FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Plain Living with Bill Finch 9.15.2024 Ticks, and City vs Country Gardening:
It's 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 FMTalk1065. It's an Alabama Sunday morning. It's a morning when a lot of folks got a lot of rain. So listen, I know it's raining in some places. I think Mobile didn't get as much as some people expected, though it was enough. Fort Pickens pretty serious over towards Florida and the Panhandle and that odd. They seem to have gotten all that rain sucked up there pretty good and then around Selma. Early bad and then Birmingham up into North West Alabama, a lot of rain out of this storm. We can talk a little bit about what rain does to your gardens and how to deal with it. You're going to see some effects from that much rain. I can guarantee you in a lot of ways and we can talk about that this morning, but I've been thinking a lot lately about the city mouse and the country mouse. And I was in building expanding my new garden, which is more or less in the country. It is in the country, I think, by any definition. Sometimes you have to kind of redefine what the city and the country is nowadays. We sort of dragged the city out with us. And when I say country, I mean, oh, you're probably 45 minutes from a Walmart. That's country, anything closer to a Walmart and you're probably in a suburb, an ex-serb. But I am thinking about what's the difference between the garden I had in the old, old suburb of Mobile, called Midtown, Oakley, had a garden there for many, many years. And the garden I had now, what are the advantages and disadvantages of both places? And there are things I'm talking to Steve this morning, there are things I miss, like being able to hop on my bicycle and get to the grocery store. I really miss that. That was a great thing about Midtown, worked out well. But there are things I miss about that garden too. And I want to talk about that, because a lot of you have decided that moving to the country, what you view as the country, what probably won't be the country very long if you're around Mobile and Ball & Counties, because the growth is happening there at such a rate and people seem to be tolerant of that, cool with that. One of the things I notice is that in the garden in Midtown Mobile, I didn't have problems with ticks. I didn't have problems with jiggers, ever. I didn't have problems with deer, eating my garden, never had to worry about it, never had to worry about it. I don't think I ever had a problem with a rabbit, eating my garden, isn't that amazing? I didn't have a problem with voles, eating my garden. If you don't know what a voles is, you kind of have to live through it to get a sense of, "Oh boy, what a mess a voles is, not a mole, but a voles." There were a lot of pests that I didn't, that I have in the country, that I don't have in the city, isn't that odd. You might not expect that, but I think it's true. I actually think in some ways there's less disease on things like beans in the cities than there are in the country where people are growing tons and tons of soybeans. There's other things too, but I think about those things because I spend a lot of my time thinking about those things now that I'm in the country. I moved to the country, I had to in a way, I miss that life in Midtown, miss a lot of the convenience, just being able to see people sometimes, but I moved to the country because I had a job there and I had a research center I had to run and I had to do that and because I needed the space to play with some really big garden projects, but it didn't make gardening easier. It made gardening more difficult and maybe that's something we should talk about with time. What are the advantages of being in the country? Well, if you're smart, and I'm not sure, oh, I should be careful here, if you're smart, you have more sunlight in the country because in a city situation, oftentimes your neighbors trees steal your light and it can be difficult to find the right amount of light. That's a difficult thing, that's a difficult thing to be fair. Probably the hardest thing I had to deal with in a city garden was those things. What was also great in the city, by the way, was the fact that I could pull leaves out of people's yards and just dump them on my garden. Now nobody bags up their leaves where I am, there are too few people to bag up their leaves anyway, they don't bag up their leaves. So I don't have those leaves anymore, I have to come up with other solutions that I have. But it's interesting to think about that. So I got a letter the other day from someone saying, oh man, I've moved to the country. And I've got ticks, and how do I get rid of ticks? Well, heavens to Betsy. And I want to think, move to midtown mobile, move to an older suburb where the deer aren't running through your yard. Get rid of the deer, don't feed the deer, don't encourage deer in your yard, keep the deer out of your garden, that's going to help, keep the rabbits out as well. Are there simple ways? No, there are no simple ways of dealing with ticks in the country because of the way we've changed the country, even people in New England. I mean, they've been dealing with ticks for a long time. They've got serious problems with Lyme disease, something we don't have down here. Feel free to call me, we'll talk about that. But we don't have the serious problems with Lyme disease like they do, we have other diseases, but not Lyme. And they've been struggling with it for a long time. Have they come up with a solution for ticks? No. It's really not easy. I can tell you that, I can tell you some of the things that I've seen that get rid of ticks very effectively in the country. But when we have the kind of suburbs that we have now moving out into the country, you're not going to be able to use those things in any effective way. So it's a tough thing. Make some good decisions about where you move. Don't think that gardening in the country is going to be easier. It's probably going to be harder. It's probably going to take up more of your time just to do the basic stuff, particularly if you're a fanatic about mowing. In fact, you'll probably spend, if you're a fanatic about mowing and you move to the country and you have more space, you're probably going to spend more time mowing, so much time mowing that you won't have time for anything else. So how do you deal with all that? Well, we can talk about it sometime. See today on the show, so feel free to give us a call, 25134306, 2513430106, we got several subjects. What's the difference between a country garden and a city garden? It's something I want to think about today. You know the other thing I think about? Not that I am too afraid of them anymore, but I never, when I lived in Midtown, worried about reaching my hand into a thicket and pulling out a rattlesnake. We'll be back. ♪ Me and my best friend Lillian ♪ ♪ Her blue dick and a dog get in ♪ ♪ Sitting on the front porch calling in the shed ♪ ♪ Singing every song, a radio play ♪ Welcome back to "Plane Living" for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Questions on conservation, natural history, and gardening? Talk with Bill Fitch, call 251-3430106 on FMTalk1065. All right, welcome back. It's a Gulf Coast Sunday morning. It's an alphabet of a Sunday morning. Steve, you're giving away your era. Yeah, moving to the country, going to eat a lot of peaches, is basically, I don't even know how the President's version goes, but that's an old John Prine song called "Spanish Pipe Dream." I'm definitely giving away my background, yeah, I was thinking, "What are you going to eat at a punk base?" Punk days, yeah, so this is free punk, this is John Prine, "Spanish Pipe Dream." So someone suggested we play that moving to the country. It's been kind of a thing here, different city gardens and country gardens, things to look out for, things to be aware of. What's the hardest part about living in a suburb, city kind of situation, an old suburb like Midtown, finding enough light, finding enough sunlight, that is the biggest issue. And it is an issue. It's a real thing. You got to really think about it. So give me a call if you've got some problems, we can talk about it. The problem is, is that you have little control over what your neighbors do. And sometimes you have little control over what the city does. And I will say that my biggest issues in Midtown were finding enough sunlight. But I did. I did. And I squeezed it out. I didn't get enough sunlight, but I had to be creative, had to think about it carefully, had to make use of every bit of space, but it was very good and very productive. And in many ways, it wasn't that hard to keep up because it was pretty small. I didn't have much left to mow, which is really nice. Not wasting my time mowing yards. I wasted a lot of time when I was 15 mowing yards. Not entirely waste. I got a bicycle out of it, Steve. So it was, you know, it's this thing, difference between city and country. A lot of problems that we encounter in the country, we don't encounter in the city and people move to the country and they say, "Oh my goodness, what do I do about deer? What do I do about ticks? What do I do about jiggers? What do I do about snakes? What do I do about?" What's this thing? Is it called a vole? Is that a mole? No, it's a vole. What do I do about that? It's the country mouse, if you will. Oh boy, and they beat city mice any time for messing up your garden bowls do. And a lot of other issues. How do you deal with that? It's something to think about before you move to the country and before you make those decisions because in the process, you're going to end up annihilating the country, which we're about to do, I'm afraid in many ways, because you're intolerant of the things that come with living in the country. What do you do about ticks? Because I said I was going to talk a little bit about it. There is, if it were a simple solution, there are a lot of people who would have already come to that, right? And I have to remind you of this, that people in other parts of the country have a much bigger problem with ticks than we do actually. We have tick issues here. We are not the center of diseases like Lyme. Lyme is very treatable now, if you look forward and you can get to it, it's pretty treatable. I shouldn't go there too much, but it's very reasonably treatable. We don't have Lyme in any numbers. Somebody may float through Alabama with Lyme disease. It's not clear how they got it, but our ticks just don't seem to show that their carries of Lyme, nor are deer, nor am I. We have other diseases in ticks, and I think it's important to remember that. We have a disease that resembles Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever, and may, in some cases, may be Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever, but it's probably a relative of Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever that's painful, but may not have the mortality risk that you would get with Rocky Mountain spotted tick fever. It's a Rickettsial disease, and that's probably one of the more common diseases here. We have Stari, which has symptoms that resemble Lyme disease very much and can make you feel not so good, but it is not Lyme disease by any means. We don't know what the long-term consequences of Stari are because there's not as much research done on it, but it does not seem to be as big a disease, and then we have some other diseases that circulate through aerolychosis and other things that we see, and we have AlphaGal, which is just a fascinating, fascinating thing, which is really kind of weird and cool. I don't know of anybody who's ever died from AlphaGal, but boy, some people have gotten very sick and have felt very bad as a result of it, and AlphaGal is, in a way, I call it an allergy, and it is sort of an allergy. It's an over response from the immune system, or at least a misguided response from the immune system to a tick bite, to things that come in a tick bite, and what that means is is that if you eat meat, you get sick because what you're eating in the meat resembles what you're getting out of the tick bite, isn't that interesting? We have those things. So it's good to have that context for ticks in Alabama. We have diseases we probably don't know as much as we should about some of those diseases. Some of them may turn out to be much worse than we think now, but we don't have the worst diseases that are recognized now. Nonetheless, it's not pleasant to be bitten by a tick, and it's not pleasant to have any of those diseases. So you don't want them. Just a few observations. Why do we have so many ticks? What did a lot of people say? What did Native Americans do about ticks? I saw that the other day. What was their formula? Well let me tell you what their formula was. It was probably pretty good. One, they shot a lot of deer, and that helped. Two, and this was probably the most important, there was a lot of fire in the landscape and a lot of burning, and that reduces tick populations enormously, really enormously. It's just incredible. They didn't have cows, they didn't have a lot of things that tend to collect and produce ticks in large numbers. So this tick thing that we've got is kind of a new phenomenon. In fact, what's interesting is things like alpha-gal, why suddenly are we having a problem with alpha-gal, this tick disease, which seems to be an over immune response that just kind of over the top immune response, did people suddenly develop this immune response? Nah, probably not, I just think they weren't as exposed to ticks a hundred years ago, even a hundred years ago, because of the way we've changed the way things are, the deer population has gone up enormously, that's been a big factor. All those things are big. So if you're living in the country, what does that tell you? Well, if you can burn around your house, which you probably can't do in Baldwin County anymore, oh, I hope it's possible in North Baldwin County, but I suspect it's getting very difficult even there, you're probably going to resolve a lot of those tick issues, it was really interesting. It's splinter hill, you got the patience for this, I'm going to tell you about it. It's splinter hill bog, I remember there was a walk from where I would park on the backside, and I had to walk through some woods that were thick that had not been burned. And I knew I was going to get a tick in those woods, it was just absolutely amazing. So I stopped as soon as I got through that little, it was just a road, it wasn't even the woods weren't even, but I knew I was going to get it, because the woods were thick on either side. So I'd stop and pick the ticks off of me, and then walk through the preserve and never see another tick. I was never worried about chickens or ticks in splinter hill bog, and the reason I wasn't was because it was burned on a pretty frequent basis, maybe once every two or three years, sometimes once every four years, but that was enough, made a huge difference in tick numbers. And that's one thing that's changed dramatically, so we've seen a big increase in ticks. And then we've created Habitat, and this is very different than what it was in pre-Columbian times. We've got the woods coming right up to the back of our houses, in many cases. That's not good, if you don't like ticks. And then we've got grass, which allows those ticks to move through the grass and shrubs into your yard. One of the interesting things they say in New England is to put a barrier, a concrete barrier, oh, this seems like this is a crazy way we have to think, right? They say to put a concrete barrier between the woods and your house, and that could be a road or something else, but that that actually stops the ticks. Okay, that sort of hard surface that the ticks don't move over. We're going to come back in just a minute, talk a little bit more about ticks than we're going to talk about. Welcome back to Plain Living for Alabama, I'm the Gulf Coast with Bill Finch. Ask Bill about gardening and nature in your backyard, call 251-3430106 on FMTalk1065. There you go, there it is. Pre-presidents, so the presidents, for some reason, decided to, what do they call that, where you take a little clip, somebody else's song and then make your own song out of it. What do they, oh boy, am I bad, anyway, they decided to take that little John Prine song, but that was a pretty fun song, Spanish daydream, Spanish pipedream, I should say, from John Prine. Any song by John Prine is worth listening to at least once, they're all pretty cool. One of the great songwriters, one of the great musicians, we should, that's a long song, isn't it? It's like four and a half, five minutes. Yes. Yeah, and so we, I don't know if we'll play the whole song one day, but we'll play a little more of it. It's kind of a fun song, fun song. I recommend it. Over the, over the, how shall we say, cynicism of the presidents. Can I say that Steve? Is that fair to say that at the presidents? Yeah, I would think that that was that era here. Yes, yes. John Prine is, I mean, it's not that John Prine had a Rosie colored view of the world. It's just that he wasn't knee flexed, cynical, enough of that, enough of that. So we're talking about ticks and I want to, one other thing that I haven't really gotten to about ticks that is very effective, fire is very effective. Keeping the deer away from your yard is very effective, setting up bearers between your yard and the woods and that's not very pleasant in many ways. Don't build in the middle of the woods is another easy thing to do. But one other thing that, that works really well and someone called in to remind me, but I've seen it. I've seen it done as we like to say, guineas, chickens, it's incredible. People were asking me about what to do about fall army works. I think, gosh, if we just had guineas and chickens, it would be so easy. Really good. Really good. Debbie, so you made me do this, Debbie. Yes. I sent you an email because I was in my yard and I was in, stepping in a leaf pile that you know, you told us to save our leaves and I did that over in the corner of my yard just next to some woods. I stepped in there cutting some weeds off of a fence and I don't know how long it had been on me, but it was an increase of my knee and I found that and I, it scared me. I picked that thing off. I didn't even worry about getting tweezers or anything else, but anyway, make a long story short, I went to, I asked a lot of questions from a lot of people and my neighbor down the street, you spec, spec decide on her lawn and then, you know, and I read about that and then I went to the Alberta co-op, they told me to bought, to buy a tall store, I bought that, came back and read about that and, and the, the warnings and the dangers and all this stuff you're supposed to be covered up when you're doing this and I went and I bought a spreader and I was getting ready to do that and I asked another question from someone and they said, I know I'm not gonna pronounce this right, Domation Earth and so I bought that and then on top, I mean, I had, I had spent so much money in the last two weeks, everything from remodel to tall store to, I mean, I, I sent some money. Well, so let's, let's go back. I have done, I have not done one thing except get, I'm gonna get the rest of my lawn more and, and mow my grass again. Yeah, so let's, let's get, I've gotten bit four times. So let me, so let me say this, so I work at a research center and I stay in the forest a lot and there's no fire in that forest for a lot of reasons. And it, it, there are a lot of ticks because there's a lot of deer, probably more deer in that forest than there should be because hunters only hunt antlers, unfortunately. And so they don't really, they in fact have increased the deer population enormously rather than culling it. So there's a lot of reasons why I get bit by ticks virtually. Oh, every week, multiple times. And we always say to folks, if you're living in an area where there ticks, the only sure protection that you're going to have is to check your said for ticks every day. And I could tell you, you could try, you could try everything else. But if you're living near the woods and their ticks, you just need to check yourself every day. Now let me tell you, I got sick once from a tick bite more than likely. It's been, oh, it was gosh, that was 2007, 2008. It's been a long while. And it was because I wasn't checking myself for ticks every day. Now it's just a habit. I just check myself for ticks. The good thing about Lone Star ticks is if your skin is even remotely sensitive, you're going to know when they buy you some other ticks like dog ticks, you might not notice as much. But I will say no matter what else I tell you, you get gannies, get fire, whatever else, if you're in an area where you're prone to ticks, you just have to check yourself for ticks every day at the end of the day. Now, how quickly do ticks transmit disease? Most of the literature indicates it's going to take a couple or three days for that tick to stay attached before you're going to start seeing real disease transmission. So CDC says 36 hours. You've got, give yourself 36 hours and in that time you're probably not going to get a lot of diseases. And then it's quite likely that the ticks you're getting may not even be carrying diseases that are that serious. It's a brown one kind of bigger with a white dot. Yeah, it's a Lone Star tick. So Lone Stars are interesting because they do carry they are the cause of the immune response called alpha gal. And that's, I know a lot of people who have alpha gal. It's, it's a peculiar disease I've been bitten by by Lone Star ticks a lot. I don't seem to have alpha gal. I don't need a lot of meat, but I mean, I eat it, but not, not that often, but I have never noticed a reaction from it. Alpha gal is not, it's not a devastating disease by any means. It's something it's very easy to, it's not even a disease. It's really just an immune reaction sort of like responding to poison ivy. But should I, should I not save my leaves anymore? I mean, I really don't want to do that. I mean, I want, well, you're never. So, so listen, listen, here's, it's, it's not the leaves, it's the woods. So because you live in Foley and because there's some woods left, there probably won't be any woods left before long if, if growth continues. So you can look forward to the day when you don't have any woods next to you. But it's the woods and it's the deer and it's the rabbits that are moving in and out and cats and every other thing that are moving in and out raccoons between your yard and the woods. It's not the leaves, it's the woods. And the leaves aren't producing ticks. It's the creatures that live in the woods and, and the overpopulation of deer, which tends to occur next to suburbs. So getting rid of your leaves is not going to change that. I would not. So let me, let me, let me go through your remedies real quickly. Tall star is really toxic. I don't, it's, it's used by nurseries on a small scale. You should never use it in your yard. It's just, it's incredibly toxic to a lot of things. Uh, it's, it's toxic. Yeah. Well, and don't do that. Don't do that. Dautomaceous earth, anytime somebody, and I, I have a hard time snickering every time I hear Dautomaceous earth because not snickering because it's, it's, it's one of these organic recipes that is just completely, totally 100% useless. Okay. It is, it is. Yeah. So right. It's, it's, you will never find an occasion except inside your house where Dautomaceous earth works. And I'm not even sure that there's a good occasion to use it inside your house. Here's the reason Dautomaceous earth is deactivated essentially by moisture. Have you noticed where you live? Yeah. You're getting 65 inches of rain a year. Yeah. Moved Arizona. If you want to move used Dautomaceous earth, it might actually work there. Of course you won't have the same bug problems there. So it's, it's, so Dautomaceous earth never works for anything. Uh, and I don't know. It's one of those internet things that some, some smart L like on internet who believes they've got all the problem solved will tell people and people believe it. And it's just one of these internet things. And it does not work. You can tell your neighbor. I said it won't work. And, and the reason it won't work is because it's complete. If it in the remote possibility that could work under any circumstance because the ticks would have to come in contact with it and et cetera, it's not going to work in a humid environment period at all. So the moisture just basically makes it useless. Okay. So, so that's not any good. What was the other thing that you said? Spector side. My neighbor uses spector side. Spector side. Spector side, just, uh, traysine or something like that. Yeah. I, I, you know, again, I don't think, I don't think the, the lawn isn't producing the ticks. The woods are producing the ticks. Right. See what I'm saying? Yeah. So no matter how you, no matter how you annihilate whatever's in your yard, like worms and other things with an insecticide, like earthworms and all those things are going to be affected. The, the, the plants you eat are going to be affected. No matter what you do, you're not going to solve the tick problem, which is coming from outside of your property. Right. So, so I need to get a guinea, right? Someone, guineas are better and guineas are better and, and yesterday, I thought I need to get that. They're really good. You've got to figure out a way to keep guineas because guineas are, but chickens may be easier to keep. How big is your yard? I live on three parts of an acre. I live on Wood Creek, which there was behind me. Yeah. Yeah. So division, but there, there is woods behind me. Yeah. So a chicken, my house. Yeah. Chickens might help. And, and there are guineas are going to fly, fly, fly far away, but chickens actually do about the same thing and they'll peck through the yard. And guineas and chickens are going to be very effective because they're going to selectively eat those ticks because they're nice and plump and they, they look for them, but they're not going to be 100% effective. You're always going to, you're always going to have to deal with a few ticks, which is why I say, yeah, the only safe way to deal with ticks is to. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. All right. All right. We're going to be back in just a second. FM Talk 1065 with Plain Living for Alabama and the Gulf Coast. Call 251-3430106. Here again is your personal nature expert, Bill Finch. Let me answer a few text questions real quickly. Brian, you were, sent me a question earlier about some evergreens that are dying. I'm pretty sure those are Leland Cyprus. They're famous for dying. In fact, and they have a lot of issues. In fact, there's a lot of people say, don't plant them in the south because they do have so many root rot issues. Can they be saved at this point? No, that's the simple answer. No. There's nothing you can do. It's a root rot issue. What are you going to do about that? I don't know. You could throw some dew on it, which is going to cost you a bloody fortune if you can still find it. It's still not going to solve the problem long term. It'll only help just briefly. I think they're too far gone even for subdue. No, it's don't plant Leland Cyprus, folks. That's a simple story. It can be a big problem. There are some other things. There are some other evergreens that people up north plant that Walmart wants us to plant, that Home Depot wants us to plant because they don't want to sell too many different kinds of plants that do okay up north, but not very well down here because of diseases in the soil. Jim, beautiful thing. I want to come back to that persimmon and some of your other questions like cogon grass before we get to before we end the show. I'm going to do that. So hold on. Dale, tell me what's going on with the ticks in citronel? Yes, I was listening to your show and we move back to the country from the suburbs and we bought some property of the citronel and it was wooded like you say and we click on it and made it into pasture. I got 30 odd acres, but the main thing that keeps the ticks off is really the guinea fowl. We got like 25 guinea fowl that just run the whole pasture and at night time they just roost in the tree over my chicken coop, but they don't take no looking after both. I've got five dogs that run or two and we never find any ticks on the dogs. Really the guinea fowl are doing the job plus the guinea fowl will run the snakes up too. Yeah, I'm not sure about snakes. I haven't heard that story before, but it's, but I do think they do eat clearly. They do eat ticks and they're pretty good about it. I think they're not always 100% effective, which is what I was trying to tell Debbie. The thing with guinea fowl is that people, if they get guinea fowl, they've got to get them when they're real young. They'll buy some of these guinea fowl that's already full grown. That guinea fowl will try to go where it's from and they'll leave your property. But if you get them as a chick, eight-year-old chicks and keep them locked up until they get nearly full of eggs and then let them out, they'll stay on your property. They won't go anywhere. That's right. You've got to get them when they're about eight weeks old. Go buy a guinea fowl that's already full grown because that guinea fowl will try to go back where it's from. Yeah, have you had any problems with coyotes or other things? Oh, yes. My biggest problem, the reason really why we moved from, I started off with the Backyard Chicken Club and put six hands and we ended up getting into about 200 hands and went, "My wife said we've got to move back to the country." So we moved from middle of Spring Hill and moving up here, you're running to all sorts of problems. The biggest problem, my back were my chickens. I freeze-range my chickens. I figure that if they get a good life running the clear the acres instead of being cooped all day, I may lose one or two to hawks, but the biggest problem on my back were my chickens are skunks. I had a family of skunks from middle home under one of my coops and I had a terrible time getting rid of them. Now, I trapped them and moved them. I didn't kill them. I trapped them and got rid of them and moved them, but you're going to have cool raccoons, possums, coyotes, domestic dogs are one of the biggest problems. There are a lot of problems with chickens. I'm sure you're familiar. I always try to develop some kind of modified chicken tractor to move my chickens in so that I don't have to worry, but if you don't move that chicken tractor pretty frequently, the raccoons or the possums or the skunks or whatever are going to figure that out and they'll get inside and move the chicken tractor pretty frequently and you don't have that problem. I've got coops and you've got to make it like a fortress because they will find a way in the venture. They'll dig in, they'll tell you why they'll get in eventually and you usually can tell what's getting in, but the way they deal with the chicken when they kill it. You can usually determine what's killed your chicken when they're eating his head or it's just gone for the crawl or these take most of the chicken with it and you can determine what kind of predators even you're chicken by what's left of the carcass. Tell us that story. Tell us that story. Tell us that story. Tell me how you tell. If it's just the head, what do you think it is? Well, it is. I have some ducklings and I've got too many wild geese and I took the baby geese away from the mother's and grew them up. They were all up until about 16 weeks old and were doing really well and I pulled in a special pen. I thought it was safe and I think a raccoon and a posse on it was one of them and all they do is come in and eat the head. Everything else was left, they just eat the head and they killed all 16 in one night and I was, you know, it was really my fault for not making the coop, you know, secure so nothing can get in but if you get one that's really torn up and nearly all eaten, it's usually a coyote. They eat most of the things although take it with them but it usually just eat the head, it's usually a posse or a raccoon so you can determine what's leaving it. But like I said, the biggest problem I've had was with the skunk. The skunk was, it was hard to get rid of them. She had, I tracked about eight of them and I took them a long way away from where I live and released them into the woods again in a quite area and luckily I've had no luck but we do have a problem with coyotes too Bill, you can hear them and coyotes are real smart, they have to get a shot off on them and you can hear them yipping when they like making yipping the tree right on the on the tree line and just walking down the tree line and start yipping and it's hard to get a shot off on them. I take the roof with the smooth which I enjoy living in the country and you take the roof with the smooth, you know? Yeah, yeah, that's right. So yeah, coyotes, well, and coyotes are a problem in the cities as well. I remember riding my bike through through Spring Hill and through Mountain Brook and it's just like the coyotes are there everywhere. They're walking down people's driveways, they're just loping around like their family dogs. Yeah, in Spring Hill, I would in Ashley, on Ashley Drive, they use the drainage ditches as their railway through the old neighborhood, the old drainage ditches and people have set up cameras, trail cameras and they'll take people's cats and dogs and if you leave you feed your dog outside they'll jump the fence and eat the dog food or the cat food and they're all over and I've seen documentaries in Chicago where there's coyotes all over Chicago because there's an opportunity to get a meal, it's a lot easier to go and rid some of this trash can than go and kill something to eat and they're all over as coyotes. People just don't realize how mostly I understand it. Yeah, so they have become part of our human family in ways that we probably don't fully appreciate but we have made a lot of creatures part of our human family, coyotes, certain types of rats and deer have become part of our human family. The thing you said about the snake, you don't see, I've told them wolves with the snake, well they did, the beginning fell like surrounded the snake, about 20 of them just surrounded the snake and made it miserable for the snake, one kept running in and pecking it and I'm going to go back, but they kept me circle around the snake and they run the snake off my property and I've been here now, I clearly and I've been here for 15 years and I've seen one snake on the property and I've got wooded the either side of me and I don't ever see any snakes on the property whatsoever. Now maybe it's because I've got houses and houses and cows on it. Yeah, yeah, well that's interesting, that's interesting and they they are probably trained to do that, that's interesting. Dale has been good here from you, that's some good observations. We've got to take a break. 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-1065. Who thought this was going to be ticks all the time? Well, it's not going to be ticks all the time, we're going to talk a little bit more about them. Some interesting things going on with ticks and and yeah, let's, so we have a caller who wants to talk about fire ants and ticks. Correct, is that right, BJ? BJ, BJ. Listen, Bill, enjoy your show, thank you. You were talking about ticks and the problems and I'm sure you know and you might remind your listeners. Leave those fire ants mounds alone, leave the fire ants alone, eat a lot of ticks, they love ticks. I'm sure you know that but you might remind your listeners. I haven't had problem with ticks in years, you've got a lot of fire ants. Yeah, and I'm not sure there's a good strong correlation there. There is some research on that, BJ, and it's very interesting. And what they found was when they did, when scientists actually researched this, because they were noticing that in areas with high fire ant populations, they were seeing fewer ticks. And there's a lot of correlations there that have to be thought through, but what they found was is that the ticks ignored, I mean that the fire ants ignored the ticks. They would go after every other insect, every other bait that they put out, but not the ticks. And they couldn't, they couldn't induce fire ants to eat the ticks for anything. And the same was true for a lot of other ants. And that's probably because ticks have, they sort of have some chemicals that help them to hide in plain sight, because they evolved with ants. And so, so the question is, which you rightly bring up, why is it that areas that sometimes, there seems to be a correlation between areas that are high in fire ant populations and no ticks. I can also tell you that there is where there are a lot of fire ants and there are ticks in some places as well. I think that's because fire ants like to live in open spots. And fire ants also tend to drive off some of the, some of the carriers of ticks. So for example, bobwhite quail populations decline enormously when they're, when they're fire ants. Squirrel populations can decline when they're fire ants. But I think that that correlation is probably the result of other things. And it's interesting to know now the researchers who, the researchers who did this and where, where were they from? That was from, oh gosh, I think they're, they were, oh, let's see, I can't remember where the resources are from. But yeah, yeah, Alan Schaller. Well, they were from curvil, Texas, East Texas. And so they were in the heart of tick, they were in the heart of tick country, they also in the heart of fire ant country in East Texas. And it's a really interesting story. You can kind of look it up. But what he did say is that he's looking at some dust, including those laced with extracts. Debbie, are you listening? Those laced with extracts of chrysanthemum in time, which he describes as lethal to ticks. And he's working on ways to get the dust onto the ticks and their host. And that was the problem, of course, is getting the ticks to come in contact with these things. But I don't think, it is interesting, I don't think there's a good correlation. I think there are other things that probably explain why people who have lots of fire ants don't see ticks. In my yard in Midtown, I didn't have any ticks and I had a ton of fire ants. But I don't think it was because of the fire ants. I think it was because I didn't have deer and fuel mice running through my yard. And lots of other things that carry ticks. So, that's it. So, just, it's interesting. And, you know, once you look at these correlations, you're like, yeah, there's a lot of other variables here. Maybe I need to think about those carefully, because that could explain what we're seeing. Okay, I just thought I'd mention it. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So, it's, you know, I, it is worth, it is worth thinking about these things. Do fire ants predate other insects? Yeah, boy, they are really good at caterpillars and other things. I know that we had good research in cotton showing that fire ants were a major predator in cotton. They could reduce the numbers of a lot of things like cotton bullworms and other things. Not eliminate them, but reduce them pretty significantly. So, fire ants are good predators, but oddly, it's the ticks that they're not good predators on. So, why, so then you ask, well gosh, but yeah, I got fire ants and I don't have any ticks. Well, there may be several reasons why you're not getting those ticks in your yard and we tried to explain some of those a little earlier. Any rate, let's, we'll think about that a little more. We've talked enough about ticks for now. Let's see, Dale's great. Someone posted a photo claiming it was taken in a neighborhood off Highway 225, though I believe it was funny. I do wonder if they cross over the delta from Sarah Land. Any ideas about this? Bears? Yes, I guess I didn't see the picture. There's not a picture of a bear, but bears move. The young move, I hope the bears find a place because we're, we're, we just, Sarah Land and the suburbs that grew up around Sarah Land grew up in the stronghold of what we used to call the mobile bears, the delta bears. They didn't live in the delta. They mostly lived in those pine lands. We've just about destroyed the pine lands. In Mobile County, there's a few left in North Mobile County that we should care a lot about. There's, there's pine lands left in Washington County. It's the hope. It's my hope that these bears are going to find a home in Washington County and that Washington County doesn't get, what's the word? Doesn't get mowed down quite like Mobile and Baldwin County have. I hope there's some left in, I hope there's some land left in Baldwin County as well. The Prudido corridor is, is really an important stronghold for a lot of creatures. I hope they can find, hope the bear can find a place there. Are the bear on the Prudido? I certainly hope so. And the idea that the bear weren't in Baldwin County is probably mostly, they've always been in Baldwin County. And they always have been. So I don't think they have to cross over from Sarah Land. I think they've always been there. What we need are more denting populations. I think that we're about to drive out the bears in Baldwin County. Though they'll occasionally come into peels yards, I'm sure. Let's see. Good. I haven't planted a fall garden in 40 forever. It's an ordered turban garlic from Oregon and it will be here soon. What else should I be doing in planning over the next month? I'm driving back from Auburn War Eagle. So feel free to talk for the next 50 minutes about fall garden. Thanks for all the nice. This is a great idea. I'm taking you up on this. Maybe not the whole 40 minutes, but we're talking about fall gardening. That's a great, great thing to do. And we're going to spend that. So yeah, the garlic's great. You actually, if you can get the garlic in early, that's fine. You can plant the garlic in November. Five of beans, a great thing. Collards, kale, radishes, man. I got to say radishes. Ella is the thing. It's, I love radishes. Not those little baby French radishes. People hear me talking about this all the time, but my radishes are coming on. They're so satisfying. They're so good. You can eat the greens. The greens are delicious. They're wonderful. The greens, radish greens, yes. You got to have fall radishes. You're growing fall radishes here. Broccoli. What else am I missing here? Parsley. Oh, man. You got to plant parsley. You got to plant cilantro. This is the fall is the time. It's the great time for planting stuff. So many things I'm going to forget about it. Carrots. Ella, you got to plant, you got to try carrots. If your soil is good, you got to have rich soil to do it. And you got to keep them moist, but this is the time to plant carrots. They do great, they do great along the Gulf Coast in winter. Do really well. Fava beans, I can't go on enough about fava beans, how useful they are, how much I like them. You can call me Ella and we can talk about it. 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. Yeah, welcome back. Gulf Coast Sunday morning, Alabama Sunday morning. Jim in Georgetown, you know, if I wish I had a secret recipe for for Kogan grass, it. I do think that one of the solutions may involve the roots. The question is, what are you going to do about that? If you can get the roots, that's the key. And Hogs would do it. It's just that Hogs are going to get everything else. I am curious as to whether Hogs would eat Kogan grass preferentially over other things in the lawn or other things. Hogs just generally tend to eat everything. But yeah, I could imagine they do it. It's just you're going to be left with mud and that's kind of what happens to hog pastures. I can actually find places where Hogs were pastured in the woods because even after many, many years it seems like boom, there's nothing there. Maybe a few trees that have come in, but you lose all of the all of the native stuff in the process, which is, you know, is it's kind of like nuclear annihilation putting Hogs on it. But yeah, it's a tough one. It's a tough one. Hey, so we're so Ella, Ella, has got us on. We're going to talk about plants again. We're not going to talk about ticks anymore for the time being. We talked enough about it. Check yourself for ticks every day, folks. That is the way to solve the problem with ticks. You're not going to solve it. You can try everything else. You're going to make a mess. You're going to hurt yourself more with some of the remedies that I've heard than you will the ticks. But the the the the tick solution given our the way we live, given how we live, given where we live, the tick solution is check yourself every day for ticks. It's something I do every time I go in the woods. It's just it just becomes something. Here's another thing you can do for ticks. And this is this is good for those of us who have to spend time in the woods. A lot of times they're crawling up your pants legs, right? So one thing that people who work in the woods like me don't mind doing is to tuck your pants legs under your socks or in your boots. It makes a ton of difference for chickens and for ticks. You still have your waste problem. You still got but you're going to you're going to have a lot of things that don't get up your pants legs. Just do that. Just put your pants inside your socks. Makes a huge difference. Makes a big difference. And and spray spraying helps with ticks. It definitely does. There's no question. And I use soers. It's oh gosh, what is what is the what is the ingredient in it? I starts with a P. I can't remember all these chemical names. But it works pretty well. And I think it's pretty safe. It's not it doesn't eat up plastics like like some of the other things that are used for repellents. But it works just spray your waste, spray around your pants legs tuck your pants in. Those are good things. And then check yourself every day. It's something we do. Just just to have it. You know, it's like washing underneath your arms. Can I be that way? Can I say that out loud? Yeah, I think I can. You just, you know, you do it every day. Well, most of us do. Just think, okay, I'm washing on the marms. I got to check for ticks. Here it is. Use a little handheld mirror. That helps a lot. It helps a lot. Okay. Back to this thing. We're going to talk about what to grow. Tony wants to talk about I want to plan a lemon tree this year. What's your favorite and when is the best time? So Tony, there are basically two types of lemons that are commonly grown. And Lisbon is is kind of the classic plain old lemon. And people grow it. Grows and pots needs to be planted in a pot. It should never be planted in the ground. I know you believe in global warming. But it ain't getting that much warmer in mobile. It's getting warmer in Alaska, folks. Believe me, it's getting warmer in Michigan. It's getting warmer nights, but it's not solving our winter problems. You're still going to lose your limits to freeze. So don't put a regular lemon like Lisbon in the ground. It's going to get hammered. Put it in a pot. It does great in a container. In fact, there's a lot of people, Mr. Courtney used to say, you know, I don't know why people would grow things like lemons in the ground. Even if it weren't cold, he said, I can get, even if they didn't freeze, I can get multiple. I can get much longer production out of lemons grown in containers because I can move those containers to a safe place. And the flowering starts earlier. And I often get a second flowering. There it is. And he said the same thing about Kalamondas. So that's one of the lemons. Lemons and limes grow them in pots. And there are a couple of kinds of limes. But they all need lemons and limes. Classic lemons and limes need to be grown in containers. If you want to plant a tree in the ground, that is lemon-like, you plant Myers lemon. And Myers lemon is a cross, we used to say between oranges, it's probably a cross actually between something like a an early version of a satsuma and lemons. And it's a mandarin lemon cross most likely. So it has some of the hardiness of the mandarin and it will survive winters much better in the ground and it will come back from the roots. So even if the top gets killed back, which happened to a lot of people who had those, it comes back from the roots and within a couple of years, given a couple of reasonably warm winters, it will still produce. So Tony, does that help? Myers lemons, if you want to plant in the ground, Lisbon lemon, which is probably the only lemon you're going to find, if you want to plant them in containers, limes in containers, only way to do it. Back to Ella's question about the fall gardens. If I did, this is the time folks and we should focus on this. You got time to order your garlic. It's going to, if anybody's got any garlic, it's fine. Order it. But let me tell you about the types of garlic that we grow in Alabama really well. One, we don't grow garlic that takes a cold winter and there are a lot of garlic that take a cold winter and some of the fancy garlic sold by places in New England and other places, they're going to require a cold winter. Do not try those. Let me, let's talk about the ones you should try. Garlics that are in the turban class, T-U-R-B-A-N. And it's not just me that's proved this, it's a lot of other people. And turban garlics, there are things like Chinese purple, blossom, lotus, a bunch of different varieties of turban garlics, tend to do the best in the south. And here's why. Not only do they not require a really cold winter, in general they do not. Some, some seem to like a colder winter better than others in that group, but most do not require a really cold winter. But they also produce much earlier in the year. So you, you're not going to dig those garlics up in July. If you have a garlic that you have to dig up in June or July, it's going to be so wet and it's going to be so humid that that garlic is going to be a mess. So silver skin garlics, which take a long time, do not do well, generally in the south, in the humid parts of the south. Now you might, you can get by with it in the mountains where it's 30 inches of rain a year. You can get by with it in, in the Carolinas where it's getting 35 or to 45 inches of rain a year. But you're not going to get by with it in the Gulf Coast south and in Alabama. Because they take too long North, North Alabama, a little different, but still it's, it's, it's a problem. I, I can tell you. So the turban garlics are the best. And, and I highly recommend that you start with those. There are, there are some other garlics that are a little harder to parse just in terms of what they do well. But you can look, if you've got a garlic you ordered, you want to know more about it. Did I get the right garlic? Am I going to get the right garlic? You can call me. We can talk about it. We can go over the variety and, and figure that out. Garlic, great. It's, and you can plant it as late as November or December. And in, in our climate, it'll do just fine. Some of us, Jim and Georgetown likes to plant his early. He's irritable when he can't plant it early. Is that not right, Jim? But because we could get greens and the garlic greens are very good. I don't know that it helps with the ball being anymore, but it, it does help that you can get those greens fairly early. And that's probably just fine. But if you can get them early, that's fine. You can plant them now. Or you can wait onions. We're going to start planting those. It's a really good thing. Let's go through the list again. What, what do I think of first? I think first of collards. Honest to goodness, I think collards. And I particularly like my yellow collards. You can, you can give them a try. I, I love them because I don't, if I have to cook them, I don't have to cook them long, which means I don't have to spend all day on the stove cooking them. But it also means I get more of this great, delicious, sweet collard flavor, which is going to be very apparent in winter. I can use them as like lettuce, yellow collards. I can use them like lettuce. They're tender, they're delicious, wonderful kale. I've got all kinds of kale. We're going to come back here. We're going to get, we're going to go through the list. I'm going to, I'm just going to enjoy talking about each one of them. You get plain talk on plain living. Let's talk about living and growing in that deep self. With Bill Finch, call 251-343-0106 on FM Talk 1065. All right, welcome back. Go coast Sunday morning, Alabama Sunday morning. So we're going through this list of things that we should be planning this time of year and why we should be planning. And I, I'm going to have fun doing this because I enjoy thinking about this. Is it okay? Because I've had to think about ticks and I'm not, you know, I have to pretend I'm an exterminator, but I'm not at heart an exterminator. It's not my first calling. I've been doing extermination for a long time as it turns out. I guess that was my first introduction to gardening was as an exterminator, but it's not my first love. I'd much rather talk about planning stuff. So yeah, so elephant garlic, that's another fun thing. I think we don't do enough with elephant garlic, Bruce. It's, it's, it's not, it's not technically garlic, as Bruce says. And it's, it, it persists pretty well in a lot of gardens. It can be grown as a perennial. I've seen it just growing wild and wild patches in many places in the state. It doesn't do it so much on the Gulf Coast. I think it tends to rot there more, more readily. But I love elephant garlic, not as for use as garlic. Use it almost like you would use potatoes. Bruce, you see what I'm saying? I got a quick saying. You see what I'm saying. But you see what I'm saying? It's, it's, it's almost like a, it's almost like a tastier version of a potato. It's kind of meaty, a little bit meaty, a little bit of an onion flavor, kind of like a leek, mild leek-like flavor because it's actually more closely related to leeks and garlic. But big old bulbs, really great. Just throw them in with a bunch of vegetables, roast them, do whatever. It's really cool. Elephant garlic. Nice thing. You can also plant that this time of year along with a lot of other onions. That's all cool. We got the collards. I didn't get much past collards. I did start talking about kale. I love kale. It's, in fact, if I'm going to cook, if I'm going to cook a green, I think I would rather cook the kale than I would the collards for several reasons. It's more, well, I, I just think it cooks better and it has a better flavor. In many ways it holds its flavor better because you're not having to cook it really, really hard. Yellow collards kind of are the same way, but kale is a really delicious thing and there are lots of different kinds of kale. It's really fun to experiment with them. There's a, there's one called Madalay that I have been growing. It's perfectly hearty. It's got some great leaves. It's really beautiful. I like any of the red Russian kales. They're all really good. They're really delicious. I am not high on the curly kales because they, I don't really understand curly kales, honestly. And a lot of people grow them and I see them grow commercially, but I, I really, they, they trap dirt. They get dirt in the, they get dirt in all those little curls, which makes them harder to clean. And I'm not big on spending a lot of time cleaning vegetables. I'll do it if I need to, but if I don't need to, and they're not better tasting in general, and they, they don't seem to be as productive and they, I don't know what it is, but I just have no interest in the curly kales, but those big flat leaf kales, like, like red side beer, red Russian kale, really delicious, really delicious thing, and really very hardy. They're going to last you through the winter. Isn't that cool? Isn't that nice? Kales, just a really cool thing to have. Broccoli, you got to have broccoli. It's, it does people. Look, I'm, I'm, I've been preaching this for a long time. And one of these days, I'm not going to be preaching this anymore. So I hope some of you will remember this and pass it on to your neighbors. You don't plant broccoli in spring in Alabama. I don't mean to shout. I don't mean to sound bad, but you don't do it. You just don't do it. It doesn't make any sense. What you do is you plant your broccoli, you plant your cauliflower, you plant it in full, and it's going to, it's going to produce, it's going to be delicious. It's going to be the, as good as any broccoli and probably better than any broccoli you've ever had grown anywhere. It's going to be absolutely delicious. You just got to plant it now and get it ready so that it matures on those cool days in, in late October, if you're in North Alabama, in November, if you're in South Alabama. And then it's that first nip of frost in November, December. Oh man, it's going to make it so good. And they're pretty hardy. They're great. Cauliflower is the same way. You want to try to get it so that it's growing in winter. Broccoli is much more productive than cauliflower. You can grow your cauliflower. I've got some cauliflower this year. I'm thinking, well, why did I take up that garden space with cauliflower? But I did. And that's fine. Cabbage, boy, ask Johnny and Graham Bay about cabbage. Cabbage is a fine. Let's start again. You don't plant cabbage in spring in Alabama. Folks, we ain't living in Massachusetts. Quit corresponding with the gardeners in Massachusetts because they don't have a clue. Massachusetts is a fine place. But it ain't Alabama. Quit, don't pay attention to that. We grow cabbages in fall. This is the time to grow cabbages. You see, and I think there's some advantages of growing cabbages yourself. Yeah, you know, the ones you get at the grocery store, they're perfectly fine. I can do good things with them. I can make some great, great things. I do it. But the ones that you make, so I've got this crispy Japanese cabbage that I'm growing. And it's not a, it's not a Chinese cabbage. It's a traditional cabbage, but it's very crispy. And it makes great coleslaw. Incredible coleslaw. And one of the nice things about growing stuff in your garden is that you don't have to cook it to death and it's still quite delicious and it holds those flavors. And I think the best coleslaw is going to come from your garden. Great coleslaw, but you can cook that cabbage out of your garden. It's great. Wonderful thing to do. All of that's really nice. Lettuce is the kind of thing you grow in winter as you get used to some of our winter vegetables, you're going to grow less and less lettuce because you realize, gosh, there's these other things that I can put in a salad that are so much better. They taste so much better than lettuce. Lettuce is kind of, but yeah, you can grow lettuce, cilantro. If you've had a problem with cilantro during the year, this is the time to plant cilantro because the days are getting shorter and it won't go flower and you can pick cilantro for a long time. And it actually does quite well in these cooler temperatures. Parsley, this is the season for parsley. I always have parsley during the winter. It keeps me going during the winter. It's like basil during the summer. It's like I have to eat basil, just a lot of basil in one way or another multiple times a week during summer. In winter, I have to eat tons and tons of parsley. It is so good. It does great during the winter. It's all this good. Ella, are you listening? Because I'm doing this just for you. So these are great things. I'm not even through yet. I think I've got a bunch more than I've got to talk about. What we did, we talked about carrots. We did talk about carrots and I need to talk a little bit more about carrots. Carrots need rich soil. They need rich soil, but rich soil means not fertilizer. Rich soil means lots of organic matter. They need organic rich soil. They really do. They can do all right in our sandy soils, but they need a long way to the water table and they need a lot of organic matter in between, but they can do very well here over winter and they can be really great. There are things that eat carrots. You have to watch for them. We'll talk about that in just a minute. Beets, if you're really good at gardening, beets are a great thing. On the Gulf Coast, they're a little bit harder because they like a lot of calcium. They like a higher pH. You just got to get your soil ready for that. Lots of organic matter. Ella, you better be taking notes fast. If you're taking those fast, I'm going to keep talking here. What do you do with parsley? Are you kidding Ella? Listen, take your carrot tops because if you can grow carrots. This is sort of optimum. You can do parsley by itself, but take your carrot tops and your parsley. Mix them together. Carrot tops, yes, they're absolutely delicious. You're going to grow your own. You got your parsley. Mix them together. Make a pesto out of it. Spread it over everything. It's so good. Or just chop your parsley up. Mix it with oil and garlic. It's absolutely delicious. It's a wonderful thing. Basil and parsley are not spices to me. They're not herbs. They're vegetables. And they're absolutely delicious vegetables. I use a parsley spread, mixed with some oil, a little bit of pepper, a little salt, a little garlic, pepper, meaning both black pepper. Sometimes I will add a good only color pepper or one of the macadam peppers just to give it a little bit of kick. Absolutely delicious. You can put it straight. It's beautiful to put it on a pasta. Just make your pasta. Save a little bit of the oil, save a little bit of the water from the pasta pan, boil that down just to get it nice and starchy. Mix it with the, oh, it's so delicious to make a pesto. Parsley pesto is out there. You can do it, but you don't have to think of it just on pasta. You can put it on anything. You can put it on anything. I mean, really, if you think about it, this is the winter is the time when we can do more different kinds of vegetables and pull more out of the garden to eat than at any other time of the year. It's incredible. Now, I got to pause just a minute and I want to pause real quickly because the problem with winter gardening, the only problem is getting it started while it's still hot. And that means you got to motivate yourself and you got to demotivate the pests that actually thrive in hot weather. And if I don't get to all that, I will, but let me say that the first thing I have found right now that's really important for winter vegetables, for me, because it saves me a lot of trouble, is using mosquito netting over the vegetables, which keeps the cabbage moss, the pattern cabbage moss, and the non-pattern cabbage moss caterpillars off of your stuff, it solves a lot of problems, makes it a lot easier. Now, there are other things I can say, like using Spino said, all that, you can do it, but really, that's it. Just doing that. Organic matter helps with eating garden. It certainly helps in fall. What else am I missing here? Did you get the part about that? That's really important. And you can get mosquito netting for next to nothing. So just plant your garden, put it over it. It's sometimes called an insect barrier. You can look them up. You don't even, for fall crops, you don't even need to get the most expensive. I didn't mention mustards. Oh, well, I got a lot to talk about here. Mustards are a great crop for winter, and we've got a few problems with some pests on those mustards, which we can solve with that netting. It works really well, but mustards are incredible. I like the big red Chinese mustards. They're incredibly, they're incredibly delicious. They're really beautiful. But there's lots of smaller mustards as well, and then there's stuff like coal Robbie. Wow. We're going to be back. 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 FM Talk 1065. What a long introduction. Listen, we got to get to the business here. We got a lot of questions. Katherine, do me a favor. I'm, Katherine, and I'm going to put you on for just seconds. We've got a lot of things I got to cover. But can you do me a favor when you're looking at your sassanquas? Take a picture and send it to me next week of the base of the sassanqua that's not doing as well. There are a lot of things going on in that picture. It's being tied up. I can tell that there's some problems around the roots. It's a little close to the house. A little close to the house, I think, which could be also some other problems. But if you will take a picture right there at the base of that sassanqua, and let's make sure I understand what's going on. Take a picture in the first 12 inches when it comes out of the ground. Can you do that? Yeah. And then send it to me, and next week we'll talk about that and talk about whether it's good to move it. It might be good to move it because I see you've already tied it up because it's trying to move away from the house to get some sunlight. Right? Well, we tied it up when we first moved it so it wouldn't fall over. That was a year ago. I see. So it's just being moved. So we've got a lot to unravel here, but take a picture of the base of that commia first and tell me how squishy the garden soil is around it, and then let's talk about it next week. Okay. All right, we'll do that. Thank you, Catherine. Victoria, you want to, so what you got, what you got on your mind? Well, you were talking about the greens that were more tender than the collards. I found out quite by accident that that beet greens are the most, the very most tender. And I just, I love them. I buy beets every chance I get and cook the greens. And folks, are you listening to Victoria? This is, she knows what she's talking about. Victoria, you are absolutely right. They're absolutely delicious. And in it, doesn't it drive you crazy when you go in the grocery store and they cut the greens off of the beets and are just selling the roots? Isn't that just, it's irritating. Oh, and they have just those little spiky stems sticking up. Yes, because beet greens are absolutely delicious. They really are great. Well, I ordered seeds from Baker Creek and I'm going to try, I've never grown beets, but I'm, that's going to be in my fall. I'm doing a patio garden with some large pots. And I mean, just planting everything in pots. But I wanted to ask you if, if with the, the winter vegetables, if I can plant my, Rudabagas? Rudabagas, thank you. I'll plant my Rudabagas. I know this because, because Steve's already propped at me. So I'm not, Phil's already propped at me. So I'm not eating this. I'm out of my river. Rudabagas, that's my favorite vegetable. So I thought I'd try to roast them. Oh, Victoria. So I promised everybody I was going to grow Rudabagas this year just because, you know, like some people haven't have a prejudice against snakes, which is totally irrational and crazy. Oh, I know. I have this totally irrational and crazy prejudice against Rudabagas. And I was going to overcome it this fall. And you know what? I didn't, I didn't do it. And it's all because, it's all because I think the way Rudabagas have been prepared in the past. And I'm sure, Victoria, you prepare Rudabagas in a way that I would love. But I, but Rudabagas, yes, let's come back to this. Rudabagas, they're the perfect winter vegetable. They're going to grow great. They're, they're, they're really quite good. For you, you might have a problem with cucumber beetles, I think on Rudabagas. But again, using that, using that, the little inset, inset cover that I talked about on your Rudabagas, if you do have a problem, mosquito netting, it really works quite well. And so Rudabagas do great. They are very hardy. You will never have a problem with hardiness with Rudabagas, immobile. You can plant several plantings of them, I think. So they're going to grow really fast. And this is the thing to know about winter gardening. And I'm glad you made me talk about it. In winter, things grow very fast as time of year, but it's not the cold so much as the short days that slow them down in December. So they're going to grow very fast now. And you want to get as much growth out of them as you can. And then they're going to slow down in December. And then about January 6th on the 12th day of Christmas, you will notice, gosh, things are starting to grow a lot faster because the days are getting a little longer. And the plants respond to it. So you just got to plan for that little bit of law, get stuff in as soon as you can, and it will grow through the winter. But you can plant several plantings of Rudabagas and just get them started and they'll grow through the winter and you may be harvesting them in spring, but that's okay too. So yes, Rudabagas do really well. I'm glad you mentioned that about multiple plantings because I like to get them when they're smaller. I don't like a great big woody Rudabaga. Yes, so I'm coming to your house to eat Rudabaga okay. You can hear me of this prejudice I can tell. So yes, that this was just the way the way I cooked them is the way my mom always did. And she always liked to pressure cook them for about 10 minutes and then take them out of the pressure cooker and put them in with potatoes and other things and put them in the oven. And you know, just cook them on through in the oven. And they're just so soft and so lovely. And the only trouble is you cook them one day and you smell them for six months. That's the issue. That is the issue. So they do have, they do have that wonderful brassica odor in spades and you know, same thing happens with cabbage. So to be fair, I love cabbage. Yeah, but you know, one of the cool things if getting those Rudabagas tender and small means that you can just roast them. Right, right. I won't have to have to do the two. And you won't have to do the long pressure cooking thing. And so it's, and I don't think they smell quite as bad if you roast them. So yeah, so it's oh, we should have not have said that about how they smell Victoria. But they are they are so odorous. That was, I can remember growing up. I love them so much. And my mom took a picture that I found a couple of months ago in a family album. And it was me when I was about seven years old sitting at the dinner table with Rudabagas on the end of my fork and holding my nose. And I thought, yep. And I when I was met when I was young and married and raising my child, she loved Rudabagas too. But of course, I don't know, she didn't know this is smell, I guess. But that's just always been a thing and our family is teasing about holding your nose and eating your Rudabagas. But oh, and and broccoli, I'm growing my first broccoli Rob this year. That's great. And and broccoli Rob does have a problem with some pests. So just grow it undercover. It's delicious. I love broccoli Rob. Oh, I do. And and it's it's great. You have to grow a bit more of it. But you know, you can eat the leaves are great for those who don't know. The leaves and the flowers are great. And what what is that flavor? It's like, it's almost like. It's almost oriental. Yes. And in a little bit chocolatey too. Yeah. And very delicious. I love the flavor of broccoli Rob and it's really good. And that and just putting it simply cooking it putting it on pasta is really delicious. What a great thing, broccoli Rob. Yes, it is. And I love to stir fry. So I can, you know, I can get my meat cooked and then put my broccoli Rob in and then do my bean sprouts and stuff. Is that your is that your warning? That's our warning. But gosh, Victoria, this is great. You call me back. You keep talking about those vegetables. We'll we'll do it next week. All right. Bye. Bye. [Music]