FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living w/Bill Finch 8.18.2024 Tree's, Burning and John Olive (Center Director Auburn AAES)
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. Oh my goodness, I can't wait to get started because I got some fun things to do. I get to talk to my old friend and advisor, John Olive here, coming up this morning. We were talking about something really fun, we'll talk about lots of things. We could do a whole show, we could do multiple shows with John and I just talking about stuff that we like to talk about, like elderberries and how to grow plants and well, we can talk about fire, John, pay attention, pay attention, John, we're going to talk about fire this morning to be good. Hey, I've been thinking this week, though, a lot because I keep getting asked, I'm around trees all the time. I spend a lot of time on trees, I spend a lot of time on grasses, I spend a lot of time in the wild and I'm looking at, we have a research facility in Alabama that I'm running and it's a lot of fun managing people. It's a lot more fun looking at the trees than we got some great people. The, what's interesting is that this is probably the plot we're working on. We chose it in Alabama for a specific reason and here's the reason. We knew we could create the richest forest dynamics plot research center in North America. Everybody else could best us and we, and that's not just about being the top, it's really about understanding why are forest diverse, why are there so many cool trees in it, what are all these different trees doing, what is going to be, what role are these trees going to play in America's future because if America doesn't have, have rich forest because things are changing and lots of things are changing and people are changing them in many, many ways. I just will start with all of the things we're introducing, all of the diseases we're introducing, all of the other things and I won't even talk about temperature, I won't even talk about rainfall. We won't talk about those things, I'm just going to tell you things are changing and right now there are a lot of threats to the forest. So we want to study in the richest forest we can and I think gosh, you know, I am, there's so many cool trees out there, I've got all these beautiful elms that were used to be part of the Alabama landscape even in cities, native elms, not this junk that nurseries are selling like lace bark elms and Siberian elms and all this other mess from Europe and Asia that doesn't really perform that well here or in fact is not only does it perform well here but is in a little bit invasive. So it can be both. So I'm thinking guys all these elms, we got all these ash trees and we've got all these oak trees just oak, all kinds of oak trees you won't even have heard of. We got all kind of hickory trees on this plot. We have at least eight, if not nine species of hickories, maybe one of the global centers, the global center of hickory diversity is going to be in Alabama. I feel confident, maybe Georgia but probably Alabama and it's just extraordinary how many species of hickories are in these woods and how great they are, how beautiful they are, how cool they are, butternuts and shortly pines and all of these other trees, basswoods, oh I want to talk about basswoods, I want to talk about all the different kinds of maples, we got more species of maples than you even know about because in fact nobody can even identify all the maples in Alabama, we're still working on it. It just goes, the list goes on and on and I want to talk about all of them and yet and the shrubs, oh gosh I want to talk about the shrubs and yet I could talk about them and you'll say well how do I get those? And I'll say I don't know. So I want to talk a little bit about why you only get a very small selection of good plants and nurseries and the big one, the big one I'll have to say right now, the big keyhole if you will through which everything has to pass, the little keyhole through which everything has to pass I should say is low down depot, dome depot, whatever you want to call it, the big box stores, they're not going to, they'll never have these, they don't care whether these things grow in your yard, they mostly care whether you buy them, that's the only thing they're looking at and they're accounting, they don't care whether they're invasive, they don't care about any of those things, they're just looking and they don't want to sell more than a dozen trees, there's a different kind of trees and they don't even know if they sell that many honestly. And this is where we're getting things from. So I'm just going to tell you the big box stores are like the final thing and it's, we're now stuck with that in so many ways, I don't even know how to, you're just going to have to work around it and one of the ways to work around it is to go to places like the Botanical Gardens, you hear me say this all the time and it's incredibly, incredibly important to you to go to these Botanical Gardens and to work with them. You've got them in Mobile, you've got a great one in Birmingham, you've got one in Huntsville, it needs to be Huntsville, you need to understand it is more than a wedding venue and you're going to have to get there with somebody who's doing, you're going to have to get somebody propagating and getting that material and taking it seriously and that's not happening right now. But these Birmingham, Birmingham fosters that a little better. I think they do, Mobile has fostered that a little better thanks to people like John Olive who's going to be on our show. But let me also talk a little bit about why nurseries themselves don't allow you all these trees and it's something really important to understand because there's something you can do about it. I'm going to try to get you there in this next few minutes but listen, here's the problem, the very trees that will do best in your yard, the trees that have the deepest firmest root systems, that have the most drought resistance in many cases, the shrubs, many of these trees that would perform beautifully, excellently well in your yard. It's very hard to grow them in nurseries. John Olive and I were talking about one of those recently that John's working on, it's an incredible plant, just an incredible plant out of the Longleaf Pine ecosystem. It's a beautiful milkweed thing that attracts monarchs and it's a beautiful plant. The leaves are incredibly cool, just super cool and the flowers are nice and it's really one of the primary foods of monarchs along the Gulf Coast. It always has been and that's a really important step in the life of the monarch is getting in touch but we can't grow it in nurseries because it's very susceptible to the way nurseries water plants and to the type of soil mixtures available in nurseries and trees, hickories and people say, "Well, why can't I get hickories?" It's because hickories have a deep cap root and they don't like to be moved at large sizes and only things like pecan hickories, the soft hickories can get around that but the best hickories, you can't grow them. In a nursery, because the root system is so big and so massive and so aggressive and hates being grown in a pot, I mean, why would you choose a tree that could only grow in a pot? You wanted to grow in the landscape now. My acquaintances, my best acquaintances and sometimes they will allow me to call them my best friends are in the nursery industry, have been worth for years and years. I learned a lot about it and it's eye opening and many of them are out of the business now because it's getting harder and harder with low down depot and other things because they're getting old like me and they try really hard and they've worked really hard but things like mountain laurel, great plant, incredible plant, great plant for your yard. You know why you don't have it because it's hard to grow in a nursery. So we're going to talk about how to get around that and there's something you can do about that. There's something you can do about that. So listen up, we're going to talk about that on today's show and boy am I excited to talk to John, it'll be great. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch. Ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard, call 251-3430-106 on FMTalk1065. Alright welcome back, Gulf Coast Sunday morning, Alabama Sunday morning and with any luck I hope some of you folks in the upstate are going to be hearing our you know streaming. We had a little glitch, should be on now. So we were talking a little bit about why you're not getting the best plants for your yard and what you can do about it. And I'm out there looking at all these really cool hickories and really cool elms and really cool bass woods and really cool maples and really cool, oh I just want to talk about all the different trees that are in the southern forest, sour woods, what a cool tree. Talk about things like mountain laurel, talk about things like winter huckleberry, sparkleberry, sparkleberry, nobody calls it really, but the winter huckleberry we'll call it, the winter blueberry, it produces its berries and winter, they're not bad tasting and not great tasting but the cool thing is it's a beautiful plant, grows crazy wild in the woods and kind of takes over in the woods honestly, it's a native plant, without fire it can be a little bit of a nuisance. But it would be great yard plant, it's one of the great, everybody agrees and yet you can't get it. Why can't we get these plants and it's about, it really is about, it really is about the difficulty of growing these plants in nurseries and I'm saying this and I, listen, I'm saying this because my best friends in the nursery business have always reminded me and I say, guys let's do this, let's get these out to people, they're so cool and they said whoa, you don't understand, took me a while to understand what's going on. So there are a lot of things that are difficult to grow in containers and get up to size in time for you and so and you want things that are already of the right size but let me tell you about how to buy and this is just the simple lesson I'm telling you, how do you get these really cool trees that we talk about all the time, how do you get some of the best trees and one it's going to take working with your local botanical gardens, there is absolutely no question, there's absolutely no question and it's going to take working with your locally owned nurseries and making sure that the few producers who are still producing for this area continue to produce trees that can work well for those locally owned nurseries but you're going to have to take one other step, you're going to have to take one of the steps and that is appreciate that you don't need to plant big containerized plants because the more you look for large trees that are already large because you have this illusion that that's going to be good for your landscape and that you're going to have a larger tree quickly because you bought a big one, you're making a huge mistake. Number one, you're only going to be able to get a half dozen trees that would grow well here and the trouble is that those trees like live oaks are being over planted and we're about to lose live oaks to disease because you have over planted them, we all have over planted them to a degree, you can't get and that's a huge tree, it's a huge problem for your lawn, to have a live oak in the middle of the lawn, I'm just telling you it is. And there are other things I could suggest for you but you can't find them in the nurseries, can you? Longleaf pine, one of these incredible trees, one of the great yard trees, can't find them in nurseries for so many reasons and because they can't be grown out in large sizes, they can be grown out as small trees and let me tell you something about planting a small tree and I'm talking about a tree that's one foot high, two feet high, maybe three feet high, those trees are going to jump. They're going to grow at a much faster rate than that 12, 15 foot tree that you bought to plant that cost you an arm and a leg, that you don't have many choices about what you can plant and so within two or three years it's almost certain within two or three years that the smaller tree that you planted is going to be taller than the bigger tree you planted, it's going to overcome that height difference in a very short period because it's going to establish quickly, it's going to grow quickly and you know what in the long run at 20 years, I guarantee you the smaller tree that you planted is going to be much, much, much taller, it's going to be taller at five years, it's going to be taller at 10 years but it's going to be much taller at 20 years than that big 15 foot tree you planted. So get away from the idea that you have to plant something really, really large, it opens up a whole new set of opportunities for you, it really is the best way to do it even if you could find the tree that you wanted in that larger size. There's a lot of research that shows trees over say 8, 10 feet actually have a hard time putting on new root growth because they're already passed a sort of juvenile establishment stage and they really struggle and so they develop those roots very slowly and that means they're more vulnerable to blowover, they're more vulnerable problems and there are other issues with putting them in pots like you get root bound at sizes like that, that's a really severe issue. If you dig them, I won't go into it all, let me just tell you, you need to be rethinking what size plant you want. Mountain laurels, another great thing, you want mountain laurels, don't go to the mountains to get mountain laurels even if you're in North Alabama, don't go to the mountains to get mountain laurels, get them from local populations, they're going to be much more heat tolerant, they're going to be much better adapted. The truth is that mountain laurels have been in mobile longer than they've been in the mountains. But it's the honest to goodness truth, that is the absolute truth, the mountain laurels down in South Alabama are incredibly heat tolerant, they're the stock from which those northern plants derived except the ones that went up North happened to be more cold tolerant and they had a much more restricted gene by someone who won't go into it all. Let me just tell you, get it from local stuff but don't expect a huge plant, it doesn't matter whether you buy it from the mountains, it doesn't matter where you buy it from the coastal plain, you should buy it from the coastal plain, you should buy it from local populations. Get a smaller plant, it's okay, it's alright, it's the way you can have it. You can have it that way or you cannot have it with things like mountain laurels, it's also true for things like hickory. If you want a good hickory, a good hickory with good fall leaf color, a good hickory that produces great tasting sweet nuts, that's going to be a hard hickory, not a pecan hickory. It's going to be a hard hickory and you're going to have to, it has got a tap root and you're going to have to plant it small, that's the way it works. And they can grow pretty fast, amazingly fast and it's going to take a while before we get up there but getting a bigger hickory is not going to make it any quicker to get the fruits, I promise you. In fact, if you could find a big hickory which you won't be able to find, it's going to take probably even longer. So just think it about, here's the two things you need to do when you're buying plants now. First off, encourage your local botanical gardens to do propagation for you. That puts a lot of pressure on people like John who gets called on to help lead the propagation efforts, I know, John, I'm sorry for saying all this, because it means more work for John. But John, we can find the people, if we work with our local botanical gardens, we can find the people who can do that local propagation for you. John's done a great job this year on Gamagrass. It's so important for you to be involved. If you want the plants, and I keep saying this over and over, if you want those beautiful ornamental plants, if you want the plant, the trees that do well in your yard, if you want the shrubs that do well in your yard, I can barely talk about them anymore because they're not available through any conventional source. But if you want them, you're going to have to work with your local botanical gardens. I'm just telling you, and when you do, recognize that you're going to be propagating material with really cool stuff, and it's going to be, it's not going to be huge. It shouldn't be huge, and that's okay. That's all right. It's going to be really good, and it's going to get in the ground, and it's going to grow fast. You know, if John and I have the time, we'll just come up with a list of things that really, if you're going to grow them, you've got to start them. You've got to have to start with a smaller size. I mean, I, longleaf pine, mountain moral, hickories. What am I? Inner huckleberries. What else? There's so many of them that we really need to think about. Even many of the better oaks. So just, just things to think about. Things to think about. All right. Let's see what we got here. Can you, will you please tell me what kind of monkey grass to plant instead of grass for my lawn? Oh, also there could be more. Thanks. Well, it's, it's the buff monkey grass. It's the monkey grass. People are giving away. It's yeah, yeah. We'll talk about it when I come back. Me and my best friend, Lillian, are blue dick and all getting sitting on the ground. 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. Oh, that music just jumped in on me. There we go. Look at this. So, David is tempting me with good goose additions. Oh boy, David. That looks great. Pictures that I get to see sometimes that you don't get to see. I wish you, wish you could. We should, we should figure this out someday. So, some great good goose additions with, there's a good goose, which is a type. Well, you could call it squash though, it's not a true squash. But a very traditional squash like thing that was grown in, around New Orleans and in Southern Louisiana, thanks to the Italian immigration, maybe, I should say, CCC and immigration, that brought this thing from the Mediterranean, that does quite well here. Good goose. C-U-C-U-Z-E-A, we're going to have David and I are going to be talking more about this. I wanted to get to Tony in Fair Hope to say, "Tony, listen, when I say that monkey grass is great for mowing," and we sometimes have arguments about this because my good friend Chris Francis says, "Oh well, you know, you should get the mondo grass, which is stay short, and you certainly could, but that would be so expensive." What you really need is just that mean old, tough old monkey grass, loropy, forget the grass. You want just the monkey grass that you see growing in people's yards. And the ones that really is kind of robust and takes over, you know, and so people are always having to pull it out of their beds and give it to you, does great. Now when I say takes over, it spreads a few inches here and there throughout your yard, but you can sprig it. And it works really good and lawns, I've seen, I mean, people who have lawns made with this material really don't have any complaints. People who can get by with mowing it pretty seldom, I'm not going to tell you how many times you might have to, you could probably get by mowing it a couple of times a year. I did in a shady area. If you've got a sunny area, you might have to mow it more frequently, but you don't have to mow it like regular grass. It doesn't grow as tall as regular grass, which is a nice thing. Note mow it too short. You don't want to mow it too short. You want to mow it as high as you can, but it's really cool. It's really well, it solves a lot of shade problems. John Olive, John, I'm so excited. So actually John Olive is, John Olive is my advisor and over many years, well, how many times John have you corrected me? See? And vice versa. So John's the real thing. I mean, he led the horticultural, ornamental horticulture station in Auburn. Did I get the right name finally, John? So it was the Auburn Field Station in Mobile, and John would give it vice to nursery growers all across Mobile and Baldwin counties and wherever else it was happening in southeast Alabama, southwest Alabama, excuse me. And that was great, but he also gave it lots of advice to me and to other people. He's always been very involved in Mobile Botanical Gardens. John is now really participating in a big way with Mobile Botanical Gardens, and I know he's helped them on many things. It's really great that they have him and that he's working there. And John, I'm trying not to put too much pressure on you about saying that because I can tell you, doing these free jobs, you can really get sucked into it really badly. I'm just a small cog in the volunteer. Yeah, well, but a critical cog, I don't know that things would run very well without you there, John. And that's what we all have to think about is who's this next generation going to be. I hate to say that for us, John, but we're getting up there. So but John's been there for a long time. Now here's the big thing because actually he's gotten, actually got some messages about it this morning and I'm seeing some messages, Michael sent me a message about driving by and seeing it saying, and I don't think John meant this badly, but they burnt down the botanical gardens. Yeah, I'm flying. That's what I don't want to hear. He's I could play, he's I could play, Michael's I could play. It's going to be really pretty in a few weeks if we can get some rain soon, Michael says. And those boys look like they are a bit hot playing with fire when it's nearly 100 degrees a day today. Yeah, but so so this is good. So I thought I want to John on for a very selfish reason because I want to talk I want to compare notes about how these, uh, summer fires work and, uh, and I've been doing more of them and we're going to talk a little bit about fire and John and I were involved in the very earliest efforts to get fire at the botanical gardens to restore that long leaf pine forest. It's slap dab in the middle of town, folks. Right, slightly about 30 acres, uh, somewhere around 30 acres, it gets burned. Is that right, John? That's about right. That's right. 30, 35 acres. Yep. And, um, it's, it's really a phenomenal thing. And I think people were so scared when we first did it and, and then within a year, within two years, I was getting people saying, isn't it about time you burned it again? Yes. It was so pretty after you burned it and people get anxious. If you didn't burn it, uh, the neighbors around, I think we, uh, I will tell a story that one of our first burns or two, maybe it's the second burn. Oh boy, it was the smoke went the wrong direction and there was a tennis championship or tennis tournament. And we got a lot of grief about that, but we, we've not had, we've not really had any big problems with this over how many John, how long has that burn been going on? Can you remember? I, I cannot. I know, uh, it's, it's been over 20, 20 years, uh, and, and, um, um, what you mentioned about the tennis centers, one of the critical things I wanted to talk about is that burning in town requires a whole lot of people to come together and, uh, without the cooperation of the city, uh, the fire departments, police departments, uh, longleaf aligns, uh, especially the Alabama Forestry Commission, you know, there is no way that we could, uh, but even think about doing anything like this. So don't, don't get the impressionist, I'm, I'm the main one. I'm just a small cog in the, uh, in the process and it takes a heap of folks and, uh, um, ensure that the conditions are right and for, for us, this is the first time we've done a growing season burn that I'm aware of. There may have been one, but this is the first time and they're a lot more difficult. There's a lot more things to manage and, um, it's really critical that we get good information about what the thermals are going to do and make sure the smoke goes up and make sure that it's not too dry or too wet and, uh, everything just came together on Friday and, uh, we were able to, uh, to put all the pieces together and so it was a really, um, really a good thing for us. Good, good. So the smoke. So one of the things that happens with these summer burns is that in general, and I'm, I'm going to tell you my experience, John, and then you correct if it, if your experience was different, with the summer burns, the, the fires are less visible. They, uh, they tend to stay, they don't get, you don't get huge flame hides, but they're smoky. They're very lots of wet, wet smoke because the stems are still wet. Is that, was that your experience? Yes, that's, that's pretty, pretty, um, pretty much the way it works. And, and, you know, the, the, the, the smoke is going to be there no matter what, but, um, it, uh, definitely, like I said, this one really worked out. We got a rain on Wednesday, uh, I think. And so they okayed it and then we got a rain last night. And so, uh, to, to kind of wet everything, yeah, so we, um, we were, um, like I said, we're really, you know, it, you know, with a summer burn, a lot of times you get a mosaic. You don't get that burn that just, you know, fire goes through and wipes out everything. You've got places that didn't burn well and you've got some, um, mosaic in there, but that's, uh, for, for a summer burn. Uh, I don't know what the far street people will say, but I'm ecstatic. We, I mean, I just, I did think it was as, as good as we could have asked for. Yeah. And I'm very happy with these summer burns. It, when it does tend to pretty consistently get the woodies, um, unless there's something very wet around them and, and we've seen a lot of not kill back on woody invasives, I'll call them, that really shouldn't be in these, in these areas. Uh, and so, so that's really good, but you know, the funny thing is, is that with these summer burns, with winter burns, you're used to sort of seeing everything sort of pulled back to the ground, you know, and it's just, it's just black, everything's evenly black. But with these summer burns, there's so much wet left in the stems that the stems will still stand and, uh, and, uh, so, but actually I think that's good for the, that's good for the wildlife. It's good for the insects. It's a, it's, I think that these summer burns are better for the entire life of the forest, in part because you do get so much standing material and things for things to work on. And I, and of course the birds immediately come into these areas after you burn them. It's just like, it's just like at a calling card. And they're, they're in there looking for insects that are more exposed, but, but there's so much standing stuff still there, blackened, that these insects get a place to hide. And it's, it's really cool. So John, it must have been miserably hot doing this that that is the, that one of the unfund things about a summer burn is it is, you really have to watch out for, uh, folks getting too hot because it is, uh, you know, the good thing is you don't have that intense fire that you do with a, a winter burn where it's a lot more flame and it's a lot more, you know, getting on you and hot, but it still is just a hot, hot day. Yeah. A lot of time volunteers and, and work. That's right. That's right. And, uh, you got to have plenty of water. It's, that's, that's one of the harder things about it. But in some ways, I think these summer burns, particularly the way you planned it are safer than winter burns, uh, because the flame links don't get as high. It's much harder. I don't think you get as many spotovers. You don't get, you don't get flames that get thrown out. Uh, that doesn't happen as readily, particularly if you've planned it the way you planned it with a little bit of rain beforehand. And so it's, it's, it's, I think in many ways they're safer, even though the smoke looks very impressive. I mean, these big, blue clouds of smoke that just, but that's where John's talking about. So what we're looking for, there's, there's a lot of indexes that, uh, that folks use to determine how well that smoke is going to disperse. And that's what John is saying. You really got to pick your days. You really want it on a day when you know that the smoke is going to go up and disperse quickly. And that's what you did and, and it, and did it, it, it did the right thing. Right. It, it really did. And, uh, it, you can tell it's, it, you know, we all know from living in Mobile how much uh, difference humidity makes on how you feel in the, in the temperatures. And with the fire, it really, you can really tell because it was hard to get it started and you may teach that morning if it was hard to get started, but it's, it's a call. Yep. Let's hold on John. You know, John, I'm going to tie you up as long as I tie you up. We've got a lot of things to talk about, but John's going to be right 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 251-3430-106. All right. We got, uh, lots of questions coming, but we got John on, John Olive, uh, and it's always great to talk with John. We're talking a little bit about fire. We're going to talk a little bit about plants too. I want to quickly answer some questions. So Tony asked what kind of, what kind of monkey grass are you suggesting for using as, as grass? And I'm going to call it the monkey grass people are giving away. That's just the easiest way to describe it. It's the monkey grass that is, that grows abundantly in people's yards and that they often have too much of it. We'll call it Lorathe spicada. That's the oldest one and it's the oldest species and, but nobody's going to have a label on it. That's not helping you. Don't get the fancy stuff. Don't get the stuff that's got the fancy leaves that are variegated. Don't get the stuff that's got the extra big flowers. That'll probably work okay, but it, it, it just get the regular old stuff that people are giving away. So somebody sent me a picture and said, this is my nursery and it's just a patch of Lorathe in his yard. And he's pulling it out of there and, and springing it around his yard and it works. There is no nursery growing it at the scale you need it for planting in your yard. That's all I can say, but all, I can also say it works. Let's see, Johnny, I'm going to tell you, Johnny has a picture of something, Tithonia, Johnny. Did you plant, ever plant in a Tithonia there, which is the Mexican sunflower? It looks to me like you've got Tithonia coming up. Let it grow. It'll be a pretty flower. It'll be nice. That's what it is. John, we're back to talking about fire at the Mobile Botanical Gardens. It was a great fire on about 35 acres. Yes, we periodically burned down the Mobile Botanical Gardens and in the best possible way. And John, how often, how often do the burns happen now? Are they on a two year cycle, a three year cycle? How often do we burn now? That would be the best if we could do it every two years, but some of these burns like this when we might try to come back again next winter and have to clean up some spots. But it's the kind of thing where you know from burning that it's a challenge last year for our winter burn, everybody showed up three times before we could actually burn the forest service and the long leap of lines. Oh, that's so hard. Everybody shows up and then we go away and some years we've even not been able to burn. We just couldn't, you know, we've lined up and do it. So they would like to do it at least I think every two years. Yeah, and yeah, you know, and of course, cleaning up, you're not going to have a lot of fuel next winter, and so because you've got it. So you can just hit those spots where there is a lot of fuel and they're already blacked in for the most part. So you don't have to worry about them too much, so that'll be a lot easier. But if you're in the country, you can do that. You can go out and get a permit and on Saturday afternoon you can do that, but in the city, that's just not an option of cleaning up. You know, you got one little later here, you might could burn and if we know it would be safe and we could do it in all, but it's just not possible in an urban situation. Yeah, so it's a big deal. It's a big deal that Mobile Botanical Gardens does this. I don't really know of anybody who does it in a similar situation consistently over so many years. And the result is some really cool stuff. John, describe some of the wildflowers that we've seen respond as a result of these burns. The most obvious one, and this one will be too late as far as it's a one, you know, a summer burn like this, it's too late, but the blazing star Lee Atris is night and day after a burn. You can look, you know, find places where we burn one side of a road and not the other, and it's like night and day as far as the comeback. And last year was a good example of that. After I burned the previous year, last fall was a really spectacular year for that one. And I think the basil is one that responds to it. That red basil, I don't know what common name you're using for that. So, yeah, they changed so many times, we used to call it Satoraja, and now we have to call it Clonopodium, and I don't know where we are anymore. But it's our wild red basil that everybody says, what is that? It's a part of this long-leaf community and it's absolutely spectacular. I wouldn't. The basil name is about the fragrance. It is a little fragrant. It's not something you put on a sandwich. No. But the flowers are incredibly beautiful, and they're part of this long-leaf system. And it's red that blazing star John is talking about, and it is absolutely amazing. I mean, it comes up the wand. It's a wand of purple. There's just no way. It's just this big stick of purple that sticks up and waves. It's kind of crooked, but it's just beautiful, and with all of these purple flowers comes up waist high, chest high, depending. And there's actually more than one kind of lightress in there, isn't there? Correct. That's correct. And so it's, and some of them are very distinctive. Some of them look like little handkerchiefs all up, and it looked like somebody made a little handkerchief for the pocket. Nobody remembers what that's like, but you fold a little handkerchief and you put it in your pocket. The individual flowers look like that going up the stem. It's really beautiful at a small scale, but the other one is just you could be, you know, it's one of those 60 mile per hour plants. You're driving by and you say, what is that? So it's, that's really spectacular. And then all of the little asters and, and the summer that, you know, the summer asters, which are the early asters, which are not, I guess, what we'd call true asters, but things like the, what am I trying to say, John, the, I'll, I'll think of it just a minute. But there's, there's so many beautiful yellow flowers out there. And then the sunflowers are great. Now this burn, I don't know what the sunflowers are going to do this year. Right. Right. So we've got, yeah, there's not a lot. They have scattered in through there and they are, you know, I'm saying we don't have it. The predominant yellow flower when in there, that's not an after, now that you're, you're mentioning it's got white foliage. I mean, it's got a real filamentous foliage and it blooms early in the, in the spring. It's not one of the fall blooms I don't think. Now maybe I'm, I'm wrong, but it's, it is ubiquitous out there and I, and I can't believe I can't remember the name of it. There's silk grass and we got lots of what's called silk grass, which is, which is an act after not a grass, but it has that silky, silvery crease that are really beautiful. And they're, they're, they may actually be more than one species there. I, I have to go back and look again, but, but it can be very pretty. And it tends to bloom some of them bloom a little earlier in summer, some of them bloom later in summer and they're out there. It's really cool stuff that's just so much fun and butterfly weeds, the orange butterfly weeds are surely out there. They still, you're still popping up here and there and we've got three, three species of milkweed at least and, and, and that's good. The main, like, as you well know, just to reiterate, the main reason we were shooting for this burn is to knock out those, uh, oaks in there, you know, we burn them every winter and they come back, you know, they, we kill them off, but they just come back from the roots. And we're hoping, uh, with them not being dormant that, that'll, um, oh, and then it'll open up the bottom of the floor that you're always talking about and you've got that high shade and then the, the, the grass is all, uh, all expand with that mineral soil being exposed and so we're just, um, keeping our fingers crossed, but getting rid of those oaks, which has gotten so thick in there that it's, um, uh, it's, it's going to be more like a long lead forest, we hope. Yeah. So when we started that and John remembers this, magnolias, the magnolias were so thick. I remember cutting down those magnolias and what a lonely job that was, John, it's good to have you on. To John about whether he has time to come back on, we'll see, but, uh, boy, it's been fun to talk about this and we'll be back here. John and I are enjoying this too much. And I'll keep on praying with two dirty hands, I'm living, yes, living in the garden. 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. All right, welcome back. Belka Sunday morning, Alabama Sunday morning. What a beautiful wild ginch and I got to come back and talk about a little bit about that or is that a really, we're going to figure it out here in a minute, getting some interesting pictures. This morning from people who have old areas where the long leave forest used to operate in Mobile and Baldwin counties and, uh, and the incredible wildflowers that are there. If you want a sense of what those wildflowers were like, you can visit the Mobile Botanical Gardens in the middle of town where we had a remnant long leave forest that had been sort of, oh, you know, nothing good could come from Alabama, even people from Alabama like to believe. So we always import things and think, oh, well, this is going to be better. And we kept doing that and we lost this beautiful, long leave forest that people from all over the world are impressed with the wildflowers that are there and you get a little sense of that on about 35 acres at Mobile Botanical Gardens and a really incredibly beautiful thing with all the great wildflowers, a lot of effort. That thing was a mess. John Olive is here with me and we remember what it was like. It had been planted over the years. So every now and then somebody go in and plant some cameos, the magnolias are a bit of a invasive species and a habitat like that. And so the evergreen magnolias that come in and they'd shade it out, everything that were thick. There were tons and tons of live oaks because live oaks, John, I'm going to say this out loud just so people can get mad at me once again, live oaks are a bit of invasive. They're actually quite invasive, they're spreading in areas where they never used to be and there were a ton of live oaks in there. We're still battling some of those. And not the sand live oaks which are a little more discreet, but the old, the big ol' live oaks are a problem, water oaks were in there. It was just a mess. We had to do some clearing because fire wasn't going to go under those magnolias, it was nothing to burn. So we did all that and now it's this beautiful, what we call a savanna. So if you want to understand what we're talking about with a savanna, they don't just exist in Africa, they were dominant here in many areas in Alabama. These beautiful savannas, grasses and wildflowers with an open canopy of trees, in this case mostly longleaf and with some slash and some other things mixed in, but it was beautiful. John, we had a burn and we didn't want to, you know, I'm glad it didn't, it went exactly as planned and it was very good, it was a summer burn. You don't have to do winter burns here, these summer burns are really cool. John, we should compare, talk more and more, Sean Sullivan's very interested in fire and how it behaves in the landscape and how we use it and how we use it to get wildlife back and quail and so many other things that were part of our lives that we've lost because we lost fire. And it's interesting, so don't think, don't be surprised if you see smart people thinking about how do we do a summer burn with careful supervision and careful thought about where the smoke goes, how we'll contain the flames and that's what we've done at Mobile Botanical Gardens and it's pretty exciting. I say we, I was part of it many years ago, now that job is being done, it's continued by people like John and it's pretty exciting with lots of help from lots of other people because it's a big deal to burn in the city, we know that. John, can I ask you about, because I'm getting some questions from folks, can I ask you about cogon grass and how that's shaping up? That's in the, in the gardens too. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. What's the question? How do you control covalent grass? Well, and so what are you seeing with the fires now? Have you got, is it, is it more under control in the, in the long lease system than it used to be? It's a whole lot more under control, but it's probably more the chemical sprays that are keeping it under control than it is the fire. The fire, the carstered people tell me that it, it, it loves fire. It comes back with a vengeance after a fire, so I, I, I maybe repeated fires or something can slow it down, but they don't, they don't have much confidence, the ones that I've talked to about fire doing much to do anything but get the fuel out of there. That's right. And, and, and so yes, the fires alone don't work. I don't know whether long term, I don't know what we're going to see. I think it benefits from longer fire intervals. So if you, you know, and by longer, I mean, if you go through four years, I think the COGON probably benefits a little bit more than if you're burning pretty frequently because, and so the more you can burn the better and, and there is the, yeah, maybe. I agree with John, and John is always right to, John, John never allows me broad statements and this is good. So this is good. Because he's absolutely right, it's, it's, COGON grass is one of, is one of many human nuisances in the landscape and, and I have to throw this on humans because we brought it here. We made the mess and it is just spreading like wildfire in, in, in, and it's tough. It's hard. I don't know. Yeah. The best thing that we, we, you know, from, from talking to people and just accumulated anecdotal and some science back up, but it, it multiple sprays in the season and not using too hard a rate. If people, people a lot of times will want to, oh, this is COGON, it's going to be hard to control. It's going to be a super high rate and it, it, it, it's better to kill it slow. And we're talking about glyphosate that, that evil chemical glyphosate, but that is the best thing that, that I know of that most people can have access to. Right. And, and we're, I think John and I probably mostly agree. And John says the evil chemical glyphosate, that's the way it's being portrayed right now. As it turns out, compared to other herbicides, most other herbicides, I would recommend glyphosate is probably one of the safest, I would, is, is, and I would rate, is glyphosate carcinogenic. Yes. So is gasoline. So you got to think about these things in a smart way. I think, I think glyphosate, we hate to use the word round up anymore because round up means so many weird crazy and same things. But glyphosate is, is probably one of the safer herbicides. I've always said this in terms of human use. Now, when you spray it over crops and I don't want to go into this, it's crazy to spray it over crops repeatedly. And it's, it's wrong from many perspectives, one of which is that we're losing the ability of glyphosate to work and two, I don't know what it does when you eat it. I don't vouch for that. But when you put it in the landscape, in the way that we're using it as spot treatments or cogon grass, it's very effective and very safe. Use gloves. Don't spray it on yourself. Use glasses if you like, but, and I don't think the zoot suits are necessary. But you know, if you want to use a special suit to spray in, you can do that. That's what the government says you should do if you're spraying a herbicide and a pesticide. Probably not, not hugely necessary, but wash your clothes when you're through for sure. And, and glyphosate's pretty good and it's, it's how we're controlling cogon. There's nothing magic about it, don't use, as John says, don't use Jim in Georgetown. Don't use, don't use it to, don't use a, a strong mix. Use a mix according to the, just according to the lightest package instructions because you, you want to sneak up and get it into the root system. And cogons, cogons, cogon is a C4 grass and that means it, it does really well in hot sunlight. But if it doesn't have a lot of sunlight and if those blades are cut too short or if it loses its ability to collect a lot of sunlight, it's going to lose out to a lot of other plants. That's what we've been talking about. All right, gosh, John, just 15 more minutes, John, just 15 more. All right, all right, we're going to be back. You get plain talk on plain living. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep self with Bill Finch, call 251-3430106 on FM Talk 1065. All right, welcome back. It's a Gulf Coast Sunday morning. It's in Alabama Sunday morning. It's a John Olive Sunday morning because I got John Olive on here and he's stuck and he's I keep saying, "John, just 15 minutes more." It's great to talk to John. We've been talking about fire at the Mobile Botanical Gardens and what it does and how to live with it. And it's really, really good. John, we talked about cogon grass. We talked about that that is a problem for a lot of people now who have longleaf. Well, it's a problem for everybody who has anything. And how do you get rid of it and it's being persistent, we'll come back and we'll do. I'll talk about that more, Jim, next week about what we found with that. And there are some, a lot of the native species don't compete well with cogon and that's just to be honest, what we find is that some grasses do and the ones that are probably best is probably broom sedge because it's so good, just mean old, bad old broom sedge because it's so good at using up many of the nutrients that cogon grass needs. It's better at partitioning those than the cogon grasses. So lots of things to talk about there. John, can we talk about plants for a minute, just generally in nurseries? You know, I started by talking about this today about why botanical gardens are so important in terms of propagating material because you know I have my thing about what's going to happen with these, with the big box stores and what they've already done in terms of our availability of plants. I also talked a little bit about the fact that all of those people we worked with for many years in so many ways are getting out of the business. And we're seeing, John, I mean I'm wondering if you think I'm exaggerating that I think it's going to be harder for us to find a wide variety of plant materials than it was even 15 years ago or 20 years ago. What are your thoughts on that? I think you're right. I think it's, we're already seeing it. I mean with native azaleas and some other things, it's just difficult for growers. Those are not easy plants to grow. I mean it's not even if they could grow them. A lot of the plants that we like are not easy things to grow. Yeah and we were very lucky to have Bobby Green, one of the great Camilla growers, propagators, developers globally working out of Fair Hope. And Bobby still plays with Camillas but he's not producing Camillas in the great numbers that we used to have and so it's hard to do that. Martin van der Geeson who still has a nursery and is still producing but he's scaled back on much of his production of azaleas for so many reasons. And so it's tougher to find all those azaleas that we used to talk about and nobody, I can't even begin to pretend that Mobile could be in Azaleas City again because I don't know where we're going to find these azaleas, so it's going to be really... And even the evergreen, I mean we're getting so concentrated on a few varieties that even the unique azaleas, it's just so much easier to grow 10,000 of one variety than it is to grow 500 of 40 varieties. And that was the difference between people like Bobby and Martin, they loved what they were doing, they loved plants, that's why they were in the business, they weren't, and they had grown up with these plants and they got really interested in them and we don't see that as much anymore and even growers outside of Mobile, that generation is gone. And so we need a younger generation who can kind of take that up but getting started in the industry business is a hard thing, particularly when low-down repo is determining what the market is going to bear and determining what people buy and determining what the price of a plant is, it's just we've got a monopoly virtually now in plant availability and that's why John, what is the few, I mean I keep saying that the big solution for this, the best solution we've got are the local botanical gardens, I mean is that putting too much pressure on the botanical gardens? Well yeah, we don't have the space or the manpower to do it on a large scale so it's going to be a challenge, so that's part of the problem, that's part of the solution but we're going to have to find another solution, I'm afraid. Yeah, yeah and it's, you know, I do think that, I do think that the more the people can support those botanical gardens, the greater the scale can be, burning and so that's interesting. One of the things that the botanical gardens can do is to serve as a retail outlet for smaller growers who want to avoid the low-down depot dead end, because it is a dead end, for the growers it's dead end for the public. So one of the ways to avoid that is for the botanical gardens to work with local retailers and I know Birmingham does that pretty well and I think they're still doing it pretty well, we need those smaller growers along the Gulf Coast for the plants that grow well along the Gulf Coast and I just encourage people to think about that and for the mobile botanical gardens to encourage that, but that also needs the public to appreciate that when you have these plant sales you really need to support those plant sales and not just in terms of buying plants, but in actual being participants in the botanical gardens with the person power and the time it takes to grow this, think of your botanical gardens as a co-op, as a co-op that you need to be a part of and that's very important for you to be a part of if you want those kinds of plants because that's one of the few ways I can see forward right now and then to encourage some of the local retailers so yeah yeah so this is this is really good. John have we got it have we got a fall plant sale coming up this year the last weekend in October okay good good we've got a little time but we didn't have a fall plant sale and we're looking forward to it good good and any any other any other thoughts about the botanical gardens and things that are really nice for people to see when they're out looking at this come look at the bird just just to get a sense of it's really fun to watch so we had a bird at the botanical gardens we've been talking about it and it's got to look a little bird right now and it's got to it's got to be really interesting but I want you to come watch it we did a summer burn John on some really rich soils rich clay soils and it looked pretty bad and the owner hadn't seen it before and he was saying I don't know and now it's just it's like three weeks later it's just beautiful it's just beautiful green it's like spring is starting all over again in this landscape and it's really impressive so well that's what I would encourage people I would encourage people to do just exactly what you said is this week even humidity is going to be down a little bit and a little bit more bearable and just go through it now so you have a reference point and you can see you know that it's not such a bad thing when you look at it now and then come back in three weeks or a month or six weeks and see just the difference it makes yeah yeah so it'll be really nice and things like Wayne has got this beautiful little ruella the wild petunias we can't even see some of them responding they'll be out it's just just a lot of beautiful things that will begin blooming even this fall you're going to see the grasses recover you're going to see this beautiful spring like green it will look incredibly lush and meanwhile you can go walk through the Camilla garden you can walk through the Azalea garden you can walk through some of the other things to see blooming plants at the mobile botanical gardens while you're out there so that's right definitely definitely and you're right there's a lot of a lot of stuff that'll be be popping out after this after this fire but it's like I said it's always nice to walk through and see it's not a beautiful it's a moonscape but it gives you a point of reference to see what it looks like now and then in a couple of weeks yeah yeah it's it's really good it's really to understand that role of fire and all the different many different things it's doing in that landscape is really important john it is so good to have you on i could you know i could tie you up every sunday with questions and bore your listeners to tears that's what we do anyway john so listen not you get me so it's it's uh but it is great to have you all john you owe me a visit i remind you i will remind that in front of everyone else and uh so it's uh it's really great to have john really great to be able to talk about fire and plants uh thanks john and we're gonna we're gonna do this again we're gonna do this again all right thanks all right thanks john so listen we've got uh we've got some other i i know you've got some questions that i haven't gotten to we're going to get to them this morning uh and talk a little bit about them i didn't want to tie john up it's just such a rare privilege to have him on but we're going to be back here in just a minute with your questions so sit them this way welcome back to plain living for alabama and the gulf coast questions on conservation natural history and gardening talk with bill fench call 251 3430106 on fm talk 10065 all right here we come we got so much to talk about this morning it was so good to talk to john listen wane i'm going to tell you i think that is the ruelia siliosa it's a uh sand hills wild petunia and it's not a common thing it probably used to be a lot more common uh it's a really great indicator that you have some really nice longleaf habitat there the key to to longleaf if you've got longleaf on your property uh wane and you can call me and we can talk about it the key is mineral soil and if you have mineral soil uh if the if the mineral soil is exposed after a burn if it doesn't have to compete with grasses it's going to come up it's going to look like grass it's going to come in so thick if you get a good year and uh wane call me sometime and and we'll talk about it call me today if you if you like and we'll talk a little bit about that uh we've got uh a lot of other questions uh it's a lot about good for barbecue smoke i don't you know i'm not really fond of oak smoke for barbecue but some people are if you are it's going to be fine uh i like i like a hickory smoke for barbecue i like uh fruit woods uh for barbecue i think they're really good uh but uh i'm not as keen on oak though in fact a lot of charcoal is made from oak i just think that the that that live oak oak that hasn't been turned into charcoal it's just not as my favorite for putting uh in for smoking all right uh glyphosate and jug killed vines in a thick bed it was very effective too great solution for vines uh we'll um we'll kind of get exposed of it let's come back and we'll talk about that in just a minute right now i cannot neglect uh our our callers anymore and i have i have Tom are you there are you still remember what a fig tree is after all this time hey good morning yeah i know i know what a fig tree is yeah yeah i'm i'm just kidding because i made you sit so long waiting to waiting to get to you tell me what's going on with the fig trees well um i don't have one but i've done a little research and i kind of want to be get a couple um another's a ton of varieties and was just going to want to get your thoughts on you know what what would be good for our area and the do's and don'ts when i when i do decide to finally get a couple all right let's go through this real quick i always tell this story i uh Auburn had a fig tree trial going up around thoresby jimmison and i used to i used to get in trouble with alabama power all the time and had a lot of good friends there but so i'd write an article and they'd get all mad at me and i'd have to go up to Birmingham to the corporate office and tell them why i wrote the article and then they'd all they'd scold me and then they'd ask me a tomato question and we got along just fine and so on the way up with with uh Bernie uh one day uh Bernie was working with we decided we'd stop at this fig place and just a sample because it was the peak of fig season and we sampled so many figs i mean we were sick by the time we were through it was just it was terrible i mean i just didn't want another fig if you can believe that because they were they had a hundred varieties some of which were strongly different and some which probably weren't all that different but there was a bunch of them and we sampled all those and we kept coming back to Celeste it was the best one we had and Celeste is one of the most common figs on the market and it turns out it's the best i it's very simple for me to say Celeste it's it's it's pretty hardy it's reasonably hardy which is not a big deal in south Alabama at all but it's reasonably hardy it's tough it's uh the fruits are not as big as some of the others but they're plenty big and the flavor is great consistently good Celeste le st there's a lot of others out there that are pretty good too and you can play with them but if i were going to have one i would definitely start with Celeste now okay what let go ahead let let's talk about planting them figs have a problem with something called nematodes and there are these little things that attack the roots and mulching around a fig as far around it as you can possibly mulch and i'm talking about six feet out from the trunk will help that fig get established and grow well for a long period of time so that is that is the key people used to say plant the fig next to your house so that it can hear people talking well of course people got their windows shut and if they have them open fox news is on so the fig doesn't get to hear anything good anymore so it's not it wasn't about planting it so it could hear people talking it was about planting it next to the house so the roots could grow under the house now we got another problem and that is that houses don't have they all have a concrete slab now so it can't grow under the house anymore so you got to imitate that by having those roots grow under mulch it's really great give it full sun mulch it just take all the leaves you can find just pile around it it loves it figs love it and the other thing the last thing i'll say and as you get this fig is you can have a fig tree or you can have figs you can't have both do not think of that as a tree think of it as a bush think of it as a shrub and every year go in and prune it so that you can reach the figs otherwise you won't harvest the figs and you can make it more productive that way so you'll cut out two or three of the biggest fattest stems every year the ones that get too tall and you can start this in about the second or third year after you're planting it and that'll that'll be big but the mulch is huge it makes a huge difference in terms of figs all right two two other things real quick i got um calling around trying to hard to find one what one guy in bawling county's got some brown turkey figs well they do okay and am i saying that right brown turkey something yeah brown turkey it's it's hard to know what brown turkey is um and and that's there are about 15 different versions of brown turkey and brown turkey is a in most of most of the plants sold as brown turkey are pretty good some of them are sold as brown turkey are not so good uh it's uh and there's nothing wrong with brown turkey brown turkey i've just came out the top yeah i've tried to find two less the last thing is on the mulching so i live i live i guess just off dolphin rag swamp laying various strokes here you know it's it's a it's the waters it's just it's just a swamp here is that going to do more more more mulch or less mulch or is it going to help us so you're definitely back from my fig yeah if you yeah figs are pretty tolerant more tolerant than some plants of a high water table but they're not they don't like it anything you can do to build up the soil underneath it is great when you plant be sure not to plant it too deeply and crack your soil and then and then you can actually bed this fig in a you can bring in say a three-foot wide make a three-foot wide place where you put on about three inches of pine bark and plant it so that the fig sits about even with the top of that pine bark and then add a little bit more pine bark on top of that and that will help it to get established and then put on your mulch and that should it should do pretty well as time goes on in adapting to those soils but that mulch is going to be really really important it's important everywhere it's going to be really important when you got a high water table gotcha okay well thank you so much all right all right so call me back if you if you run into any more trouble Tom thank you for holding on Jackie yeah we got some time Jackie tell me what's going on hey thank you for taking my call um I am in the same home almost 30 years in Magnolia Springs pretty close to Magnolia River and this year I have such a problem in a very shaded backyard with St. Augustine with something called basket grass yeah opolis manus two or three others yeah I've got a variety but that's the worst that I just it's going to take over my yard oh well that would be okay so because because your choice is bare dirt or something that's very shade tolerant like opolis manus so the the basket grass is telling you something the basket grass is telling you it's too shady for St. Augustine. St. Augustine St. Augustine does not like shade it it it tolerates shade better than some grasses but not well and so you you're getting a very shady area opolis manus is a summer grass that comes in and I think it's quite pretty the only downside to opolis manus from a growers perspective is that it doesn't really have much substance during winter and so it can look a little you're it can look already but I think it actually is quite pretty in summer and and it's not a bad choice but you get your areas too shady and the opolis manus the basket grass is telling you that it's too shady what can you do there you can if you're among common plants among common plants that are easy to find basket grass is one of them but monkey grass will tolerate that shade pretty well and if you want to start yeah if you want to start springing in monkey grass you can do that if you want it to be a natural area under that shade there's a lot of other things but you'd have to have an interest in doing that and I yeah that uh-huh tells me probably the monkey grass the monkey grass is going to be the thing so I would I would go with the monkey grass there and and and or whatever nature gives you that will tolerate that kind of shade because sagging pristine is not going to do it unless unless you remove some of the shade and I can tell you how to do that you can take out the mid-story trees the trees that are of intermediate height and leave only the tallest trees but if a lot of those trees are camper trees or are live oak trees that are youngish uh you're gonna have a really hard time getting anything to grow there yeah they're old oaks um and it's pretty tall shade but um yeah it is it um what is it face the north so a little bit of it close to the house gets done but it's it's shaded but this is the first year I've had this kind of a problem although there's one little spot where I put monkey grass a few years ago that near the biggest tree the grass wouldn't grow and I'm like what no monkey grass will grow there so it has some uh a juga and monkey grass around that tree that's done really well that's right so there's another let's leave yeah so the nice thing about monkey grass is you can mow it and you can treat it just like a lawn and and so it's it's not a bad thing you've already started that direction I would go that direction now and just piece it in where you're losing grass the fastest don't uh the basket grass is doing you a favor because otherwise you might have mud there and it's uh and and and it's not the basket grass isn't taking over it's just that the st. Augustine is no longer able to compete with the amount of shade and other stresses that are there so if you put monkey grass in it will it overtake that basket grass or do you think it'll just grow with it yes no it'll overtake it that'll be fine it'll it'll it'll pretty do it pretty quickly actually is it again okay well thank you I appreciate it all right Jackie good here from you Wayne you just hold on we're gonna talk about a long leaf welcome back to plain living for Alabama on the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard call 251-3430106 on FM talk 1065 Druski uh it sent me a picture of a sunflower he wants to propagate it uh i'm not gonna have time to be with it all today because i'm gonna run out of time but Druski will you call me send me that picture next week and call me and let's talk about where you got it i'm curious about it and uh and let's talk about what you mean by collecting it and we'll see we'll see i'd love for you it's really an interesting looking sunflower it is a sunflower and i i think it's one of the annual sunflowers it looks really cool oh gosh there's so many things to do this morning and i'm gonna run out of time but Wayne Wayne i told you to call thank you uh tell me uh tell me about hey but long leaf in what you've done to propagate it hey Bill uh thanks first of all for taking all my questions every week i want to thank you for that um i've got really sandy soil here in Ermington and when it was when it washes off there's a lot of little um i guess a copper colored pebbles so i'm guessing there's a lot of iron in the soil or something here and uh it's kind of rocky under about uh four inches of sandy soil and when i moved here uh 15 or 16 years ago i had about 30 long leaf on here and i've lost three or four of them over the course of last 15 years but the others seem to be doing well and i've had a few little volunteers come up and i've moved on their set about seven or eight of them but the needles on them are a lot shorter so i'm thinking they're probably splashing not long leaf and i would love to know how to propagate long leaves i've i've buried whole pine cones uh both the open ones and the green ones i've tried to get the seeds out of them and plant them maybe i'm putting them in the wrong kind of potting soil but i'm not having any luck propagating them yes so let's uh let let's do this you're going to need to pick the cones when they're green and just beginning to open when they're when they're when they're already open and that's going to be i have to do this professionally actually judge when pine cones are ready and yeah with with in your area that's probably going to be october and november uh you're still they're going to be green they're going to just start turning brown and you want to pick those cones and then put them in a paper bag okay and let the seeds fall out when they open up they'll dry keep them in a dry place let let the seeds and then you can collect those seeds and plant those seeds you should get you should get a ton of seedlings and it's going to look like grass and i suspect you have seedlings out there that you thought was grass and you mow it all down because it's going to look like grass it's not going to have a little stem if it's slash or lob lolly it'll have a little woody stem with little leaves coming off of it but this is going to look like grass and when long leaves seeds in it will look like you'll you'll learn to tell the difference it's very thick but it will look like blades of grass when it comes in and there won't be a little tree like stem for growing on it won't be a little minute or three at all just just this grassy like thing and that's the grass stage that's what we call it the grass stage and it'll be like that for three or four years so you've probably got them growing in but you just didn't recognize them because they look like grass so go in and look at pictures of grass stage long leaf okay just look at some pictures on the internet and you'll see what i'm saying and uh and it's it's a little confusing for folks and they're going to stay like that for about three years okay three years and by the fifth year usually between year three and five they're going to just jump out of that grass stage and they'll grow two or three feet in a year okay and and are more so that's how you do it i do not you can do it in a pot once you get once you get a few trees up in that container don't keep them for more than a year in that container because they all right that was my question Ben you got to plant them out just as soon as you you got to plant them out no later than the first year after you propagate it so if you plant them out if you get seedlings up in in um march probably a good idea to get that thing in the ground by april by august september october okay now great art even sooner the seeds that come off in the bag can i plant those directly in an area that absolutely that's the that is the best way to do it okay now rip a little channel and and just put them in there yeah okay so about what a couple inches deep or an inch deep or yeah you don't even have to just make sure so you're going to have wings on there that make it a little a little hard to plant and you can clip off those wings if you want to individually just clip off the wing and and that makes it easier to plant or you can just use the wing and just just kind of rip a little channel just plug it in with the with the wing sitting up and it'll probably do okay that way or with it wing laying down however you do it and it doesn't need to be that deep okay it it's sometimes if you've got really compacted soil it helps to break it up but that's a little problematic so i'm not going to tell you to do that just just look for mineral soil put it out there rip a little channel and it's they're probably going to do really well now that once those those seeds do not last so you've got to get them you got to get them planted as soon as possible after you start seeing them come out they need to within within a month they need to be you need to find a place for them in the dirt well well the trees i have are 100 feet tall so i kind of have to rely on the squirrels and knock the cones down for me but they do knock down a variety of mature cones yeah yeah and you know i use Hastings poles printing poles to get at them uh when i have to um that's a problem but i'm telling you go look for those long-leaf seedlings because you probably have them already in your yard and you're just thinking oh well that's not a tree seedling that's grass well it's probably not so look that up study that and then on your advice i left about a half acre that i haven't mowed in about three years so i'm going to go look through there yeah and and it needs those seeds need to hit mineral soil so if they they'll get hung up because they're big seeds so you if the more mineral soil you have exposed the better the regeneration will be got you okay thank you so much bill i really love you so all right Wayne thank you uh yeah and Wayne call me back if you have any other trouble jean jean good to hear from you what's going on schedule my little schedule man yeah right on schedule it's it's it's you know we got four minutes i call him pick pick at your buddy and every one day when he was up at all my center i went in there and we was talking out down the street and we mentioned your name or something other he got to looking all around everywhere and he said building around here is that no he said building you both me i'm going up that back gate back there that's not true but anyway i live about four blocks in the park and had that burnover i didn't see it yeah so it's uh it's cool so you'll have to uh you'll have to take a look at it i think they did it just right the smoke went up just straight it must work right up there i went south on billy because i never even said i like i said i said i'm walking up portion from south side because i didn't see a smell of dropper smoke yeah yeah he had me get me a pomelo going i got a bush about four foot tall and that five foot tall we've been working on something about five years but uh yeah and it's you know john i don't think people know how much john has contributed to so many of things we have a lot of people with citrus um and particularly things like pomelo and pomelo whatever you say well whatever you call them i call whatever but yeah i i don't know i had one three years out here and it come up here a while but hey and you tell me say this thing they'll down you yada yada and down about two years later big co spill commitment i it killed it down to the root yeah and uh yeah i never i always had that so don't blame don't blame that on me all right so uh you know uh i thought hey that's like i had had 80 80 plus pomelo's what i warned you yeah yeah so it's uh but john has been really instrumental in you know um the um not just the the clementines which i had which was such a great privilege to have i don't know how long we're gonna have that privilege of growing clementines but they were in john said you know i i secretly like clementines a little better than satsumas and and he's i'm i'm divided i like i said i told you if you can work to january favorware man the much better they're great they're great uh jean it's good to hear from you oh i call you next week full 30 that's right thanks for taking us out as always all right folks great to talk to everybody we'll be back next week You