henley of the University of Maryland Extension Family and Consumer Sciences. But before she joins us, we're going to go ahead and answer this question.

Emily

One thing that I think we need to take into consideration when we are talking about lead in the soil is that all soil has some small trace amounts of naturally occurring lead, typically somewhere around 50 parts per million. So that's a very, very small amount. So you are typically going to always have some lead in your soil, but it doesn't necessarily always need to be a huge concern. However, some garden soil can contain moderate to very high levels of lead that may pose a serious health risk. This risk is sometimes misconstrued by people. So a lot of people have this fear that if they plant in soil that has high lead levels, their plants are somehow going to uptake the lead and put it into the produce that they're going to be consuming. It's going to get taken out of the soil. It's going to be put in my tomatoes or my squash or my eggplant or this or that. And that's actually not true. Lead has a very low solubility rate, meaning that it doesn't get absorbed and taken up via water, which is how plants tend to take up a lot of their nutrition.

Emily

This ability for it to get absorbed is even lower if you have good, healthy soil. So if your soil is rich in phosphorus, has lots of organic matter, and is in that stable PH level of six to seven, where most of our vegetable crops, like, the likelihood of it actually getting absorbed, decreases even more dramatically. So what does actually pose the most risk with regards to lead in the soil? Is it being brought into the house on things like clothes, shoes, or tools, where it then as it dries and becomes dirt. Not soil. It's dirt at this point, right? Flashback to our thing with Nicole Ferrelli about soil health. At this point, it becomes dirt and it will mix with house dust and can get inhaled or ingested. And this is how your body can actually absorb that lead more so than it getting absorbed and put into your vegetable crops. So we're going to talk about a few tips and tricks that you can do to decrease the likelihood of this happening. So the best thing right off the bat and Shauna is going to talk a lot more about how to properly do this, but we always recommend people wash their produce, not only because you want the soil contamination to come off of it in the case of something like lead, but also with regards to soilborne pathogens and other things, it's just safer to kind of wash any and all produce before you eat it.

Emily

Elevated lead levels are more common in urban neighborhoods, but you can also find them in suburban and rural soils that may have been contaminated as well.

Rachel

The greatest lead concentration is in the first one to two inches of soil. So when you're doing a soil sample, you want to make sure that your children's play area or the vegetable garden is separate from those turf samples. Avoid mixing several sites into one sample. So you want to make sure that if you're doing a turf sample, you only mix those areas of turf together and keep everything else separate. There's no legal regulation for lead soil levels. However, the most current recommendation from the United States Environmental Protection Agency is to avoid growing vegetables and soil with a total lead level above 400 parts per million. So if your test comes back with a total lead level between 50 parts per million to 400 parts per million, all the vegetables and fruit crops can be grown safely. So when we think about high lead levels, that's when your test comes back with a 401 parts per million to 1000 parts per million, and fruiting crops such as tomatoes, pepper, squash, and sweet corn can be grown safely. However, leafy greens and root crops should be grown in containers or raised beds, placed on top of the contaminated soil and filled with a mixture of clean topsoil that has a low lead level and compost and that needs to be at an eight inch depth level, as contaminated soil particles can cling to or become embedded in leafy greens and root crops.

Rachel

No matter your lead level, you should always wash your vegetables and peel your root crops before you cook and eat them.

Emily

So now I am very excited to introduce our guest speaker for this month's episode. So we are joined by Dr. Shauna Henley, who is a senior agent for Family Consumer Science here at University of Maryland Extension, and she is going to talk to us all about food safety. So, welcome to the podcast, Shauna.

Shauna

Thanks for having me today.

Emily

We are so happy you are here. So why don't we start off with just a simple question. So why don't you give us an overview of what you do at University of Maryland Extension to help people with regards to food safety.

Shauna

Sure. So my role has evolved to be a little bit different than some of my coworkers when looking at food safety. Traditionally, family and consumer sciences agents helped homemakers become better homemakers. So traditionally that was preparing meals at home as well as food preservation, especially canning. So that's been our expertise, has been consumer food safety education. So washing hands, using food, thermometers, knowing what temperature or how long you want to keep foods out on the counter. And then I also help with ServeSafe. ServeSafe is just one of many different food safety manager certificates that people can obtain when they're looking at food jobs in the retail area. And what we do is if you're someone that's interested in becoming a food entrepreneur, we're helping you navigate some of the waters around regulations, packaging, labeling, so on and so forth. Another thing that deviates from the normal family and consumer sciences agent is I get to help with food safety training for food manufacturers that need to comply with federal regulations. Similarly, I also help with produce grower, training with a produce safety rule and good agricultural practices. So I would say helping with food safety education along the federal lines is a bit unique compared to what family and consumer sciences agents focus on typically, which is consumers and home food preservation.

Emily

So what exactly is food safety? And why should our home gardeners care about food safety and the food that's coming out of their garden?

Shauna

Food safety is just good business all around, whether you're someone that's trying to sell food items or produce to even just making sure that if I went over to your house for lunch or dinner, hopefully you prepared it in a safe manner that I'm not going to get sick. So with food safety, we'll say that it's typically conditions and practices that help keep the quality of the food free of contaminants and anything that could have contaminated it to cause foodborne illness. Now, when I'm mentioning contaminants or contamination. It sounds scary. Not all of them are. So when we're putting on our food safety goggles, we're talking about biological, physical and chemical hazards. So physical hazards that could be hair in your food, rocks or bugs in your food, which is not going to typically make you sick, but it's gross. The other kind of hazards are chemical hazards. So that could be excess soap. It could be some other type of detergent that accidentally got into food. And then the one that we're going to probably focus on a little bit more is the biological hazards. So that could be your bacteria, your viruses, your parasites, your yeast and molds that can lead to foodborne illness.

Shauna

In terms of food safety, why we should care, if you eat, if you drink any sort of beverages, you could be exposed to contaminated food. And we know that for certain populations, those that have a weakened immune system so someone that might have cancer, diabetes, for example, if you're cooking for older relatives. So 65 years and older, pregnant people or young children under the age of five who are still building up their immune system, it could be something as one or ten bacterial cells that can make them really sick. And we know, too, that as home gardeners, you're working really hard to grow edible and non edible plants. And so food safety matters because you're putting so much effort to grow really great produce that's going to be nutritious for your household that we don't want anything that could contaminate it and make it risky to eat for our friends, our families and ourselves.

Rachel

So, Shauna, what can our listeners do during the garden season to make sure that their food is safe to eat?

Shauna

So before you even harvest, I would say before you even plant is just start thinking about where your garden is, what the land use history is. Is your garden area going to be a place that's prone to flooding? Because we would be concerned that if that area is prone to flooding, pooled water could leach in that chemical hazard. It could allow bacteria to grow, too, and really contaminate any sort of fruits and vegetables that you're growing. And like you talked about earlier, testing for lead, making sure those heavy metals stay out. So my first bit would just be knowing where you're putting that garden and also think like a farmer. A lot of Maryland farmers are going through food safety trainings, whether it's good agricultural practices or Gaps, as well as the Food Safety Modernization Acts produce Safety rule. And there's great things that we can take away from these more official areas and apply them to our home gardens for best practices. So if we're thinking like a farmer, we know that through research, water can be contaminated. We know that soil can be contaminated. We know that people can bring contaminants into the garden as well as animals, whether they're domestic or wild.

Shauna

So we'll talk a little bit of each of those areas. I'll backtrack a little bit and just say that when I'm teaching food safety, it's all about informed risks, right? There's some things that we know are risky, but sometimes it's hard to possibly exclude the dog that's with you. So just knowing about certain risks and trying to mitigate them or reduce them is really the key thing in any context. So trying to exclude animals, maybe if you have bird feeders or bat houses, you're putting them further away from the garden, even though they might look pretty aesthetically. Again, we're just thinking about animals and their poop. Another thing too is that soil, not only are we worried about heavy metals, but we also want to make sure that if we're using manure, we're using manure appropriately. Because if we have a lot of rain or high water that isn't necessarily flooding, any sort of poop in the manure could potentially become a problem with what you're growing cropwise. But luckily you have your master gardeners as well as your AG agents to talk to about how to mitigate some of these risks or hazards as you might see them with water.

Shauna

The big thing with water, we know our plants can't grow without them. But from a food science, food safety perspective, we know that water is a great way to grow bacteria very quickly sometimes. And we also know that water is a good vehicle to spread that bacteria really quickly. So when we're looking at water, we're thinking about how risky is our water source that we're using for our plants. For instance, if you're living in a city and using municipal water, that water is going to be the safest because it's being treated for bacteria and other sort of things. We know that well water in general is typically safer just because water is going to be filtered through. And we would also recommend that out of good practice, whether you're growing it or drinking your well water, just getting it tested once a year. And we also know through research that open source water tends to be the riskiest. So open source water could be something like water from a pond, a stream, rain barrels kind of straddle a unique area.

Emily

So in that note, if you'll recall from our Stormwater special episode last year with Jen Dinger, we do not recommend using rain barrel water to water vegetable gardens. If you've got plenty of flowers and turf grass, put it on that. But because of runoff from your roof and so forth, we don't recommend using rain barrels for vegetable and or fruit gardens.

Shauna

Yeah, again, you can always talk to your county agents and kind of talk about what you're using for water and how you can mitigate some of these risks. And then lastly, people, right, people are coming in, planting, harvesting, you want to eat your garden crops. And so hand washing, you can't beat hand washing. And I would say that if you're working in the garden, especially at home, you're really going to want to stick to washing your hands with soap, water, and ideally, a paper towel. If you use cloth towels, make sure that cloth towel gets into the washing machine more often than you think. We know that if you're working in gardens and you get soil on your hands, those alcohol based hand sanitizers just aren't going to work for cleaning your hands. So stick to hand washing when you're dealing with garden activities. Another thing, too, is that if you're someone that has backyard chickens, other animals that you're tending to, you may want to think about, do I need to work in the garden first? And then tend to the backyard flock or other animals you might have, thinking about the clothes that you wear and even the shoes that you put on your feet.

Shauna

We know that boots, sneakers, anything footwear wise with a tread can lock in soil or manure, and we just don't want any potential cross contamination occurring. So, for example, if your chicken was carrying something like salmonella, let's say in the morning, I decided to feed my chickens. I wore my sneakers. I'm walking around collecting eggs, feeding them, cleaning up their cages. Maybe I step in poop. Don't think about it, because I'm not looking at my shoes. And then I go pick the leafy greens of spinach and kale. I might be transferring salmonella that was in their poop over into my garden space, and that would be slightly risky. Instead, I might want to have that dedicated footwear and clothing just for my backyard flock. And you can visit our extension website on poultry because that does become a biosecurity risk. Not only a food safety risk as well.

Emily

We actually had John Moyle come on last year as well for our Backyard Poultry special episode. So if you want to know more about backyard poultry biosecurity, check out that episode.

Rachel

That was a really great episode.

Shauna

Isn't this saying for comedy? It's continuity. I feel like this episode is hopefully bringing all the different pieces of extension together.

Emily

Yeah, it goes to show how many other people we've had on as guest speakers.

Shauna

Yes, I love it. And even for people, you want to make sure that if you're harvesting, ideally you're using tools, whether it's scissors, knives, shovels, anything like that. It's going to be equipment that you can easily clean with soap and water and possibly sanitize if you felt the need to. Especially if you're harvesting. Try to think about using containers that are food grade. I know personally, when I go home and visit my parents, my dad's using the plastic that the cat litter came in. I'm like, dad, no. This could be a chemical risk. We're not using that. Let me get you some food grade clean buckets to put those tomatoes in. So it does happen, and even when you are thinking about harvesting your garden produce, maybe do a quick scan to look for poop, right? Does anything else look a little amiss before you go and pick, just so you can kind of weigh your risks? Or maybe just avoid picking if you saw poop on crops that you want. Another thing too, is that if you're bringing in younger visitors, right, maybe you have a small child. It's great to get them in the garden to see how things grow.

Shauna

But either telling them, hey, let's wait to bring in the carrots to be rinsed under potable, running water before you eat it, instead of brushing something off right there in the garden and taking a bite.

Emily

I am so bad about that. I do that all the time in my garden. I jokingly tell people none of my cherry tomatoes make it into my house because I'm literally in the 50ft. I have to walk from my raised beds to my back door. They're all gone. I've literally eaten the entire handful that I have. Wash your produce.

Shauna

But again, it's informed decisions, right? Sometimes people will tell me that they think of me when they're thinking about not washing chicken or washing chicken, and that's their decision to make. At least they can weigh the risks. They know what could potentially happen and do what you need to. I think it's interesting because the world of food safety recommendations are changing so often. So, I mean, I don't know, Emily, maybe next year or in two years. Everything I'm talking to you today, I'll sound like a liar because the science and technology is changing so much. But for now, it's still going to be informed decisions.

Rachel

There are several suggestions floating around about how to wash produce from either the store or from your garden. What are your recommendations? Should people be using just plain hot water? Or do we need to use a mixture of hot water and bleach? Or how about soap? Do we mix all three together?

Shauna

So you'll still want to wash or rinse produce right before you eat it? Or cooking under running water? So that goes for store bought or whatever you harvested from the garden. Then you have to think about the surface of the produce. Tomatoes, apples, something with that smoother outside skin. You could typically just run underwater and rub to kind of clean it off. If you want to add some extra precautions, you could use a paper towel or a clean cloth towel to dry it off. Just like you would hand washing if you have something like a carrot or a cucumber or a melon. So any vegetable that grows in ground or sits on the surface of the ground, having a dedicated scrub brush to help remove any surface dirt from those nooks and crannies. Then with the leafy greens, I would recommend using a salad spinner to help rinse as well as remove excess moisture. Because if you're using your salad greens to make a salad. And you're someone that likes salad dressing. Wet leaves are not going to hold onto the salad dressing very well. So you're just going to have a slimy soup mixture of water and salad dressing at the bottom.

Shauna

So from a culinary perspective, food safety tends to lend itself helpful on occasions.

Emily

I knew I was officially an adult when my mom gave me a salad spinner once for my birthday. And I was like, this is the best gift ever because I hated that exact thing. And it was like if I wanted a salad, I had to get the lettuce, and then I had to waste a bunch of paper towels padding it dry. So salad spinners are amazing, and it's.

Shauna

Fun too, for any age. And I would also add too, for washing produce. It's more of a common issue with fruit, but when you're washing produce and it's still maybe warm from the field temperature heat, you want to make sure you rinse your produce using similar temperature water as a produce. You don't want to rinse warm produce with cold water because the cold water will be sucked right into that warm fruit. And if the water is contaminated, you're potentially bringing pathogens into the flesh of your apple or cantaloupe. Another thing too, that I would also want people to consider is that when you are rinsing produce, you really don't need anything but water to rinse it. I know a lot of people will tell me that they'll use bleach, they'll use soap, those type of chemicals. I would be concerned that they might cause some harm if you ingest them, you yourself or other people that you're feeding. Also another thing is people will sometimes say that they'll use vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, some sort of acid to help clean produce. You don't need those items, but if they make you feel better when using them, at least they're food safe, right?

Shauna

You can eat lemon juice, you can eat a little vinegar. Typically they're diluted. They probably aren't going to do as much as you think, but at least they're safe to ingest. Another thing I've heard are the veggie washes. Those aren't necessarily any better than using water from the tap. Some people say that they've noticed the veggie washes help remove some of the waxy protective coverings from store bought produce. But again, right now the recommendation is just using running tap water that's safe to drink. You don't need soap, you don't need bleach or chlorines. You don't need any acids like vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, but again, just differentiating. What is safe to consume versus could be a chemical hazard is important to know when you're making these decisions at your house.

Emily

I know that we've just ended spooky season, which I'm very sad about, but we are getting to enter what I like to call food consumption season, which is when you make all of those delicious foods and I know I always make tons for leftovers. So what are some general tips that you can give us for just preparing even non fresh produce food in our households and then making sure that as we store them as leftovers that they stay healthy for us to continue eating for leftovers?

Shauna

I would make sure that you know from the get go that most leftovers are safe to eat within three to four days in the refrigerator. If you don't think you're going to get to those leftovers or you're someone that gets leftover fatigued pretty easily, think about freezing them. So one of the things that we'll say for freezing is make sure you're thinking about the portion size that you want of those leftovers. Are you freezing things to be one individual meal or are you freezing something as a leftover to feed for for dinner? Making sure that you're labeling what the food item is so it doesn't get lost into the abyss of the freezer and even making sure that what you're wrapping or putting your food items and leftovers in is going to be appropriate for the freezer, right? We've all had freezer burn. It looks funky. It tastes funky when the food is reheated appropriately to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. So we recommend that people visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation sponsored by the University of Georgia's Cooperative Extension and you can search and learn how to correctly wrap and freeze all sorts of food items to prevent freezer burn so your foods have that quality as well as that safety peace in mind.

Shauna

When you are freezing. Things can basically stay frozen for a very long time, over a year. So we would just say that if you are freezing foods, make sure you're storing them appropriately for quality. Put an appliance thermometer in your freezer so you know your freezer is somewhere between negative 20 and zero degrees Fahrenheit for appropriate freezing. And maybe think about how you're organizing your freezer so you can find things that are oldest firsts up front. So in the food business, you'll hear people talk about first in, first out. If I was freezing a casserole tonight and I made a fresh casserole next week, I would make sure that any leftover portion went behind the older ones.

Emily

On that note, what's your thought on thawing stuff out and then refreezing it once I've brought it out? Should I refreeze it at all or once it's out, I should then eat it like one freeze or can I do multiple freezes?

Shauna

Right? Oh, the life of something that's a leftover. Okay. So I would say if you're pulling anything out of the freezer, you never want to thaw something out on the counter just because of the temperature. It could cause bacteria to grow rapidly. If you want to have the most options after you're letting something thaw about whether you cook it, you freeze it, you do whatever thaw frozen foods in the refrigerator because if you decide when it's completely thawed, you don't want it, you could refreeze it. However, if you thaw foods in the microwave or if you thaw foods under water, you need to cook it that day. So it's not as forgiving as thawing in the refrigerator. Another option too, because sometimes people don't plan ahead to thaw food in the refrigerator a day or two in advance, depending on the size of what needs to be thawed out, is that you can actually cook whatever is frozen and just plan that because it's frozen, the cooking time is going to be a bit longer, right? Maybe a time and a half. But the four different ways of thawing is the refrigerator, which is the most forgiving the microwave, thawing it under cold water, then cook it immediately, or cook it as a frozen item and just realize it's going to take longer.

Shauna

So those are my recommendations.

Emily

Awesome. If our listeners have any additional questions with regards to food safety in the garden or their kitchen, where could they go to get more information?

Shauna

So, depending on how much engagement you might want, I would say a good place is always starting with your local extension agent. If you're trying to introduce food safety to a younger audience or just trying to find resources that make food safety a little bit more fun, I'll always argue food safety is 1000 times fun, but New Mexico State University's Learning Games Lab is a great resource. They have some interactive games, they have songs, they have some good images that help teach food safety principles. So another place would be the Partnership for Food Safety Education. So fightback.org. They have some different activities, especially for younger children, as well as some previously recorded webinars that are free to access for anyone that's interested. Also, the government has a lot of updated websites and food safety tools. So CDC, FDA, USDA has some really great infographics fact sheets that are available again for free, and you'll see them too, on their website. Lastly, USDA, they do have a free app that people can download for their Droid or Apple, depending whatever your platform is called the Food Keeper. So that's something that you can look up to see how long certain foods should be frozen or in your pantry.

Shauna

They'll even provide some recommendations for safe, minimal cooking temperatures too, if you were going to cook a turkey, because that might be coming up soon for some people. Yes.

Emily

The highlight of the beginning of the food season.

Shauna

Yes.

Emily

Awesome. Thank you so much, Shauna, for coming on this episode and teaching us a little bit about food safety.

Shauna

Thanks for having me.

Mikaela

It's the native plant of the month with Mikaela. Now, you guys know that I have a weakness for grasses, native grasses in particular. So my pick for native plant of the month this month is called bushy bluestem or Andropogon glomeratus. And now the beautiful. Part about native grasses, and there are many, is that they are really coming into their own late in the season and they really should be enjoyed all winter long. I think the biggest mistake people make is cutting back a lot of their perennials, including grasses in the fall or after the summer and fall season. And really you're missing out and it adds a lot of seasonal interest when you have native grasses in the landscape. So bushy bluestem belongs to the Andropogon group, which includes nearly 100 speies of grasses. And this comes from the Greek name which is pogo n, which is Greek for beard. And this is in reference to the fluffy flower spikelets that they produce in the fall. And it's very distinctive to this group. They're very fluffy, very white, and that enables them to spread pretty easily as well, but without being aggressive. But the grass themselves turn a really beautiful color in the late fall.

Mikaela

It's a rusty orange color or a coppery kind of color that persists through the winter. And that's why we should leave them up, is because not only do they have really great winter color, but they also have great winter structures. So these are grasses that stay pretty upright through the season when some of the other grass species tend to flop over or fall down, or if we get any kind of weather, they just kind of lay flat. But these guys are really good at staying more upright. So bushy bluestem can be found in medium to wet soils, but they do like full sun. They will tolerate part sun, but like Broom sedge, which is also very common out here on the Eastern Shore, it also habits fallow fields, but it's more frequent in marshy and low moist ground of flat coastal areas. It's actually one of the grass species that has the most tolerance for wet ground, so that's good news for us, at least out here on the Eastern Shore that tend to have kind of heavier soils. And what's nice is it reaches a height of about three to 5ft, so it's not super tall like some of the other large native grasses.

Mikaela

And this all really depends on the fertility of the soil. Like many native plants in areas of low fertility, it will have shorter heights, which isn't a bad thing. This is kind of an advantage in some ways so they don't get so tall and flop over. Like I mentioned before.

Shauna

Mikaela

This grass stands apart due to the very bushy seed head produced. And it looks like it's something that comes from a Dr. Seuss book, hence the common name, bushy bluestem. It lends great structure to the landscape and it's very unique looking. And so this dense seed head produces very fluffy white seeds, which can self seed in the right areas. But the remaining grass stems continue to provide winter interest and cover for wildlife and they make really attractive additions in like dried flower arrangements. This is a species that can be found pretty easily on the eastern shore of Maryland and has a very coastal range across the south and southeastern part of the United States. If you're lucky enough to find this commercially available, it makes a valuable addition to a naturalized or meadow landscape. And actually, I think it even fits into a more formal landscape in the right areas. Dare I say run, don't walk to the nearest native plant nursery to look for these and buy as many as possible.

Emily

What buzzing? It's the bug of the month with Emily.

Emily

Emily

This month's bug of the month is boxelder bugs. So boxelder bugs are a type of true bug and they belong in the same family as stink bugs and cicadas and other insects with that piercing, sucking, mouth part. So again, these guys aren't chewers or biters. They tend to be a nuisance insect around this time of the year as they eventually find their way inside homes and businesses looking for a nice warm place to kind of overwinter. They don't bite and they don't sting and they don't cause property damage the same way like post powder beetles or termites would. But they do have the potential to stain surfaces and they release a bad odor when they're crushed. So think of these guys as the cousins of brown marmorated stink bugs. You're going to find them in your homes, but they're not really threatening. You can kind of scoop them up and toss them back outside if you want or you can let them overwinter with you. So the adults are the life stage that will enter the home. They tend to be at half an inch in length and they're kind of an ovally shape.

Emily

They are black with orange and red markings along the edges of the front wings and they'll have three orange and red lines running right behind their head vertically. When it warms up, they'll move back outside. So if you get these guys in the fall, you're likely to find a few of them in early spring. So when it warms up, they'll move back outside where they will feed, find a mate and then lay eggs. The eggs will hatch out late spring into early summer. You're going to find the nymphs, which are red and black, so they're rather striking. The nymphs do tend to hang out in groups, so when you find one you tend to find a lot. And because of that red coloration, people kind of notice these guys. They will feed on the leaves, twigs, seeds of boxelder trees, which is a type of maple, as well as other maples and ash trees. They don't cause any harm to the tree. Feeding damage is very minimal, so you don't have to worry about your trees or banding them or anything like that. And then come fall time again, the adults will start looking for a location to overwinter inside buildings if they're available, as well as the overwinter and rock piles in that leaf litter or in other sheltered places during winter.

Emily

The boxelder bugs are generally inactive. They kind of put themselves into what we call diapause, which is an insect's version of hibernation during mild, sunny days. However, when it does kind of warm up, particularly if they're overwintering in your attic or something, they may start to become mobile. So you may end up finding them on warm days in the winter inside your home as well. If you find them in your home, you can catch and release them outside. If you are noticing them outside and are worried about them coming in, you can reduce the number that get into your home by checking to make sure that your windows and doors have tight fits. You can cock any holes that you see that would be entry points for them. You can also eliminate hiding places such as wood piles, rock piles and so forth that are around your home. If they are enticed to go to these places and these locations are further away from your house, you kind of can lure them a little bit further away. We, however, do not recommend spraying either your landscape or inside your home to treat these. Again, they aren't going to harm you or your house or your pets or your kids or anything.

Emily

They're just sort of a nuisance. So you can just toss them outside and spraying is really going to be a waste of your time and money, as well as you're likely going to harm more beneficial insects by spraying. So that is my bug of the month.

Rachel

I love this bug. I probably say that every time you pick a bug of the month, but I find them so pretty.

Emily

Yeah, I think they're kind of cool looking. They do tend to gross people out because you don't find them hanging out by themselves. These guys like to party. They like around others. So it's one of those things like people will open their shed in fall and spring and the whole ceiling or the whole side will be just covered with these and it's like they're not harming anything. They're what I like to call a neutral bug. It's just they're a mild nuisance.

Rachel

Yeah, I think they're really pretty. And they're so striking with that red and that black.

Emily

Oh, I know. And like the nymphs do this thing where they're like bright red and then they slowly have those black wings growing. So every time they molt, the wing pads will get a little bit bigger. So you get this black that keeps growing a little bit more on them.

Rachel

Yeah.

Emily

So they're very cool insects.

Rachel

They're very striking.

Shauna

Get your tip of the month here with Rachel.

Rachel

All right, it's November, the weather is cool and here we are getting ready for winter. I love winter. S o be on the lookout for the spotted lantern Fly adults and egg masses. You want to report any fines to the Maryland Department of Agriculture and they have a special website just dedicated to the Spotted Lantern fly. So that website is MDA.Maryland.gov/Spottedlanternfly and you can go on there and give them the location. And if you have a nymph or an egg mass or an adult, you also want to make sure that if you are seeing any adults or egg masses that you're trying to get rid of, go ahead and get rid of them by scraping the egg mass off or taking that adult and putting in the freezer. Or you can soak it in some soapy water. But we do want to make sure that we're also informing the Department of Agriculture if you find any. It's a great time to mulch your perennials after a hard freeze and this helps protect them from frost heaving caused by freezing and thawing soil cycles. Mulch helps moderate the temperature fluctuations, reducing this problem.

Rachel

You can amend your soil according to your soil test results if you took a soil test this fall. According to the Maryland Lawn Fertilizer law, lawn fertilizer cannot be applied to Maryland lawns by homeowners between November 15 and March 1. This helps protect our Chesapeake Bay from excessive nutrients entering its waterways. It's too late to broadcast lawn seed and expect it to survive this winter, so consider waiting until spring. Protect late planted crops like beets, spinach and broccoli rabe with a cold frame, a plastic sheeting over hoops or a row cover. If you haven't done it already, dig up your cold sensitive bulbs like elephant ears and dahlias and store them in a cool, dry place for next season. It's also a really good time to clean and sharpen and store your tools. Get all that soil debris off. It's the holiday plant season and you should really check out last year's November episode for more information about holiday plant care. So when you're buying plants, always check the plants for live insects and disease. And this was a big one for me after my mealybug adventure with a Christmas cactus I bought from a big box store and it infected all my orchids.

Rachel

I always like to check them and make sure they're not overwatered or underwatered by checking the root for root rot. And you want to make sure that you have white roots, so make sure that they're not brown or discolored. That's worth the time to spend looking at your plants for like 5 minutes in the store, even though somebody might be standing behind you going why is she taking so long?Carefully examine any boxwood wreaths and decorative greens for symptoms of boxwood blight before you purchase them. And be aware that sometimes infected plants don't show diseases, but they are carriers at the end of the season. Don't place boxwood wreaths in your compost if they have any signs of boxwood Blight or other diseases. 


: Up Beat Music: 

 Rachel 

Well, that's all we have for this episode listener. We hope you enjoy it and you turn in next year 2022 for more gardening 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.

Mikaela

The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland extension. Mikaela Boley, Senior Agent Associate in 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

University of Maryland Extension programs are open to all and will not discriminate aid against anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry or nation of origin, marital status, genetic information, or political affiliation.