The Garden Thyme Podcast

S3: E1 Houseplants with Ginny Rosenkranz

January 10, 2022 Garden Thyme Podcast Season 3 Episode 1
The Garden Thyme Podcast
S3: E1 Houseplants with Ginny Rosenkranz
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Hello Listener,  

Happy New Year! It is hard to believe that we are already in a new year. We are kicking off our third season by sitting down with Extension Educator Ginny Rosenkranz. Like many of you, during the pandemic our acquisition of houseplants increased exponentially. Ginny guides us on caring for all of our botanical beauties. 

Timing: 

  • Houseplants at ~ 01:50
  • Native Plant of the Month Musclewood, Ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana) at ~ 24:55
  • Bug of the Month Ice crawlers or ice bug family Grylloblattidea at ~ 29:05
  •  Garden Tips of the Month at ~ 31:50 

We hope you enjoyed this month's episode and will 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 https://www.facebook.com/GardenThymePodcast.  For more information about UME and these topics, please check out the UME Home and Garden Information Center website at  https://extension.umd.edu/hgic

 The Garden Hoes 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). The University of Maryland is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Equal Access Programs. 

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript:  S3: E1 Houseplants with Ginny Rosenkranz



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: 


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 house plants to cure your winter blues with our guest speaker, Ginny Rosenkranz.

 

:Up Beat Music:

 


Emily

Welcome to the podcast, Ginny. We're so excited to have you.

 


Ginny

Oh, thank you for having me.

 


Emily

Why don't we start off with your title? So what do you do in Extension?

 


Ginny

Oh, okay. I am so fortunate that I can go ahead and be an extension agent. I am commercial horticulture, which is perfect for me because I work with all the landscape contractors, all the greenhouse growers, all the nursery growers, all the garden center operators. I even get to go on golf courses, although they have asked me, please never play golf again, but please come and help them with all their problems. So for me, it is just the perfect job for me because I love to work with people who love plants. And then the other part is I'm 20% master Gardener coordinator, so I get to teach and work with all of these really creative people who we call master gardeners. And they're amazing because they help all of you guys.

 


Rachel

Wow, that's really interesting. And it sounds like the perfect job where you get to work with so many different people and different facets of horticulture.

 


Emily

So today we are actually going to talk specifically about house plants because it is January and there's not a lot outside. And I know this is the time when we start micro focusing on the few plants that are still in our lives, which are all the inside ones. And I know from personal experience, I end up with more dead plants in February because I'm over babying them in January than any other month.

 


Rachel

I know a lot of people get house plants over the holidays. It's a perfect hostess gift. What do you think is the easiest house plants to grow or to start with.

 


Ginny

That are Christmas house plants? Okay. To me, that would be the Christmas cactus. They are very forgiving. They can be allowed to dry out oh, dear. For longer than you want to. They are very comfortable with a lot of light or just a little bit of light. So I would say that they are probably the easiest, most forgiving. The only requirement that they have is that they're light sensitive in the late summer. So we're talking August and getting into September, where if you have them in a room that you don't actually turn the lights on after dark, then they'll start developing their flower buds. And then around Thanksgiving and Christmas time, all these beautiful flowers. And they're really cool because they're like bell shaped flowers, multiple tears coming down with either bright red or orangey, red or pink, or even pure white. And they're fabulous.

 


Rachel

I have a few. And I love that bright, fluorescent hot pink. So are there any additional ones that are pretty easy for the novice gardener?

 


Ginny

Oh, I think so. I think a lot of times you might get a house plant that is just all sold for foliage, and that usually is the easiest one. They can handle so many different places in your home. There's foliage plants that can handle being on a north facing area or a room that has absolutely no light. And you provide a little bit of light through a very easy to use grow light or something like that, or sometimes just even having a lamp on while you're in there. In an office, especially if your office doesn't have any windows, which would be horrible. If you have an office without windows, you definitely need a house plant just to keep yourself sane. But things like Philodendron, they're easy. They don't require too much. Jade plants are also very small and very easy. I would say all of the succulents are very good. A lot of succulents need a lot of light, but lots of them can handle just a little bit of light. And they are, I think, one of the easiest things to grow, because if you forget to water them, no worries. That's how they live.

 


Ginny

They're designed to hold a lot of water. So, as Emily said, sometimes she loses more in January. It's because she said, oh, look at you, you need to be watered. Give it a chance to go ahead and dry out all the way first, maybe like every two weeks water. Yeah.

 


Emily

I actually have recently killed a rosemary plant because I didn't realize that they prefer it dry, and I've been watering it weekly with all the rest of my plants.

 


Ginny

Rosemaries are actually very very difficult to grow. I think that they are among, I would say, the most difficult house plant to grow, first of all, because they don't like to be in the house. They are from the Mediterranean area, which means that they like it hot and dry in terms of soil, but they like a lot of humidity. So, like, think about being on the Mediterranean area where it's hot and dry. It's the mountain area, so there's a lot of gravel, there is very little soil, so you don't want to over fertilize them. But as soon as the humidity in a house dries up, they're just like and they just dry up, like, oh, no. And that's when things like mealy bugs and spider mites go, hey, man, this is perfect. I can go ahead and feast on you. And they have no way to really kick them off. So as soon as you get a rosemary, I would say keep it indoors for a little bit, and I would put it into a larger pot with that you've maybe insulated and put it outside so it can handle the outside. They can handle winter just fine.

 


Ginny

So I would just go ahead and bring it inside just for look at that gorgeous rosemary. And as soon as your guests go, put it outside again in a nice sheltered location, but with a container that's more insulated so it can handle the cold around its roots.

 


Emily

That's good to know because I did.

 


Ginny

Get it for the holiday season, because.

 


Emily

My plan was to keep it alive and then eventually plant it out in my front yard. But I might just wait until springtime and get another one. But along those notes, are there any other house plants or plants that you would say find at a box store that are commonly sold that are tricky and you wouldn't actually recommend for a novice gardener?

 


Ginny

In a sense, I would say also any type of fern, especially in the fall and the wintertime, because they have a tendency to go dormant, which is kind of frustrating. And you see this beautiful plant and it's like, oh, yeah, lovely, because it came up from Florida and it's a lot warmer. And even though we have short nights, their nights are actually longer. And so as soon as you bring it up here, it's kind of like in culture shock.

 


Rachel

I think this is a really great conversation for right plant, right place. And we always talk about that when we're talking about our in Ground Gardens. But it sounds like it's pretty much the same for house plants.

 


Ginny

Oh, absolutely. The easiest house plants to grow, like I said, are the ones that you buy for the foliage, because the foliage has different shapes, different textures, different colors. They're just wonderful. And so many of them are really happy in a window that is on the north side of your house, where you just get sort of like light, ambient light in the early morning and a little bit in the afternoon, but for the most part it's so indirect. But these are the plants that in the jungle are understory. They're the ones that are growing with hundreds of feet of large trees just shading them. So this is where they're used to growing. So with them, it's good to go ahead and have them in those areas where they don't get a lot of light, but they'll do just fine. Things like Sansevieria. That's also called mother-in-law's tongue or snake plant. They are such strong growers, you can forget to water them for a month and they're still going, whatever.

 


Rachel

I have the hardest time growing prayer plant. I don't know what it is about that plant, but I can buy one. And like Emily with her comfort cactus, I can kill that thing in no time flat, but I can have ten phalaenopsis orchids and be completely fine. I don't know what it is about my house or my watering schedule, but they don't like me.

 


Ginny

It's not the watering schedule, it's what the plant likes. So you're probably doing a good job of watering it. But that particular plant needs a high humidity. And there are a lot of plants, like ferns, also need a lot of high humidity. So if you have just one single fern and it's kind of like looking kind of nasty, even in the summertime, you rain. What have I done wrong? Think about where they grow. They like to grow with a lot of humidity. So what I would do and I actually have this in my house in some places where I have a larger container or a tray and I put pebbles on it and then I put water and that I don't water the plant as often as I water the pebbles because especially in the wintertime, there's a lot of drying. But my house is air conditioned in the summer, which means that if it's really hot outside, the air conditioner is running, and that also pulls out the water. So I'm always putting water on those pebbles to keep the humidity there for them. The other trick I do is I put a whole bunch of plants together so that they're all having fun together and they're sharing the moisture.

 


Ginny

So as we're having coffee and tea and sharing conversations, they're doing the same thing, but they're sharing the moisture.

 


Rachel

Humidity trays are a great option, though. Would you suggest using like a small humidifier? If you don't have the resources for a humidity tray and you have an extra humidifier laying around.

 


Ginny

That would probably be a really good idea. It would be easier. I know a lot of people like to mist things, and there's a lot of plants that would like that, but I'm sorry, I don't have time for that. So a small humidifier would be really good. There are some plants that you never want to do that with. I mean, any type of plant, like a gloxinia or an African violet with those nice fuzzy leaves, oh my Lord, you get too much humidity in those and they immediately start to get all kinds of different diseases. I mean, the leaves of a plant will always tell you what the story is. And if it starts to wilt and get funky looking, you're like, the world is wrong with you. Sometimes it's just too humid. So let them be bright and dry.

 


Rachel

So we get this question a lot. What about repotting our house plants? When's the right time to repot them? When do you repot them? Do you buy them and immediately repot them?

 


Ginny

Okay, well, when you buy a plant, the first thing you want to do is take a look at the plant, the whole plant. And I tell people this, and even in a garden center when I'm showing how to do this, people like, oh, you can't do that. But what I do is I tell people you're buying the whole plant, not only the top that has all the foliage and the flowers and all that, but you're also buying the part of the plant that has roots. So I like to actually take the plant and take the pot off the plant. So if it's hard to get the pot off the plant, that could mean that there's too many roots and it's pot bound. The other thing is when you turn the plant over to take a look at the roots, do you see any roots coming out of the holes, the drainage holes? That could mean it's too pot bound. Also, you have to weigh it. Do you really want to use something like that? You're already going to have a problem, or are you up for the challenge to go ahead and say, if I repot this, it will actually do really well.

 


Ginny

So if you decide to go ahead and get one that is not pot bound, when you buy it, you just go ahead and make sure you have the right place for it and put it on the right watering schedule for that particular plant. And you can go ahead and leave a house plant without repotting it for years. But there are plants that when you buy them and they're the challenge ones, you already know that they're pot bound, and you say, I'm up for the challenge. Okay, you see, it doesn't matter at this particular point that plant needs to be repotted. I would say most of the time, I would say repot plants in the winter or late winter, early spring, because a lot of plants kind of like start to really move on there. But most of our tropicals are from the equator area or South America, so actually their summer is our winter. That's why winter is a good time for us to replant them. So anyways, you take the pot off and you take a look at the roots, you can go ahead and sometimes soak the plant in some lukewarm water and to get those roots to sort of tease apart.

 


Ginny

If the plant is too big for that, what you can do is actually take a very sharp knife. I use a penknife, and you want to score from the top of the root ball down to the bottom of the root ball on four different sides. So like north, south, east, west, and what you're doing is you're breaking up those roots. So you're asking those roots to continue to grow, but into new areas. Go west, young root, that sort of thing. And then you want to go ahead and get a pot that's at least an inch larger, but you don't really want to get too much larger. And then you want to go ahead and put, like people like to put a piece of broken crackery and that's good, but I always like to go ahead and put a coffee filter on the bottom so that when I put the new potting soil in, it will basically stay there and not dribble down. As soon as you start watering it, you want to put about an inch of new soil, put the pot back in there that have the roots that have been teased apart or trimmed, and then add more potting soil.

 


Ginny

You always want to have at least a half to an inch of what they call lip of the soil that's down from the very, very top of the pot. And then put that pot in a larger pot or in the sink and water it with remember, lukewarm water, and let it sit, let it drain, and then find the right place for it. That's a really good idea. Things like orchids, you really don't need to repot them. They usually do best with, like, bark or pieces of wood that they have that they sell, because an orchid in the south actually grows on a tree, but after a while, those pieces of bark will decompose and you have soil, and that's bad for the aerial roots of those. So you would want to repot that when it's not blooming with new fresh bark.

 


Rachel

I had somebody give me an orchid once that they couldn't get to flower anymore. And the first thing I did was take it out of its container to look at the soil medium, and they had repotted it with potting soil, and I repotted it with orchid bark. And I tried to bring it back for, like, six months. And after that, I was just like, this thing is just done.

 


Rachel

It was so sad.

 


Ginny

Oh, that's a shame. I like the type of orchid pots that have lots of decoration and air holes through it. So quite often people think that they have to put those roots into the soil, into the bark mixture, just maybe one or two to hold it stable and then have the rest kind of go over the pot and hold on to the pot.

 


Rachel

Yeah, they're like one of those house plants that really don't need the extra growth. They just kind of like to stay compact and tight.

 


Emily

So to learn more about orchid and orchid care, check out our extra episode from February 2020 when we interviewed Greg Griffin, who is the orchid specialist from Longwood Gardens. Ginny, so we talked a little bit about caring for plants, and you talked a little bit about inspecting them before you did. But what happens when we get them home and we've taken care of them and all of a sudden we notice that there's something kind of wrong with them? Maybe there's some discoloration, or maybe we had a hitchhiker? How do we go about dealing with some of the troubles and issues that come up with our house plants?

 


Ginny

That's a good question, because so often we find a plant, we go, oh, this is the most beautiful plant. I know just where I want it. And you want to put it with all of your other house plants. I guess the first thing is when you buy a plant and you look at it real careful and you don't see anything bad, you go, okay, good. But still try to keep it away from all of the other plants that are doing so well in your house. Because if you do have a silent, quiet hitchhiker, you don't want to spread it to everything else. And sometimes it takes about two or three months before something would have a chance to go ahead and build up a population. So when you do just always every week when you're looking at your plants, I always talk to my plants. I think that that's good because it gives me a chance to say, hey, how are you doing? And I also focus on that particular plant. I think that that's really important, too. But the other thing is you want to look at the top of the leaf, the underside of the leaf you want to look at if it it's flowering, how the flowers look.

 


Ginny

And the leaves will always tell you a story. Like, for instance, if it's sort of funky, like you mentioned, different colors and all that. When you see something that the leaf doesn't look right, go ahead, get some larger glasses. Or I just use a magnifying glass, a great big one that you can go ahead and see and look at to see why is the leaf turning different colors? Look on the top. But lots of times those hitchhikers are on the underside. When you see that, then you have to decide, how are you going to deal with this? Are you going to keep the plant if you've not noticed it and the whole plant is just covered with something, sometimes the best thing to do is put in a plastic bag and put it outside. Just really hard for everybody. But if you just find a couple of things, then you can go ahead and you'd want to go ahead and take note of what it is you want to keep it in quarantine. There are different types of things you can go ahead and use, like insecticidal soaps you are allowed to use on indoor house plants and some horticulture oils and different oils and all that.

 


Ginny

But you'd want to be able to have it so that you have a small amount, and you can go ahead and maybe put it in the bathroom tub and spray the top and spray the underside. Sometimes that's a two person job. And then, of course, you want to let it dry up before you move it anywhere else and then keep a real close eye on it.

 


Rachel

I am notorious about buying discount plants that have some type of insect hitchhiker with them. I feel like it's just like one of those things that I gravitate towards. Or maybe it's just because I buy discounted plants, but I've learned my lesson and I quarantine. They might be quarantining in the bathroom for a month, but they're going to be quarantined because I hate mealy bugs. I hate them. And I feel like they're one of those things that you don't see until it's too late, because you don't see that population until you're like, what's that? What's that sticky substance? Or spider mites.

 


Ginny

Right? I will say I agree with you. Mealy bugs have a tendency to live where the leaves meet the stem sometimes, so that they're really hiding underneath that area where the leaf meeting the stem is, so that they can build that population up. Same thing for spider mites who lived on the underside. I will say this. I had a beautiful braided weeping fig  Ficus benjamina, and I've been taking care of it for years and years. And it was early summer, so all my windows were open with the screens in the windows, so the breezes were blowing in. And then within three or four weeks, as I was vacuuming, I thought, wow, there's something weird about the rug underneath this plant. And I went ahead and just got down on my hands and knees and felt what was wrong with it? It was sticky. It was sticky because scale insects had blown into the window, because I'd had this thing for two decades and they had blown in, and the population has just bloomed, unfortunately. And scale insects are often the same color as the stems of your plants. So sometimes when you're working with your plants, touch them, feel them.

 


Ginny

If it's sticky, that's a bad sign. That means you have a sucking insect that is not processing the sugar, and that's time to really look at it with big glasses, magnifying lens. And I had to ditch that poor plant. It was just the population just grew too fast, and sometimes that happens.

 


Rachel

What about house plants and your pets? Are there any house plants that we shouldn't have around our pets? And are there house plants that are kind of okay if our dog or cat to chew on them?

 


Ginny

That's a really good question, and a lot of people ask that of me all the time, especially this time of year when people have poinsettia, because so many people think that poinsettia are poisonous. Actually, they're not poisonous, but poinsettia have what they call latex inside their stems and leaves. So if you break off a leaf, you'll notice a little bit of white coming off the leaf. If you break the leaf off the stem, this white stuff oozes out. So imagine if you have a cat. Cats like to chew on things, and if they're chewing up a leaf, they're getting a lot of that latex in them, so it kind of makes them go like they're chewing bubblegum and they don't like it. They might froth a little bit, but it's not poisonous. But it's not something you want to have them do or encourage them to do. I would also say if you have cats or dogs that like to chew on plants, you would want to make sure that your plants that are viney plants don't offer the temptation. So you might want to go ahead and trim them up so that they're above where they can get to it.

 


Ginny

I would also be very careful of any of the cactus because of the spines. Some of the spines are very small, some of the spines are very large. And you just don't want, and I would say not only pets but children, too small children. And you don't want to have somebody just reaching out to something and then having a whole handful of these nasty thorns. So I think that that would be more of a problem. There are herbs that can give you a funny little rash. Rue R-U-E is one that will actually makes it look like you've got a burn. It's not, but it will give you that. So I would say just try to keep your plants so that they're decorative and they're improving your lifestyle, but not where they can be played with by your pets. And talking about that, there are a lot of plants out there that actually improve the air quality. So any type of type of plant that has a large head, like for instance, like Philodendron and Pothos, any of the ficuses, they're wonderful. The one that I think is amazing is the spider plant. It has a long graceful green and white leaves and then it will have like an arching stem and at the stem it will have a few flowers, but the flowers usually don't get fertilized or pollinated, I should say, because you don't have bugs in your house, I hope.

 


Ginny

And then they turn into these little teeny aerial plants. And that's why they call a spider plant because it looks like a little spider hanging off of it. And they actually do a great job of pulling in a lot of the different chemicals that are in the air and like for instance from maybe a carpet or something like that and they just change it into much better health. So having house plants in your house not only is good because it keeps the moisture in your house, but it actually is good for cleaning the air in your house. So from the whole body spiritual part to the actual physical part, having house plants makes your life healthier.

 


Emily

That's all the questions we have for you Ginny. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Ginny. And we will definitely have you back on because you are a wealth of knowledge.

 


Ginny

Thank you for having me. I love talking about plants to helping people with them.

 


Mikaela

It's the Native Plant of the Month with Mikaela.  :Bird chirping:

 

Well, welcome to 2022. I've really missed talking about native plants for the last month or so. So I'm really excited to introduce my pick for January. And usually I have a really tough time picking a native plant for the winter months because there's not a lot of things in bloom. There's not a lot of colorful foliage, but this pick for this month is one of my all time favorites, and it's called Musclewood or Ironwood. It actually has a lot of different names. The Latin name is Carpinus caroliniana, and this plant also goes by American hornbeam, musclewood, bluebeech, Ironwood. This is a smaller understory tree that grows very slowly, and it's not as flashy as some of our other flowering native tree specimens. Very often it is confused with another native tree named American Hophornbeam or Ostrya Virginiana. Although related and confused for one another, capinus possesses the smooth trunk and can be found in valleys and along stream beds. The height of these trees reach about 20 to 30ft tall, but it's a very slow process. This is a great addition for a shady landscape or naturalized woodland gardens.

 


Mikaela

It's a very low maintenance tree, growing in sandy or clay loam soils with moderate moisture. So it's pretty middle of the road when it comes to growing conditions, but it does prefer slightly acidic areas. Areas of high organic matter are also preferred for this tree, such as a forest understory, which is where it grows in its native habitat. Ironwood really demonstrates the beauty in the trunk and the wood and which is why it's my pick for January, because you can really see the trunk and the bark, and it has very smooth, dark gray bark and the wood ripples. And it has an actual muscly looking texture that even Dwayne The Rock Johnson would be jealous of, which is why it gets its name musclewood and Ironwood, because it is also a very dense wood. It bears a lot of resemblance to another native tree, the American beech or Fagus grandifolia, but it has a lot more texture, much like someone's muscly bicep. The wood is renowned for its dense quality and hardness, making it very popular for handles of tools and crafts like wooden bowls. Because the tree grows so slowly and does not reach great heights, it is not seen as a commercially viable species in forestry.

 


Mikaela

However, the wood is still known for its density, strength and resistance to cracking. As a landscape specimen, this understory tree reaches about 30ft tall, and it frequents shaded woodlands, streamer, river banks and floodplains. While it does produce subtle winged fruits, the fall color is yellow to orange and red, making it really attractive during the fall. January is a great time for noticing other characteristics and qualities in the landscape. So I encourage you to go look for this tree to admire the strange bark that you may have not have noticed at other times of the year. And I challenge you to start thinking about what other kinds of trees exhibit those really attractive bark features. And for all my wizarding fans out there, I actually bought a homemade wand made from local wood at the farmers market this past fall, and it was made from you. Might have guessed it ironwood. It was a super attractive piece of artwork. In fact, I bought it because it was so smooth. And I can totally see why people make tool handles out of this. I want all of my tools from now on to be made with ironwood handles.

 


Mikaela

And that's my native plant of the month.

 


Emily

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

 

So this month's bug of the month is ice crawlers, also known as ice bugs, which is the family Grylloblsttodea. These are a specialized group of insects that are typically found in leaf litter and under stones in extremely cold environments, typically in high elevations. They are fairly rare and most of these species are considered endangered. While there are no species that are native to Maryland, there are 26 species known worldwide and ten that are found in North America. These species are found in the icy mountain ranges of Montana, California, Oregon, Washington, and Western Canada. They're also found in similar habitats in China, Siberia, north and South Korea and Japan. So this is a group of insects that we actually don't know that much about, particularly because they live in such an extreme environment, people just haven't had the opportunity to study them as much. These insects tend to be rather small, only about 3 CM long, and they're wingless. They kind of look like a hybrid between a cricket and a cockroach, in that they have fairly long antenna and a long Cerseis or filaments that come out of their abdomen. They oftentimes have reduced eyes or no eyes, depending on where they live.

 

They are nocturnal and during the day can normally be found hidden under rocks right along the edge of glaciers. They are omnivores. They will feed on lots of things, but they tend to prefer dead arthropods and plant material. They're known to inhabit cold temperature forests along the edges of glaciers and ice sheets. They have a very narrow temperature range that they can live in, which ranges from about one to four degrees Celsius, which would be 33.8 to 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Any colder than this and ice can form in their bodies. So when the temperature drops, they tend to burrow down under the snow pack to be closer to the soil. They can also be killed when the temperature rises above five degrees Celsius. So they tend to move in response to seasonal changes to maintain their optimum temperature in their foraging habitat. This is one insect that in particularly climate change, has scientists worried about because of the receding of glaciers as well as the change in these kind of temperatures areas since they have such a finite temperature range that can live in. So that's all I've got for this group. Very cool. And I highly recommend heading over to YouTube and you can search for the American Entomological Society has a great video brought to you by Purdue University that shows one of these guys they're very cool looking.

 


Rachel

Get your Tip of the Month here with Rachel. :horn nosie: 

 

January is one of my favorite months, and it's primarily because I can start thinking about and planning my summer garden. So if you're like me and you love to have a summer garden, it's a good time to decide a site for your new garden. Make sure it's sunny, level, and you have access to water. I also like to sit down with a pen and paper and mark out my garden plan. I'm a huge advocate for rotating plants, so every January I sit down with a cup of tea and my notepad, and I think about what plants I'm going to put where in my garden. It's also a good time to review any notes that you have from the previous year. I also like to look over our Home and Garden Information Center fact sheet on recommended vegetable cultivars for Maryland and that's on our Home and Garden information website. It's a really great fact sheet to review. If you're going to start seedlings instead of buying transplants, get your supplies now. You're going to need some soiless mix, some potting trays, grow lights, a small fan, and possibly even a heat mat. If you have some leftover seeds from last year, it's a good time to test the viability of those so.

 


Rachel

In order to do that, you place 20 seeds on a moist paper towel and roll it up and put it in a perforated plastic bag and set that bag on top of the refrigerator for seven days. When your seven days is up, count the sprouted seeds. If you have less than 70% Viability, so that means less than 70% of the seeds germinated. It's time to toss out those seeds and order new seeds. If you're thinking about starting a fruit garden or buy any fruit trees, it's time to order those plants from mail order companies in January and February for early spring planting. And we also have a really good page on our University of Maryland Extension Home and Garden information website for recommended cultivars for Maryland for homeowners. And I suggest checking that out because we have several varieties of different fruit trees that are acceptable to grow in Maryland. It's also a good time to start thinking about ordering your summer bulbs elephant ear, dahlia, gladiola, canna, et cetera, or just looking at new varieties or something that might catch your eye if you're an orchid lover like me. Phalanopsis orchids do very well as a house plant and will grow and flower moderately well in a bright windowsill in January, February, March, so pick one up.

 


Rachel

It's a great little house plant. Be sure to clean your bird feeders once every two weeks, or more often if seed is getting wet. Dirty bird feeders can spread disease, and spoiled seed can make birds sick. Also, feeding them regularly brings them back, and during the winter you need to provide a high fat diet because it's so cold outside and they're also still really thirsty in the winter. So clean your bird baths regularly, even during the cold months, and give them a reliable source of fresh water. If you're doing any pruning this month, remember not to handle hairy poison ivy vines that are wrapped around trees and poison ivy is still active and can produce symptoms during any time of the year. Be careful not to bring firewood in the house with poison ivy vines attached. And that's all I have for our Tips of the month. Listener have a great day.

 

:Upbeat Music:

 


Rachel

Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener we hope you enjoyed it and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. You have any garden relating 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 at go.Umd.edu/HGIC thanks for listening and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

 


Everyone


Goodbye.

 


Mikaela

The Garden Time 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 Annes County. And Emily Zobel, senior Agent Associate for Agriculture in Dorchester County.

 


Emily 

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