Ep. 156 Fall garden Q&A and garden updates | #GoodGrowing
Welcome to the Good Growing Podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois. And we have got a great show for you today. It is a q and a. Fall is we are really into it right now.
Chris Enroth:We're gonna be in winter before you know it. We have some questions that have been coming in, plus a check-in. What's going on in our gardens at this time of year? So you know I'm not doing this by myself. I am joined as always every single week by horticulture educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville.
Chris Enroth:Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson:Hello, Chris. May winter may be coming, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Chris Enroth:It was, like, 80 degrees yesterday. It was great. My kids were mad at me that I sent them to school in, like, pants, long sleeves, and a coat. Yeah.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. They're T shirt shorts, and I can't really argue with them. So
Chris Enroth:I can't either. And and coming up as the temperature drops at the end of this week, they're gonna be back to summer garb, and they won't believe me. It's cold outside. So I've lost all my cred cred. So yeah.
Ken Johnson:Boy boy, you cried wolf.
Chris Enroth:Exactly. Exactly. Well, kind of speaking of of weather and how things are going, every year, we kind of check-in about the leaves. Ken, leaf report. How's it going in your yard?
Ken Johnson:We've got some trees dropping leaves. We started this weekend our annual drive around Jacksonville, picking up bags of leaves that people put out on the curb. So I think this weekend, we collected well, that we my wife and Ron collected a light chip or shredded. She got probably forty, fifty bags of leaves. You know, about 20 of them 20 of them chip or shredded.
Ken Johnson:So before everybody, you know, sends me angry emails and stuff saying you shouldn't be doing that, the leaves in our yard, we leave, or we'll rake them off off to the side, but these are already bagged. So he's gonna pick them up and do whatever they do with them. So I'm not shredding the leaves in my yard doing that for stuff that's already collected.
Chris Enroth:I have two thoughts. I love that your wife is on board with this. Second thought, you guys should, like, charge for this. Like like, this has been going for free for the last couple years, but hey, neighbor. If you give me $5, I'll I'll take the leaves off your hands.
Chris Enroth:So
Ken Johnson:Said he already takes them for free. But Oh, man. I do I do get some nice bags out of it sometimes. So anybody who's we've taken our latest, thank you for not tying them tremendously tight so I can open them up easily. I don't have to rip the bags.
Ken Johnson:Sometimes people use, like, the really good quality contractor bags, like, thick. If I'm lucky, I can untie those and save them and Oh, yeah. Use them for later. And
Chris Enroth:You can reuse those. Yeah.
Ken Johnson:It's a double bonus. They get leaves and good garbage bags.
Chris Enroth:That is great. And you're just you're just chipping shredding away while she's picking them up. Oh, that's just amazing. Still need to get that chipper shredder. But
Ken Johnson:Yeah. It makes a lot of dust, and she enjoys breathing.
Chris Enroth:So So she she doesn't
Ken Johnson:like doing that. Chipper shredder. Yeah. I get down. I I still have black boogers from this weekend and stuff.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. Mhmm. Gross. Yeah.
Ken Johnson:Well,
Chris Enroth:I I am in this this similar boat. I'm not going around collecting leaves because my wife wouldn't let me do that. She would label me as as already crazy because I already, like, let things happen in my yard that normal people don't. And so I I know my limits. I know where I can push her.
Chris Enroth:But I've done a lot of raking. I've done a lot of pushing of leaves. We did our annual giant leaf pile. I mean, we had a huge leaf pile, and, of course, we all just jump in it. And my favorite thing is to just, like, burrow myself in the leaves and just wait for the random jogger or passerby on the sidewalk to come by, and I just jump out and scare people.
Chris Enroth:So, that has been a lot of fun. But we I do shred up a lot of the leaves that fall onto the ground. Kinda depends on the species. We have some really thick magnolia leaves that we really do have to shred up. Our ash leaves, a lot of times, those are those are the first ones that come down, and so those usually are part of the giant leaf pile, along with the sweet gum, some of the maples, and that gets pushed into the backyard to our woodland garden area.
Chris Enroth:And then finally, we're just waiting on those oaks to drop, and that's not gonna happen until winter, sometimes spring. So we never never really know. So don't set your clock by those, but that that's where we're at. Just living the dream, surrounded by our trees.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. I think our the walnut so the walnuts are in the neighbor's yards, but those are all down. And those leaves are so small, can't really tell they're on the lawn. Maples in our backyard still have are still holding on to their leaves, starting to drop. So I'm I'm thinking maybe this weekend, next weekend for sure.
Ken Johnson:We'll definitely be doing some raking in the yard. Yeah. I don't know where all these other people's leaves are coming from, but ours aren't. A lot of ours aren't dropping too much yet.
Chris Enroth:Well, the the walnuts so I I get the question every so often where they're like, well, I got can I use black walnut leaves as, like, a mulch or a compost? And I'm like, sure. Because they aren't that big, you know, compared to an oak leaf or a maple leaf. So the bulk or the mass, it it it and if you compost it, especially over the course of a year, it if there is any chemical warfare going on there, more than likely that dissipates through the composting process and with time. Because there's I have a lot more other species of leaves besides black walnut, and my backyard is lined with black walnut trees, and I really don't deal with them at all.
Chris Enroth:So
Ken Johnson:Yeah. And that's your list of trees to plant if you don't wanna break leaves. Yes. You gotta pack the walnut stuff.
Chris Enroth:You do. You do. And you have to wear a hard hat when you go out. Right? Well, a few weeks ago, it was dangerous in my backyard.
Chris Enroth:So the we got some big ones, and they are moving very fast when they hit the ground. Yes. Oh, yeah. So black walnut is good for leaves. Honey locust is good for leaves.
Chris Enroth:Kentucky coffee tree is another good one for leaves. Bald cypress is another good one that I like. And then ginkgo is nice because it just drops all its leaves in, like, twenty four hours all at the same time. So it's a lot of leaves, but they all come down at once.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. It's not your, I just raked, and I gotta do it again.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. Yep. Yep. Well, Ken, another thing that we haven't really done yet is to check-in and see how the garden's fared this year. We kinda already know the story, though, but I'm gonna ask you anyway.
Chris Enroth:Ken, how'd the garden do this year? How the how'd all of your oddities did they come through our what I will say was a pretty substantial drought this summer?
Ken Johnson:Let's just say there's a reason this isn't its own podcast.
Chris Enroth:There's other things that we had to add into here, yes, so that we were talking about more than just what we did in the garden.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. This would be, like, a five minute podcast. Mhmm. So let's see here. Trying to remember all the weird stuff.
Ken Johnson:So shiso. Yep. We're ready to get that to come up. We started inside. We had some seedlings, got them outside.
Ken Johnson:They petered out, direct seeded some, then it got dry and it didn't do a good enough job keeping up with the watering, and they never came up. Our Cardoon and artichokes, you know, we planted all that. We thought everything was dead. We had one Cardoon come up. That was actually pretty good, but then the frost got it.
Ken Johnson:The hard frost got in. And I didn't really notice it because we we planted a bunch of cover crop last fall, a lot of the tillage radish, and that didn't we planted it too late, a lot of it didn't germinate. So it kinda went crazy the spring. And as things weren't doing all that well, we just let it go in the garden. So I've got, you know, tillage radish that's two or three feet tall and stuff.
Ken Johnson:So it's kinda covering the cardoon and and stuff. But we have one of those turn up pretty well. Our our celery, our pink celery did pretty good. Last I looked, it was still holding on. So I think it must not have got quite cold enough to to kill that off for the year.
Ken Johnson:See here, our green cotton, I don't think last I looked, I didn't have any of the bowls starting to open up. So all that cotton is still kinda in the bull, fully developed yet. Have a little bit of white cotton, but this year was not as good as previous years. We because it was cool and wet in the spring, we just didn't get it out till later than we normally do, and growing season just wasn't long enough to to get all that. How about you?
Chris Enroth:I I didn't I I did not have as wild of a year as you normally do, Ken. And I, as we mentioned, we we did we had a podcast. Actually, we did two episodes, one on the edible stuff we were gonna grow and one on the ornamental stuff we were gonna grow, some of the different ones. So maybe that's something we could also link below so you can learn about all that that I didn't do that I said I was gonna do. But there are some things that I did get done.
Chris Enroth:So I did plant my German butterball potato that I said I was gonna order. I planted those in containers this year as because our yard, we we have to do rotation. So let me back up. I'll say part of our rotation is containers because we don't have much space in the ground. So solanaceae, which would be potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, all that stuff.
Chris Enroth:Yeah. That's a we grow a lot of that. So this year is a container year. And the German butterball potatoes, they did okay. I mean, they didn't get really massive, massively huge or, but they were a lot.
Chris Enroth:And they're a lot of fun to harvest, especially in containers. We dumped them all out in a big bin. The kids just kinda sorted through everything. We got those. We also had some purple potatoes.
Chris Enroth:I don't remember the cultivar name of them right now, but we get did get some of those. But the butterball ones did pretty good. You know, we ate off of those for a few meals, so that that did very well. What else did I say I was gonna do? I didn't grow the sickum cucumber, that is it looks it doesn't look like a cucumber, but my neighbor did, and it's just a wild looking cucumber.
Chris Enroth:We did not grow any of our poblano peppers this year, and and so that would that would have been kind of wrapping up our vegetable garden. We did grow the pink celery. It never turned pink. And every time we used it, there it was such a strong celery favor. I've said it once.
Chris Enroth:I'll say it again. I'm not a fan of celery. It was so strong. I I didn't put much of it into any dish that we've made. So, yeah, it never never turned pink.
Chris Enroth:It was always green.
Ken Johnson:That's not one you eat plain unless you really, really like that. So I like my tongue would almost go numb eating it just raw.
Chris Enroth:And what and the nice thing, though, celery is a bit more cold hardy than some of these others that I've mentioned, and so it's still growing. You know? It's November 7, and it's been a mild fall, but it survived a pretty good freeze, and it's still going strong. So I still probably could harvest from it. I might try it one more time to see if that cold weather maybe chilled it out a little bit, got rid of some of the harshness of that flavor.
Chris Enroth:So I will probably try that, and I might take some leaves off of there, dry them, and shred them up and throw them in, a shaker or something, and we can have that celery flavor during the winter months. And then I will I will just end with I did plant trees. I said I was gonna plant trees in the spring, and I did. I got a black gum, which is a nissle sylvatica, and we planted that in our front yard. And then I got a hybrid oak tree.
Chris Enroth:Now this is an oak tree that's been hybridized, so it is a swamp white oak hybridized with a bur oak. And and that's pretty normal. Oak trees are promiscuous out in nature, and this is just kind of a purposeful hybridization in the in the nursery. And I'll see how they go. I've I've got them in the ground.
Chris Enroth:They are protected from the deer. Right now, I probably should get collars on the base of them to protect them from rodent damage this winter. So but, yeah, I I actually did plant those trees. Oh. And I just got a message from my wife saying we had more wood chips delivered.
Chris Enroth:So, I'll I'm gonna be spreading mulch later on today into the into the gardens.
Ken Johnson:Good deal. Mhmm. We're just using leaf mulch this year, I think.
Chris Enroth:Don't have good spot
Ken Johnson:to dump we don't have a good spot to dump wood chips. So
Chris Enroth:After getting all those bags of leaves, yeah, you got some got some leaf mulch options there.
Ken Johnson:We got we got two more weekends to go to collect stuff too soon.
Chris Enroth:So the disappointing thing about leaves, though, is that you have a the pile the size of, like, a a pickup truck, but you shred it, and it's, like, the size of a I don't know. Not even a car.
Ken Johnson:I I think with the bag with the bags we were getting after shredding, was, a four to one. Four bags shredded down to one bag.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm.
Ken Johnson:So even though we did 20 some bags, we only got four and a half loads wheelbarrow loads out of it.
Chris Enroth:Yeah. So you're yeah. That covers a handful of square feet. So
Ken Johnson:We did we did build a corral in the backyard. Because last year, we didn't get to everything shredded. They just sat in the bags. And then the spring tried to chipper shred some of it. It was just too wet.
Ken Johnson:So got some t posts and some garden fencing, built a corral that we'll just empty bags into. So maybe it dries out a little bit better or stuff we don't get shredded.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. I like that. I like that. See, folks, this is how you can purposefully and creatively reuse things that would otherwise go to a landfill or get burned or, yeah, get buried somewhere else. So leaves, wood chips, they can be reused.
Chris Enroth:Yes. Well, Ken, if that was a story about our gardens and what we're doing right now, it would be a short show. So let's answer some questions that have come in, and I'll go ahead and and and kick this off asking you a question here. And this is all about mums. So something that is a very popular fall foliage and flower.
Chris Enroth:Now what do we do with them? So the question goes, I didn't get my mums planted, and I overwinter them. I'm guessing in pots is what they mean.
Ken Johnson:Yes. Yeah. So, yeah, if you didn't get them planted, definitely, you're if you wanna overwinter, we're doing it in pots. If you planted them this time of year, they're not gonna get well established. It's not gonna say they're not going to overwinter, but they're probably not gonna survive the winter.
Ken Johnson:So that would be, you know, letting them kinda die back on their own, putting them in an unheated garage ideally. Probably best would be if it's an attached garage. If it's unattached, those get a little bit colder, so they may have to do some insulating of that or or put it in the basement. But but cool area where they're gonna remain dormant and come spring. And once things warm up, then you can then plant them, get them established.
Ken Johnson:One of reasons you don't wanna do it plant them now is they're they're fairly shallow rooted, so they they dry out quickly. They're prone to heaving and stuff, especially since they're not gonna be getting established. So yeah. If ideally, yeah, you would overwinter them inside, and it's it's pretty easy to do, pre be pretty successful doing that. My mom's done it.
Ken Johnson:She's got a three season room. She just leaves them out there, waters them every once in a while to make sure they don't you don't wanna get too dry. Make sure there's some moisture in that that potting media, and that'll all retain some heat as well on those roots. They don't get too cold and die. Alright.
Ken Johnson:Our next question here is, when do you need to worry about needle drop on white pine trees? This person has some some needle drop on their trees, and they've they've read that keeping moisture in the needles is important to prevent needle drop. So something like wilt proof help prevent this every fall or winter. So probably a a two parter there.
Chris Enroth:Well, I I will say needle drop is not usually a problem on our white pine because we think of our our pines as evergreen, but they do shed needles. Like, they do go through every about three years kind of a a loss of some of those older needles. And so when we see that happening, like, this time of year, it can be a little bit alarming, but it's okay. That's that's usually a pretty typical part of their their cycle, their life cycle. It is important at this time of year, also in the fall, that we have adequate soil moisture for our evergreens going into winter.
Chris Enroth:Winter for an evergreen is a lot like a drought because if the soil freezes, it locks up all that moisture, but the evergreen still have leaves. They still have those needles, which can potentially transpire and lose lose water throughout the winter. So if if, like, in my neck of the woods, if we're going into winter in kind of a soil moisture deficit because we haven't gotten too much rain, we have gotten some, which is good, but not as much as we usually do. It's not a bad idea, like, at this point to water some of our evergreens, especially younger, maybe more newly planted ones, ones that are more exposed to a lot of wind, some of the more extreme elements out in the flat Illinois landscape. So, yes, right now would be a good time for watering plants.
Chris Enroth:You don't you you don't necessarily have to worry about the needle drop. And in terms of that wilt proof, gotta be really careful with that stuff because the way it works is you actually you'll spray it on the plant, and it coats the needles, and it blocks that stomata that that that moisture is lost on the leaves, which you say think, well, that's good, but, actually, there's a negative consequence because that's also how air exchanges into the plant. That's kind of how the plant breathes. Water comes out, air goes in, and that's that's a natural process for the plant. And so if you do that wilt proof incorrectly or too much or too long, you suffocate your plant.
Chris Enroth:And so I stay away from wilt proof. If you do use it, make sure you read those label directions really, really closely and follow them to the letter so that you don't accidentally wind up suffocating your plant.
Ken Johnson:I'm not gonna go for any evergreen, but broadleaf. It's a lot of times where people are putting them on because they'll lose even more water than needle. But even then, you still have to be careful with it.
Chris Enroth:Exactly. Yeah. That that needle shape of of those pines and the spruces and the firs, that is a evolved leaf morphology to minimize water loss during hard times of the year, like winter for these plants. The broadleaf evergreens like our boxwood, If you have southern magnolia, things like that, some of our rhododendrons, then they actually they're not as well adapted to cold weather. They get a lot more winter injury, when we get a lot of frozen soil and windy conditions.
Chris Enroth:So and and the other thing I'll add, leave the white pine needles underneath the tree. A lot of people like to rake those up and, like, get rid of them or do something else with them. Try to grow grass underneath the white pine. Just leave the needles there. They make an excellent mulch.
Chris Enroth:It insulates the soil. It keeps the moisture in the around the root zone. Just just leave them lay. They're they'll be okay. If you need to blow them back underneath the tree, if they come out a little bit into the lawn, that's fine, but push them back underneath the tree and leave them be.
Ken Johnson:You don't wanna bring them to me. I'll use them.
Chris Enroth:And we'll use them. Yeah. Pine needle are make a great mulch. So yeah. Alright.
Chris Enroth:We our next question is about dahlia. So it goes, this is the first time I've had dahlias in my garden. They've only started blooming a few weeks ago. I'm wondering if how I can overwinter them.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. So my dahlias yeah. So what? We got a frost. It was a hard frost.
Ken Johnson:Was that last week, two weeks ago? Everything's blending together now.
Chris Enroth:That was was last week.
Ken Johnson:It was last week. It seems like longer ago. My daylights are really kinda starting to take off. It seems like every year kinda start getting really start taking off, and then we get a frost. So I I think what they're experiencing probably isn't all that atypical, at least in my experience, especially if you're a little later getting them out.
Ken Johnson:But with with a frost, I'm I'm assuming that everything is gonna be killed, died back, killed off. When you get that killing frost with dahlias, you know, you get that you wanna prune off those stocks and everything just to make sure there's no rot or anything that goes down into those tubers from that plant material above ground that's dying back. Then we wanna dig those, let them dry off a little bit, kinda get off as much of that soil off, and then put them in something like a cardboard box, milk crate, something that's gonna be able to breathe a little bit. Put them in with trying to blank here.
Chris Enroth:Pick up sphagnum, peat.
Ken Johnson:Pee moss. There you go. Mhmm. Completely lost. So it's peat moss, something like that in there.
Ken Johnson:So that's a little bit moist so your so your tubers aren't drying out. Put those, you know, in the basement, something like that. Typically, you want around 40 degrees or so as you overwinter them. Check them periodically, make sure they're not molding or rotting. Pull those out if they are.
Ken Johnson:Maybe need to moisten that peat moss, sawdust, whatever you're using. Make sure that's moisture. If they're starting to shrivel up, you're gonna need a little bit more moisture. And then you can bring them up again in the late spring, early summer, when, you know, once that danger frost has passed, to plant them outside. I've got some that I've had in pots for three years now.
Ken Johnson:It's probably not the best way to do it, but I just cut them, bring the pots, and put them inside, and that's it. And every spring, they're sprouting in the basement. And I haven't fertilized them at all. I don't know how they're still flowering and stuff and still nice and green, but that's another way. I think you do run a risk of, you know, if you've got any kind of pathogens or stuff in there, you do have a higher risk of that becoming a problem and you're potentially bringing in critters with it.
Ken Johnson:But that could be another option, maybe not the best one, but an option. But if you don't dig those, they're gonna die. And then when you're digging in the garden next year, may end up with a big mushy, gross spot there Mhmm. Like we had in a few spots where we missed some last year.
Chris Enroth:Well, I I brought in so many house plants, and I've I've mentioned it already in the show. But just last week, I was downstairs where we kinda store everything. I have a big actually, I have two racks now with grow lights and all kinds of stuff. It's getting out of hand. But, I'm downstairs.
Chris Enroth:I'm it's in our little laundry room, storage room thing, and throwing stuff in the washing machine. I looked down. There's a giant toad right there by my feet, and I realized he probably popped out of one of the pots that I brought inside. So you mentioned bringing critters into the house. Well, watch out for toads.
Chris Enroth:So so there's that one, and then we moved a bunch of plants in the garage. Found another toad in there. And so they really like bedding down in my potted plants. So and then they pop out when it gets warm in the house.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. New pets.
Chris Enroth:New pets. I bet someone's gonna say, well, what do you do then? Well, you take it back I took it back out in because it was actually freezing at that point in time outside, took it in the garage, buried it in another container, but it was cold in the garage, stayed in there, and went back to sleep, went took it back outside.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. So, yeah, while it's warm now, you can take them back outside. But once it's Mhmm. It's some cold Yes. Don't do that.
Chris Enroth:You'll Don't do the they'll It's
Ken Johnson:not gonna not gonna end well for them.
Chris Enroth:They will croak and not in a good way. Yes.
Ken Johnson:Alright. Next question here. This individual has a garden, but they have a feral cat problem in the neighborhood, and they've started using their garden as a litter box. What can they do to amend their soil to keep cats away?
Chris Enroth:That's a tough problem, living in a neighborhood myself that has a lot of cats that just roam about. There are a few things that can be done, and we didn't we don't know from the context of the question, are they talking vegetable garden, landscape garden? Let's assume vegetable garden because that kind of that gives us the most limitation, like, you know, when it comes to edible crops. And the bad news is if the cats are pooping in your garden during the growing season, you can't use your vegetable garden. There's some pretty nasty stuff in cat droppings, toxoplasmosis, which is a pretty nasty, I think it's a parasite that that attacks the human, and it's not good for you.
Chris Enroth:There's other diseases and things. Cats are meat eaters. And so it it it just like a dog, their droppings are not healthy for you to to have in anywhere you're growing food. Now if you were at the end of the season, so if there's cat poo in the garden right now, it's okay because a lot of times that the winter weather and decomposition will take place. It'll render a lot of any nasty stuff in those droppings.
Chris Enroth:It'll take care of them when we get to next spring. Now how do you keep them from going in there, say, in the winter, say, in the spring? That's really hard. Dogs. You have to get a dog.
Chris Enroth:That's, I guess, one biological control. I don't think you can cat trap, especially if it's belong to somebody. But if it's a wild feral cat, well, then you could probably trap it and at least take it, get it fixed or something. You know, get it spayed and neutered. Do my best Bob Barker impersonation right now.
Chris Enroth:It's helped control the animal population. But keeping them out is gonna require a physical barrier of some kind, whether it's a long, tall fence around the garden. Sometimes you can use, like, a landscape cloth if it's in, like, a vegetable garden bed. Based in that landscape cloth, it covers the soil, and you have to cut holes for each one of your individual plants that you wanna to grow in. And and, hopefully, that system works for your method of gardening.
Chris Enroth:You could mulch. I will say this is probably not practical for an outdoor garden, but at the house plant, listener, when I had problem with my kitten digging in our pots last year, listener recommended tinfoil. Works great. The forks that I would stick in the pot did not work at all. The cat just pushed them out of her way and kept digging, but she stays out of the tinfoil.
Chris Enroth:I think it's kind of a waste of resources to do to spread tinfoil all over your garden bed. So that's why I would opt maybe for that landscape fabric as a physical barrier.
Ken Johnson:You could maybe use, like, a chicken wire hardware cloth so they can't get in there and try to bury stuff, discourage them. And maybe we work better for, like, a raised bed suit. Yeah. Because it's not gonna be exactly cheap. Landscape fabric could be a lot cheaper if you go into a larger area.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. Yeah. And, yeah, try to avoid working in that area. Wear gloves. Wear a dust mask.
Chris Enroth:Avoid from breathing that stuff in, and getting it on your hands. And, you know, you can't stop them from going every single time. But if there is a large if there's what I've noticed in our neighborhood is that where one cat has picked a spot, a lot of times, many of the other surrounding cats are gonna go to that same spot, whether it's territorial or just, hey. That's a good spot to go. I I don't know why, but we do have a few areas in our yards.
Chris Enroth:Like, yeah, that's pretty reliable. We'll find a pile of cat droppings there. Good luck.
Ken Johnson:Get a motion activated sprinkler.
Chris Enroth:Start spraying
Ken Johnson:the air as they come over.
Chris Enroth:Mhmm. Yes. Trying to think what else scares my cat. Oh, the cucumber trick. That's supposed to scare your cat.
Chris Enroth:Throw a cucumber at him or something or it scares him to death. That might
Ken Johnson:work. Just put a yeah. Cucumbers on the behind him. There you go. They turn around and
Chris Enroth:They think it's a snake or something. Don't know what it is. Scares him to death. Alright. Well, Ken, our last question for the day is has to do with the insect invader.
Chris Enroth:So invader into the home, really. What's with all the black and orange bugs all over the place? Which I don't often see, but this person, they they do see.
Ken Johnson:So these are are box elder bugs. I'll try to find a picture. We'll put it right now. So these are are insects that are one of the kinda overwintering house invaders over the winter. You know, box elder bugs, brown marmorated stink bug, multicolor Asian lady beetles are are three of the more common ones we get.
Ken Johnson:Box elder bugs, they're they're they're gonna be a nuisance just like the other ones. They're feeding on box elder trees and other maples as well, lot of times the seeds. So depending on how many seeds your plants are producing, they may be beneficial because they may have fewer viable seeds and fewer maples and box elders popping up everywhere. So that may be your silver lining there. But like other overwintering insects, they're finding trying to find somewhere to to spend the winter.
Ken Johnson:A lot of times, you find them on the south or west sides of a house if they've got a nice full sun exposure. It's nice and warm. They'll crawl up into the siding and into windows and then wall voids and things like that and may occasionally make their way inside, completely inside into the house. But they do not they don't reproduce indoors. They're not feeding on anything.
Ken Johnson:They're just they're just a nuisance come spring or really anytime it really warms up. So, you know, right now when we're having seventy, seventy five degree weather in November and they've if they've come in, they'll be warming up, crawling around and stuff. And then when it cools off again, they'll they'll go back to to kinda hibernating, so to speak. But in the spring, they'll they'll emerge. They'll go to to out, and they'll start feeding on plant material, make their way to box elders or maples or red ash sometimes too.
Ken Johnson:They'll get onto them. They'll feed on the leaves, the shoots, the seeds, things like that. And, you know, they'll they'll do their bug thing, reproduce and feed. And they usually have two generations so that the ones that overwinter, they'll lay eggs. Those will hatch out.
Ken Johnson:Those will be around in the the summer and fall, and those will be the ones that are overwintering. So a nuisance, you know, if you get them inside, collecting them, you can put them in a, you know, like Japanese beetles, bucket of soapy water, drop them in there to kill them, vacuum them up, making sure your house is well sealed, you know, cracks, crevices, no holes in screen thresholds, or one of the doors and stuff are are intact and things like that. You know, at this point in the year in November, probably should have done that already. Probably a little late to prevent those from getting inside now. But in future years, something to think about, especially if you've got box elder or maple trees nearby.
Ken Johnson:And we've got maple trees in our yard, but we don't have any problems with them here in Jacksonville, anyway, in our yard.
Chris Enroth:You know? And what you say, just that that physical ceiling of of openings around your house that can play a huge role. We've had so many problems with brown marmorated stink bug in the last few years when we moved into our house, and we installed a new back patio door. We've installed new front windows, new front door over the last couple years. And this year, with all of those new openings first, I noticed in the windows and the doors, there was nothing sealing around it.
Chris Enroth:That's why it was so cold in the winter. Air would just move right through. But, like, we just put in the new stuff and we put in that that expanding foam then around there, sealed the those openings. We've had far fewer brown marmorated stink bugs this year than we've ever had. Could that be population dynamics of the particular insect?
Chris Enroth:I guess it could be. This is only my observation, but I still find brown marmorated stink bugs all over the place in my garage, like, in in and under everything. So they're still coming in in some way shape, but they're not getting into the house. So coccidio cracks and crevices, we say it all the time. It does make a big difference.
Ken Johnson:Yeah. And remember, they're they're a nuisance. They're not gonna damage, you know, stuff inside there. They can't be smelly. They can't stain if you smash them for for any of these invaders, but they're not they're not reproducing inside.
Ken Johnson:So what you have in the right now is what you're gonna have in the spring. Probably fewer because some will die, but you're not gonna have millions of them all of a sudden emerging.
Chris Enroth:Well, that was a lot of great information about what we got going on in the garden and answering some of your fall gardening question questions, plurals. I can speaks. The Good Growing podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by Ken Johnson. Hey. Special thank you to Ken for both editing and hanging out with me, talking what's going on around our house gardens and answering questions.
Chris Enroth:Thank you so much, Ken.
Ken Johnson:Yes. Thank you. And let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth:Oh, we shall do this again next week. We are gonna be back next week, and we're gonna look so young and fresh faced. We're gonna be going a few years back in time when we talked with James Theory all about turkey. Thanksgiving's coming up, and so we will talk turkey with James. And it will actually be an older recording of us, so it will be a garden bite.
Chris Enroth:But, hey, you gotta you gotta do that every once in a while and look back. So we look forward to that. And listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, watch it. And as always, keep on growing.
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