605 - May - Its Hip to be Square When You Grow Mint.

Hey Listener, 

This month it’s hip to be square as we discuss a favorite herb of our, MINTS! Mints are a common herb of the genus Mentha that are widely used in cooking, cosmetics, and popular medicine. Join us as we share some fun facts about mints, their history and chatting about how to grow it in your own garden. 

Mint Resources - 

• Drying and preserving herbs - https://extension.umd.edu/resource/harvesting-and-preserving-herbs/
•  The Big Book of Herbs: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference to Herbs of Flavor and Fragrance 
• The Wonderful Activities of the Genus Mentha: Not Only Antioxidant Properties 

We also have our Native Plant of the Month: Lyre-leaf Sage (Salvia lyrata), Bug of the Month:blue-winged scoliid wasp (Scolia dubia) , and Monthly garden tips (so much to do in May).

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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).

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Chapters

• 24:08 Native Plant of the Month
• 29:46 Bug of the Month
• 35:37 Garden Tips of the Month

Transcript

Garden Thyme Podcast Transcript
 S6:E05 Its Hip to be Square When You Grow Mint! (May  2025)

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.  

Mikaela

Hello, listener. Welcome to the University of Maryland extension presents the Garden Time podcast, where we talk about getting down and dirty in your garden. We're your hosts. I'm Mikaela.

Mikaela

I'm Rachel.

Rachel

And I'm Emily.

Mikaela

And in this month's episode, we're talking all about mint. I'm really enjoying these deep dive episodes on different groups of plants, like we did dandelion last time, and now we're doing mint. It's wonderful.

Rachel

I know. Me too. I feel like, though, I go down even a bigger rabbit hole when I find something, and then I'm like, Oh, but what about this fact that I'm wondering about? And then it's just as much as a research topic, I feel like, as an episode.

Mikaela

Right. It's more than you ever thought you would want to know about any one group of plants.

Rachel

Exactly. So May signals our transition from chilly spring days into long, warm summer days. It's a busy month for planting with warmer temperatures that are ideal for sowing seeds and transplanting some of our heat loving plants. And one of our favorite heat loving plants is mint. It's also a great herb. All right, so when I was in college, I had a professor His name is Dr. Arthur Tucker, and he wrote a book, The Big Book of Herbs. And he has a quote in this book that is absolutely one of my favorites. And it's, Mints are like stray cats. You take them in, you give them some food, and they're yours forever. And that is so true because, as you will learn in this episode, that they're so easy to take care of, just like cats, and they will love you and love your home absolutely forever. They're just the best plant. Mints are a common herb of the genus, mentha, that are wildly... Wildly.

Mikaela

Sorry. I like that.

Rachel

They are wildly used. They are wildly, but They are widely used in cooking, in cosmetics, and popular medicine. They are one of the longest known plants in the world and are considered to be native to the Mediterranean, North America, Southern Africa, and Australia. They belong to the Lamanacea family, and that contains many other herbs, including basil, thyme, rosemary, sage, and oregano. All of those are my favorite, too. So maybe we should have the episodes just about them as well. In the upcoming years. Some fun facts, because I can't live without a fun fact. The name mint comes from the Greek mythological figure Minthi, a nymph transformed into a plant. There is a rich history with many of our herbs in Greek mythology. And if you want to go down that rabbit hole about how Minthi was transformed into a plant, I highly suggest you do that. Mints are a great source of vitamins, including vitamin A, which is crucial for your eye health. And it has been used for centuries to soothe to set stomachs, to aid in digestion, and to relieve headaches. We'll get into that stuff later. It's a key ingredient for our favorite Girl Scout cookie, the Thin mint, and Yum.

Rachel

There's a whole NPR article about thin mints. If you want to go down that rabbit hole.

Mikaela

Wow, Rachael, you did really go above and beyond. I know, right?

Rachel

The cooling sensation from mint comes from the chemical compound, menthol, which tricks your brain into perceiving a cooling temperature, which is even cooler, right?

Emily

It's so cool. I got it. It's ice cold.

Rachel

It's ice cold.

Emily

It's mint cold.

Rachel

So many fun facts. I mean, Washington is the top state for mint production.

Emily

Oh, I didn't know that.

Rachel

Yeah, I know, right? There's so many fun facts about mint. Amen.

Mikaela

So what makes mint so notable to the public is that they are very dramatic. And that's because they contain these the ragrant oils that are found in resinous dots all over the leaves and the plants. And these resins are often volatile and repellent to many animals. The flowers, however, are very attractive to many insects. Now, the mint is one of the largest plant families with 236 genera and more than 7,000 species. Now, most of these are perennial or annual herbaceous herbs, but the family does include some woody shrubs as well, and that includes chaste tree and beautyberry. Of the actual mentha genus, there are about 19 or so distinct species and many crosses or hybrids. Two of the most popular are pepper mint, which is mentha piperida, and speermint, mentha spaisada. However, numerous hybrids and varieties lead to over 600 different types of mint that you can find commercially. So what are your favorites? Anybody have any favorites? Emily? Rachel?

Rachel

Oh, I got to say, pineapple mint? Absolutely love pineapple mint so much. Yeah.

Mikaela

That was going to be my favorite, too, of the mint species. Not including the native mint species. I like pineapple mint. True.

Rachel

These are not our native mint species, but I love apple mint as well as pineapple mint.

Emily

Chocolate mint for me, it's my favorite. I have a barrel of it on my back porch, and I'll go out all the time and just take clippings and just chew on the leaves as I garden.

Mikaela

Nice. Does it make you feel minty fresh?

Emily

It does make me feel minty-fresh.

Rachel

I mean, her brain is tricked into feeling minty fresh.

Emily

All right, Emily, do you have some mint ID tips for us? So So mint, and how did I identify whether or not something is a mint? Well, obviously, the smell helps give it away as well. But some other key characteristics that you can look for to determine if something is a mint or not is its square stem. So If you just clipped off a plant and rolled it amongst two of your fingers, you'll feel it as it turns rather than a round stem. And then mint plants also will have leaves that are arranged in opposite pairs. The flowers, I think on mint plants, are incredibly unique. I'm sure that Mikaela could list off some other plants that have these types of flowers, but I think they are very iconic in that you have these clusters of tiny flowers that are in a circle or a false swarle pattern that basically will be on the top, I don't know, few inches of your spikes or your branches. The flowers themselves, because they're tiny clusters, make the whole thing have a spiky look, I think, compared to a lot of other clusters that we might have. You'll oftentimes see these guys in bloom from July to October.

Emily

The individual flowers themselves are about an eighth of an inch. They can vary from shades of white to pink to purple to like, lavender in coloration. So mint does create a nut-like structure for its seeds or a nutlet, which actually will contain four very tiny seeds that are typically dark in coloration, and they're fairly small because, again, the flowers are super small. All of us will equally say one of our favorite things about growing mint in our garden is letting it go to flower and trying to watch some big bees or some medium-sized bees try to shove themselves into that flower to get that sweet minty nectar and pollen.

Rachel

I love that so much. It's like the never-ending entertainment. To me, mint is one of the easiest to grow, and it's an excellent plant for beginners. They really adapt well to life in a container, and that's where you want to keep them. They are hardy in USDA Zones 2 through 10. And while many types of mint can be grown in the garden with its own particular flavor, pepper mint and spearmint are the most common mints found. They easily can grow grow from one to three foot tall. And as I mentioned, you want to keep them in a container because they are aggressive in how they spread, and they spread by rhizoms underground. So if you have set them free, you will know that you can easily divide them and share them with your friends, and they will take over a spot. They produce flowers in the summer that, as Emily mentioned, are favorites of many pollinators, and they are extremely hardy perennials that will overwinter in our zone. They prefer moist, well-drained soil in a full sun location, but they will tolerate a part shade, light shade, area as well.

Mikaela

Now, if you're asking yourself, How can I get lots of these plants? Mint can be propagated by either stem or root cuttings. Some of the hybrid crosses seeds are sterile, so you can't do sexual production with those. And to keep your plants vigorous, it's suggested that they be divided every 3-4 years. And mint tends to grow pretty vigorously, so It shouldn't be too bad to divide it in half. And then you'll have lots and lots of other plants. To maintain the flavor of the leaves, flower spikes should be removed as they appear, and that's just because they'll put less energy into making their leaves and more energy into making the flowers and the seeds, so they might not taste the same. As your plant grows, the mint leaves can be harvested as needed. It's pretty simple. Leaves and flowers can be used fresh, picked from the garden, or they can be dried and stored for later. Mint is considered a tenderleaf herb, which means that the leaves have a high moisture content, so they have to be completely dried before you store them long term. They can be dried somewhere with darkness and low humidity, or the leaves will turn dark and moldy, and you certainly don't want that, especially something that you're using in the culinary world.

Mikaela

So you can actually use a paper bag to help dry them out as well, as long as they're placed in an area with low humidity. We do have an extension web page that talks about harvesting and then preserving herbs using this paper bag method, and we'll put the link to that in the short notes.

Emily

So in addition to being super easy to propagate mint, mint also tends to be pretty easy to grow in your garden with regards to disease and insect issues in that while there's a lot of insects that will come to pollinate it, there's a handful that might It's going to potentially be pests on it, but it's going to mainly be a lot of your generalists. So things like white flies and aphids that can easily be hosed off or treated with water or washed off. Oftentimes, mint, especially if it's in a spot that it likes in the full sun, outgrow most, if not all, pests. Now, there are two diseases that you may get on your mint, especially if it's not in full sun and you're not pruning it back. And this would be a mint leaf spot and a rust. So if you start to see this on your mint, an easy thing you can do is just to prune some more back or just prune it all back. And I think within a week or so it will come back because once mint is in place, it will not go, at least not easily. Because of how much it likes to grow once it's in a happy setting, you want to make sure that when you are planting mint, ideally, you should put it in a container.

Emily

But if you decide to put it in your ground or even in containers, you want to space it out to allow for that air movement around it. Different types of mint should be planted fairly far apart from each other, potentially opposite ends of your garden. And the reason for this is because true mint varieties are known to cross-pollinate with other types of mint when plant it within close proximity. So we would actually recommend spacing them out by a fairly good distance if you were commercially growing these. For a home gardener, it's not quite possible to separate them by half a mile to prevent your bugs from doing this. You may just have to live with it. You might find that later in the season, your mints may not run as true as they did early on. But this can result in characteristics from different mints starting to appear in one plant or leading to the loss of the integrity or potentially some different flavors happening, particularly in that later season, mint. So next, we're going to talk about mint and health. It's worth noting that mint has a really long history of being an herb that multiple countries and cultures have used to help with health issues.

Emily

Now, we are not medical professionals, and you should consult with your health care provider before using herbs to treat any specific medical conditions, whether that be mint or rosemary or any of the other fascinating herbs or plants that we talk about. So mint does have a really long, deep history of being used by multiple civilizations to help treat various different ailments. So many Native Americans made a tea from wild mint leaves that helped with digestion and particularly upset tummies. Chewing pepper mint was known as a Persian folk remedy for toothaches. And in India, herbal mixings that contained pepper mint were used to treat things like cough colds and other ailments. I, for one, know that when I'm not feeling good, I go for my mint tea over anything else.

Rachel

I love lemongrass and mint tea.

Emily

Yes. Including ginger. That's a good one. I love mint. Records have ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all also using it for digestive conditions as well. There was a paper that came out that was put on the National Library of Medicine's website, and we can include a link to our show note that goes into a deep dive in a lot of studies. But the one interesting thing is that mint has a lot of actual research that's been done on it, looking at both the mint as a plant itself, mint tea, essential oils, and then some of the phytochemicals that are found in mint themselves. Distinctly, there have been multiple studies that have shown that phytochemicals found in mint have been shown to have anti-cancer. These phytochemicals are in actual mint leaves in a very small quantity. But it was neat to see that there's research being done looking at our herbs and our plants to see how we can go about treating or coming up with medicines to help treat some of these conditions we have. Mint has also been found to have anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties to it as well, which is neat. So spearmint oil contains chemicals that have been found to reduce swelling and hormone levels in bodies.

Emily

Some chemicals may also harm cancer cells and kill bacteria. People are using Studies have looked at people using things like spearmint and pepper mint for memory, digestion, osteoporosis, nausea, and vomiting after surgery. And there's a fair amount of good scientific evidence to support that it can be super useful for them. Several studies have found that, especially in children, the taste and smell of mint has been shown to be associated with reducing anxiety and stress, particularly during test situations. So lots of really neat studies taking place in mint and showing the great benefit of it. It is worth noting that herbs, however, can trigger some side effects by interacting with other herbs, supplements, or medications. So for this reason, you should consult with your health care provider before using herbs to treat any specific medical conditions. Never apply peppermint oils to the face of an infant or a small child, as they can cause issues with breathing because it's such a concentration of those oils. Also be cautious when using any essential oils around pets as well. A study has shown that pepper mint and pepper mint oil has been shown to increase gallstones, and large doses of pepper mint oil can be toxic.

Emily

Now, Rachel, what are some other ways we can use mint in our kitchen to embrace our taste buds?

Rachel

Well, I love mint. Well, I think this entire episode is a love story to mint, right? And how we just enjoy it so much. So when you're harvesting mint, you're cutting the spray, and then you're using those leaves. And when you use those leaves, you can either dry them or that you can use them fresh. So when you're drying the leaves, Mikaela went over how to dry it with a paper bag, and you want to make sure that you're drying those leaves before they flower so that the leaves are more tender. And they're commonly used in cooking, making tea or jams or jelly, or even salad. You can make dressings, or you can put them in a fruit salad, or you can cook with them and use with lamb. It's a very versatile herb. It can be a little overpowering, so you want to use it sparingly, but it's a great addition to many of our dishes.

Emily

I love putting it with fresh watermelon.

Rachel

Yes. Lemon grass and mint tea is one of my absolute favorites, and that's just a sun tea that I make. But putting it with strawberries and strawberries and honey and lemon?

Emily

That sounds good. That sounds like a great snack on a hot day.

Rachel

Exactly. And then there are also beverages that we don't endorse here with the university that mint is used all the time.

Mikaela

You know what? It's versatile because it could be used in sweet dishes, savory. It's versatile.

Rachel

It is so versatile. Southern mint tea, like a sweet tea with mint and lemon. Oh, love it.

Mikaela

All right. And you guys know We can't go an episode without me talking about some native plant versions of what we're talking about. That's what I'm going to talk about. We have lots of native mints, and again, these are all in the Lameacea family, which is where mint belongs. The first one I want to talk about is Bee Balm because it's probably the most popular and also a very versatile plant. The genus for this group is Monarda. This is a native mint that was often used by the Oswego Native Americans and then was adopted by early colonists in protest of the tea tax imposed by British government. Because you can use these leaves in a tea, and it's actually quite a delicious tea, actually. The leaves are high in vitamins A and C, and primarily just the leaves are used in the tea, although I think you can also use the flowers. But of course, the flowers are very attractive to pollinators, native bees in particular. So bergamot oil, which is what you would find in earl gray tees, is actually derived from a native species of Monarda, which is Monarda fistulosa. And that is one of the flowers that has a very light lavender color.

Mikaela

And it's beautiful. It's a great addition to the landscape.

Emily

I did not know that earl gray tea came from a mint. I thought it came from a black tea plant. I thought it was just a less potent.

Mikaela

I think they're mixed because it is under black tea, but it's got bergamot in it. In it.

Emily

Okay. So we'll have to look it up. I think I'm going to have to now grow some of this. Yeah. Well, I already grow bee pollen, but I've never bothered to pick it for myself. I've always just left it for the bee, so I'm going to have to experiment this summer.

Mikaela

I've drank tea with the fresh leaves from Monarda, just from my front yard. It's actually quite tasty. This is not bad.

Rachel

Yes. I would wear bergamont all over my body.

Mikaela

I would. Yeah. It's one of the best smells out there, actually. So some of the other native mints include hysops or agostaki. And then I mentioned this one a little bit earlier, Beauty Berry, which is actually a shrub. It's one of the few woody plants in this group, Calicarpa americana. However, this does not have the same trademark strong smells or oils produced by many of the other mints that you would find in this particular family. But that being said, it's still a beautiful shrub, and one of my top landscape shrubs actually producing very attractive purple berries in the fall. A few others that I would like to highlight are whorehounds or lycopis, skull caps, scutularia, obedient plant, which is a very common, commercially found landscape plant that is a native. But unlike its name implies, it is not obedient. In fact, it has a tendency to wander. So that's pretty characteristic of the mint family as well. But it also has the square stem and the tubular flowers that are very popular with native bees. It can exhibit aggressive behaviors, but there's quite a few varieties now that are a little tamer, maybe is the right word for it.

Mikaela

And then, of course, mountain mint, picananthumum. This includes several native species in this group, which was also declared our Home and Garden Information Center's Native Plant of the year, and this is a must for pollinator gardens. While it can be also somewhat aggressive, vegetatively, it will spread, not as much by seed, it can make that really hard to grow in a small garden. But the attractive quality is, I think, outweigh the negative ones. And so it's a really hard plant to argue with. It's just got so many fine qualities. And again, quite a few different species. This group also includes Pictananthum tenuafolium, which is the thinleaf mountain mint. I think that is one of the more attractive landscape plants that you can put into your garden. I think that's it, except for my native plant of the month, which, again, will be in the mint family. We will include several of the resources that we've mentioned or where we received some of our information today in the show notes, including the Big Book of Herbs that Rachel mentioned earlier.

Rachel

Yes, I love that

Rachel

book.

Mikaela

All right. Native Plant of the Month, get ready. I'm actually pretty excited about this one. I say that every month, but I'm actually also very surprised that I haven't done this one yet because it's a workhorse native plant in a landscape. My pick for this month is no surprise. It's part of the mint family. It's the lyreleaf sage or selvia lirata. And it shares many of the characteristics that belong to this group, including the square stems. And then when they flower, they have these tubular bilateral shape that are very attractive to wildlife. But they also have that unwelcome habit of spreading where they're not always wanted. But I like to say It can be aggressive in areas where you may need an aggressive native plant. The common name comes from the shape of the leaves, which are lyre shapes, so the musical instrument lyre. And all of these leaves are formed basally, which just means that they're all formed mostly near the ground. They will send up a flowering stalk in spring, and it will get a few leaves on those stalks. But in the winter, they pretty much die back to just the basil leaves.

Mikaela

So this is a very attractive plant in both the wild and in cultivated landscape, and it serves as an excellent ground cover. It really does not get that tall. Those basil leaves I talk about rarely get taller than like three to four inches, but the flowering stock will get a little bit taller up to like a foot, foot and a half. But because not everybody enjoys the aggressive behavior of this plant, I sometimes recommend cutting back those stems with either a mower that's set at a really tall height or a string trammer after the flowers are finished, and that's before the seed has time to develop. So as soon as they're finished flowering, that's a great time to cut them back. And while they probably won't take repeated mowings throughout the year, they are pretty tolerant of foot traffic and mower traffic once in a while. Of course, again, I've picked this plant because it is both a member of the mint family, but it also blooms in May with lots of these tiny lavender flowers on that flowering stock that I talked about. Now, there are lots of varieties available commercially, and most of them have red or burgundy leaves.

Mikaela

But the straight species that you find natively has just a tinge of burgundy. Otherwise, their leaves are pretty much green. But these other varieties are much, much darker, like a deep burgundy. Either one is a striking addition to the landscape, and they also make a wonderful substitution for the invasive and non-native Ajuga, which behaves similarly as a ground cover. It's also a very adaptable plant, which is what I like about it the most. And it grows in a variety of conditions, including full shade to full sun, moist to dry soils, clay. It is very low maintenance once it gets established, but it will also spread by seed if you allow it to. So if you forget one year to cut all those flowering stocks back, you may find it has doubled the following year. This behavior may actually be desirable in areas where turf is difficult to grow or you're looking for lawn alternatives. Bonus, lyreleaf sage is moderately resistant to browsing from deer and rabbits. However, the leaves are pretty low to the ground and it's unlikely that even if they do take a little nibble at it, that it will actually kill the plant.

Mikaela

It'll just prune it back a little bit. So they're pretty resilient in many ways. And that's my native plant of the month.

Rachel

I love this plant.

Emily

I do, too. Yeah, it's a good plant.

Mikaela

Although I have it at home, and I do not always catch the flowering stocks, and it is now creeping into my turf, but it's not good or well-established turf. It's mixed in with moss and stuff, so I don't mind it too much, but you can definitely tell it has wandered. But if it handles foot traffic and walking and stuff, I don't mind it so much.

Rachel

Yeah. I mean, I usually find it in like you say, wild turf areas more than in a home landscape, but I still love finding it.

Mikaela

You know, where I most often see everything is when I'm driving down the road. It is along road sides that maybe only get mowed a couple times of year. So it's not like heavily wooded areas. It's usually pretty open areas, but they also have terrible soil. They've been abused, but they look really pretty. And you can usually tell it because it's a pretty low-growing flower, but they will all bloom around me.

Rachel

Yeah, that's usually where I see it as well. And I love it. Me too. It's just a beautiful little purple flower, too. I know. Just cute. I just want to sit there and watch bees try to get their butts into it.

Emily

I feel like that's all the mince. I feel like that's all the mince. Yeah.

Mikaela

I mean, it's not a super showy plant, but I think it's one of those ground covers that's nice to have that does bloom and have some flowering characteristics. Better than grass.

Emily

For sure. This month's Bug of the Month. We all like this bug, but I think this one's particularly a favorite of Mikaela's.

Mikaela

It is. It's my favorite wasp in the world.

Emily

The two-spotted scolium wasp, also known as the blue winged scoliwasp. Gulea wasps are incredibly important wasps. They are solitary parasitoid or parasitic wasps, and specifically, they like to parisitize scarabeetle larvae. So This would be things like Japanese beetles and June beetles, so really big grubs that would be done in your yard, are the distinct ones that these types of wasps like to parisitize. So if you guys remember back to other Bugs of the Month or other podcast episodes where we've talked about it, it's important to remember that parisotides don't feed on that pest as adults, but instead they lay their egg inside of them and then their larvae consume that pest as the parisotite's larvae grows up on them or inside of them. In this case, this wasp is a really important biocontrol agent. They are a native species in the United States, and they range from New England all the way down to Florida, and as far over or as West as California. Their Southern range can even extend into Northern Mexico. These are a pretty good size wasps, which I think is one of the reasons why a lot of people are intimidated by them, because they're about two to two and a half centimeters or just shy of an inch.

Emily

But they are gorgeous. Their body is going to be black, metallic-looking from head all the way down to their first or second segment of their abdomen. Now, The rest of their abdomen is going to be like a redish-brown, rusty color. It's going to be a little hairy, but nowhere near as hairy as a true bee would be. Just looks a little fuzzy or velvety, I would say. Now, they get the name to Spot It, Skal wasp because they have these two big horizontal yellow spots that hit midway on that abdomen. Technically, they're on that third abdominal segment. But if you were just looking at it or caught a glimpse of it, it looked like it was about halfway down the abdomen. The wings, I think, are the most beautiful part of them, and they have this blue iridescent to them. Their wings are going to be very dark-colored, and they're rather thin wings, but they have this blue sheen to them. So oftentimes people will see these wasps hovering a few inches above the lawn as they're searching for the grubs. And it's worth noting that the females are hard at work searching for the grubs.

Emily

The males, on the other hand, are hard at work searching for the females. So the female wasp, if she senses there's a grub down there, will dig through the soil in search of a grub. So sometimes she can find a burrowing tunnel that they've made if there's been rain, but oftentimes she'll dig her own to locate a grub. Once she finds it, she's going to sting it and paralyze it. Then sometimes she will burrow even deeper and form a chamber with the grub entuned in it. Afterwards, she will lay an egg inside of that paralyzed grub. The grubs, it's worth noting, do not recover from these stings. They're basically once she finds one of these and she paralyzes it, whether or not she lays an egg on it, this grub is not making it to adulthood. Now, when her larvae hatches, the wasp larva will then consume that grub, and this typically takes about a two-week process. As the larvae feeds, it will molt and grow and then feed and molt and grow, and then it will eventually reach the of its larvae stage and it will get ready to pupate and it will spin a cocoon and it will stay in this pre-pupation stage inside that cocoon for most of the fall and all of the winter.

Emily

And then the following spring, it will finish its pupation and it will emerge as an adult wasp the following year. So you typically see these wasps out in July through September or October. The adult wasps generally die out with our first hard frost. And I commonly find them in my garden and two plants, the first one being goldenrod, which we did a whole episode on a few months ago. I'm surprised I didn't make this in my bug of the month for that month. And the other one is mountain mint. So generally speaking, while this wasp is intimidating in its size, it's super beautiful. And it's worth noting that they're not likely to sting because they're not guarding any colony or anything like that. So they're not really considered something that you would need to worry about. The likelihood of them stinging you, just short of you, grabbing and holding that female wasp in your hand, and squeezing is very slim to none. So I wouldn't be super worried about getting stunned by these. So that's it. Mom bug in the month.

Mikaela

It is my favorite wasp of all time.

Rachel

No, it's a great wasp. I love seeing it on like Boneset in the fall or Golden Rod. It's just happy living its life up there, parasitizing other things.

Emily

When I think they're very iconic-looking, once you know what it is, and even in those big mounds of mountain mint in the late summer or in the golden rod when there's lots of different wasps and bees buzzing around, it's really easy to pick these out and then to constantly keep seeing them because those two yellow spots and those blue wings just make them pop. Okay, Rachel, do you have some garden tips for us?

Rachel

Of course.

Emily

Of course you have garden tips. What chores have I forgotten to do that I need to get done this month. Maybe that's a better way to put this.

Rachel

That's probably a better way to put it. By now, our Azaleas, Rotodendrons, and other spring firing shrubs are growing and they've bloomed. So you want to prune them after they've bloomed, all right? We don't want to wait until the fall or winter. Go ahead and prune them now after they've pruned. If you started your pees, it It's time to pick the pods when they're nice and tender so that the plants keep producing. If you planted radishes three to five weeks ago, it should be time to harvest those now. So go ahead and pull a few up, see what they look like. And you want to really harvest them before the heat of May really sets in because then they can get a little bitter. I like them when they're nice and tender and delicious. You would want to plant your warm season crops now, like your tomatoes and peppers or squash and cucumber. But that's only after the danger of frost has passed. The National Gardening Association has an awesome tool that can help you calculate when your first and last frost of the season is based on your zip code, and we'll link that in the show notes.

Rachel

For example, where I live, two years ago, my frost date was around Mother's Day, and since the USDA hardiness zones have changed, my now frost-free date has been bumped up to about the first week of May. So you really need to check that now and see if your frost date has changed for your area. If you are planting your tomatoes and your peppers, you You want to mix about a half a cup of ground lime in the hole before you plant them, and this will help prevent blossom and rot. Make sure that you're watering each transplant with a soluble fertilizer like compost tea or fish emulsion or kelp extract to get them off to a good start. Pinch your blooms from flowers and vegetable transplants before you set them out. And this will help direct the plant's energies into root development and will result in more productive plants. You can also gently break up that root ball before you transplant it, too, just to make those roots say, Hey, yeah, I want to grow now. When you plant your tomatoes, you really want to check for suckers. So they usually appear in the V of the stems, and you want to pinch those off.

Rachel

And that encourages the plant to grow into one central stem. We have a really good video on our Home and Garden Information Center YouTube channel that can show you how to do it correctly. Your cool season crops like lettuce, broccoli, kale, and radishes are going to bolt. This means they go to flower when our temperatures consistently get hotter and then hotter at night as well. When that happens, when they go to flower, It is time to remove them and make room for more warm-season vegetables. So if you have already planted your tomatoes and peppers, and then you have to take out your broccoli and your kale and your Brussels Sprouts or your lettuce, plant some green beans. They're easy to germinate, and then you'll have green beans really quickly.

Emily

Mmm, green beans.

Rachel

Who doesn't like fresh green beans? It's like the best snack ever.

Emily

It's nice to have a snack in the garden for when doing the other gardening chores, too. It is.

Rachel

It is so great. It's also a great time to plant your herbs as well. So parsley, basil, oregano, thyme, dill. Get that in the ground while you're transplanting all of your other warm-sneezing vegetables. Summer annual bulbs like gladiola, elephant ears, begonias, canas, catalam, and dahlias can be planted now. And then make sure that if you plant them in early May, you still want to protect them a little bit if they're starting to grow because they can be tender. Emily's favorite thing is coming up next. Ticks are active people. Please protect yourself self. Our cold temperatures that we had in January and February did nothing to them. They don't care about it. They are out there. They want to suck your blood. So make sure that you are wearing light-colored clothing. Get in the habit of checking yourself and your loved ones and your pets when you're spending time outside. Repellents are really effective at keeping ticks away, so use those as well. Make sure that your pets have tick repellent on them. Nobody wants tick bites. May is a really good time to mulch as well if you haven't mulched already. It's great for weed suppression.

Rachel

It's great for moisture control. The one thing that you need to actually pay attention to, if you're mulching or if you're having a landscape company come out and mulch for you, pay attention to your trees and how close mulch is to the base of your tree. You don't want a volcano. You don't want mulch touching the bark of the tree. You want it to look like a donut. So that means the mulch should only be 2 to 3 inches high, and it should look like a donut around your tree. No mulch should be touching the base of your tree. If you see this happening, speak to your landscaper or go out there and dig the mulch away. And the reason And the reason why we don't like mulch volcanoes is it tells the roots of your tree is like, Hey, this is warmer. This is more comfortable. Let's migrate up into the mulch, which then inadvertently stresses out the tree long term. It makes them more susceptible to disease and insect damage, and will hinder the life of your tree over a period of time. So we don't like mulch volcanoes. Please don't do them.

Rachel

And I'm personal about my mulch now. I don't like the finely-schredded mulch because I feel like it compacts really easy, and then it creates a barrier where water doesn't percolate down into the roots of my perennials. It just sheets off. So I I love the thick pine bark mulch, or I even like pine needles as well.

Mikaela

That's my favorite right now.

Rachel

Yeah.

Mikaela

Mostly because it's free at my house.

Rachel

See?

Mikaela

I thought that was a wild flower.

Rachel

I saw my neighbor raking leaves over the weekend, and then they were just dumping them in the woods, and I wanted to run over and be like, No, I can use those.

Mikaela

It's free.

Rachel

Do you realize that that's a really good mulch?

Emily

Or equally good just to put in a I'm supposed to be.

Rachel

Exactly. And that's my tips of the month.

Emily

These are some good tips, Rachel. Constantly reminding me that I've got stuff I've got to get done.

Mikaela

I was going to say that frantic month where you try and get as much done before it gets too hot. Yeah.

Rachel

Well, that's all we have for this episode, listener. We hope you enjoy it, and we'll turn in next month 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 Garden Time Podcast. That's Garden, T-H-Y-M-E. For more information about the University of Maryland extension and these topics, please check us out on the UME, Home and Garden Information Center website at goumd. Edu/hgic. Thanks for listening, and have fun getting down and dirty in your garden.

Emily

Goodbye.

Rachel

Goodbye.

Emily

For real? Yeah. Bye. Tees. So many good tees.

Mikaela

Enjoy your earl gray tea. No.