The Garden Thyme Podcast

A monthly podcast where we help you get down and dirty in your garden, with timely gardening tips, information about native plants, and more! The Garden Thyme Podcast is brought to you by the University of Maryland Extension. https://extension.umd.edu/. This institution is an equal opportunity provider.

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The Garden Thyme Podcast

S4:E05 Pollination

June 06, 2023 • Garden Thyme Podcast • Season 4 • Episode 5

Hey Listener,

In this month's episode, we are excited to Celebrates National Pollinator Week. ( June 19-25, 2023). A pollinator is any animal that visits flowering plants and moves pollen from flower to flower, which helps plants reproduce, making fruits and seeds. In North America pollinators include bees, butterflies, moths, flower flies, beetles, and wasps. Worldwide, approximately 1,000 plants grown for food, beverages, fibers, and spices need to be pollinated by animals.

We also have our:

Native Plant of the Month - Beardtongues (Penstemon digitalis and P. hirsutus) ~16:40
Bug of the Month – Fig wasps (Agaonidae sp.) ~21:18
Garden Tips of the Month - ~30:00

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

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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,

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.

Rachel

I'm Rachel.

Mikaela

I'm Mikaela.

Emily

And I'm Emily.

Rachel

In this month's episode, we're talking about all the things that buzz and flutter pollinators do.

:Up Beat Music:

Mikaela

So we're talking pollination and pollinators this month, and it's a big shout out because June 19 through the 25th is officially Pollinator Awareness Week. This is an annual reminder to support pollinator health and how we can help protect these critical organisms, which is part of the reason we're doing this topic for our talk today. I think pollinators deserve a whole month. So we're designating June pollinator month. First questions first. What is pollination? We talk about pollinators a lot. It's kind of like no pun intended. It's a buzzword.

Emily

It kind of is.

Mikaela

It's become like, a big topic. So pollination is basically the exchange of genetic material between individual plant species. In other words, it's plant sex.

Emily

Okay.

Mikaela

Pollen is more than just some powdery yellow stuff that makes you sneeze and gets all over your car. Pollen contains male gametes, so it's produced by anthers, which is the male holding receptacle in flower anatomy. And okay, I know we're going to Botany 101, but this is just important information because it's all related. So this pollen needs to travel from the anther so that's the male part, to a receiving stigma, which is the female anatomical flower part. So these pollen grains then fertilize the stigma, which can create the fruit and seeds that we all enjoy.

Rachel

It seems really simple, right? But flowers are complex, and pollination can be just as complex. Different groups of plants and species have devolved different methods to ensure that they can reproduce. Some flowers only bloom at night, so they require moths or crepuscular insects. These are insects that are just out at dusk time. So think lightning bugs to transfer pollen. Some plants may have a male and female flowers on different individual plants, so they require cross pollination between individuals. And this is holly trees or winterberry and similar. There may be separate male and female flowers on one plant, but they still require that transfer of pollen from one flower to the next. And you would think about pawpaw when you think about this action of pollination.

Emily

So what is a pollinator? So getting that pollen from the anther to the stigma is where pollinators really shine. It's worth noting that some plants do not rely on insects or other animals to do pollination and, in fact use things like wind or water. So some examples of these things would be anything in our grass family. So food wise, that would be things like corn and wheat. What they do is they just put their pollen out there and let the wind whisk it off willynilly into the landscapes and hope that it lands on a nearby plant that is also of the same species that's also in the right pollinating stage so that they can produce their fruits and seeds. Less than 2% of plants are, in fact, pollinated by water, and most of those are not aquatic plants. Most aquatic plants produce a flower that comes above the surface, and it's either wind pollinated or pollinated by an animal, particularly insects. So another fun fact is that wind pollination has a really interesting name. It's anemophily anemophilic. Pollen grains tend to be smooth and light and are not sticky because they want to be transmitted via air currents versus ones that are relying on a pollinator are going to be a little bit more rough and sticky because they need to get stuck onto that animal so that they get carried with them. Besides grasses, some other examples of plants that would be wind pollinated would be things like oaks, pecans, pistachios, sweet chestnuts, pines, spruces, and ferns. Yeah, man.

Mikaela

That's why I call it loblolly season in the spring, where you can literally watch drifts of pollen coming off of the branches. Yeah, it's great.

Rachel

Yeah.

Mikaela

So in contrast to that, many of our angiosperm species, which are flowering plants, they're not gymnosperms, which would be pines and spruces and furs, most of them have evolved a more sophisticated and direct method of pollen transfer, which relies heavily on animals, mostly insects. So insect based pollination is entomophily as opposed to the wind pollination. In this regard, there are so many interesting methods and characteristics that plants have developed in order to not only attract insects, but ensure their genetic survival, which means they are dependent on those insects transferring their pollen to somewhere else that it needs to go. So one example I love to use, because this is just a fun one, alfalfa, which literally the flower of alfalfa has something called a keel, which is part of the flower. And that keel needs to be triggered, and when it does, the anther is vaulted at the insect, so the bee, and it literally smacks the foraging bee with their reproductive organ to ensure that the pollen is stuck to something that is really rude. So you guys will find this interesting because you're nerds, too. But interestingly enough, many bees, specifically honeybees, do not appreciate being hit by the flowers, and they will actively avoid alfalfa flowers for this reason, except for the alfalfa leaf cutter bee, that accounts for roughly 80% of alfalfa's pollination, and they do not seem bothered by it.

Mikaela

They are the ones who we are dependent on for alfalfa to pollinate. So I guess they don't mind being hit in the face, it'd be kind of like if you went to go eat and you opened the fridge and someone hit you with a foam bat full of, like, flour or something you were expected to eat and carry about your life. Just keep going.

Rachel

I can just see, like, a bee just getting bam.

Mikaela

Oh, there's videos of it. It's really interesting. And I think at least the article I was reading about is honeybees have also adapted to the point where they know it's going to happen. So they'll either stand off to the side and try and trigger the keel, or they'll wait. They'll actually wait and watch, like, a leaf cutter bee do it so that once it's triggered, they can visit it without being hit.

Emily

Yeah.

Mikaela

Honeybees are like masters. So leaf cutter bee, not so much.

Emily

I wonder if it's also like a leaf cutter bee is a lot larger than a honeybee. Maybe. So maybe for the leaf cutter bee, it's not that big of a deal versus, like, the honeybee. It might be enough to actually knock them not out of the air, but knock them off their flight path. Yeah.

Rachel

They probably have honeybee PTSD a little bit.

Emily

Yeah.

Mikaela

So it's a serious business.

Rachel

Yeah.

Emily

Oh, my gosh.

Rachel

Poor little honeybees.

Emily

Yeah, I know. There's so many interesting things with flowers and pollinators where there's coevolution stories. So that one's a really neat one. I always think of, like the bee orchid or the orchid bees, where the flowers that have evolved to look like the female ones so that the males pollinate them, thinking that they're going in for a smooch and it's a female bee, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, you're a flower.

Mikaela

Yes. At least they get, like, a meal out of it. Well, I can still drink some nectar and gather some pollen while I'm here, like having a date at the grocery store and getting stood up.

Emily

Well, and I think it's interesting that in the case of bees, because they will feed on the pollen, they kind of can get a second use out of it. But there's a lot of insects that don't feed on pollen at all, so it's literally only the nectar is what they're going to the flowers for.

Mikaela

Yeah. That's interesting.

Rachel

So I think when we talk about pollination, we also need to think about how we attract and support these insects for pollination. And much like any animal, insects need essential things, just like us. They need fresh water, they need food. They need a place to raise their young. And that would be like habitat and nesting sites. They need a place to rest. So what can we do to support them in their mission of life? We can plant native flowers that bloom at different times. If you're using a wildflower mix, you want to make sure that you look for one that's specialized for our region or your ecotype, and you want to offer variety, but not overdo it. So different types of pollinators are attracted to flowers or of different shapes and sizes. And colors. And while it's tempting to plant a lot of different flowers all over your landscape, you may want to kind of limit it to just a couple and plant them in a clump versus one or two scattered all over the place. And this makes it easier for pollinators to find and locate their next meal.

Emily

That's a good point, Rachel. I always think of this as like, if you go to an all you can eat buffet, but you can only eat like two things off the menu, you're not going to keep going back versus if it's like, Well, Rachel just cringe. She's not an all you can eat buffet person either. I feel like we outgrow that like in college. We all love them because it's cheap food, but you become an adult and you're like, not so much unless it's.

Rachel

Indian buffet, then I'm game.

Emily

But again, you'll keep going back to a place that has lots of food that you can eat, even not in all you can eat. You're not going to go to a restaurant if there's only one thing on the menu, but if there's more things on the menu or more of a selection, it's worth your time and energy to come back. And that's ideally what you want your garden landscape to be. And I will just say I will.

Mikaela

Just say as a footnote that when we talk about flowers that bloom at different times, we mean across different seasons, and we've probably said this in other episodes before, but a lot of our early spring blooming plants are actually trees and shrubs. So it doesn't always have to be just flowering perennials. It can be these other things because they are better at blooming in the spring when a lot of our at least our native bees or even honeybees are active early in the spring as well, so they need something to forage, and flowering perennials usually aren't out of the ground by then.

Rachel

That's a great point, Mikaela.

Emily

It's an awesome point. And if you're looking for some suggestions for native plants, you can check every past episode of the Garden Thyme podcast for Mikaela's Plant in the Month because she is the proclav list. You can also check the HGIC. So Home and Garden Information Center has a list of native plants in our area and has links to a whole bunch of ones on which ones you can have when they bloom, what colors they bloom, what type of insects or other pollinators they'd likely have in them as well. And we will try to remember to link to that in the show notes.

Mikaela

Another link we'll try and include in the show notes is at least for people who are on the Del Marva area, is the Delaware Native Plants for Native Bees booklet, which is a good PDF to have.

Rachel

I love that handout.

Emily

Such a good book for listeners that don't live in Maryland or in the Mid Atlantic region. You can check with your local extension service as well or I think the Xerces Society also has some handouts, but they're regionally broken down. So it's like northeast Southeast, midwest Southwest. So they're a little bit broader. But they're great jumping off places. And a lot of the plants that you'd find there are ones that you can more readily find versus compared to some of Mikaela's native plants, you're not going to be able to find in a nursery. So you wouldn't be able to put them in. But they're still good to learn about.

Mikaela

That's right. A little obscure, but if you know where to look, it's where the good stuff is.

Rachel

I love the Xerces' book attracting native pollinators. That is just like one of my favorite reference materials.

Mikaela

The Xerces's website is a treasure trove, really. I just wish I could remember where everything was located. That's true, all websites. So the other thing pollinators need, just like any other animal, just like any human is they need fresh water source. So while you may be surrounded by brackish water like we are here on the Eastern shore or in other parts of the world where you have the ocean, they actually need a freshwater source. And it's not enough just to have it, they have to have accessibility to it. So putting a shallow dish of fresh water on your deck or windowsill helps those thirsty pollinators stay hydrated. You can submerge some stones or semi submerged stones so they have sort of like a landing pad.

Emily

Right.

Mikaela

I've heard of other people using marbles. They'll just put marbles in the dish as well so they can drink without the risk of drowning. And just as a good reminder, you want to make sure you're changing the water every few days when it gets either gross or before any mosquito larvae.

Emily

Can develop in it. Just like a bird bath.

Rachel

All right, so when we're talking about giving them food and water, we also need to think about their shelter and the other parts of their habitat. So a really important factor is resisting their urge to rake those leaves. In the fall, you want to leave the leaves dead. Leaves and other plant material are food and shelter for pollinators in the winter. Think about our large moths. And we also need to provide habitat in addition to the leaves. So this would be nesting and sheltering sites. Different types of pollinators require different things. Some bees and pollinating beetles may used down tree limbs and logs and many butterflies lay eggs and rear their young on plants. Think about your host plants. A small patch of bare ground might serve for a ground nesting bee. So just consider incorporating some of these aspects into your landscape when you're thinking about creating a pollinator garden.

Emily

Additionally, in order to increase the likelihood and the health of pollinators in your garden, you want to use integrated Pest management or IPM as much as possible. Ideally, you want to limit your use of pesticide in your garden because even using really soft chemicals can still have detrimental effects on the insects that are visiting your garden. So before using a pesticide, ask yourself the following things are flowers in bloom and or are pollinators active or going to be active during my pesticide application? If so, consider snipping off those flowers and waiting a few hours and then making the application to reduce the likelihood of pollinators coming in contact with it. Do I need to use a pesticide or is there an alternative method to reduce my pest population without using chemical? Is my pest population high enough that I even need to do anything? One hornworm chewing on a tomato plant probably doesn't need a chemical application if you can hand pick it off. Am I applying that pesticide according to the instructions on the label? If you can't find the instructions on your label, put that chemical into Google with Label or contact your local extension office and we will help you find the label so you can apply it in the proper method and then learn to identify your beneficial insects and your pollinators.

Emily

This way, you're less likely to confuse them for pests themselves.

Mikaela

It's the Native plant of the Month with Mikaela

Emily

Mikaela picked a good plant of the month.

Rachel

She did.

Mikaela

I know, if I'm being honest, june is kind of like the tail end of this bloom period, but it was just too good, too relative to everything we've talked about for this episode, so I went with it anyways. So my native plant of the month is the Beardtongue group. Probably the most common ones we have in Maryland is Penstemon digitalis and Penstemon hirsutus. So. I love the beardtongue plants. They are these somewhat delicate looking perennials with spikes of tubular shaped flowers that are kind of along the spike, which gives us its name. Beard Tongue is it has kind of like a hairy petal on the bottom. Yeah, it's pretty bizarre. But this elongated flower actually acts as a visual funnel to attract bees and basically used as an advertisement that they have great nectar and pollen available. So it'd be like the strip at Vegas. You know where to go because the neon lights are like, pointing you in the right direction. So that's sort of what Beardtongue does. Now, personally, I'm slightly more partial to hairy Beard Tongue, which is Penstemon hirsutus, which is a smaller plant at maybe like one to 2ft tall.

Mikaela

It has light purple flowers and more narrow foliage. And just like the name implies, there's a lot more hairs on it, on the stems, on the leaves, on the flowers. This is more commonly found in the Piedmont region with preference for sun to part shade environments with slightly drier soils. But it does have a tolerance for clay. Now, Penstemon digitalis, this is smooth Beard Tongue, so very similar looking plant, except it doesn't have any hairs, and it tends to be a little bit bigger. It's found more commonly in commercial nurseries. However, they tend to favor varieties, so you aren't going to find the straight species as much. So these are varieties that have red foliage. So husker red is probably the most common one, among other burgundy variations. So the foliage is actually like a darker red color instead of green. So while they're very attractive, this is my little soapbox. I do have some real concerns about how they affect native populations of Penstemon, because they seed quite freely, and I wonder about the cross pollination of the variety. With the native types, they spread very freely once they go to seed. So I will often cut off the flower stalks almost immediately after the flowering period to avoid that distribution of seeds.

Mikaela

Because they're very teeny. They develop in these pods, and the seeds are like dust. Like, so they go very far. They germinate very well. It's a slightly taller species with a wide variety of growing tolerances. So it is a great addition to any landscape because it has these tolerances for growing. But the flowers will vary widely from light purple to white flowers. A lot of the red colored varieties, the foliage is red, but the flowers are bright white, so the husker red has white flowers. So why is Penstemon so great? Well, I got some fun facts your way, so hang on. It's the larval host plant for several checkerspot butterflies, including the Baltimore Checkerspot. It also provides nesting habitat for not just bees, but other pollinators as well. And it supports both specialist bees, so a type of Mason bee, as well as generalist pollinators, which is the more broader group of bumblebees. It attracts other beneficial insects. So these are natural predators, ladybugs things to that degree. It's deer resistant, which people love.

Emily

Right?

Mikaela

Like, if you can hedge your bets, it's probably better to do deer resistant plants. It's also really pretty and cute, so that's really hard to argue with. I hope everybody runs out and puts a penstemon in their yard.

Emily

I love these ones because the bumblebees, like, barely fit in them. So you just walk through and you see, like, bumblebee butts.

Rachel

I know they're the best because they're trying to fit in it and they really can't. And they're just like little fat little butts trying to get in there.

Emily

Yeah.

Mikaela

Larger bees will have a problem. I mean, it doesn't stop them, but certainly they will have a problem fitting in there. But it's just a great group of plants.

Emily

They're a good one.

It's the Bug of the Month with Emily

Emily

Okay, you guys ready for my Bug of the Month? Yeah. Okay. So this month's bug of the month is a group of bugs. So these are fig wasps, which are wasps, and specifically, we're going to talk about the family, Agaonidae and this is several different species together. But the defining characteristic is that they spend their larvae stage living inside the fruit of figs. Most of them are pollinators, so on brand for a pollination episode, but there are a few that have become kind of more they're not quite parasitic, I'm struggling with the biological term, but they're not quite beneficial to the fig because they don't do the pollination like some of the other ones do. But the majority of these guys are pollinators of the figs, while others will simply feed off the plant. So this is a historical great example of a coevolution relationship and has been thought to go back 70 to 90 million years ago, is how this kind of relationship started. So there's over 750 types of fig worldwide and each one requires its own separate species to kind of pollinate because of how unique and how they've coevolved together.

Emily

Before we dive into the fig wasp and how it pollinates, we need to backpedal a little bit. Let me give you guys a setting and a backdrop of figs in particular, because while we normally think of figs as a fruit, they're kind of a unique fruit and that they're not like an apple or a cherry or grapes, where you've got kind of the seed and like flesh going around it. Instead, they're what we call a multi fruit, meaning that the fruit is not one fruit, but instead it's a form of clusters that have come together. Now, this is not like a berry where it's multiple ovary fruits together, this is actual individual flowers with separate ovaries combined together to make a fruit. One other common example of this that you would find in your grocery store would be a pineapple. Now, what makes figs incredibly unique on top of this is not only are the fruits made up of all these individual flowers clusters together, but the fig is inverted. So the flowers are inside of the fig. So you have to be inside the fig to get pollinated. This is nuts, right? Like it's nuts.

Emily

How did this evolve? How did this happen? So you've got all these clusters of flowers and depending on the species, it can range from anywhere from 50 flowers inside of the fig flute to 7000 that are inside this basically hollow receptacle. Scientists have found that in most of our common fig ones, that they're finding three types of flowers inside. So there's male ones, so the anterior to produce the pollen, and then two types of females, so long ones and short ones. It's worth noting that our commercial and ornamental varieties of figs have been bred to be parthenocarpic, which means that they don't require pollination in order to produce fruit and the fruit in return is sterile. So when you go to buy fig fruits in the stores, you don't have to worry about finding wasps on them because they wouldn't need to be pollinated for this reason. So, with that being said, we've set the backdrop. Figs are very unique fruits, they have very unique pollination requirements. Now we come to the fig wasp, which is the little insect that can pollinate this very unique fruit. So what happens is that the female fig wasp finds a fig and she finds it via scent.

Emily

So when the fig fruit is ready to be pollinated, it releases a scent and she hunts it down, and she gets to the very bottom of the fruit, where there's a teeny tiny little hole, and she wiggles her way through it. And a lot of times she ends up losing her wings and her antenna through the process. But that's okay, because she's never leaving that fig ever again.

Rachel

She's going to die in there.

Emily

Yeah, she is. Spoiler alert, she dies in it. So once inside, she's going to move around the inside of that fig. And, I mean, she's a very tiny wasp. Like, there's not a lot of space inside the fig anyways, but she's millimeters at most. So she's going to move around and she's going to visit those individual little female flowers that are in there. Some of them, she is going to pollinate them. These would be the ones that will become fertilized and become fruits and seeds for the fig tree. So this is the benefit that the fig gets out of it. Other ones, she's going to take her over positioner, and she's going to jab it down on where the seed is, and she's going to lay an egg. And this is going to cause that seed to swell up into what we call a gall. And this produces a protective barrier around her larvae so that her larvae can now seed and grow inside of that fig and be protected from predators. So the fig gives up some seeds, basically, to make sure that it gets its pollen spread around, which I think is really kind of cool.

Emily

Then, as Rachel pointed out, very sadly, she'll die. Her youth will develop in the galls simultaneously. The fig seeds are also developing as well. So after about four to six weeks, males are going to emerge. They're going to hunt around and find their female sisters, because insects don't care that much about this, and they're going to mate with them while the females are still in the galls. I know, it's very rude, right? It's very rude. But that's okay, because once they get done mating, they're going to chew their way out of the fig, and as soon as they're exposed to the outside world, they die. They cannot live outside of a fig. All they will ever know is living inside of a fig.

Rachel

This is a Shakespearean novel.

Emily

I told you this was good. And you needed some tea and popcorn.

Rachel

Snack.

Emily

Get some snacks. This is a good bug of the month. Okay. It is a little traumatic. It is.

Rachel

I went from here to here to here.

Emily
Rachel's arms are waving everywhere as she does. That so interesting. Some species don't do this. Some species the male just dies inside of the fig fruit as well, next to like so that you've got mom and like the dead males in there. And then eventually the female wasps finish their developmental cycle and they emerge from their galls and they are fertilized and ready to go. And then they will either go out through the tunnels that the males have chewed for them or they'll exit out through that same hole that their mother came in. Through their process of exiting, however, they are going to get covered in pollen. They are going to fly around until they find an unfertilized fig and the whole cycle repeats itself. So what's kind of unique about this is that, particularly in the tropics, in order for this to work, figs constantly have to be in these different stages to coercive with the fig wasp, which, from an environmental standpoint, allows other animals to have a ready supply of food because you constantly have to have figs that are in these different stages. That is a classic example of coevolution. And if you want to get even weirder here I found a paper that talked about the fact that in a lot of figs, the plant itself is going to release an enzyme that's going to break down the dead wasps and reabsorb the nutrients.

Emily
So that's why if you were to bite into a fig and you find something crunchy, it's the seeds, it's not dead wasps because it's reabsorbed them. It's weird. Plants are so weird.

Mikaela
I love it.

Rachel

I'm not going to lie. While you were talking, I was googling how many dead wasps are in figs because I was thinking, oh my God, all that fig jam I've made is full of dead wasps. And I knew there's a specific pollinator. I just didn't realize that they couldn't get back out and they die in there.

Emily

Well, so it's worth noting, again, our commercial varieties and the ones that you would buy in a store to plant in your garden likely don't need to be pollinated. So you probably don't have to worry about this as much in your backyard and even your commercial settings. And a lot of times people will plant these and then they will put bags around them so they don't get wasps in them because people are worried about eating dead wasps. But again, these things are super tiny. If you swallowed one, you wouldn't even know you were swallowing.

Rachel

How many bugs do we eat in our lifetime anyway?

Emily

I'm not worried about it if you eat ketchup. But yeah. So again, don't freak out about not eating figs ever again. Chances are the figs that you're getting don't have these in them because again, we've kind of bred to not have this. But wild figs out there, particularly the tropic ones, this is how they work.

Get your Garden Tips of the Month here with Rachel

Rachel

I usually talk about this in January, but I'm going to bring it up again because our summer solstice is the perfect. Time to take a moment in your garden and reflect on what's working and what isn't. So do you need to expand a garden bed? Maybe you need to build a structure to support some of your plants. Are some of your plants receiving more or less sun than they need? Take notes on what should be divided and transplanted in the fall. Or maybe there are places that are bare that need a few more native plants or spring flowering bulbs. Just take an inventory. And I know I always say this in January, but when your garden is actively growing, you should be looking at it and recording things in your garden journal and just making sure that you're taking those notes so that you can look back through it and say, yeah, I really should move that hosta. It's getting a little too much sun. Or I have this perfect space to create my pollinator garden. Let's go ahead and lay it out now so we're ready to plant it in the fall. So by now, your bearded irises should be finished blooming.

Rachel

It's time to cut those iris stalks down to the crown when they're finished blooming, and you want to leave the foliage alone. If your irises are overcrowded, you can lift them and divide them really easily. You want to check the rhizomes for iris boar, and there's a really great home and Garden information center web page that goes into how to divide your irises. You basically want to take a wide berth. Make sure that you don't disturb those rhizomes. Lift them out of the ground. I like to put them on a tarp, and I like to shake off all the dirt. Make sure my rhizomes are nice and firm. You don't want to mushy rhizome. You don't want to rise them with a hole. And from there, I like to divide them out with my hand. I don't usually use my spade. They break really easily. And then that's a great time to go ahead and share them with some friends, if you like, or plant them in different areas of your landscape if you have a spot for them. If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, we always talk about integrated pest management in your landscape, and we've talked about it today.

Rachel

And just to reiterate those principles, make sure you're not spraying your trees or shrubs unless you absolutely need to. And avoid the sensitive times when our pollinators are actively flying or making sure that you are evaluating them. And looking at them and learning about your beneficial insects and how to identify those so that you're not harming our pollinators or our beneficial insects. My arch nemesis of the summer is out in June, and it's the squash bug. So you want to look underneath the leaves of your squash and your pumpkin plants for those really pretty copper squash bugs eggs and destroy them. And you can easily do that by squishing them in your hand or taking some duct tape rolled sticky side out, and you can rip them right off your leaves onto your duct tape. And it's a great and easy method to get rid of your squash bugs without using any type of chemical. If you planted any trees or shrubs in the early spring, you want to make sure that you're watering those newly planted babies for about two years, especially in the summer and the fall. And you want to make sure that you're watering deeply by allowing the water to soak into the soil directly underneath and around the root ball.

Rachel

Check the depth of the water penetration in the soil by digging a small hole after watering, and it should stay moist for about six inches. Down. A two inch to about three inch layer of mulch is really helpful, but make sure you're keeping the mulch away from the trunk or stem of the trees and the shrubs. You want to make a doughnut around it. You don't want mulch up to the bark, and you want to make sure that it's not a volcano. It's going to be flat like a doughnut, not up like a volcano.

Rachel

That's all the tips of the month. Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it and we'll tune in next month for more gardening tips. If 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 website at go.Umd.edu/HGIC. Thanks for listening and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

All togethrer

Goodbye.

Mikaela

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).

Emily

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:Up beat music:

Emily

At 9 at night I'm increasing my word count and reducing the number of letters in each word.

Mikaela

Unfortunately, I'll spend the whole day tired and then at like 09:00 at night, my brain turns on.

Emily

Are you crepuscular then, Mikaela?

Mikaela

I am human being is my word.

Emily

Of the day now. I like it.