FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living with Bill Finch Identifying Trees, Vines and Guest questions
It's time for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. With nationally recognized nature writer and award-winning horticulture and nature expert, Bill Finch. Bill shares his knowledge of conservation, natural history, and gardening. Let's talk about living and growing in the deep south. With your personal garden and nature consultant, here's Bill Finch on FMTalk1065. Welcome back to Gulf Coast, Sunday morning. It's an Alabama Sunday morning. The weather's doing just exactly what you expected to do in July on the Gulf Coast for sure. It's kind of a North Alabama is trying to be a Gulf Coast imitator here, raining all the time, even in North and Central Alabama right now. But you look at the forecast, it's just where it should be for the Gulf Coast. You know, 50% chance of rainfall every day. Temperatures moderate 92 degrees during the day. Not dropping much below 74 degrees at night, 75. That's just the way it is on the Gulf Coast, a little cooler for the North, but not much. That's Alabama moisture. Alabama moisture, Alabama humidity, Alabama rainfall. It sort of dampens the climate, we might say, makes it a little more stable, keeps it from getting too hot during the day, and keeps it from cooling off too much at night. That's the way it is. There's being just what it should be, Gulf Coast Summer, Alabama Summer throughout. Listen, I've had to think a little bit because I'm working on some projects with folks. In the past, we've tried to design plant lists for people who are gardeners so that they understand what grows well in their yards, and this time I was tasked with coming up with a list that promoted the idea of pollinators so that gardens actually benefited creatures, birds, and insects, moths, and butterflies, all the other things you don't talk about, but should dragonflies, oh gosh, do I love dragonflies, the dragonflies are out-swarming now. Aren't they absolutely cool? Lightning bugs, really cool looking beetles. The more diversity of those insects you have in your garden, the better your garden will be, by the way. But the idea was, look, maybe we can use gardens to be so that they're a little more natural and so that they contribute to nature, and so it's not like we just erase nature, and we can have a little bit of nature in our gardens, and actually promote it, and keep things from getting rare, and et cetera. So I'm thinking about it, and every time I'd bring up a plant I'd say, "Well, that's too tall." I'm looking at my garden now, and I'm looking at some things coming up. It's just beautiful sunflowers everywhere. Just I got so many different sunflowers. It's really fun to collect sunflowers. They're all native. I didn't go out west to get sunflowers. I came to the center of sunflower diversity to get sunflowers, which is Alabama, and I've been pulling in native Alabama sunflowers, and I keep saying, "Guess, these are great. These are incredible." And one of them is just shooting up, and I'm thinking, "What a spectacular thing." It's one they call, it's great for North Alabama, it's called Appalachian sunflower. The leaves are just these beautiful, green, big lily pad looking things on the ground. Little woolly. And the stem just shoots straight up with barely a leaf on it, but it's really cool. Little sinewy as it comes up, a little wavy as it comes up with just a few little leaves. And then this spray of flowers, and I'm thinking, "Gosh, what a great thing for every yard." And then I'm thinking, "You know what? People think nature is a parking lot." And this is what I want to talk about this morning. People think nature is a parking lot. And we live our lives in parking lots, do we not? Oh my goodness, I hate to think about it. And you know, our impression of plants increasingly has to do with what we saw in some parking lot, in front of some store, in some place, where all the plants are about shin high. Because if they're any taller than that, there's going to be some booger bear hiding behind them that's going to jump out and get you, right? Or you're not going to be able to see the other car coming at you very fast. I mean, it's just amazing. So we've created this whole world of plants, and this whole impression of plants that plants have to be, these dwarf down plants. It's sad. It's really sad. It's just pitiful. Nature is not a parking lot. I couldn't tell you how many ways nature is not a parking lot, but I've got to remind you of this now. Our houses now look like parking lots. Oh, some of you park your truck on the lawn, and then it looks more like a parking lot, but that's not what I'm saying. I mean, it's just that all the plants there look like they were designed for mall parking lots. Do you remember, this isn't even a native plant. But some of you, I can't believe I'm having to say this, but some of you will not remember the old mobile Loserias. You won't even remember what they look like. These big old Loserias that used to be spread out across yards from Birmingham all the way south. And just amazingly big, beautiful shrubs, and everybody loved them. They were like big hoop skirts across the lawn. And everybody tolerated them. We don't even grow those anymore. We lost what it was to be this really special place. And even the parks don't allow those big hoop skirts as they is anymore, because somebody freaked out and said, "Oh, there might be booger bears hiding in them." It's crazy. It's weird. And so if we really want to enjoy yards, if we really want diversity in our yards, if we really want butterflies and birds back, if we really want those things, we can't depend on these weird dwarfed down shrubs, which are not natural. They don't get that way on by accident. We get that way because somebody designed them to be super dwarf. And in the process, they lost almost all their benefits to nature, all their benefits to butterflies, all their benefits to birds. So maybe we could talk about how to design a bigger, bolder yard. I'm happy to help you do that this morning. If you give us a call, 2513430106, you can also feel free to ask garden questions. I've got a couple coming in already. Need to understand them a little better before I can answer them, but you could text me. And we can give it a shot that way, or you can call in, and we can probably give it an even better shot because we can explain how we got to where we are. But think about your yard. Think about where you plant. Think about how to make use of it. It can be really fun. It can be really fun to think about how do you use plants that are normal plants that haven't been turned into some kind of artificially dwarfed down plastic parking lot plant, like so many that we see. And I know you spend a lot of time in parking lots. I know you do. We all have to. It's a shame. But don't let those parking lots tell you how to garden. Don't let those parking lots become your impression of how gardens look. Don't let golf courses tell you how gardens should look. Golf courses weren't designed for golf, for plants. They weren't designed for gardening. They weren't designed for your happiness. They were designed for two inch wide golf balls. You're not a golf ball. Don't act like one. There you go. Let's think about where we are. Let's think about how to take advantage of it. Let's think about how to have a really fun yard. Let's think about the whole yard and how to make use of it. Let's think about the butterflies. Let's think about the birds. Let's think about those dragonflies. Are they swirling around in your yard? Oh man, I saw them the other day, you know? It's beautiful, swarms of them. We'll be back. FM Talk 1065, home for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep south. With Bill Finch, call 251-3430106. All right, welcome back. It's Gulf Coast. It's Sunday morning. It's Sunday morning. Somebody asked me how to plant colladiums. Now is the time to do it. I am willing to say, you know, it's one of those plants you kind of throw within a reasonable distance of dug soil and they're probably going to do okay. But is there an ideal colladium soil? Got lots of organic matter, well-drained, doesn't stay too wet in winter. If it doesn't stay too wet in winter, it'll survive the winter just fine. If it stays a little too wet in winter and we get a cold winter, they won't survive. But mostly in the southern part of the state, they're going to survive the winter, at least on the southern third of the state, farther north, you're going to have to dig them up or you'll lose them or you'll have to replant them every year. I would say in the northern two-thirds of the state, it doesn't make sense to plant them this late in the year because you're probably going to have to dig them up soon enough. In the southern third of the state, you can plant them now, just fine. Lots of organic matter, if you don't know what that means, you can give me a call. Organic matter means leaves, basically. All those live oaks, dropping limbs, dropping leaves, all that's great. Any leaves work. You've got plenty of them, the water oaks, if they don't fall on your house first, gather some leaves. There you go. And that's the organic matter. They don't, Cladiums, don't like full sun. Well, I shouldn't say they don't like, if they're not going to look their best in full sun. They're going to look their best when they're getting a good bit of midday shade and afternoon shade. A little morning light's great, they're best on the east side of the house, but you can plant them just about anywhere. I don't mean to make it too difficult for you. Cladiums, easy things, as long as it doesn't get too wet in winter, they'll survive the winter in the southern third of the state, usually, usually. All right. What is the small floating plants, kind of like giant duckweed, Tinsaw River? Let's see what we got here. Well, as soon as I can pull that up, I will. It looks like the giant salvinia, I hope it's not. Let's see. Yeah. I can't tell by the scale. It is definitely salvinia. I can't tell whether it's giant salvinia or the usual salvinia. Both of them are invasive plants, salvinia, S-A-L-V-I-N-I-A. I don't know how to say which is worse. I think the giant salvinia is probably worse. I'll have to look carefully at this. It looks pretty big, but maybe I'm being deceived by something here, because I don't really know. I guess those are lotus leaves, but we can call it salvinia, and I will, on a break, I'll try to figure out exactly which one it is. It's not duckweed, doesn't have the same effects. It's salvinia. Does it have a common name? I'll look that up, too. I'll look that up. It's too bad. I think it does displace better plants like duckweed, and that's, there it is. Do I plant bulbs or plants now, the person with the colladium says, "Oh, yeah." You know, you got a shortened season. If you can find plants, that's fine, and probably they will be plants now. I don't know. I guess you could probably find bulbs. It wouldn't hurt to do either, at least on the Gulf Coast. If you're farther north, for sure, you would definitely want to plant plants that are already emerged. They're going to merge pretty quickly this time of year. Plants are fine. You know, whatever, whichever you can find, whichever you can find. Let's see here. What else we got? There's a question about muscovines, which is an interesting, interesting thing, which sounds like Russian vines, but I think the idea is it's muscadines, muscadine, muscadine. Oh boy, what a wonderful thing muscadines are. I hope we don't lose track of them to the point that we're calling a muscovines. Muscadines, there's a, I'm not sure what the question is. Are you, there's a question about cutting out the dead vines, I'm just not sure where we are. I don't think, I can't tell where you're coming from. We'd have to look at that vine. We've got to talk about it. I suggest you give me a call because I think there are probably a lot of questions, and it sounds like you may not be familiar with that quite, so let's give me a call. Let's walk through that vine. Let's describe how it looks. Let's see, because I think you're probably going to end up having to do a good bit of trimming on it, and we need to figure out what it looks like now so I can tell you what to do. There it is. You're still in any explanation, thanks Wayne. So have you seen this for, but don't understand why. Four nice banana peppers planted a foot apart, all getting the same care, all of a sudden one just up and dies, others still doing fine. Any explanations, thanks, Wayne. In general, I think, I think what we're seeing, things like that, it's generally bacterial wilt. If it dies fine, quickly, it's generally a bacterial wilt, and I can't tell much about your soil there, Wayne. It looks like it's pretty good organic soil, but peppers can be susceptible to organic wilts, just like others. It could be, if you see, I mean, it could be something else that went on. It's hard to tell, but back to it, it can affect peppers as well. I'm going to try to pull your picture up, Wayne. I can't do it right now, so I can see your soil a little better, get a sense for weather, for how well-built it is for these. I will say that annual peppers, Mexican peppers, hear me out on this, folks. The peppers that we generally grow are from Mexico. Their origins are from drier climates, and they were developed in places like New England and Europe. Better peppers are a great case. I know they're grown in the south, but they are part of this group, and they are not appreciative of a lot of soil moisture. They do not like humidity. They tend to have a lot of problems. They don't deal well with insect pressure, jalapenos, bell peppers, the whole lot of them. They've got lots of issues. They could have problems with eusarium, they could have problems with water molds. They could have problems with bacteria. There's a whole series of issues that they're very susceptible to. What I find, and just hear me out on this, is that peppers from the Caribbean, and peppers from farther south in places where it tends to be a little more humid and jungly in some cases, which is South America, and even Central America, and the Caribbean, those plants tend to do better here, so the most famous ones are things like habaneros, and that seems awful hot for a lot of people, and so you want something mild. Well, there's a lot of these mild, mild Caribbean peppers. They have almost no heat, and they have some great flavors. There's all degrees of heat, much more variety of heat levels in those peppers, and it could be habaneros, what we call habaneros, which is in this species called chinaensi, which has nothing to do with china for whatever reason it's called chinaensi, and then there's the others like the bacottums, which I really love, B-A-C-T-A-T-U-M, which are often sold as ajis, A-J-I peppers. These are terms we need to get familiar with if we're growing peppers in Alabama, because they do much, much better. Now, your banana peppers are mostly doing fine. We've got one that got some kind of root rot. It could even be a mawater mole, it could be pythium, or something like that. It could be bacterial wilt, I'll be looking to see, but just by the way, I have never, I continually, I lost a pepper myself. If I had to explain to you why I lost that pepper, I think the soil got too wet, generally, and it just didn't like it. And the other peppers did just fine. I can't tell you why that one pepper did it, but it was predictably, it was an annuum, it was one of those Mexican pepper derivatives, just blew up, just all of a sudden. But every pepper I've planted that's a South American pepper, no matter where I've planted it in the state, they do great. And on the Gulf Coast, it's one thing we should begin working towards. I wish I could, oh, I wish I could change the world. And we could change the dialogue. And suddenly, it was easy to find these peppers, you have to work at it a little bit, but they're out there, the seeds are out there, you can grow them yourselves, just a thought. And meanwhile, you've done okay with the banana peppers, so, you know, 3 out of 4 ain't bad, as they like to say, it's doing well. But I'll see what I can do Wayne, I'll see what I can find. All right, let's see what else we got here. Yeah, you know, Wayne says, I've seen this before, and I have to, it just happens every year for all sorts of, there's a whole list of things that it could well be, but those annuum seem to be annuum peppers, like banana peppers, like jalapenos, like all those others. They all seem to be a little susceptible to that kind of thing. Ah, post-doc, okay, goodness gracious, I got a list of oaks I get to identify, well, it will be fun. We'll be back here in just a minute. You get plain talk on plain living. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep self, with Bill Fitch, call 251-3430106 on FMTalk1065. All right, welcome back, it's Gulf Coast, Sunday morning, it's in Alabama, Sunday morning. Lots of things to talk about, that Salvinia, I can't tell which one it is, just a thing to look up. It sent me a picture of a weed in the delta, probably is in the delta, with a plant that's got some weird little leaves, looks like giant duckweed, it's Salvinia, S-A-L-V-I-N-I-A. Look it up, it's an interesting group of plants, this Salvinia, I can't quite tell, I think it is, get this, Salvinia molesta. What does that tell you, M-O-L-E-S-T-A is the Latin name, does it have good common names to know, I think giant Salvinia is what people call it, either way, both are a problem. Salvinia Minima has been here for a long time, it's smaller, it's a nuisance, it's a problem, it actually is a problem, not just a nuisance, it's a problem for everything, even the fish and the shrimp, and the native vegetation, Salvin, molesta may be somewhat worse, the one thing I can say, look those up, if you want to know a little bit more about them, the one thing I will say is that they have found a fungus that may have a good, that may actually attack just Salvinia, and that would be great, that would be great. But meanwhile, look up Salvinia, it's kind of give you the creeps, Salvinia molesta, gee, there you go, there it is, let's see here, who sent me that message, Amy, Amy did you get, Amy, I kind of lost you for a while, so let me ask you, did you get the message about the gamma grass at the mobile botanical gardens, please check that out, if you haven't checked it out, I think, you know, I pestered John into doing this and I can't have had you in mind, so check that out, let me know, give me a thumbs up if you got that, let's see, you're asking about Salvin's plume, mention a few show heat stress, there's seven ones in smoke, he's very erect leaves close to main stem, well I would say the Salvin's plumes would have a very difficult time going from Colorado to Hill up here, so there it is, we got a caller, and let me not lose track here, Joe, tell me what's going on, hi Bill, how are you? I'm calling, I'm good, I am calling about something you talk about every November and December, and that's the golden hickory trees, the, they're called, why don't you refer to them as golden, because their fall, golden foliage is so beautiful, and I've been trying to grow mock or nut and pig nut hickories for several years, and when they're small they get eaten up by the web worm, and I'm wondering, is there something that I can't be doing that I'm not doing, I live in just south of Silver Hill, in the Marlow area, and I'm wondering if you have any direction to impart, yes, so on the flats, and I'm trying to think exactly where, there's certain areas that certain types of hickories are not going to do as well, I will say that, but your hickories are surviving, right? Well they're surviving, but they ain't pretty, I mean they're, they're usually denuded of all leaves by August because of the web worm, and I'm not far from Fish River, but my elevations about 90 feet, yeah, yeah, so here's, here's what I would, you know, I, I, web worms, the pecan trees have certainly attracted the web worms, helped to build up big numbers of them, I, when I see those web worms, I just take a stick and wrap the, wrap it around that, and sort of wrap it around in the plants where those web worms are, and just pull them out, and that usually stops them, and I, you know, it's, that's probably the state of the art, yeah, for those kinds of things, and it works pretty well, I think as the trees get older, you'll see they'll, they'll have less and less of an impact, but you can actually get those web worms pretty early, go through and check it out while you're beginning to see those web worms, that's what I do, I don't know that will ever be quite shed of, of web worms, but usually, usually I can get them, I mean there's some trees I ignore, but, and, but if, if I were worried about web worms in a tree that I really care about, I'd go out with just, and you can, usually you can wrap them up pretty quick, is that any other, that's my best advice, and that, and I think that particular variety that I should be looking at other than a mock or not, or a pig nut that might be somewhat more resistant to web worm, probably all hickories are going to be equally susceptible, I, I have not thought about that, I would, pecan is a hickory, for example, and I wouldn't think that, I wouldn't think that, you know, in fact, if anything I would think mock or not and pig nuts would probably be a little less susceptible to web worms than the pecans would be, but no, no, I don't think so, there, there is, you know, one, one pecan that you could also look at, there's several pecans that are sort of, that are more common along the Gulf Coast and depending on where you are, so if you can find them, and if you can find the seeds for them it's pretty easy, keria, the water hickory, bitter pecan, it's sometimes called, is, no, it's different, bitter nut is cortiformis, and I would not recommend cortiformis where you are, though I might recommend, I would certainly recommend a water hickory, I think it could be a very good tree in a suburban situation, it's quite good, and you see it a lot along the delta, if you can see that one, will it be resistant to the, to the web worms, you know, I think, I don't, I rarely see web worms on it in the delta, that's, that's the truth, and in wild situations, I think maybe where you are, I think where you are in the midst of all those pecan groves, in the midst of a lot of pecan trees and other trees where those web worms can build up without a lot of predation, there aren't a lot of, there's few things to predate those worms on, I think that you might see more, a little more pressure from web worms there than you would in the delta, but again, I think the remedy there is just to stay ahead of the web worms, it's, it's a little bit of extra effort, but I, I think it shouldn't be, and I don't think every year will be the same, I do find that web worm populations rise and fall, some years are much worse than others, I, I can't really gauge how serious the past two or three years have been, which, how long have you seen these web worm issues? Well, there, I put them in a pasture and I've been out here for probably eight or nine years, so I'll just, I'll just, I'll just be persistent and put a few more in this, this, this November and wait a couple years and then give you a whole of that. Where are you getting your, where are you getting your trees from by the way? I like to get them. Well, I get them from Mobile Botanical Garden who gets them from a great nursery over in North Florida. So I think they're very good trees. Yeah, superior trees. So that's good. Right. And so superior will have good Gulf Coast genetics. So that's very good. You can look at some of those others like, Kerry Aquatica, the water hickory, bitter, bitter pecan hickory, cordiformis. I don't recommend for a lot of reasons, which is the, which is better not hickory. I don't recommend that one. It just, it's very prone to breakage here. And, and it's, it's a little finicky, little finicky. Southern Chagbark is a great tree. And, and you can try that one. And, and even though it likes a little more lime than what you've got, I think it would probably do okay. Southern Chagbark, not North, Northern Chagbark, but Southern Chagbark is a super cool tree. And you might try that one. Okay. Well, I do appreciate it as always. Enjoy the show. All right. Thanks, Joe. All right. Thank you, Bill. Uh huh. Um, yeah, web worms, they, they, so did y'all hear me say, look, this is a message to all of you who have problems with those fall, the, the web worms. The bill that the big tent caterpillars who build these big, like, web like structures up in trees. And then the, the caterpillar spread out from that web like structure. The web like structure protects boom, boom, boom, boom. There we go. So the web like structure protects those caterpillars from predation, as we like to say, protects them from birds and things like that. And they move out from those at certain times of day to do the feeding and then they come back and they gather. If you just look, look, here's a simple thing. Find a bamboo. Find some bamboo. You got anybody get bamboo. There's a bunch of bamboo around. It could be native and it could be the exotic bamboo. There's plenty of exotics. Find you some bamboo that you can handle that's about so 20 feet tall, maybe 25 feet tall, right? And it's a little stiff at the tip. You want it to be a little stiff at the tip. You don't want to have this really flimsy tip. So the pole might actually have to be a little longer and you can just cut it off so that the tip is a little bit stiff. But don't cut off all the branches at the tip. Leave little stubs. And they could be short stubs. They could be slightly longer. They could be the whole branch depending. But just so you've kind of got like a bottle brush at the tip. You see what I'm saying? You're there with me. Bamboo. Take that bamboo and when you see those webs, you just run it up into the tree. You just twist it around a couple of times. That web just grabs that web and it just wraps it up and then you just pull it down. You're not going to get all the caterpillars by any means. But you're going to take away their hiding place. You're going to take away their protection and it makes a ton of difference. Just something to think about. Just something to think about when you're, if you've got those tent caterpillars. So are there things you could spray them with? Well, you can, but you got to get the spray up there. And it actually is less effective than the simple bamboo pole. Trust me, the bamboo pole works great. And it's really easy way to deal with that. Paul, hold on. We're going to come on 3.4.3.0.106 on FMTalk1065. God. Hey, we got lots of things to talk about. I did have a chance to look through those trees. Who sent me the trees there? Oh, I'm going to find a name here in just a minute. I don't see a name. Somebody sent me five trees over by Bromley and asked me to identify them. And there were some questions. Let me, let me say this. You got five pictures. Everyone owns a water oak. More than likely. I could be wrong about a couple, but almost all of them I can definitely see the water oak. So young water oaks are shape shifters. They don't like to be easily identified. So they'll have all kind of weird leaf shapes. They'll have loaves. They'll have, you know, this is a great thing. We have, we have tree experts that get fooled by water oaks all the time. Water oaks do funny things after fire. Water oaks do funny things when they grow super fast. It's water oaks are weird. Typically water oaks have kite shaped leaves. You'll notice that on most of those trees, you can find a few leaves that are kite shaped, but others that are lobed, but almost all of those are probably water oaks, probably water oaks. I wish I could tell you it was something different, but the other probability is that nothing is weirier than a water oak. It just, it just, and it did right. It was doing just fine. It had its own little place. It wasn't very abundantly common. And then we created these conditions where its very seediness made it a nightmare. Live oaks were doing the same thing with. I know I shouldn't say that out loud, but for that very reason, I should say that out loud. Oh boy is that going to just fire folks up. But live oaks are extremely weedy and they're coming up in many places now that they shouldn't. And live oaks can be a little hard to discern when they're coming up as young seedlings too. But these look pretty much like water oaks. I don't see any there that could be anything else. I don't think I see a turkey oak in there. And there are several reasons why. I guess we could call and go through the pictures on each of them. If it were turkey oak, it would be a little more conservative. It probably would not be coming up in your yard. It probably wouldn't do as well. But the leaves are going to be turned sideways. Some of the leaves at least. It could be southern red. I thought some of them might be southern red. But I still think if I look carefully through each one, the highest probability is that they're all going to be water oaks. There it is. Charles, thank you. That's a disappointment, isn't it? But water oaks just they're just a pain. They're just a pain. Paul, I'm listening. Tell me what's going on with that, Mimosa? Oh, no, it's not my Mimosa. I called you about a month ago and told you about me and some guys talking about, you know, they could eat Mimosa flowers and then one told me that you could also tap it and get a syrup out of it. And you think you're thinking about doing it? Yeah, yeah. So Paul, I didn't eat a Mimosa flower. I did read that other people are doing that, but I have not done it myself. Paul, you're shaming me because I set up wood and then I didn't. Well, you know, if you were interested in tapping it and see if we did, you know, like a maple tree or, you know, if it did give out a syrup that we could, you know, harvest. And I don't know about that. I don't know about that at all. I don't remember, I don't recall seeing that, but I looked that up too and I didn't see, you know, one of the interesting things about tapping trees in the south is that you, to get a lot of juice out of a tree, and this is one of the reasons we don't tap maples in the south, is you got to hit the flow just right. And, yeah, what, and we don't really have those definitive seasons that get the flow just right now. How that applies to Mimosa's, I have no idea. Paul, you're just, you're making me look bad, Paul. I don't need to. I said, I said, I'm just playing. So I said, I'd go do this and I haven't done it. So I got to do it. I did look up a little bit about Mimosa's. And I, you know, I, but I got to go back and I got to try the flowers, which I'm going to do. And I'm going to also, I'll see if I see anything about tapping the, tapping the trees, though, I will tell you, I have certainly not done that. Certainly not. Okay. The other reason I call was to congratulate you on the NAPI award. And you never said nothing about it. The only reason I knew is Mike and Stu sent a little, I mean, congratulate you on it. Okay. So yes. So I did say a little bit about it last week and I, I'll, I'll emphasize if my winning the NAPIs is, is really about listeners. And it's, it really is about their efforts here and Sean's efforts. And I really appreciate that. I'm glad that it heartened me to think that there's a lot of people out there who might be interested enough in gardening to listen to the show and actually call into the NAPI awards from land yap and, and elevate us as the specialty, what, what was that category that the, I think a specialty lifestyle show on radio. And that was, that was really nice, really nice. I hope I deserved that. And I'm going to do my best to provide a good show and good information to you. And I am not doing you well. This is more than a gardening show. I mean, hell, man, it's some time turns into a philosophy. And I love the way you poke at people through metaphors, you know, the parking lot yard or the, you know, all these tour plants, and you're right. Native Azayas, if you just let them go, they got a beautiful and giant, you know, you do way more than, you know, tell people to add fertilizer and wind the prune. I mean, man, you do a heck of a lot more. That's why everybody loves this show. I mean, milk every now and then we talk about, I don't know, wine, moonshine, bourbon, you know, they do way more than cherry bounce. Matter of fact, I'm getting ready to, some of the time to harvest a bunch of elderberries. And I'm going to take them and some friends are going to make a moonshine out of it. So trust me, you do way more than gardening way more. Well, Paul, I appreciate it and everybody else does. Well, thank you. So we're going to check on this mimosa. I'm, I'm, I got it written down right here. It's on my list. We are going to make, we're going to, I'm going to do all the reading I can on mimosas. And better than that, I'm going to go out and eat a mimosa flower. Just for you, Paul. Well, yeah. Are they still in season though? Might have to wait for next spring. Yeah, there's still a few out there. They're not as abundant now, but they're still out there. Okay. Well, Bill, thank you very much. And you have a great day. All right. Thanks, Paul. Well, that's nice, Paul. What do you think? What do I think about lace bark elms in a front yard? Ellen. Yeah, you know, we're kind of stuck, aren't we, with whatever somebody in, listen, please don't take this wrong. I think New Jersey is a fine place. Great place. I've been there before. Went to the Vince Lombardi way station. But we have to depend on New Jersey to tell us what elms to grow. Let me tell you 15 reasons why lace bark elm is not a good elm. But no, I don't think it would be great for a front yard. Ellen, if I remember your yard. Ah, we'll be back. It's time for Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. With nationally recognized nature writer and award winning horticulture and nature expert, Bill Finch, Bill shares his knowledge of conservation, natural history, and gardening. Let's talk about living and growing in the deep south with your personal garden and nature consultant. Here's Bill Finch on FM Talk 1065. Oh, I hope you didn't hear me snivel there. Listen, we're going to be back. We got, we got a lot of questions. We've got a lot of catch up to do on your questions and some fun topics this morning. Johnny and Grand Bay, I don't know if I emphasized this last week, Johnny and Grand Bay wanted to talk about using muscadines in apple pie recipes. And it sounds really good. Did I mention that last week? Johnny said, look them up. There's some great recipes. Just pass that along. Muscadines are coming in. We talked about the difference between a muscadine and a scuperateong last week. In fact, there ain't a difference. A scuperateong is a muscadine. That's muscadine. Not muscovine, muscadine. We talked about the fact that my dad would call those purple muscadines. Bulluses, not bullets, but bulluses and bulluses an old term. I think that's how he'd say it, bullus. Bulluses an old term that was the old European word for big purple plums in that interesting. Or he got transferred over in Mississippi and Alabama in the Midwest to muscadines. That interesting. I think it's kind of weird, but interesting. We're always looking for good names. We talked a lot about muscadines, but Johnny brought that up. Johnny also said, look, I got these half inch apple like things falling out of my water oak. What is it? Anybody know? Raise your hand. It's a it's a gall, G-A-L-L, G-A-L-L, and gals are formed by insects, often by insects, or by sometimes by fungi, a fungus, or that creates a little home for itself, by distorting the growth, the new growth of the water oak, and it often forms these little gals, these little balls, that fall from the tree. Does it do a lot of damage to the tree? No, I mean, water oak doesn't have damage to itself. You almost can't make a water oak worse. It just, but there's a lot of insect gals coming out of water oak, so come out of live oaks too. You'll see gals falling from live oaks. They're gals. G-A-L-L-S, it's a little home that some creature has created for itself. If I were really smart, I'd tell you which creature created it, but honest to goodness, I think I've looked this up before and I can't remember which one it is, but it's a gall, G-A-L-L. Can't remember off top of my head. What else we got? Who else did I not answer? Dan and Sims asked about cutting down some Philippine lilies. Dan, I would say that given those Philippine Formosa lilies don't really, they're pretty wild, pretty aggressive, even though they're not native, they're spreading. I've seen them on highways, mowed at arbitrary times, and they come back just fine. I don't think you'll lose anything by cutting them now. If you were to continue to cut them back, I think you might have problems, but I don't think, you know, I don't think it'll make a huge difference. They're pretty tough guys, pretty tough customers for better for worse, and I don't think you're going to have a single problem cutting them down now in terms of losing them. You might have a problem with them coming back. That's where they get to be a problem. They're a little aggressive. They are a little aggressive. Ellen, so I just, I am trying to think, we've, you know, we've been here before with your house and it was, you got a landscape architect who recommended Lace Barkels 'cause, you know, that's what his little book said and his little book was written in New Jersey. I don't recommend Lace Barkels for a lot of reasons. I, they can be aggressive. It's going to be nearly impossible for you to grow anything underneath it. So the grass under that Lace Barkelm because of its thick canopy is going to be a problem. If that's all right, that's okay. I think this is one of the, the elms that tends to seed in. I'll have to look into it and can get to be at least a nuisance, if not a problem generally. You know, one of the things your landscape architect may not know 'cause sometimes landscape architects don't get well trained in what's native and why it's native and that's a deficiency of a lot of programs and, and he's probably stuck dealing with whatever handful of trees he can actually find. But, you know, again, I would, you got a big front yard and if you plant something very close to the house, you're going to have to be very, very careful with it. On the other hand, wouldn't it be nice to frame your house by moving your plantings out to where that picture is taken? And putting some trees there. That's where I would start. And then you can use smaller plants that like more sun nearby. And if, if I were going to plant one tree close to the house, oh, let's see. What would it be? You know, I, I, I really think, you know, it could be really beautiful. A hailsie would be very pretty there. H-A-L-E-S-I-A. Let me think of what our common names is. Silver bells. How is that? Great name. Silver bells. Would be great small trees for that area. You might look at silver bells and they're, they're available. You know, we don't have a lot of choices anymore in terms of trees because of the, of the nightmare retail thing we've created with Home Depot and Lowe's. And it makes our local nursery struggle. It means our wholesale nurseries are now slaves. And I use that word carefully. I should use that word carefully. But they are beholden to the big box stores in some terrible ways now. And, and they, they have a really hard time. I mean, it reminds me of the whole relationship between chicken producers and the big chicken growers. I don't know if you want to get into economics, but it's, it's a really dangerous situation. And in terms of your plant availability. So I'm saying all this to say, yeah, I know that plants are hard to find, but silver bells would be much better. Layspark elm is just not, I just don't see it as a great tree for the Gulf Coast at all. And your landscape architect can call me and once called me and beat me up about it. And I'm, I'm happy to talk to him or her about some of those trees. But, you know, that's, that's one tree. I, palms are very nice close to the house. And I actually think it could be really cool with some palms there. If you wanted some nice shade, a little small grove of palms could be really nice there. That's one thing if you wanted something kind of instant because with the sable palmetos, you'll get that because you're going to have to put in relatively large specimens. For other trees, don't go too big, stay small. And then think about, think about, think about how you want your yard to look. But it really is, it's like when you plant it too close to the house, your house just retreats. It's like you're saying, oh, I'm just don't want anybody to pay attention. But if you pull your house, if you pull those plantings out to about where you've got that picture, just right in front of where you've got those pictures. And then you can do all sorts of wonderful things. And one of the things I might suggest out there even is to think about, think about some longleaf pines to plant there, start small, don't need to be big, they'll grow fast. Think about some big as they are, they would be fine too. And they're not going to make your house look small, they're not going to make your house look low, because you pull them out to the street. And they'll look really cool and they'll, it'll be like a big alley, it's sort of like a little opening if you can imagine looking back to your house, it'll be so nice. I think that's just something I would consider. Um, there you go. Hey, and don't forget, don't forget fruit trees too. It's going to be really nice. We'll be back. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch. Ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard. Call 251-343-0106 on FMTalk1065. Alright, welcome back. Gulf Coast, Sunday morning, Alabama, Sunday morning. We're helping Ellen here. We're all helping Ellen. Because she's got this house. She says I should come there. Ellen, I feel like I've been there. We've talked about this part yard for a long time. And I haven't said the right thing yet. I've been trying. Ellen, you know, I think your house is probably facing mostly south. Maybe I'm thinking it's facing southwest. Faces south. Okay, good. And so here's a really, here's lots and lots of sun. And this is great. So here's the, here's the, here's a really good thing. The house is facing south. You want the tree on the west side. On the south west side is where you want the tree. That it looks like a bedroom over there that doesn't have a porch over it. That's a great place for a tree. It's a great shady area. It's perfect. It's the place. And I'm just going to say I'm going to try it one more time and I'm going to say Silver Bell. Great. And under that Silver Bell you can have things like Coladians and it'll be a little, little bit of a shady area there. But it will, the Silver Bell will cooperate. Pull the Silver Bell out from the house and enough. You're wanting to intercept that sunlight that's coming in from about three o'clock to seven o'clock during summer. That's the place. Now let's talk about the front of the house, right slap dab in front. And, and so Plumbago, Plumbago is a pain in the Petouti. I'm glad I remember to say this in polite ways. It's a pain and I've grown Plumbago before. I have a hard time keeping it looking really good and alive. And it's another one of those things that somebody saw in a book and said, Oh yeah. And I saw it in a book and I said, Oh, and then I said, Oh yeah. It's, it's hard. You can certainly try a little bit of Plumbago. Let me talk about the things that generally do well and that low in full sun. I would not put as I is there. It is too, it is too sunny. And I don't think it's, you could, you could try some low growing as I is, but it's just not the place. Dwarf roses. I don't think they look really great in the long run. And, and I don't, they don't do much for me. And, and maybe you want something that doesn't do much for you. Maybe your husband wants something that doesn't do much. And that could be an issue. But let me say rosemary is incredible for that situation. It makes a beautiful plant. Huh? Make sure it's not a wet area. It should do really well there. And, and you can use rosemary's just think about a bank of rosemary shrubs. They're very easy to trim. And in fact, you can use them. Isn't that good? And never say to your husband, ooh, we can use this plant because he's sick. Well, I don't know if plants should be useful. Don't tell them it's useful. Just plant the rosemary's and say they're beautiful and they have flowers. They're really nice. Rosemary does great. Let me tell you something else that could do really well there. And you'll have to think about it. You'll have to put it in the right place. I love little places like that. And against your house, it's going to be really nice. Come quads. And just, you know, once again, you have kind of have to pretend like it's not a useful plant. And, and you're just going to emphasize it's a beautiful plant. You're going to say this is a plant with beautiful evergreen leaves that doesn't get very tall. Easy to trim it. Easy to keep it trim. Has beautiful white flowers that are fragrant and smell really nice. That doesn't sound too useful yet, does it? And then you say it's got this beautiful orange color in fall. I don't even know if you should use the word fruit. And you know what Ellen, you could actually use those fruit. What a great combination. Rosemary and come quads. And you can kind of build around that. But Rosemary can kind of be your structure. Rosemary over time. Particularly, you know, you'll lose a few plants here and there and you just replace them. But they'll last, you know, I've had Rosemary's last seven to 10 years. And they're great evergreen shrubs. That's probably going to be about as long as you're going to get. For most of the is that now they're now selling better dwarf is they're going to they're going to poop out. But, but that Rosemary's going to make a really nice hedge. And it's really easy to get. And it's really fun. And the come quads are really really great. Really great. Other and the come quads are not messy at all. Am I saying the right words here? I mean, I don't even want to bring up the word messy. I don't even know what that means. But yeah. And then one other thing I would add. I'm going to risk this. This would be a really great combination. This would be a really great combination. From a texture standpoint, from a boldness standpoint, from a coolness standpoint, let's put in a short palm there. And it could be a shrub palm. It would be really great. Like Sable. I'm sorry, Sarah Noah Repens, the salt palmetto would be a beautiful thing. If you can get the silvery, the silvery leaf salt palmetto, give it a little space. It needs a little space, but it could be really nice there. Work with your, you know, work with your landscaper about it. Sarah Noah Repens. It's available. The silver, the silver leaf form would be really good. And something that's bigger and you'd have to think more about it. Again, this is all about being ornamental. This is strictly about ornamental. Plant should not be useful at all. I know this. So I'm going to say this is completely useless plant. We're going to call it jelly palm. Plube. I shouldn't use that word. We'll call it pindo palm. That's the word that people who like useless plants are now calling it. Pindo palm, which is a traditional palm that's been used. It's not native, but it is, it's been used along the Gulf Coast for a long time. Doesn't get huge, doesn't get super huge. Maybe about eight feet tall. It's full of fruit that's just delicious. I love it. I love it. Don't, I did not say this very loud, but that fruit is absolutely delicious. It takes like a combination of tangy mango and peaches, beautiful jelly palm. We're going to call it pindo palm. You could mix those. You see what we're building out here? It could be a lot of fun. And that could be right next to the house. I still think you need to come out from the house and develop something out there to kind of frame your house so that you have a sense of distance looking in. You can even have expansive lawn in between. That's fine. But come on out with something out there too, but there you go. Rosemary makes it throw a little plum baggo if you like. Throw in some other flowers. You'll have some other flowers you can throw in around that. But build the base with rosemary. Come quats. Maybe a saw palmetto. Check those out. Look at those. Look at the size. Make sure you get the right space. All these love sun. And then you got something like the big. And then if you want to something bigger, if you want something bigger on that southeast side of your house, you could go with something like a pindo palm, a jelly palm. It'd be a lot of fun. A lot of fun. All right. But, you know, call me back. Let's talk more about it in the future. Let's see what we got here. There it is. So, Johnny said, you know, he lost one out of four peppers too. And it just seems to happen. And I'm not sure what the primary culprit is. I sometimes think it's a bacterial wilt. I sometimes think it's like a water mold. I sometimes think it could be what am I trying to remember the some of the other diseases that affect that affect peppers. And I'll come back with the name here in just a minute out of somewhere in the file drawer in my head. But it just tends to be a problem for peppers that are in that annual group. And I, you know, I had I lost about one out of seven of the annual group this year, which I feel likes a pretty good, you know, pretty good record. Always seem to lose a few. I think the variations in moisture make it very susceptible, you know, when you get lots and lots of moisture. Yeah, that's that. Now, Johnny, who is this? Wayne sent me another picture. And Wayne, that's looking more like a root rot from excess moisture. Not not really great soil. I'm just thinking there it is. Yeah, and and Wayne's got two suggestions too. We'll be back. FM Talk 1065 with plain living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Call 251-343-0106. Here again is your personal nature expert, Bill Finch. Yeah, that's right. So Wayne adds sweet olive. It's a great tree. It's not native. It's beautiful. The native relative of sweet olive is also beautiful, sometimes called devil wood, but it's don't let that name distract you. It's actually a beautiful little tree. It's it's a good evergreen that could be used there. But the the old Magnolia, what people used to call Magnolia Frascati, which is a weird name, which has no currency outside of the Gulf Coast. I think because it was a family here called Frascati and people got it all tangled up with fuscata. But the new Magnolia Schenariana, which is we call banana shrub, which is has really beautiful fragrance. It's like a little bit of shade, but I think it could do all right there as well. But the silver bell I think would be just the thing. I think it'd be just the thing over there on that west, southwest side. I think it'd be beautiful. You're going to have that as your shady area. You know, Ellen, and you all excuse me, well, we got to get Ellen on the on the on the right road here because we haven't we haven't done this and gotten her there yet. So right where you got those two urns, she's got two urns framing her porch and her front door interests her cumquats. I'm just going to say cumquats. Now, don't put them right exactly where the urns are. Give them a little pull them out a little bit more so that you got plenty of room. And we can talk about that, but the cumquats would be very nice there. And then you've got the rosemary's, which could be really great as well. There's some other plants that I can think of for those sunny situations that could be very nice. You know, blueberries are really great too. And there's some great dwarf blueberries. I think they're harder to find. So I'm not going to recommend them right now. We were we were getting there at some point and oh, and then the Walmart Home Depot thing just basically crushed our ability to produce a lot of these native plants. But, you know, Walmart Home Depot still allows rosemary. Cumquats are still pretty easy to find. So these are great. And then you can tuck in. There's a lot of nice little flowers that you can use. You'll have to change them out as the year goes on. And you can think about think about this. The rosemary plant the rosemary in a way so that you can plant plants both behind it and in front of it. So behind it, you could have a little bit taller stuff coming up behind that rosemary flowering plants that emerge behind it that come up a little bit taller and you don't you see what I'm saying. So there's a lot of fun things to think about there. And there we go. This guy named Sean, he asked me, will my rattlesnake beans start producing again with cooler weather? Yeah, probably. Usually. And it's but but usually now make sure Sean that you keep it picked because if if the beans sense that you're done and that you don't care anymore and that you're not out there picking beans, it's going to it's going to shut down. So don't let those beans don't let any beans develop. In some ways, you know, I'm wondering if it would be good to retune a bean vine and I haven't tried this before. I almost thought about doing it this year. We do it with okra. So an okra ceases to be productive in that for various reasons, for slightly different reasons. A lot of times people go in and they would beat the okra. That was the old southern expression. But in the official name is retuning, which means basically means cutting it back so that it will produce younger growth that's more vigorous. I think it could actually work with rattlesnake vines. But I would experiment carefully. So you might try that with a few vines, Sean, and tell me how it does. Just cut them back. Oh, cut them back to about three feet tall and see if they don't re-sprout. And and then on the others, make sure there's no that you don't allow the any of the beans to mature. You either got to pick them off or throw them away or whatever you're going to do. But don't let beans mature and it should put out new growth. But I would experiment with the retuning. I would experiment with the retuning and see what happens. It's that you know, if you can get some young good growth going, when September gets here, it's going to start producing again. Okay, here we go. It's going to be a tough one. So I'm working both ends of the study here and Carol from Huntsville is saying, "Can you help me identify this conifer?" It's off of the thin white. They're still living and not getting tall. I never wrote down the name and can't find it books. It was twin inch, especially in one winter. Carol brings the most amazing any idea of a snake. I'm going to, ooh, Carol. I'm going to have to look this up carefully. This is, there's a lot of horticultural possibilities. It definitely looks like a spruce. I'm guessing it's probably like an Arizona spruce or something like that that's been dwarfed down. But I'll have to look carefully. I'm not even sure I can tell based on just the picture you sent me. So I'm not going to tell you what I think it is until I've had a chance to look at it. And that's probably going to take me, oh, give me a week. See if I can, see if I can come up with it. All right, come up with a good probability of what that might be. And we can base a little bit on what the Atlantic Botanical Gardens, Atlanta Botanical Gardens might have sold. But let me, let me, let me work on that. Sean says he's getting ready to beat his okra. There it is. So do we, yeah, it's always fun to talk about beating okra and I don't want to belabor it. But one of the things that happens is that okra gets less productive this time of year. And a lot of people in the deep south, less of a problem farther in the, as you get up towards the Tennessee line, it's less of a problem up there. But in central and south Alabama, they would frequently go out and win that okra quit producing and whip it. Literally beat it with a stick. And there's actually, you could probably accomplish the same thing by just going out with some pruners and pruning it back. That's called retuning. And what it does is it forces the plant to produce new growth from the base and that new growth is a little bit more productive and will start. And this is about the time of year you whip your okra so that you get another, another crop of okra. Or you retune, maybe I should just say, you retune your okra because whipping has all sorts of negative effects. But let's just, let's prune it back. Let's retune it. Down to about three to four feet. Just cut it back. You can experiment. You might find it a little lower or a little higher. But I'd say about three to four feet. Just cut it back. Cut those upper branches out. Look for, cut it above where you've already got just a few little, you can see, and it's going to sprout from the base in general and come on up and be pretty good. You can trim it lightly from the top if you want to as well. More lightly from the top if you want it to be four or five feet tall. But you're going to, you know, you're going to need to cut it back a pretty good bit. And it will generally, and you know, I think with the old idea of beating, you want to be a little harsh. You want it to be, you want it to know something happened and that it needs to re-sprout. Don't, don't be too gentle. And it will tend to re-sprout from the base and you'll probably get a good second crop. There it is. If your okra is declining. If your okra is not declining, well, don't worry. Don't go out and, you know, beat a golden goose or some sort of mixed metaphor. All right, let's see what we got here. Also, stagger ochre seed planting all summer. So we got this guy. He's gonna, he's gonna be a good garden columnist one day. You gotta run a good garden show someday. I stagger ochre seed planting all summer, so I get new plants says this guy named Sean. And that's, that's right. And it does help in the south to, to, you certainly want to do that with peas. I do that with peas all the time. And it wouldn't hurt to have two crops of basil. Oftentimes it's a good thing to do, particularly with some of the new varieties of basil, which drive me crazy because they were developed for northern greenhouses. Don't get me started. But so it's, it helps to have two crops of basil. And, and, you know, having staggered crops of ochre is a really easy way to approach life. Stagger crops of beans as well. So you might have started, I think it's a little late to plant rattlesnake beans at this point, because they produce so long, but you could start another crop of shorter season beans for produce production this fall right now. And you could have, you know, start some beans early, start some beans a little later, and you might not hit a gap or quite so much of a gap. Let's see. Not sure if you covered it. I did not cover it when your tech service went wonky, not sure if you covered it. So I've got to, I got to look this thing up. Do I need a different photo? I don't think so unless you happen to see any, unless it happens to have cones. Now, I will tell you that when we turn plants wonky to use the word that you've put me in the mind of, and make them short that shorter than they usually are for garden purposes, we also basically de-sex them, if I may say so. So oftentimes they don't actually do the normal thing anymore, like produce cones. So I don't know, but if they do produce cones, it would be a really good indication it would help me a whole lot if you see any cones. Other than that, I don't think so. I think that picture is probably going to help me as much as any picture, and I'm not a genius when it comes to northern conifers, but I know a little bit, and I'm going to try to help you out. So we're going to, we're going to keep looking at that. What else have we got? Well, we had several listings. You know, Paul, I'm not seeing anything about mimosa sap. I just, I don't know about this. I mean, they do bleed. I just don't know that I'm not going to be really keen on saying much about mimosa sap yet, and whether it is, I wouldn't suggest that somebody just go out and lick it. There you go. So I'm going to look more about it. I am going to try some, there's a few left, and I'm going to try some mimosa flowers. I think I can find a few. And we're going to see how that goes and figure that one out. Let's see, what else have we got here? Got this Sean all taken care of. Let's see here. We're mostly caught up on questions. If I have missed your questions, you, you jump up and down and tell me I missed it, and we'll work on it. You know, we did get this question about the muscadines, and I want to answer that question really bad about somebody moved to a farm and they've got what they believe is a muscadine. Send a picture. If you've got the muscadine and you want me to help you with the pruning, just send me a picture and we'll see what we can do. FM Talk 1065, home for plain living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep South with Bill Finch. Call 251-3430-106. All right, welcome back Gulf Coast any morning Alabama Sunday morning. Jarhead Sunday morning. Jarhead always gives me a call here in these last 15 minutes, but we got time, Jarhead. What's up? Okay, you know, you said something out of the week that you kind of got, kind of told me all about, you know, I could Google this these questions that I have to ask, but I like talking to somebody. So that's fine. But just got a quick question. We're serious and hydrangeas. Where's the best time to trim them? And what's the best way to trim them? Yes. So wisteria is a much tricker question. Hydrangeas are, this is pretty, pretty good. If you trim them the right way, it doesn't really matter when you trim so much. You certainly could do it now. With hydrangeas, you don't want to cut the tops. You want to cut the cut from the bottom. And what I mean by that is you want to look at that bottom and you want to find the thickest, tallest stems and you want to remove those. So with a hydrangea, you're going to have, you know, just look under there. You're going to have about seven or eight or 10 or 12 sprouts coming up from the base. And the biggest, fattest ones are going to be the least productive. And they're also going to be the tallest. And they're going to be the range. I know they say that they bloom from the previous year's growth, right? Right. So you don't want to remove all of the previous year. You want the smaller canes to keep growing. But what you're doing is you're removing the oldest canes first. So you could go in this time of year even now. It's just fine. Probably be a little better to do it back. Perfect time, maybe right after they bloom. That may be the perfect time, but you're still okay. And go in and and prune out two or three of the heaviest stems and see if that doesn't shake the bush up right quick. Because those are going to be the ones that are tallest and the and the ones that kind of look like calics. Like you got your hair is all messed up like you just got out of bed the morning. So take those. So you just take them back to the base. You look under the base, take your short-nosed long handle pruners, go in there and prune them off right there within six inches of the ground. Does that sound good? Sounds good. Do you ever recommend cutting them back all the way to the ground or take six inches above the ground? I can't see any reason to, I don't see any benefits to doing that. No, not with hydrangeas. No, okay. I know with theory, you can't kill a wisteria. Yeah, and so the problem, so what do you need to do? So I don't know how to prune a wisteria honestly. I mean, it's just it's just a thing. It's a booger. And if it's an Asian wisteria, it's going to spread everywhere like crazy. So what are you looking for when you're pruning with the wisteria? Basically to be able to get, I don't I don't care about the top, but the base where I can get up in there and cut around it with the llama. Oh heavens, this sounds messy. So yeah, so I, you know, there's no good way, there's no bad way to prune a wisteria. It's you just want to keep the wisteria from growing everywhere. That's basically it. Once it gets mature, it's going to flower successfully is you know, it takes forever for it to get mature to start flying successfully. Yours is, but then it starts sprouting all over the place. So yeah, you know, I I don't know what to tell you. I think I would cut out everything except for the bigger stems and I guess whatever it's growing in will just have to suffer for it and and just leave cut out all those small stems. I don't think there's a just wisteria is going to wisteria. Well, they're kind of like a zag. You can't there's no bad way to prune them and you're not going to kill them if they're established. Right. And the one thing, the one thing is if you prune it too heavily on those bistems, it's going to start sprouting like crazy in a farther ring around the plant. So I would prune it so that it doesn't notice, which is to prune off those smaller and just keep those smaller sprouts mode around the plant and hope that hope that it's far enough away from everything that you don't it doesn't get into everything else. But yes, I just cut cut it back. It doesn't really matter when you do it. It just doesn't matter. Well, now one of mine, I I pruned it back last year and I put a pine straw up on it and it has done very well as far as keeping the growth down and being able to mow around it. So that might be something that your listeners could could try. It worked with one of mine. The other one I'm going to I trimmed it back yesterday a little bit. I'm going to probably cut it back some more and maybe throw a little pine straw around it and see if that works. All right, Jarred. So I want you to tell me how that works next year. So let's let's give it let's give it another year and see how that pine straw works. I don't think it's going to have much effect on the sprouts at all. It's that that that wisteria probably don't even know that pine straws there. If it's not sprouting, it's just because it hadn't gotten a hold yet. The good thing is, is there is there any possibility that I couldn't possibly be a native? It doesn't sound like it's a native. So the native one doesn't sprout. Isn't that interesting? And the native ones are quite beautiful. When we first started growing wisterias in the south, they were all our native Alabama, Mississippi. Tennessee, Georgia, wisterias, native wisterias. And then at some point, oh, sometime in the between 1890 and 1920, we started importing all of these Asian wisterias that just go berserk. So it's kind of fun. If you can find the native wisteria and plant it, for those of you who are who are still have the opportunity to think about it, use the native. Do not use the Asian wisterias that they will eat. And then you'll have to call me like jarhead. I don't think the pine straws going to help in the long term jarhead, but it'll be interesting to see one thing that, and in fact, a couple of people are a couple of people who struggle wisteria, Jim and Georgetown says, make sure that you make sure to pull the seed pod that it's going to help you get out of the way. All the seed pods before they fall, if you can do that, or all those seed pods can come up as well. And they are pretty good about sprouting, but yep, so I don't know, I don't know, I think they're really hard to control, I think the fact that you have a good single stem that's growing up into the tree is keeping it happy. It doesn't feel like it needs to sprout a whole lot. I would say just don't get that big stem angry. That's the big thing. Don't anger up that big stem. Leave the big ones alone. What do you think jarhead? Oh, did we lose jarhead? Yeah, I guess yes. All right, sorry. I can make a beautiful, tell them to form a tree out of it, a bush, just keep it back and make a beautiful shrub out of it. I do think that can cause more sprouting. So I would leave the big stem jarhead. Don't mess with that big stem. There it is. Yeah, so David Hubble, our expert on unusual southern edibles, is saying he's chasing old newspapers and nothing on the most of Samper syrup. I don't know. We're going to look about, we're going to a little more about this. That was a quick two hours. Thank you. We'll be back next week. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]