FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living w/BIll Finch 9.8.20254 Ants, Sunflowers and More
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. Hey look at this weather. It's going to be nice. You know what you're going to see? Those tomatoes are going to start producing again. The nighttime temperatures are going to drop into the low 70s. That's a good enough if you've got some tomatoes that survived to get them flowering and fruiting pretty well. The days are getting shorter, that means we're going to be talking a lot about melatonin here lately. There's a lot of good things happening. This is that great time of year. I am getting my garden ready and as I do, I think about, gosh, do I really know enough to be a garden expert? Isn't that good for you to know? Sitting out there in my garden thinking, goodness gracious, there's a lot of things. I don't know how to fix. Should I admit that? Yeah, I should admit that. Everybody should admit that because there's a lot of people who are certain and they sound certain about what they're doing on things that, in fact, they can't be certain about. There are some things I'm pretty reasonably, oh, what should I say? I feel reasonably good about giving you advice about a lot of things because I've seen it work a lot of times. I'm not saying it works 100% every time, but it works many times. So I'm going to talk about some things that I know how to fix and some things that I don't know how to fix. I'm not sure anybody else does either and that's an important thing to think about. Let me talk about some things that I'm pretty excited about right now. One is the best fixes are sometimes the simplest, most mechanical fixes and by that I mean when we are trying to fix things, we always think at least nowadays we always think because we're so used to being at the mercy of people who sell drugs that there's some kind of drug, some kind of chemical thing that we can feed the soil or the insects or whatever it is it's going to fix things. It's like a pill, you know, so you're going to get it in a bottle and it's going to make everything work right. Well, where people are concerned, I think we're much better at that actually. I think we're probably much better than we used to be. We actually, I don't trust a lot of things that come in bottles, I'll be honest. I'm bad about that. I don't think we fix a lot of things that we think we're fixing when we do that. And even with painkillers and a lot of other things we create other problems. And some things work really well, I'll have to say, you know, we just about conquered mops, for example, we've, do you remember when you said mops, we got good at this. We're actually good at probably having people live longer because of blood pressure medicines and other interesting things. But most of the things that are really effective in a garden are not like that. So let me tell you, I've had a huge problem, a huge problem in the fall with getting vegetables ready for this cooler weather that's coming up because the bugs just are a real problem this time of year. And that's particularly true with the brassicas, the broccoli, the cabbages, the kale, the collards, the cauliflowers, the brussel sprouts, mustards, which is sort of a same thing. All of them are having real problems this time of year because of insect attacks. And there are several products that I've used to control it. But honestly, you get something, you get a lot of maws out there and a lot of egg laying going on. And it's really hard to keep up. Let me just say something that has been very effective and that I highly recommend to you. If you're getting started on your fall vegetables, many of you are, you should be. Use what is essentially mosquito netting. It is incredibly effective. It's not that expensive. You can use it year to year, don't let it go to waste. You can get it in several sizes. You can get it on the internet and it looks like wedding bales. Doesn't have to be the finest. In fact, you don't want it to be the finest for most of the pests that we're dealing with. Flee beetles are another matter, but we're not going to go there just yet. For most of the pests we're dealing with in fall, it works very well. And make out you can lay it directly over the plants. Probably works okay. It also helps even more if you can actually put it over a little arch made out of PVC pipe. Whatever it is that's flexible that you can make a little arch, not too high because you won't have enough fabric to cover it. Just tie enough to accommodate the growth of the plants into winter. And then you can use that in winter to cover it on cold nights to protect those plants. Really good. It's worked incredibly well. I got a little while to go. And something bad may happen like I might get a grasshopper caught under there, which I did the other day and I had to get rid of him because he's a grasshopper. He'll start eating stuff, but it works pretty well. That works really good. And then there's the stuff. I got a couple other hits like that. They're fun. They've got them. But then there's stuff like this, there's ants. And some of my best friends send me things about, what do I do about these ants? They're eating up my blank eggplants, okra. They're fire ants. You know, it varies from year to year. Sometimes you'll have big problems with them and sometimes you won't. I can't tell you why. I wish I could, exactly. But I can't. I do think, you know, I'm just not even sure. Every time I think I know why, every time I think I have a clue why, I think my experience doesn't prove that to me. But you're going to have a problem with fire ants more than likely in your garden at some point. And the problem is not just that they sting the stew out of you, which they do. I've got, gosh, I've got the little bumps all over my arms to prove it. But that they will actually, they can actually be a nuisance on your vegetables or in the worst case, on occasion, they actually destroy vegetables. Now I want to talk about this for just a minute because I want to say you could go on the internet and there's extreme confidence from a lot of people that all you got to do is put baking soda in water and mix it with something and do something else and put it on, and the ants are going to explode and you're not going to, do you believe that? Look, anybody can come up with something on the internet and put post it there. It doesn't mean anything. They can swear to it. They can be, I don't know, they can go to church every Sunday. They can still give you bad information. Just beware. So what do you do about, what do you do about these ants? And I want to say I can give you some things, but we're not going to solve the ant problem. We're not going to solve the fire ant problem. It's been with us a long time. There have been a lot of people who try to solve it. We're not going to solve it entirely, but we're going to talk a little bit this morning about some of the things you can do to maybe, maybe discourage the ants in some cases. And in other cases, to actually get them out of the area where they're causing the most problems. So as we're going to talk about that, but it's really important to understand that I'm not smart enough and I don't know of anyone else right now who's smart enough to solve the fire ant problem. If that were the case, it wouldn't be a problem in so many places. And it's why is that because, well, we've created a perfect habitat for fire ants in a way and because we introduced them because we're typhoid marries and typhoid toms and we spread those things all around, but we come back, we're going to talk about fire ants this morning. Yes, we're going to talk about fire ants in okra in raised, artificially raised beds. I've got a lot of problems I've got to address and I'm going to do the best I can. Hey, that mosquito netting works really well. Let me tell you, I am so excited. We're going to be back here in just a minute. 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. Hey, relief from pest. It's kind of what we're talking about. I'm ready for my lecture. There you go. So listen, yeah, I'm going to lecture a few of you. No, I'm not. I'm going to commiserate with you. It's tough. Life is hard sometimes and sometimes we wish we had. You know, gosh, I'd love to blame you for all your garden problems. No, I wouldn't. But let's say I could. It wouldn't be correct because, you know, we all have garden problems. We all have problems that are sometimes really difficult. Sometimes mechanical things are the best. Let me tell you this story. You've got to be patient while I tell this story because I think it's important to understand. So everybody's got this, you know, hornworms, right? Hornworms on tomatoes. And I, this is back, some of you will remember the story. Hornworms on tomatoes. And everybody's got some kind of homemade concoction that's going to get rid of something in the garden, right? So well, let's go to the store and buy something. Let's go to the, but you don't want to do that. You want to find something. So here's the thing. You go in your refrigerator. You've got a hornworm. You go out, you get, there's a hornworm on your tomato. You see it. He's eating the tomato. You finally discover him there and he's big and he's gosh, and there's two or three. And so what you do is you go inside and you get a jar, mason jar is fine if you remember what those are. You get some lemon juice and you squeeze into that lemon juice, squeeze a, squeeze a good lemon in there, medium, a medium size lemon is fine. The dosage is pretty important in this case. Put a medium size lemon in there. And it's, it helps as a sort of a synergist here to add some sugar to that. So you can add a teaspoon of sugar to that and then dilute it as you would all of those kind of concoctions. You dilute it because it doesn't need to be that strong. Dilute it to the top of the mason jar about and then it leave a little bit of room because it helps to put, it actually helps if it's cooled down, particularly on a hot day. It just makes it much more effective. Put some ice in there. Walk out to the garden, knock the hornworm off your tomato plant, stomp on it and drink the lemonade. You see what I'm saying? There's a really simple, there's really simple, mechanical ways of dealing with insects. They don't have any resistance to it. That's why I love, that's why I love this mosquito netting. It works really great. It's like, this is state of the art, mosquito netting. It's incredible how that helps and it just makes all the difference. It solves a lot of problems in my garden and it's, it's, it's been really great. You got to tuck those edges in just a little bit. You got to figure out some, but it's great, works great. Very simple, something you have to prepare for, but it's really good. So one of the things I, I do think is we're looking for some kind of chemical solution for fire ants. We're never going to find one. We do have to understand that fire ants, you can, there is no easy way to kill a mound. You can get it to move. And even if you were to kill a mound, the densities of fire ants are such in the south that there's always going to be another fire ant mound that moves in. Having a garden is a particular problem. Let me tell you why. It's a problem in sandy soils that are wet all the time, like they are in midtown mobile or in many places in mobile where the soil is compacted. It's a problem in clay soils because the ants, and you think about it, if you had to dig in soil, we'd rather dig in nice loose soil, right? And in many cases, they like fire ants like soils that are raised just a little bit for a lot of reasons because one, it doesn't, it's raised up out of the moisture. They don't like to, they actually survive flooding pretty well, but they don't like to see, they're not going to build their nest right at the water table. So they like for it to be raised, right? And they like it loose. Now here's the thing, to some degree you want all of those things. You want beds that are slightly raised. You want beds that have lots of organic matters that are easy to dig in. All the things that you want a garden or what fire ants want. And that's one of our problems. And I can't figure out a way around that, it's just the fact of the matter. If you raise your beds really, really high, I do think, and I can't prove this, I can't prove this, but if you raise your beds more than say 18 inches, 12 to 18 inches, you're probably going to see there's going to be a greater chance that the fire ants are going to move in. They base this on the fact that when I had big containers with lemons and limes and blood oranges, every time I got fire ants in those containers, it's just going to be an issue. They like containers. They like the bigger the container, the more they like it. So there it is, just something to think about, and I think if you have something in a container, it's actually pretty easy to deal with. Up to a certain size, get your wash bucket, a wash bucket, or something, or even a small garbage can, a pail, or something that you can drop, you can put water in and drop those plants into that water, assuming they're well established, drop that you can put your container in the water and it will drive the ants absolutely crazy, it can drive them out of the salut, it's going to drive them out of that container really well. And then it'll probably help, it sometimes helps just to move the container, just to move the container. So there it is with containers, and that can help a little bit, and I do find that it's generally easier with containers to deal with the fire ants because you can do those two make simple mechanical things, and it generally works pretty well, and just fire ants hate to be disturbed, they hate to have to rebuild, and all those things, and this is one of the ways to really begin thinking about it, and sometimes you can just make sure that they're watered pretty well, or maybe over watered a little bit, and that'll do it, but there it is, that's one quick way of doing it. It's a mechanical thing, it's not some kind of chemical thing, because the chemistry that we have for fire ants has got some problems. Now everybody's got their own, creates a slightly different problem, I have problems with ants in beds that aren't in containers, right, they're just in my beds, and when I get those situations, I know that those fire ants hate to be bothered. They just hate to be bothered, it's the vulnerability of fire ants, it's why they attack you. They don't want to be bothered. So if you continue to bother them, it can sometimes help, not always, not always, but it often helps, and you can bother them in many, many ways, but the simplest way, as I have said over and over again, is with a good hose, and if you can hose down in your garden beds and expose those eggs and do it a couple or three times every day, or a couple of three times over a week, I should say, you usually can get those fire ants to move, they hate that, just follow up, don't, not gonna happen the first time, they'll rebuild, do it the second time, do it the third time, do it the fourth time if you need to, simple, figure out water in your plants, just irritate the stew out of them, and they're gonna move, it's not gonna kill them. If you did kill them, you'd have more fire ants coming in from somewhere else, but you're gonna have a really hard time killing them because you gotta get the queen. Now all that can work, and it can, what happens if you have a raised bed, maybe it can work in a raised bed too. If you can move, I don't know how these, I will tell you, I don't know how some of these new raised bed systems work, honestly, it occurred to me the other day, I don't know how they work, do they have a bottom, I mean I think some of them do, and some of them don't, and somehow the plants are supposed to root in the ground, and some, I just don't know, so it's gonna, you know, I can't tell you, if you can move your container, you're in great shape, because I do think you can help a little bit by doing that, if the plants aren't actually rooted in the ground, if the plants are rooted in the ground, you've got the same problem, and you're gonna have to water, we're gonna come back here, and now I've told you about the mechanical things, and they're gonna work really well, but we're gonna talk in just a second, hold on, hold on, we're gonna talk a little bit about a chemical treatment. You get plain talk on plain living, let's talk about living and growing in that deep self, with Bill Fitch, call 251-343-0106 on FMTalk1065. Yeah, welcome back to the Gulf Coast Suny Morning, it's an Alabama Sunday morning, ants, fire ants, oh boy, we're gonna talk about the insoluble, the insolvable, the unsolvable, but we can do a few things I think, we can continue to experiment, fire ants are always gonna be a problem, just like lawns are always gonna be a problem, you know, the whole concept of lawns is kind of designed to have problems, inevitable, and the way we feel like we have to treat them, it's inevitable, fire ants, we just sort of introduced sort of an ultimate nuisance, and it has been with us for a long, long time, and nobody's really figured out exactly what to do with it, it's not that people hadn't tried, but we've done all kind of crazy things, I mean we unleashed nuclear annihilation on these guys when they first came out, we walked out all the native ants in the process, Lord have mercy help us, we literally, so we're going after the fire ants, we wiped out the native ants with these chemicals, and the results were that the fire ants just basically went unimpeded, always the thing that will, we will never be able to control fire ants unless we figure out some way to encourage, as part of the solution, as part of the solution, having native ant populations return, which do less damage, and which are incredibly important, by the way, a lot of these native ants are incredibly important for germination of seeds, for carrying seeds around in the forest, many wildflowers depend on them, it's a huge, they play a huge role, these native ants, in making our woods really nice, and also on predating pests that we don't want, so do fire ants for that matter, I got stung by a bunch of fire ants, it was cussing the stew out of them, and then realized, oh gosh they're eating all of my, I looked down and they were eating all the caterpillars, that were coming up in the soil, they're just tearing them up, that's what they do, they are good predators, but sometimes they get on things in their problem and you don't want them in your beds and you want to get them away from your beds, Bruce is saying, to start with peas, beans, and okra, and then they find the outer skins of collards and potatoes, yeah, and I've had, I'm not sure, I haven't seen them on collards, never had that problem, potatoes I have had a problem with fire ants, I think I understand why I did at the time, it's, I wouldn't put fresh compost around potatoes, because they're not going to distinguish the young potatoes from the compost, there it is, compost meaning kitchen stuff, and so I think that probably helps, but I've seen people, my next door neighbor didn't have any problem with fire ants, and it varies, year to year, do they learn, maybe, I think, I don't know about that, Bruce, I'm just not sure whether that's transferred, it always seems to me to be a year to year thing, sometimes it'll be really bad, and the same plant won't have a problem, I had a problem with ants on, egg plants didn't have it the next year, alright, let's go, so, ants, you got 'em, you want to do something about 'em, I did mention Spino Sad, and it's, I don't want you to go overboard on Spino Sad, there's several reasons, one, we don't know that it's perfectly safe for a lot of insects that are beneficials, and those beneficial insects are mighty important for your, here you are, and in fact, they're probably mighty important for the ability of your ochre to grow, but Spino Sad works, how does it work, that's the important thing, I think the most effective way to use Spino Sad, Spino Sad is a bacterium, I think it is, that was found in soil and was actually reproduced and is put into a formulation, it doesn't seem to have a lot of effect on humans, probably, probably doesn't have a lot of effect on humans, it may have some effects on other insects, but it doesn't have, it's supposed to effect most seriously those insects that chew on plants, because they're gonna pick up Spino Sad in the process, but for fire ants Spino Sad is gonna work best as a bait, it just takes longer, and I would say, patrol your vegetable beds early in the year, and if you see the fire ants beginning to develop in those beds, use Spino Sad in the beds, and you're probably within about three weeks, if you use a Spino Sad bait, S-P-I-N-O-S-A-D, it'll have a lot of trade names, I can't go through them all, but if you use Spino Sad baits, it's probably gonna help to control those fire ants, in your vegetable beds reasonably well, you can at least have a little bit of a border area there, you could probably use a Spino Sad spray around plants, you'd probably have to reapply it quite a lot, along the basis of plants where the fire ants are climbing, like okra, or egg plants, and that may help, it may help. Sometimes if the fire ants are going after aphids, which they seem to prefer, in many cases, over the vegetables themselves, you can get rid of the aphids, that's a mechanical thing, we can do it with water, you can do it with savers insecticidal soap, whichever, but that'll help too, but here's the last solution, and it's not perfect, it's not gonna be something you want to do all the time, but if you're in an emergency situation, you can use a Spino Sad drench. I, most Spino Sad products have a, have information on the package about using a drench, it's expensive, it's not cheap, let me just say, it's not like a spray bottle, you're gonna use, but a Spino Sad drench will probably work, and you use a watering can, you know I don't know, if you've got a big sort of cattle trough raised bed area, and you're gonna drench that whole area, you want to hit the perimeter first, let's just hit the perimeter first, and then work towards the center, that's been some people's experience, let's just do that, won't hurt to do it that way, and let's see if that doesn't help a good bit, that Spino Sad drench, you should see effects pretty soon if you don't mind spending that kind of money, that can certainly help, so that's a treatment, it's not actually chemical so much as it is biological, and it's using biology against biology, which is a little better, though I will say that it has its limits, and one of them is is that that Spino Sad is not evolving as quickly as the ants will, unfortunately, because we're gonna maintain the exact same product for a long time, and there could be some resistance to it, but occasional use that Spino Sad can help with the fire ants, you know, I think I would use it if under a lot of, if I were in extreme conditions, meanwhile, we need to think about, and I'm gonna be thinking about, 'cause I'm not, I don't have everything figured out, but we all should be thinking about what is that, what are the things we do to encourage fire ants, and are there things that we can do to discourage them from setting up shop in our vegetable gardens? And I'm just, I'm gonna think about it more, I'm gonna experiment more, I'm gonna look at other people's work and we'll see, maybe there's some things we can do. I am wondering if super raised beds, that are raised super high, and that collect a lot of, a lot of heat, and that drain excessively well, I'm wondering if, I'm wondering if they, in fact, may encourage fire ants more often. I'm not sure, but I'm curious, because I know they show up in my containers quite a lot, they love those containers, they love big containers, they love small containers too, but you know, really small they don't like, 'cause they're not big enough to really make much use of, but just, just thinking about it, but on the other hand, I'll have to say they also show up in my garden beds. Fire ants, have I said enough, and have I said enough about, we need to think about it, and let's not be, let's not be susceptible to, how do I say it, made up things on the internet, there was a, it is still very amusing to me about the grits story, which it does, it won't die, I mean it is a zombie, it's a zombie solution, it, take grits, put 'em on your fire ant mounds, the ants are gonna come up, they're gonna eat the grits, and the grits are gonna get in the moisture of their bodies, and their grits are gonna expand and the ants explode, and the ant colony dies. Folks, think about it, think about it, it seems odd to you, well, it is, because it ain't true, it's not true at all, there's absolutely, it's not just that there's no evidence for us, it's just weird, and silly, what happens if ants move, because you happen to put grits on their mound, it's because you subtly spotted 'em and you irritated the stew out of 'em, and they'll just move, they don't die, didn't kill 'em, they just move, and in fact if you put most quick kill insecticides on a fire ant mound, it doesn't kill the ant colony, they just move, because they recognize something's wrong, yeah, maybe that solves the problem, but that just says to me, use the least expensive, least toxic solution, could be opposed with water, that'll make 'em move, suppose the eggs, that doesn't, there you go, enough about that, can we talk about something else besides fire ants? I think we will, I think we will, this morning, give us a call, 2513430106, 2513430106, and let's find some other things to talk about, I wanna talk about my mosquito netting, can we talk about that, can we talk about what a cool thing it is, why don't you ask me how I did it, pretty simple, but it's a pretty cool thing, and it really, really solves a lot of the fall problems, I think it could solve a lot of problems too with summer crops, and I'm gonna be thinking about that, it won't work with crops that need, that have flowers that need fertilization, cross fertilization, but it would work with tomatoes, 'cause tomatoes actually don't need fertilization, in that weird, they self fertilize in almost every case, so, so there you go, eggplants, maybe it's, I'm gonna deal with my eggplants, alright, give us a call, give us a text. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast, questions on conservation, natural history, and gardening, talk with Bill Finch, call 251-3430106 on FMTalk1065. Alright, I had thousands of caterpillars in my yard, but I guess the ants got 'em, you know, it's quite possible that the ants actually did play a role in that, birds play a role in that, so when you've, I've had several people talk about the fact that these, I don't know, probably some people had problems with sod webworms this year, though they're a little less noticeable, so I'm guessing people are having problems with fall armyworms, which are moving through, birds do a lot of damage to those fall armyworms, they can really begin to, did you notice a lot of birds in your yard, they can really pick at 'em, and it can make a lot of difference, chickens make a, if you've got chickens and you've got fall armyworms, you're gonna have fat, happy chickens, and they're gonna really do damage to those fall armyworms, 'cause they're really, they're on the surface, they're perfect there for chickens, it's kind of, it's interesting that we have a lot of problems with things like fall army worms, because we don't have a lot of birds in our yards anymore, for a lot of reasons, we don't create habitat for them, or because we feed them at feeders, which is sort of encouraging the wrong kinds of birds, or we go up shrike, get a shrike, I mean that's what you need is a shrike, you need a quail, that quail are great, but see we don't encourage those kinds of birds anymore in our yard, right, oh well, turkeys are great, you've got some turkeys in your yard, you're doing, they're gonna eat those worms, they're gonna love those worms, great year for turkeys, I think, because of the fall armyworms, potentially. There you go, it'll work, it'll work, let's see, oh we're gonna talk about partridge peas before it's over with, because I want to talk about partridge peas, so Johnny says I have a problem with the grass on the north side of my live oak, the grass is not dead, it's not just not thriving like the rest of the yard, it's been like this all summer. Any idea what the problem may be? Yes, yes, so there are two things going on, and I will say that live oaks and grass don't mix unless those live oaks are very, very old, because they block the sunlight all year long, and so it's normal that it would be worse on the north side of your tree because you're actually gonna get a little more reflected light and also the low angle of the sun is better in afternoon and morning under that tree because it's coming from, generally from the south, east and west, and it comes shines under the limbs of the tree and so it gets to the grass, but on the north side it doesn't. Now there are many ways that live oak competes with sod, and those other factors that play, but I think if your problem is on the north side I'm just gonna use Occam's razor here and cut to the chase and say, "I ain't getting enough sunlight," it's not getting enough sunlight, and Johnny what do you do? So if you can thin the tree out, it will help, but at this point you've probably lost the sod and it's gonna be hard to get it back. I will say, under those circumstances, if you need a ground cover, Opus minus basket grass can work, it's only going to be there in summer, but even better is going to be monkey grass, and if it's important to you to keep something on there, the monkey grass can work very well on the north side of the tree. It will actually survive on the north side of the tree because it's, well, St. Augustine is a, it's got a particular way of doing photosynthesis, it's a C4 grass, it needs a lot of sunlight, it needs a lot of sunlight, and so monkey grass is not a C4, it's a C3, it can get by with less sunlight, it is more competitive in places with less sunlight, so it can work very well, and I think that's the thing to do. Several people have been grabbing the hornworms by the tail, as they say, or the horn, or whatever, and dealing with them, that's just the way to deal with them. Stomp them off, you're gonna start seeing it now, and Johnny has a great mower that cuts six inches or higher, I'm very excited about it, it's a craftsman product, he showed it to me, it looks like a sports car, pretty cool looking in it Johnny, kind of reminds me of an old Alfa Romeo, I don't know, but it's battery powered, but it cuts six inches, Johnny says are higher, I, but that's great, you know, the more we find out about grasses, and the more we find out about long grasses, the more we realize that keeping that grass, we, well, let me just say this, cutting it below five inches does damage, and it really weakens the grass, it really weakens the grass. Now Johnny, keep that, keep that mower high, and you're really gonna help the St. Augustine that's there, particularly in shady spots, keeping that St. Augustine as high as possible, I mean as high as possible, six inches is gonna be great. You know, I was out the other day, and I think about people, if you've got grass at six inches high, and you've got a mower that's got a nice sharp blade that'll cut it, it'll be fine, nobody's gonna notice it, that it's six inches high, except you, and people are out saying, oh, I want to really cushiony grass, and somebody said, oh, well, I want Bermuda grass, 'cause it's got a thick cushion. Man, I will tell you, you ain't walking barefoot through that grass, 'cause Bermuda grass is prickly, it doesn't feel good, it just doesn't, and neither, honestly, does most zoysia, it just doesn't feel good, it feels like you're walking on a, oh, like a Brillo pad or something, you know what I'm saying? If you want soft grass, St. Augustine's great, it's got other, every grass has problems, I don't mean to suggest, but it's a soft grass, keep it high, it's so soft, it's so wonderful, if you can do it, it's really good, it's really good. Alright, let's see what else we got here, should I put lime on my St. Augustine lawn, I laid this on with the week before Christmas last year with a layer of pie bark with lime, with the handout, is it time for more lime? Yeah, probably not, probably not, you know the great thing about the pie bark is if this is taken pretty well, it sounds like it has, it is that it serves as a platform similar to lime, it does help to have a little bit of lime, there's no question, but I think you probably are okay, I wouldn't add a lot more lime until I did a soil test and make sure that you needed the lime, would I go out and get a soil test? Probably not, because you probably got enough lime, you probably got enough lime, it's certainly you don't want to add lime every year, maybe in five years you say to yourself, I wonder if I should add some lime now, and you could certainly do that, probably wouldn't hurt at that point, but definitely don't add it this year, and you're good, you've done your lime thing, how much lime did you add, I will have to tell you, confess, I don't know, but probably you added enough, particularly with all the organic matter, because the organic matter is going to serve many of the same functions that the lime would, not all of them, but many of them, there you go, got lots of text, that must have been listened to the ant stories, now we got lots of text and we're going to get back to them, let's see, do you know what this is called, beauty berry, somebody sent me a picture of beauty berry, which my dad calls beer berry, though if you're from south Mississippi or south Alabama, and you got a south Mississippi south Alabama accent, as I still do, to some degree, it may sound like bear berry, and it took me a long time to figure out that what I thought my dad was calling bear berry, was beer berry, you know, pretty close, beer berry, uni berry, talk more about it too when we come back, oh, lots of fun things to talk about, thank goodness we don't have to talk about ants all morning, we'll be back. This time for plane 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. So, we'll get back to that, some great observations, saw this on Goldenrod, any idea what butterfly, you know, I'm thinking I know that, but I can't think of what it is, that's not a Goldenrod by the way, I can tell you Jim, and Georgetown looks like Helianthus to me, or something, but I don't think that's a Goldenrod, but I don't think about it in just a minute, it's coming to me, so there are happy things in the world, and the Partridge P's are blooming like crazy now, they are, they are like in the day length, and they have started blooming, you know it's, Partridge P is, like BroomSedge, one of the great unheralded wildlife foods, well, it's getting to be a little, getting a little more attention, BroomSedge and Partridge P just kind of go together, there are two very nice things to have, the BroomSedge is not so much something wildlife eat, though there is some of that going on, it just makes great habitat, and BroomSedge makes a place for Partridge P to come in, and Partridge P is a great wildlife food, lots of peas on it, beautiful flowers, beautiful flowers, there's a little section near my farm, and it just, we, I did some burning, and one of the Partridge P's, there are a couple kinds of Partridge P's out there, in fact, if you're on the Gulf Coast, you got three or four kinds of Partridge P's out there, so there's the small-floured Partridge P, nicked-a-tans, something like that, about how you pronounce it, came across to nicked-a-tans, it's sometimes called sensitive bush, or lots of plants are, but it's got small, less showy flowers, but it's really important too, and I see it coming in in place, it always makes me very happy, I think it makes wildlife very happy, good food for wildlife, really great, kind of sneaks in in places where sometimes the big-floured one won't, and does really well, it's to be preferred, and then there's the showy big-floured Partridge P, which is blooming yellow now, the flowers, if you look at them close, they're classic beanflowers, legume flowers, they have a lot of the structure of that, and they're quite showy, as most beanflowers are, if you look at beanflowers, they're showy flowers, and these are like, they're 80 miles per hour plants, I mean, you know, you could be, if you're driving 80 miles an hour and you're talking on your phone, you're probably not gonna see them, help you, but if you're driving down the highway, even at 80 miles an hour, you're gonna see these bright yellow spots, not very tall, maybe knee-high, Partridge P's, long the edges, really great, great wildlife, really wonderful things, boy, I could talk about them a lot, you know, Sean, what I'm gonna do, I got an area, I think we're gonna do some fall burning this year, sorry, we're gonna talk about this, think I'm gonna do some fall burning, we're gonna experiment with it, I know I'm gonna have some bare soil, so we're gonna just lay out straw from little blue stem, just cut a bunch of little blue stem straw, lay it out in some areas, and take the Partridge P, lay it out, gonna make it work, gotta make it work, that's it, so it's all good, let's see, we got lots of things, I am shortly going to have to, I've gotta take a break, we gotta, I gotta do, help some folks, so we're gonna play a really neat tune and we're gonna be right back, you know, I love, I love what Sierra Farrell is doing, she's got some great music, this is in the car, we haven't played the whole thing, but Steve, can we crank that up real quick, and we're gonna run that right into the break, and then we're gonna be right back, after the break, thank you Steve, alright, Sierra, let's listen to you. I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be, right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm going back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be 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back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be right back, I'm gonna be suspicious for a little while, and I've seen some cool stuff on spoil mounds as well, but yeah, one thing Sean says, and it is true that most sunflowers are eaten readily by deer, I don't know that all sunflowers are eaten readily by deer, particularly if they're particularly hairy, and have a lot of hair on the stems, I do seem to think that they go after the sunflowers that are less hairy on the stem, because sort of for the same reason people don't like to eat hairy things, at least while they still have the hair on them, so let me look at this, and I'm gonna look at it more closely, but just be a little cautious, because that's a pretty disturbed habitat, and it's a great breeding ground as I say, from invasive species, and it's gonna take me a while, you know there's 52 species of sunflowers in the US, I don't recognize this one right off the bat, and I'm so, but I think it is the Argo Phyllis, and I'm gonna do a little bit more work on it, and you can look up Argo Phyllis to A-R-G-O-P-H-Y-L-L-U-S, Helianthes Argo Phyllis, and see if that sort of fits what you were looking at, but very well, like I said, I found it, and I didn't know if it was native, I guess I assumed it was, but I don't think I want to spread anything that's not native around the hunting camp. Yeah, it could be a little bit of problem, yeah, you never know, so let's be a little cautious, I am not giving up on this, I'm gonna keep looking up, I'm gonna think about it, if I don't have time, because I'm gonna run out of time on today's show to look it up and find out more about it, I'm definitely gonna spend time with it, I got this picture staring at me in front of my computer, and I am gonna think really hard about it after the show, and try to come up with a species on this, so it'll help you, and you can message me back next week. All right, well thank you sir. All right, thank you, all right, so there it is, it's interesting, sometimes when you're on roadsides, and when you're in disturbed areas, sometimes the species we encounter are in fact the ones that we've introduced, and that's something you have to be thoughtful about, it doesn't mean you don't look on spoil mounds, it doesn't mean you don't look on roadsides, it just means you might want to be a bit more cautious with those plants and make sure what you've got before you spread it around, you could be spreading cogangrass for example, 'cause it shows up in those areas a lot, yeah dear, you know Sean, I got these rare sunflowers that we're working with, we're trying to save, we're actually trying to give them a name, so I don't even have names yet, and the deer just eat the stew out of them, and here's the funny part, Sean you know I'm gonna preach on this. So the funny part is the deer, this is what the deer have been eating for, what do you guess Sean, a million years I would say easily, five million years easily, my scene, twenty five million years, let's go back, the deer have been eating this stuff, and so people read some, oh gosh, can I say it out loud, some deer magazine in Michigan, and they say oh you gotta plant this mix for the deer, 'cause they don't have anything else to eat, and you do, and the deer are eating the stew out of the sunflowers on the edge of the plot where they're getting enough sunflowers to grow in the green field, and they ain't touched whatever the deer magazine in Michigan said to plant, I just had to be bad Sean, I had to say that, but boy they do eat the stew out of sunflowers, and lilies, oh gosh, man I don't even want to go into the lily situation, and you know, so we need mixes that actually involve these native species don't we, and we don't have them, we could make them up, and here's what I would do, if I were looking for a deer mix I would look for the native plants within about a 15 or 20 mile radius of where you are, make sure they're native, you can ask me, and most of the time I can figure it out pretty quick, let's think about that, really good, it'd be great for the green fields, one of these days I gosh, you know I ought to come up with eggs, but every little place has its own mix, 'cause places are different, we'll be back, however partridge peas, man you can't beat them, they're great, you get plain talk on plain living, let's talk about living and growing in that deep south, with Bill Finch, call 251-3430-106 on FMTalk1065 All right, so let's get back to our questions, we had several this morning, we still haven't really worked through, I'm working on that sunflarger scheme, Wayne says I dug a small clump of this cane, I left out the lovely part, I dug a small clump of this cane from a vacant lot, can you tell me what it is called, thanks Wayne, so Wayne that is Arundo Donax, giant reed, which is, let's see, let me, 'cause you all don't necessarily believe me, but it's on the invasive plant atlas, invades wetlands such as ditches, stream bags, competes for water nutrients and radiation suppresses and excludes native vegetation, which degrades wildlife habitat, increases fire risk and interferes with flood control. Arundo Donax is native to India, it was introduced in the early 1800s, it is an invasive, it's a serious problem in many states, it really really really spreads aggressively, so far it has not spread aggressively into native areas here, we've got plenty of other things that have, it is molly aggressive, it will be very aggressive in your yard, however, be careful with it, Arundo Donax, what should be the other names for, giant reed, Arundo, elephant grass is the name I'm seeing here, wild cane, cane abrava carizo, carizo, giant reed, Wayne, think twice about it, be careful, be careful, came from a vacant lot, and sometimes those are disturbed habitats, they're kind of difficult habitats and they become breeding grounds for not such great things, not such great things, so what am I, what do I get to talk about that I have fun talking about this morning, I have fun talking about the fact that my garden is doing pretty good for this time of year, gonna get some cool temperature, it's gonna be good for everybody, it's gonna get hot again, but we're getting into that time of year when the real extreme heat doesn't doesn't really become a problem, if you're trying to get a fall vegetable garden growing, I'm just gonna tell you this works, this really works, you're gonna want those plants to grow really well there, they're gonna be really stressed by the heat, you might actually want to put a little bit of a shade cloth over them during the day, we can talk about that, but the big thing is it's gonna be the bugs, and it could be fall army worms, this won't entirely stop fall army worms, but it'll help, it will, it could be the, what do you call them things, the criss-crossed, there's a name for the patterned version of the caterpillar that eats the coal crops and I forgot the name of it, but it's, there are lots of caterpillars that eat those coal crops, cabbage worms, we have a, we have the cabbage worm that has the patterns on it, and it really is a huge problem, but this works, and it's mosquito netting, basically it's called several things, it's called insect netting, for fall crops you really don't even need the super small size, if you've got a problem with free flea beetle you might want to get the smaller hold versions, the more expensive versions, but I got the cheaper versions and they work well for most things, they work well for most things, and they're, they're really, it's really great, and it, my cabbages are looking great, my broccoli's looking great, my brussel sprouts, I got brussel sprouts, they're looking great, I got, boy I got cauliflower, I think it's a mistake to grow cauliflower, but I'm growing it, and it's looking great, they're looking beautiful, you know it makes you think almost, well maybe I'm not making a mistake by growing cauliflower, because they're looking so pretty now, and it's the mosquito netting, it makes a ton of difference, so I highly recommend it, it's something that's really working for me, it makes a, it makes a huge difference in these fall gardens, just something else we need to do to prepare, you know you're, you're going out and you're spending lots of money on irrigation systems and all kind of crazy stuff for the garden, killers, just get some mosquito netting, it's, it's not that expensive, it works really well, you can put it up, it makes a huge, it makes a huge difference on a lot of plants, I wonder how many times I'll, I'll say that. Probably several times over the next several years, probably several times over the next month or two, it works great, that mosquito netting, I really like it, it's insect netting, look it up, it's, it's really cool on the internet, insect netting for gardens, I don't even know that the most expensive insect netting is, is really important, it just needs to be big enough that allows you to cover your plants, not maybe there's some super chief stuff that, cheap stuff that tears, but that works really well. And then there's the ants, and back to this whole thing that just mechanical stuff works really well, before you resort to chemicals with the ants, you're not going to get rid of ants, but you can keep them moving, and oftentimes that's just a simple mechanical technique, let's see, I got, I got a message from someone who said, let's see, I have ants in a large planter on a raised deck, I went out the other day and stirred them up with a stick, after about a week they left, bury on fish river, and that's what happens, they just do not like to be disturbed, it's always good to remember that, you have to keep doing it, it won't be the first day that they move, it won't be the second day they move, but maybe by the third day, maybe by the fourth day, and certainly by the fifth day, I think you're going to see some movement, these guys just don't like to be repeatedly disturbed, you know, be a kid again, you remember, I used to stir up insect, you stir up ant piles and see what would happen, I did, you could even take one ant pile and throw it on top of another, do they actually war with each other, no, but boy it just irritates the stew out of them and then they say, I don't know, this isn't the best place because somebody keeps dumping other ants on my house, and they move, so there's all kind of fun ways of doing it, just doing it with a hose sometimes really, really helps, and then if all of those methods fail, you can try the Spino Sad Drench that we talked about earlier in the show to see how well that works, so just picking up on some things that we dealt with early in the show, wanted to talk about them again, what should you be doing now, it's getting to be that time when those plants that you're growing out, it's about time to put them in the garden, I would certainly, I would certainly think about it, particularly during these cooler days, I would certainly, even on the coast, certainly in North Alabama, it's time to get these plants in the garden, it's still, you can direct seed a whole bunch of things, you should be direct-seeding radishes, if you aren't direct-seeding radishes, you have missed the point of fall gardening, man what great things, there's such a joy, you get to pull them up, if you, they're so good, like if you've got a party, and instead of using crackers, you just use those radishes, and you smell radishes, like I've got one, what is that one, oh what's they, where's that little package, says cheong doo, cheong doo, a great little radish from a kid as always seeds, and pretty mild, pretty mild, not too hot, you cut it, let radishes sit a while, and they lose a lot of that super heat, I actually like the heat, with a lot of those varieties, I like green luobo, it's great time to be planting those kinds of things, it's a great time to plant cilantro, I don't guess I talk enough about cilantro, you know what irritating cilantro is when you plant it in spring, it goes to seed almost immediately, I ain't gonna happen this time of year, this is the time to do it, hey we'll be back next week, good to talk to everybody, we're gonna follow up on some of these questions, we'll be ready to try to identify them, definitely next week, alright, bye. 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