Signal Strength

Podcast: WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack

WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack

  • Meatball Pruning

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Meatball Pruning
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on do it yourself in the garden and do it yourself today means trying to do as little pruning as you possibly can to keep yourself satisfied. And I’m saying that in the form of if you want round bushes in your yard like ones that look like they say they’re shaped like
    meatballs this landscape is called this meatballing when you have to prune something it looks like a meatball or you know a ball or or or or something like that something that’s not normally not normally like the normal way it would grow best to choose a plant that would do that naturally on its own so when you’re pruning you have to do just a minimal amount of pruning and not a major amount of pruning it is an art form and to do it properly you don’t want to stress the
    plant too much or you’ll ruin everything that’s right I must take a lot of time to do it right it does now folks do topiary and that’s an incredible art on its own and that involves sculpting bush evergreen bushes and and allowing them to get large enough so that you can do the next layer which which is intense well I think of the shining in the giant maze of what kind of yeah
    box would yeah probably box would fall box something like that would take decades to grow and absolutely decades to grow in fact I’ve been to Mount Vernon I went out there to check out their hemp field it was in the paper and it was so we went and checked it out and actually checked out their garden and they had topiary fruit trees that were trained
    to be the railings in the pathways I love that garden and it was just incredible and those must have taken a good hundred years to train to know like that way I what’s the term it you know the term when you when you ask Pellier yeah I love that so forth taking advantage of it in a warmer colder climate that technique actually allows you to grow stuff that normally wouldn’t grow because a southern facing wall and a plant again
    has its own microclimate yeah so there was a reason to do it not just because it’s beautiful that’s right when I was landscaping I had one client that insisted that we prune her azaleas to look like meatballs in a semicircle around her in her front yard around her Ivy and it was by doing this which we did you know I would say religiously every every time we visited which is about
    every other week or so gotta do what the client wants it stressed these azaleas beyond belief and because it stressed these azaleas they were attacked by all kinds of bugs all the time so we were constantly fighting these bugs and of course being an organic company you don’t have so many solutions so it’s best to choose a shrub that has a more compact weeping habit and if you like yellow I can think of no better
    shrub than the Jasmine new to flora is a weeping shrub with yellow flowers in early spring so that’s my my advice folks choose choose a shrub that has a natural habit of what you want it to be what will help me here I am I don’t know anything about topiary and I planted well 20 years ago boxwoods they were tiny when I got them from the Arbor Day Foundation and
    look like little sticks they’re giant now and I want to trim them to look like a hedge and my wife likes them bushy and growing out should they be either way works right yeah you want to shear them you know take like a big pair of scissors you know she’s or a gas you know electric not a gas pair but electric power hedge trimmer mm-hmm and then
    shape them you know only by taking off no more than say four inches well the outer growth you want to make sure it stays green cutting it back you want to cut back to still well when I trim it I find it hard to make it flat on top as almost as if I need to put up a level line to you know because it seems to get all crooked yeah well it helps to have your apparatus that you’re standing on as level as possible right anyway but they’re
    also helps to have someone look stand in the back right and only trimming off four inches at a time would help keep it more even then I was taken off much more you can take off four inch down on one side and leave the other side up to try and even it out there but Azalea is not the thing that comes to mind for for trimming although the deer are doing a pretty good job right now I like the natural way that is it is grow into each other and there are different colors well what was the name of the
    shrub that you recommend using four if you for with a compact weeping habit that’s jasmine new to flora and that would be in place of say a meatball type shape that’s right and that would have a yellow flower right so so it’s a natural a natural meatball type of meatball shaped bush cool cool I’ve learned a lot about how to take care of my hedges
    and never prune your evergreen shrubs after September 1st because pruning them encourages new growth and we don’t you don’t want any new growth when when you could get a frost right so even though we could probably push that back to you know October 1st we could always get an early frost in October even though we haven’t in at least two decades right
    but yeah you when you prune back evergreen when you put back anything it encourages it to grow if you prune back in a deciduous plant in the wintertime when it’s dormant that it’s not gonna grow but if you prune back an evergreen in the wintertime it will grow because it’s always thinking about growing there and has leaves there so you never want to prune back an evergreen where it’s getting close to wintertime because you don’t want that new growth to freeze before it hardens off
    so what do we learn today prune if you’re gonna prune prune prune early and if you need to prune choose a shrub that you don’t have to prune that much of and don’t what take four inches of take any more than four inches off your evergreen shrubs whether they be boxwoods or use mm-hmm or false cypress or whatever right there I could go
    on there’s at least a couple dozen different types of evergreens out there yeah and there’s probably different shrubs that are to be trimmed at different times of years as a year as well well I’m saying it was an evergreen shrub you don’t want to prune it after September 1st right wait wait till the spring of course you wouldn’t want to trim your resilience until you get your your blooms in that’s right and for hydrangeas you need to know what type of hand hydrangeas you have because there are five
    types in the area three of them bloom on current year’s growth and two of them bloom on last year’s growth so you don’t want to cut your hydrangeas back drastically I’ve seen a lot of that done and obviously they didn’t know what they were doing yeah I didn’t know that anyway folks goodbye from Weed and Whack we’ll be back join us next week we’ll be back

  • Loofah Gourd

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Loofah Gourd
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show Focusing on ways of doing it yourself to save money in the garden, right? And today we’re gonna talk about a squad of member of the gourd family that’s not necessarily always grown for eating That’s right, but it’s very useful. It’s the luffa gourd right and It’s a very interesting plan
    I grew it once in my garden and I say that after I grew it that one time I knew I didn’t didn’t have to grow it again for many years because I got myself lots of gourds and in turn there are lots of luffa sponges, right? We have one in our shower and I always thought it was from From a sponge from the sea a sea sponge, right? It’s very similar diver gone down and chopped it up and Brought it up, right? It’s much better that I actually is comes from much more
    Growing your yarn and it’s much more renewable that way and we’re not destroying the oceans I know how they work as an exfoliate on the skin, but how how well do they work in the kitchen? I’ve never used mine in the kitchen Well, let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves here We want to talk about how we want to grow this thing and when we harvest it and so forth So it’s it’s kind of just like a a zucchini or you know any type of Squash you grow it just like a squash
    Gourds are just like squashes, but you can’t eat them, but they are decorative, right? This one is very useful because the innards inner side the innards of the thing is a sponge and like it’s like we said earlier it kind of looks like a sea sponge So the best thing to do is to grow these things in full Sun and I would say a very sturdy trellis the trellis I had that time with the the things got so heavy they pushed the trellis over I learned my lesson but a strong
    trellis would do it and then let them do their thing and let what let the fruit completely mature on the vine Before you pick it and the best way to tell if the fruit is mature is to grab the thing and Shake it and if you can hear the seeds rattle inside the thing, then it’s ready to be harvested How much work is it to get to the inner sponge part? Well Once you cut the thing cut the thing off and you need to take
    a knife and slice into the skin and peel away that skin it’s fairly hard just like a winter squash But you know you can get in there and peel away that skin and then loosen up that sponge the seeds will shake out you save your seeds put them in a paper bag and let them dry someplace cool next year and dark and you can plant them the next year although it sounds as if one plant was enough to last you quite a while certainly but they do make nice gifts I’d imagine yes so what we
    did was we ended up making our own soap and in this process we got some liquids and we poured them into molds and we added some flower some different flowers like lilac and lavender and we sliced a piece of Lufa and put it in each bar and then so when it when the bars solidified they were clear you could see the the flowers in there and you could see the Lufa and we
    gave I gave one each to my clients when I was landscaping as a holiday gift and you know it’s kind of a nice American craft I’d say you make soap and as you’re washing yourself there with it the Lufa eventually exposes and helps to scrub but you know this in this case we slice the Lufa’s about I’d say three quarters of an inch thick and submerge them in the soap dish in the you know for each mold
    so I but I’ve seen you know I had put a put a full Lufa in the shower and then when you take a shower you scrub yourself with it have used it next to the sink washing dishes you know basically it is a renewable resource of vegetable that you can grow in place of using synthetic materials to scrub yourself in your yes and your plates and pots and pans and it will work well on I’ve never used mine in the kitchen
    I work it works so folks have you grown Lufas let us know I haven’t but hopefully you’ll grow some for me well we can do it yeah we could certainly do it in our community gardens yeah yeah that’d be great and then we’ll have plenty of sponges to pass around and maybe it’s deer resistant who knows
    yeah I don’t think dear eat these oh good although you did look up and said that you said that they were edible in it in when they’re young right we don’t know that folks so we’re not going to recommend you it sounds as if it’s part of the Indian cuisine some dishes are made with this but I think it’s much further in it yeah it’s not something that’s we’re gonna throw on the grill here in America yeah so who knows you know harvest if you about what I read it does have to be harvested young to eat and I
    do prefer to harvest all of my squash and a zucchini you taste better on the younger side myself and definitely my zucchini when it gets hard sure and the charm on you know as well but it’s primarily we’re recommending using it as a utility yep yes well folks have a good one so goodbye from weed and whack join us next week we’ll be back

  • Hydrangea

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Hydrangea
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed. And this is WACK with WOWDY gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on how to improve our gardens without spending any money. Right, and we like to use our gardening to eat healthy and stay healthy. That’s right. You know, you get a little exercise out there watering, even if you just stand in there with a hose. Yeah, for sure. And water yourself while you’re at it. Exactly. I feel like doing that first.
    I’ve been doing a lot of watering. But yeah, this time we’re going to talk about hydrangeas. It’s a plant I’ve often inherited in the various places I’ve lived in. But I’ve never paid much attention to them, but they make great flower bouquets in a pinch if you need to go on a date. And that’s why you should keep your hydrangeas watered. But anyway, you’ve done a lot. They’re also good foundation plants. You’ve done a lot of landscaping over the years. You had your own business and you’ve dealt with hydrangeas.
    Tell us about this species, if you would. Hydrangeas, actually hydrangeas like water. Hydro hydrangea. They will wilt quickly. I spent a very long time with mine last night. Yes, exactly. Mine needed perking. And last night, I stood with a hose right over them and they came right back. They were very happy about that. So we have five different types of hydrangea that grow in this area. And it’s important to know which type you have because
    two of them bloom on new growth, whereas three of them bloom on old growth. And you don’t want to cut off the future flowers. So by knowing what type you have, you can avoid improper pruning. What’s the best way to identify the species if you moved into a place and you have hydrangeas and you’re not sure what you got? We have five different types. They are hydrangea arborensis.
    That’s the tree type. We have penicillata, which is a panicle flower type. We have pediolaris, which is a vine type. There’s macrophila. That’s the globe flower type with the big leaves. That’s the one I’m most familiar with. That’s the most common. And the corsifolia, which is the oak leaf type. Now the corsifolia macrophila and
    penicillata all bloom on last year’s growth. So when you prune them, you just need to basically take out the dead wood and take off the dead flowers. The arborensis, the tree type and the pediolaris, the climbing type bloom on new growth. So you can go ahead and prune those back and they’ll put off lots of shoots with new growth. You’ll get more flowers if you prune them heavy.
    The main type, the most common type in the area is the macrophila, which is the globe type with the large leaves. And these have big globe like blue or pink flowers, depending on soil acidity. Basically, the entire area has clay soil. So clay soil is acidic and that will produce blue flowers. If you have the shrub next to a brick building,
    the plant will turn will put off acidic water, which will keep the flowers blue. If you have the plant next to a concrete walkway, the flowers on this, that side of the plant will turn pink because the concrete as it, as rain falls on concrete, it emits lime into the soil and the lime causes the flowers to turn pink. So you can literally change the color of your plant. We had, we used to have a large one in front of our house.
    And the pieces made me a little art, art piece out of a drop, drop in concrete in a bucket and then dropping some stones in there to make a little design. And I took that slab and I put it on one side of the hydrangea. And as you water, as I watered the thing and on the other side, I put a brick just on top of the ground. And as I watered the thing, I made sure to water the concrete slab on one side and the brick on the other. And sure enough, I had vibrant blue flowers on the brick side, vibrant pink flowers on the other side.
    And the concrete side and purple flowers in the center. – Interesting. – Which was really cool. – Right, right. I’ve heard of things like that. – So there are very few shrubs that have vibrant blue flowers. – And if you water them, they’re fairly hardy. You really don’t have to add any extra compost or a whole lot around them, it seems to me. – That’s right. – Because the ones I’ve had, all I’ve had to do to maintain them is water. – That’s right. They’re very hardy in this area.

    • Cool. Well, so if you were to plant a hydrangea, would you go for the easiest one if you’re a beginner, such as I am? They’re bush, so you probably have to dig a fairly good sized hole. We’ll deal with that later. But which one would you pick if you were a beginner and you just wanted to start with one, probably a globe one, right? – Well, the macrofila would be the easiest to work with. I would say that a deer love to eat the
      quercifolia one, the oak leaf hydrangea. If deer go to a hydrangea grove, they’re going to eat that quercifolia first. And I’ve seen that happen. – So which one is the most deer resistant? That’s important in this area. – Deer resistant, I’m going to say a penicillata or pediolaris. Pediolaris, the vine type. – Right. – I’ve never seen deer eat the vine type. – That can grow out of their reach too as well.
    • Deer men and have fun and water, they do like sun. – That’s right, full sun. – They can handle some shade. – Some sun, but they do better in full sun. – Right, right. – And you know, plant a hydrangea. – Yeah. – Now there are other types of the macrofila, like for example, in my yard, I also have the lace cap type, which is, it’s not a globe, it’s more like a flatter flower with just the outside flowers in the inflorescence open.
    • Opening up. – Right. – So the inside ones stay closed. – And they’re good pollinators, or good for the insects, I suppose. – Yeah, absolutely. – Well, I don’t want to ask this question, but I will. They’re probably not a native species. – I believe they’re Asian. – Well, anyway, folks, garden on. – That’s right. So what did we learn today? – What did we learn today? – Water your hydrangeas.
    • I’m like, crazy, and they’re pretty damn hardy. – And if you want to change the color of the flower, you can put brick on one side or concrete on the other for the macrofila. Enjoy that. – Yeah, play with the colors. – And so goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week, cause we’ll be back.

  • House Plants

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    House Plants
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed, and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show focusing on doing stuff yourself to save money. Right, right. We like to save our money and keep our plants growing. So this week we’re going to talk about a lot of us in the spring like to move plants outdoors for summer growth and flowering. And now’s past, actually, past the time to bring them in, but it’s not too late.
    We’re going to talk about how to bring your indoor plants in for the winter time. And we’ve got a few topics we’re going to hit on. We’re going to, before you bring them inside, try to get rid of all those, pass off of those plants and try to act. That’s number one. Number two, try to act, acclimate them to their new environment. If they’re in direct sun, maybe move them into the shade for a little bit. Number four, cut back on Watt or yeah. Oh yeah, temperature. Bring them in. Number three,
    temperature. Bring them in when it gets what below 40, I mean 50. Yeah. Well, 45. Yeah. Yeah. And cut back on water and fertilizing and make sure you have plenty. Your new indoor environment has the right light and humidity. I haven’t completed the process yet and we’ve had, we’ve had a couple nights below 50. So I have been spraying my plants and getting them ready for
    the summer side, but I still have quite a bit of work to do. So we’re talking about tropical plants that have been outside, soaking up that summer sun. Now it’s time to bring them in because it’s getting colder at night and they won’t survive in the day. So we want to spray them with an organic pesticide once a week for at least three weeks, preferably five weeks, but three weeks is, you know, works.
    And that would be with an insecticidal soap or a neem oil, which are both organic, I believe. Right. It’s more work. You can continue treating them with neem once you get them in the house, but it’s a, or any kind of insecticidal soap is just easier to do it outside cause it’s less of a cleanup. Right. And when you spray them, you want to spray the underside of the leaf as well as the top part and then the stem and then the ground around the plants. Right.
    So you just want to water them, no fertilization. Do that in the spring.
    State is the way I like. Yeah. They’re going into their dormant stage. Right. I do get some of my tropical plants will do their thing, um, um, flower in the windowsill for me, which is always a real tree. Well, then again, they might flower because they’re getting less light and less light sometimes triggers flowering. I like to, um, bring a lot of those plants, you know, that you wind up buying each year.
    I either collect the seeds, uh, like my petunias, I just leave them out there and repot the plants right. Those are annuals. Those are annuals, but I know they’re going to reseeds in place. If you leave them alone, but I, I found with a lot of those annuals, like bagonias and things and geraniums, I can make clippings, uh, um, uh, and put those clippings in my windowsill and managed to get those plants to, uh, you put them in water and water and I managed to get those plants going. And then of course I,
    I use as light as soil. You said you could, you did that with mint as well. Mint and basil as well. Um, uh, and I love to bring in my, um, uh, uh, my, uh, pots of spices because, uh, it’s even the perennial spices like rosemary. I keep wrote some rosemary outside, but I always, uh, uh, I make a little cutting. I have a cutting from your cousin’s place. Uh, how do you propagate that rosemary? Uh, the rosemary that I cut at your
    cousin’s place, uh, I brought it and put it in a jar in the windowsill, rooted like crazy. And now it’s in a little hot water and water. And that will be the rosemary I bring inside on my windowsill to use all, uh, um, yeah, I’ll show it to you. Um, yeah, I put it in water. Remember we were there and I took cuttings home. Yeah, I remember. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, um, used a lot. It was a, a hearty, uh, plant anyway. I’m glad I propagated it, but, uh, I’ll bring that inside just in case we have a really bad winter and some of the, uh,
    my, uh, rosemary doesn’t make it. Hey, rosemary doesn’t like temperatures below five degrees outside. I’ve lost some rosemary bushes in the past cause of cold weather. So, uh, and then of course you can bring your bulbs inside too, but that’s a whole nother, uh, uh, topic. Uh, how, uh, what are we doing time wise here? Oh, we got more. So the, let’s go over, um, um, um, what did we learn? Spray your plants, tropical plants that you’re planning on bringing inside once a week.
    Release three weeks in a row. Find a spot where you’re going to plant them. If it’s a cold floor, it might be a good idea to put a heat mat on there, uh, because they don’t like cold roots as well as, you know, the rest of the plant, um, have a spot obviously in your, in your house where you’re going to trans, transfer these to, and do not fertilize them. Do not fertilize, but they do need light and humidity.
    And, uh, they do need, uh, washing, uh, houses is dusty environment. So you want, that’s right. They’re not going to get any rain being inside. So it’s a good idea to, and you can do that with a little hot ball or with always cold water. Don’t ever give them hot water. Right. Um, uh, uh, yeah, put them in the shower, always cold water. A good shower is a good idea for something. Put a screen in the drain and get them a nice cool shower. Yeah. Put them in the bathtub and shower them. Uh, okay.
    So when the temperatures one temp below 45, move them inside, get rid of the pests, uh, acclimate them to their new environment, uh, and cut back on water and fertilizer and make sure they get enough light and humidity. Stop fertilizing. Yeah. Oh yeah. Exactly. I didn’t mean cut back. I said, I meant stop fertilizing. Right. Yeah. Okay, folks. Yeah. Bring those plants inside and bring them all year long and then enjoy them next year. So you don’t have to buy any new ones. That’s the idea. All right.
    So goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week. We’ll be back.

  • Hot Boxes

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Hot Boxes
    Loading
    /

    We’re an organic gardening show focusing on the health and environmental benefits of getting out there and gardening. That’s right. And we’d like to come up with solutions that don’t cost a lot of money. Right. And today we’re going to talk about cold frames or hot frames, whatever you want. Hot boxes. Cold frames and hot boxes. The basic of the same thing. And there’s a couple different concepts that we were just discussing.
    earlier. It can be a permanent structure in one part of your yard where you go and open the thing up and put your seedlings in there this time of year for a couple weeks to let them harden off before you go and plant them in your veggie beds. Like I have tomatoes and peppers in mine right now. Or it could be a just a way for you to protect tender plants and you can go ahead and move that thing around.
    As you see fit with hoops and a either a sheet of plastic or a large white sheet. I used to be real big on cold frame hot boxes back in the day when I didn’t have any good windows. The house I live in now has so many good windows. I really start on my seedlings inside and can basically grow them. They’re almost ready to transplant.
    My windows just got too crowded and I just moved everything outside and I used the technique WAC just talked about. I have these big hoops. Some of them are metal rods left over from old voting signs. You know those things you put in the ground. So I’ve used those. They’re not round. They’re not as ideal as the round hoops, but they work. And then I just use old plastic or sheeting or something and I cover everything up and use bricks to hold
    it down. So I’ll take my seedling, my little flats of seedlings that are in my windowsills that have basically gotten too big for the windowsills, move them outside and put them under these things, harden them off and tear the thing down because I’ll need that space to plant things. So they basically serve their purpose and that’s to protect the tender plants from cold nights.
    The tomatoes and basil are outside under these hoops right now. And if we did get a frost, they would be protected. Actually, I know one of the books I read was the Four Seasons Harvest. The guy lives up in Maine and they had hot boxes or cold frames where they were growing lettuce inside them through the winter. They were basically pull the snow off of the thing
    and open it up and pick their lettuce. If you wanted to be technical, if you took one of my hoop idea or the hoop thing with the plastic over it, snuck a little heat pad under there, you’d have by technically you’d have a mini greenhouse. That’s right. Yeah. Heat pad would be great, which I’ve done, but it’s not really necessary in this climate anymore. Of course, we all would love to have a greenhouse, which you could walk into and it’s heated and ventilated. Right. Yeah.
    Now that that that doesn’t happen on the cheap. But anyway, if you run out of space indoors or don’t have a good south facing window, but you have an outdoor area that gets some sun, you can build yourself a hot box, cold frame and start and and I have a stranger growing season extended or in my case, I really use it mostly in the spring to harden off things that I’ve started indoors. That’s right.
    Well, that’s it folks. That’s it this week. So goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week because we’ll be back.

  • Herbal Teas

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Herbal Teas
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show Focusing on doing it yourself in the garden to save money right and I’ve been Drinking way too much coffee. I’ve managed to cut back to one cup a day. I’m now down to one cup of real coffee and decaf the rest of the day and I’ve been drinking these delicious herbal teas and I started reading the ingredients on these herbal teas
    And as I go down the list. I’m like, oh my goodness. I could grow that I grow I do grow that and you know, so I I do make teas out out of herbs in the backyard, but Not as much as I could so you’re thinking about doing it to save myself money because I’m I love to drink drink coffee all day and now I drink decaf all day and it’s getting a little expensive so I’ve always loved making sun teas and things like that
    I’m going to experiment with making more hot and cold teas from herbs I grow and You know more about herbs than I do I’d like to read off a few of the ingredients I see on the back of my tea bags And let me tell and you just pipe in about whether you think we can grow it Yaro, I’m not familiar with that. Yeah, you can grow that easy
    Daisy we I have that right back there. No, I’ve never used it in teas I see it in a lot of ingredients particular medicine Camamille we’ve grown that I’ve never grown up, but I’m going to look in a little white like Daisy with the right Lavender it’s like I’ve got never used it for a minute all kinds of varieties of men I’ve got that now now to be fair meant I do add to my Tees my my home
    Brutees a lemongrass. I do want to grow that now you grow lemon balm That’s on the list. I have a quaker tea. I have lemon balm and it spreads like mint spreads everywhere. So I have that now this one anis is I have anis and this one anis yeah, and his sock yeah, I love the licorice flavored herbal teas
    I’ve never grown it, but that stevia. Yeah, that’s what sweetens and lemon balm of course Stevia boron borage borage is another hops. I’m noticing we grow that you grow that rose hips and rose petals now I have roses, but I It’s not going to kill you from what I’ve read, but it is a certain type of road that that’s sweeter than others So you could do that
    I’ve seen rose hips as grown at the shore that were really big poppy that might be one that’s sweet because of all the rosemary sage I always mispronounce the nasturtium nasturtium abysses ginger ginger’s on my list I make a I slice my own ginger and put it in hot water and drink that every day So I already do that, but the list goes on and on I’m only halfway through you got B bomb. I mean it just goes
    Pineapple’s aged sandwich uranium’s It goes on and on and on so I’m taking over I’m making a pledge that I’m going to drink I’m going to buy less expensive decaf and drink more Stuff either fresh or dried that I’ve grown in my own backyard and grow those plants on that list Yeah, so my takeaways would be Look at your tea your herbal tea
    I mean the list goes on and on like if you were to walk into an herbal Med shop, I mean the walls are just covered in a
    with all kinds of things now there are a lot of these are bitter and not going to be taste good So I’m after things that actually sort of taste good because a chicory is a substitute for coffee because I’m an addict to having a mug in my hand all day long that mug used to be filled with coffee now I want it filled with with stuff like bro Thanks for indulging me folks grow our own teas about my own little less money pet project of trying to
    Drink more teas and stuff that I grow myself because you can’t grow we can’t grow coffee I would if you could. Oh, I was down and visiting my daughter in New Orleans. I walked into her backyard There’s a lemon tree going there. I’m my yeah lemon trees I’d like to experiment
    Lemon every morning. Yeah, anyway, we’re blabbing here. Thanks for listening to our our yak and about an herbal tea garden Yeah, this is a tease this is about it. This is weed signing off This is whack from where any garden is join us next week and we’ll be back

  • Hardening Off Plants

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Hardening Off Plants
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show focusing on, do it yourself in the garden and save money while you’re doing it. What’s today’s topic? Well, it’s springtime and we’re going to talk about how to harden off those plants that you’ve worked a week or two on, starting from seedlings in your window seal. And now you’re thinking about moving these little seeds seedlings outdoors and it’s still early spring and you want to acclimate them slowly. And I think we call the process hardening, hardening off. Yes, yes, yes. We did have a couple of warm days here last week. I think it reached almost 80 degrees here in DC. And that prompted us all to think, well, it’s time to get out there and get our gardens moving. And I myself moved all, well, not all, but I’d say you have
    of all the tomato seedlings that I’ve started out to my flimsy hotbox that I was now held together with tape and rope. And it’s certainly not airtight at all. But well, let’s go over a few things that you should consider. First, you have to have a good location picked one that’s protected from too much direct sun and definitely protected from too much wind.
    You want to start gradually. You might want to put some of your seedlings out for a few hours and then bring them back in. So you want to increase your exposure slowly and you got to monitor and adjust. You got to pay attention to the weather report. Yeah, exactly. You know, open the tops of the thing and when it’s hot and they can get, they can get some rain that way and they can get some sunlight.
    And then you close the thing, of course the sun goes through the thing. And you don’t want to do it too early. You want the seedlings to… They should be at least six inches tall before you bring them outside. My tomato plants are currently, I’ve outgrown their windowsill home. So I moved them outside and we had a frost. So I had to cover them with floating rows of plants.
    And we did have an episode on how to build cold frames. And when you did that, you made sure that the fabric or the cloth was not touching the plant, right? In a few cases they are touching, but the plants are big and healthy enough to survive some loss of leaf.
    There’s a good location in your yard and start gradually and gradually increase the exposure to being outdoors and monitor and adjust accordingly. You know, if there’s going to be a freeze and you can’t cover some of your sensitive plants, you might want to bring them in. Right, right. And be patient. That’s my problem. I always move things outside too early.
    But you know, if they’ve gotten as big as my tomato plants, they’ll be okay just as you cover them up. That’s right. There are certain things you can get that kind of insulate the plants when you plant them and different gadgets I’ve tried over the years. But frankly, the best thing to do is just to let them grow in the hot box. Now your hot box, my hot box is about a foot tall in the back, maybe 16 inches tall in the back.
    And a foot tall in the front. And so I can have things in there and in small pots and they can grow up to just about the roof of the thing. So I can have them there probably all of April. And actually after this cold spell we have that’s happening just right this this minute here in DC, we had a last night temperature was 34 degrees. Now that that’s passed and I will be able
    to give these things away. And I live a few blocks away and we had a real frost in my neck of the woods. I had a little dish of water left outside and there was ice on it this morning. But everything that I covered with with plastic or cloth did just fine. I’ve left the plastic on because that’s translucent. But things I did cover with other protective things that that don’t let sun
    light in I did I did remove this morning. So you take the the covers off during the day and then you put them back on at night. Depending depending on the plastic I’ve left on today because it’s a cold day. And for my hot box I would lift the lid up and have the lids open all day and then close them at night. Right. So basically this requires a lot of monitoring and you have to have time on your hands to do this.
    So this is a weed signing off and this is whack from Wowdy Gardens. Join us next week. We’ll be back.

  • Growing Zone Changes

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Growing Zone Changes
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show coming to you from Little Hamlet of Tacoma Park. Yes, which has just been reclassified as far as the growing zone we’re in. What growing zone do we get changed to? That’s right. We used to be in 7A here in the suburbs of DC. Now we are officially in 7B. And downtown DC would be 8A.
    And we’d like to talk about 8A. That is true with all the tall buildings holding that heat in. Yeah, and all the infrastructure below the streets. I want to look up what you can grow with in 8A. Yeah, downtown. If you got a little townhouse down there in downtown DC, let us know what you’re growing. Right. But we’ve all noticed that spring is coming earlier. And winters aren’t quite as cold as they used to be.
    That’s right. My cherries and my figs have ripened earlier every year by a few days, it seems. And one of my best buddies grew up in Frederick and he has a little farm out there that he still manages. And he says definitely a week or two earlier. So what can you grow now that we are zoned in 7B as opposed to 7A?
    We are previously zoned at. We are going to find out, aren’t we? I think as much of the same things, it just means we can grow them earlier and longer. Yes, that’s right. Possibly a pecan, possibly an almond. Definitely an apricot. Right. It would be good to have a small apricot tree. Right. And I think the sweet cherry tree succumbs to a heavy frost quite easily. I love those. We are going to try a couple sweet cherry bushes.
    I have to look into that. I haven’t tried that. But I definitely noticed that with my arugula crop the last few years, normally to get my winter arugula to survive, I have to be prepared to cover it and protect it from a really intense frost. And I have not had to cover that arugula at all the last couple of years. And that’s just more than that. That’s evidence right there that our
    zone has changed because it was not like that 10 years ago. Yes. They base these readings on the lowest temperature that happens during the year. And in previous years, about a decade ago, our lowest temperature was around zero. Right. And now it seems like our lowest temperature is 20 degrees, maybe. We’ve really had no snow per se to speak of in the last, say, five years. It makes me wish I had taken no
    notes on all my, better notes on all my gardening over the years is to when things sprouted and all of that. So you can go back and look at it. But I’m not there. Have a spreadsheet. No, I wouldn’t do that. So folks, be venturous, grow your veggies, grow your greens all year long. Yeah. Start early and try to take advantage of this climate change and hold on, be prepared for
    growing things, maybe a little bit differently than you used to. That’s right. So this is weed. This is wack. Goodbye from Wowdy Gardens. Join us next week because we’ll be back.

  • Groundhog Day

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Groundhog Day
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens, and today we’re going to talk about ground hogs and ground hog day. Take it away, weed. Right. I was interested in how this tradition started, and you know, I just wanted those things. I don’t think anyone really knows other than probably goes back to pagan and Celtic traditions that were carried on, and like many traditions just adopted in the modern, like many old traditions that were
    based around agricultural societies just were adopted by us, and we’re happy to have them because it’s a joyful celebration. It’s celebrating the coming of planting your seeds. That’s right. We love to throw a party, so this is another excuse to throw a party. Right. What’s your prediction on ground hog day? My prediction is that it was not going to see a shadow, and we’re going to expect an early spring. Really early? I’m hoping for the opposite. I love snow. I love skiing and all that kind of stuff, and I love looking out at my beds covered in snow right now, and the little tiny garlic sprouts, just little heads above, and I can see my, anyway, I like the snow. So I’m hoping for the opposite. Yeah. Well, tell me what a ground hog day means to you as a gardener. Ground hog day to me means it’s time to think about cleaning out my trays and getting my seeds in order, figuring out exactly what seeds I’m going to use for my garden this year, and getting some in the mail if I don’t have what I need. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I used to love, but I like to save all my seeds. Right. This time of year reminds me of us getting my seed catalogs, and I can spend hours. That’s right. We can spend too much money on those seed catalogs as well. That’s why we really advocate for you to save your seeds from all the things that you grow. Right. Right.
    It is. Even though online uses energy. So what’s your favorite gopher movie? Well, I’m kind of partial to Ground Hog Day. We part ways on this one again. In yours is. I’m a caddy check person. I thought that was the most hysterical movie. It was a robotic animated gopher. Right.
    And Chevy Chase. And, you know, I think gophers should win in the long run. Myself, you know, they have a rough time at it these days. Everyone’s after them. They’re formidable creatures, though. I did work on a farm. They do dig holes in the fields, and they can hurt a dog in a fight. They’re strong. Yeah. And I can see why some people don’t want them in their fields, but I like
    Gophers. For sure. I imagine they could break some of the damage. Yeah. Bringing the gophers back. Do some serious damage to the farming. I think they also, some people call them ground beavers as well, I’ve heard. Ground hogs. Ground beavers. Ground beavers. Yeah. Yeah. Different than a badger. Right. Right. But I can’t remember what family, and all I think is a wonderful holiday. I think it’s great that people celebrate the midwinter and looking forward
    to spring. Okay. Happy, happy time. All right, folks. So get ready to check out whether that ground hog sees its shadow or not. And I say keep that Parker out. You’ll need it all. You’ll need it well into April this year. When we tend not to have really cold winters, we tend to have prolonged winters. Right. Cool, prolonged seasons. It was nice to see our first snow in a long time. I must say I’ve enjoyed that. Well, this, this is a
    weed signing off and enjoy ground hog day. And it’s whack signing off. We’ll see you next week. Take care. We’ll be back.

  • Forsythia

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Forsythia
    Loading
    /

    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show focusing on keeping beauty in the garden year round if you can. Right. We basically love gardening and love talking about gardenings and figuring out things on our own without having to spend a whole lot of money. And when we sit around and chat over a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, the conversation always veers towards something
    in the garden. That’s right. And a very easy plant to propagate that would save you money so you don’t really have to go go buy a bunch of these things. And actually they are fairly inexpensive at the nurseries and the garden stores is the forsythia. You never have to go buy forsythia. Forsythia, excuse me. It’s so easy to propagate by cuttings. That’s right. Now, this is an arching shrub that has yellow flowers that are that that are
    born all along the stems and their profuse in the springtime. It’s amazing how many flowers come out of this thing. It’s a real yellow. Yeah, true yellow. And if you like yellow and you don’t and you like a a an arching a shrub with an arching habit, that’s what you want to go with is the forsythia, especially if you want to be generally blooms in March. Right. And it’s interesting because it is an intergeneric hybrid or the types that grow around here, which is forsythia.
    Frase area is an intergeneric hybrid. And that in the Latin terms, the X that specifies hybrid is before the word instead of before the first word, instead of after the first word. So a regular hybrid would have the X in the after the first word. But this has the X before the first word. So it’s X forsythia, Frase area. And like so many of our gardening shrubs,
    were found by Europeans, mostly wealthy Europeans, botanists and surgeons and so on traveling in Asia and discovering. And this is how this particular shrub was discovered. Brought over, believe it was a Scottish guy. Brought it back and it became very popular in the 1800s in European and American gardens. And that’s right. I suppose why we have them. Yeah.
    No edible value and no usage for structures or anything. You can’t really build anything out of it. You can’t make baskets out of it. It really has no value other than its beauty and it sure is beautiful. My wife taught me a nice trick with it. Around January, you can go out and cut a branch and bring it inside and put it in a jar of water and no time at all.
    You’ll have a yellow, beautiful, yellow flower arrangement. Now the way to propagate this plant is to strip off the leaves and whatever’s coming off the tip of the cane and shove that in the ground. And sure enough, probably six months later, it’s going to sprout on its own and then you’ll be able to cut that cane. You’ll have a new plant. So my only bummer about the plant is the flowering is so short.
    And the rest of the season, it’s sort of hard to recognize what it is. It becomes a shrub. You just need to cut back because it grows over the pathway in distinguishing qualifications. Now the flowers are sterile. You will not be able to find any seeds in this plant. But like I said, if you want to propagate it, you just bend the cane over and shove it in the ground. If you don’t have any, ask somebody for a cane.
    I have a bunch in my front yard. I’m happy to give away some. All right. And you’ll find it growing in parks and places where you can just clip a few branches. Really, no one’s going to say anything. Well, it’s always good to get permission, folks. You go out there and do a little guerrilla gardening. Yeah. Well, this this this species is hard to kill. Yeah. Well, for sure. So, folks, planta facetia.
    You have a facetia in your yard and you can enjoy that nice yellow flower early in spring. Really? Yeah. You know, they’ve been coming earlier and earlier, it seems to me. But of course, that’s another topic. So goodbye from Weed and Wack. We’ll be back. Join us next week.