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Podcast: WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack

WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack

  • Finding Seeds at Local Markets

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Finding Seeds at Local Markets
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    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on doing it yourself in the garden and a lot of times that means Venturing out into your local farmers market or a place where there is produce that is sold Asking asking to find out to make sure it’s grown organically and then trying a bunch of new stuff and I was telling
    weed a minute ago here that I we’ve gone to the Tacoma farmers market I went out the other day a couple weeks ago, and I saw a couple new types of squash and I bought one Called honey nut and this is a miniature butternut squash. It’s only about the size shaped like an hourglass It’s only about I’d say six inches long and maybe three or four inches wide Just like an hourglass. So I bought four of them cut them brought them home
    Cut them in half took the seeds out to save the seeds and then bake them up and boy They were delicious. They’re just the most tasty little squash. I’ve ever had so I wanted to make sure I Grow I want to I’m basically I’m gonna try and grow these next year So then the next week I went back to the farmers market went back to the same stand or I thought it was the same stand and I said boy I don’t see any more of these Honey Nut squash and the guy said to me what we’ve never had bows
    I thought I was in the twilight zone because I was sure I was in the same stand So anyway, I bought two other squash one was a called butterkin Which is like Which like a big crust between a butternut and a pumpkin and the other was a blue winter sweet squash and took them home cut them up saved the seeds baked them tried them both and Found that I didn’t really like them all that
    much So I ended up throwing those seeds out. There’s no point in saving seeds of plants that I’m not intending to eat I would that was a rule I made a long time ago only grow only grow what I’m gonna eat and That narrows things down. I end up running out of space anyway, so So I encourage you to go to your local market pick out of interesting looking fruit Because it’s most likely grown locally so you will be able to grow it in your own
    Yard and then cut it up save those seeds let them dry really well put them on a paper plate someplace let them dry really well and put them in a paper bag and Next year plant those seeds absolutely and this doesn’t only apply to our our Tacoma Park Farmers Market anytime you’re traveling and hit a hit a farmers market say, you know and yeah anywhere anywhere. Yeah. Yeah, you know It could be an heirloom variety save a seed or two, you know
    Or ask if it’s an heirloom when I’m out and about in visiting strange towns I like to walk around and check out everyone’s gardens and And if the gardeners out there, they’re always willing to chat and you know what possibly give you some seeds exactly That has happened to me
    And you stop to chat next thing, you know, you have some bulbs that’s been in their family forever, right? And they’re now they’re spreading to my backyard. So So yeah, go to your farmers market try your favorite thing my favorite thing recently was a melon And I don’t remember the name of it, but I planted the seed unfortunately I didn’t nurse it well enough and it got taken over by as we mentioned earlier green beans out maneuvered it for sunlight so
    That that was that but I I’m definitely gonna experiment with that melon again if The next sweet tasting it was like an oranges It was sort of a cross between one of those Japanese melons And a cantaloupe and it was it was just it was it was a cool weird cross and I deserves its own space. Yeah, so I’m gonna look for that variety again and and They like you say all kinds of crazy squashes you can get nowadays
    I was at a farmer’s market up in Brooklyn and I saw some weird shit Not that I want to grow any but they were like some artists had sculpted some of these squashes. They weren’t you know like charm on scene Yeah, it was just unbelievable and some of the the Christmas like cauliflower’s you know with all you know that the farmers are grounds just some really cool stuff I don’t know how you propagate cauliflower. You couldn’t do that now from that new seeds, but you need something with seeds. Yeah
    So folks go and experiment. Oh, hey, hey, yeah experiment. I take that back You don’t need only seeds take a clipping. You know if you buy some delicious a Mentor parsley or something like that at the out of stem and put it in water still green and there’s a stamp put it in water It might root. Okay. I wanted that cut the stem then put it in water might root Okay, folks, I’m dig on rooting things absolutely
    For you We’re rooting for you. We’re rooting for you. All right. This is weed and this is whack. Join us next week. We’ll be back

  • Figs

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Figs
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    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 growing things that we like to eat and one exactly the things we like to eat and one of the things that’s sort of easy to do is Take a clipping from a fig tree. We have lots of fig trees growing in our neighborhood first thing you need to do is make friends with someone who has a fig tree and and then make a clipping and
    Cutting foot off the tip of the branch and route that and put in some water put on the windowsill Right it sounds simple, but it literally is that simple Take a cutting and put it in a jar of water and leave it on the windowsill and keep on changing the water is needed and Do a couple just to be safe, but eventually it will root and
    Windowsill transplant it to a pot when the weather is When the when the weather is what about 70 degrees easily well and and the thing has lots of roots You don’t want to transplant unless it has lots of lots of roots right when you transplant trying try not to upset those roots Yeah, or you can go to the nursery and buy a fig as well and follow the instructions on on how to prune it
    My wife Jenny about our fig tree a Turkish fig that We’ve had for 25 years now. Did she get it locally? No, she bought it. I I’m pretty sure she bought it on her way back from Virginia and at a nursery at a nursery and Brought it home and planted it and it’s been prolific. It’s a matter of fact
    my wife took a Creative writing class and one of she wrote an essay that was published on on this very fig tree and Are you gonna give us a little excerpt? Well, let me just read the last sentence of the first paragraph during this season meaning the season of ripe figs It is true. I love figs more than I love my husband. Anyway, she really writes well about
    Growing this fig tree and say I love is true. I love figs more than I love you But it’s a great essay look it up Jenny Apostle And you’ll and figs and you’ll find her essay But yeah that fig tree I just love it I loved my favorite time to eat from the fig tree is before I play tennis and
    An hour or so before I play tennis I go out and I pick a couple off the vine vine excuse me shrub shrub and Vine is a figure speech And I swear I feel like I play better tennis and have more energy. It’s anti-inflammatory. It’s a very good anti-inflammatory fruit and I like to eat it fresh off the off the plant and my wife D likes to dehydrate
    Well, she’s an excellent cook she can do anything and then put them in a jar and eat them later on But yeah, do not waste your figs folks. Do not and I’ve always been fascinated by the fig in literature, you know, Adam Covered with his little fig leaf and Eve that’s right here first bikini the fig leaf bikini going there Right, I sort of think of that when I when I look at my fig tree in the big leaf
    That I sprout on that thing. That’s right And if you wanted to plant a biblical plant in your yard if big is a great 100 plant other than that in season I like to just chop them up and add them to a whatever salad garden salad I’m making and oh It’s great with a little bit of goat cheese and you know when Jenny planted our fig tree. I don’t think she added much as far as You’re right and it’s
    Real clay is all clay around here, but this particular area. They’re fairly hardy and one more thing before we finish about The fig tree it’s been around for a long time. So it’s seen my kids grow and everything That’s right It the fig roots found its way into my garden beds and became a real problem and So every season I would have to chop the roots off a little root pruning root pruning to
    Keep them out of my garden bed, but they’re the roots are so gross so fast I gave up and I raised my one of the reasons I have raised beds is because the fig tree Was was getting all my nutrients out of my my beds and if you find that your fig patch does not is not putting off enough fruit for you a good way to increase fruit production is to give it a root pruning which would be to do exactly what we did is is take a
    And go around on the outside of the shrub Whether it’s a single trunk shrub or a patch of of woody ground cover shrub like Plants as I’ve seen both types of figs out there just slice those roots all the way around and that’ll increase fruit Okay, and after a couple years you’ll have a mature tree that will need to be pruned What’s the rule of thumb on pruning?
    How much of the plant? Well, if it’s really large like yours and mine and it has multiple trunks Then you want to take out one third of the largest growth Each year for three years in a row and that that will encourage new growth to come up from the base of the plant right you can do that with lilacs as well right well folks prune your fig tree because what happened to me is it got so tall
    that all the fruit became it was all of a sudden out of reach for me food yeah, and the Tree would rattle between the squirrels and the birds and yeah, no one likes that Yeah, so I’m I’m and I really need to do some work on pruning on my tree Okay, this what do we talk about here? Of course my wife saw article about a 20 year old fig tree. She planted which is just great reading I suggest it things you very well
    in this area, right They’re easy to clone so you really don’t need to you can be cheap like we like to be you don’t need to go to the nursery you can Take some cuttings and put them in water and once you have a mature tree You have to trim the roots and prune the roots and prune the top. Yeah, they keep keep it so it doesn’t grow too big
    Much for listening and again, we’d like to thank Eric and wowd for having 4.3 LP yes To come up to come radio.org. Okay folks are signing off. This is whack from where the gardens. This is weed See you next week. We’ll be back!

  • Feng Shui Zen Garden

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Feng Shui Zen Garden
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    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on doing things on the cheap which means doing them ourselves and today we’re going to talk about Zen gardening or the Chinese term is feng shui feng shui and I before we get going on this I’d like to say I think this concept applies to almost all of our Episodes and all aspects of our gardening
    I don’t have as much experience in this that you are a professional landscaper and done a bit of this but we’ve narrowed down six talking points on creating this Zen garden. What are they? Picking your auspicious spot, curve pathways, that’s number two, three balance with yin and yang elements, dark light, I don’t know if that can go into all kinds of things. You plant with intention, plant plants you love and like, incorporate
    those, five water features and six a good place to sit and meditate. So this start with number one how do you go about picking the spot? Well like you said yin and yang you want to have a spot that’s in the sun and then a spot that’s in the shade and you want to have sitting areas in both of those locations and plants that will be inviting and make you comfortable as you
    as you’re enjoying yourself in these two spots. Absolutely. And yin and yang we want to have a wet spot and a dry spot. We want to have a water feature where there’s preferably running water that can be heard in the garden and then a nice sunny spot where you have some big tall perennials. I agree. To me to me this the space you almost know it when you see it. You know to me that’s Zen garden.
    You know, you get that feeling you get that feeling. So you look at you see a little bit of moss and you’re like, Oh my God, that’s beautiful. To me, my favorite inner city Zen gardens are where you can put yourself in an area and almost feel like you’re you’re in a garden in the countryside and not in a city. That’s right. Close your eyes and lose yourself. Yeah. Now that was number one, you know, picking your space. So number two, curve pathways.
    In a way that always bothered me. It’s like, what if, what if your house has a straight path from the street to the sidewalk? Does that mean your energy is all messed up forever and you can’t correct it? What’s this white, white curve pathways? Well, the idea is they want energy to flow through any area. You do not want it to be stagnant. And in a straight line, I read energy flows too quickly. Right. Straight lines and corners make straight lines.
    Make energy flow too fast and corners make energy stagnant. So you want a slightly curving line on every edge of a bed and the bed would separate the plants from the grass. Somewhere and I’ve always instinctively incorporated this myself with pathways is that let people do the walking first before you create, make your pathway. And in other words, let people create the path and you often notice that.
    And then where the grass is worn that, that often is your pathway. Right. You can certainly make a wider walkway that has curved edgings with plants on both sides of it to break up the space. In other words, you want to have plants at different heights in your Zen garden. Right. And I agree. Curved beds are slightly more attractive.
    A curved line is more attractive to the eye. It’s a line of beauty as it curves around hillsides. Nature is curvy. It’s not good there. Balance your number three. Balance yin and yang elements. Boy, that applies to all of these topics we’re going over for this Zen garden. Yes. So when we’re talking functionally in the garden, we’re talking for yin and yang, we’re talking about having a plant
    that would signify eternity. That would be an evergreen or bamboo, which tends to be evergreen and have green, you know, stems. And then a plant that signifies renewal. That would be a generally speaking, they use weeping Japanese maples. The way I think of it is that you have your high energy plants, which are your often your annuals, your brightly colored full sunflowers.
    And then you have your more subtle greens, hostas and stuff that hide off on the annuals and perennials. We’re also talking woody plants. And you know, this move on to number four since yin and yang applies to everything you do in this Zen garden. You plant with intention. When we say that, we mean, I think plant things you love the best and that might harmonize with, you know, the rest of the
    writers in your yard, hummingbirds, like a tube shaped flower. So if you love hummingbirds, plant lots of that. I’d say plant some edible plants that humans can eat, some edible plants that animals can eat and some ornamental plants that humans can enjoy. That’s right. When we say plant with intention, let’s not forget about our, our friends, the deer. Yeah. Why, let’s just say wildlife, you know, whether it’s birds, squirrels or deer.
    They plant something that they want to eat too, because you know, they’re hungry. They’re just as hungry as we are. Right. Right. Squirrels love, love your bulbs. Now, water features critters need water. Your birds need water. And something about, to me, the water feature needs to be where you’re going to sit and meditate. Oh, absolutely. Have a waterfall there and have a bench. So two people can sit there or a couple of seats. So two people can sit there and enjoy it. And then,
    you know, plants around your water feature, lots of lush plants, definitely a place in the shade. Beyond water features, a lot of articles, a lot. I didn’t read that much. I mentioned metal in your garden. Usually chimes are things that you want to put near your window as, as a way to create, create good energy in your garden too. Metal chimes, metal sculpture. Right. So, and you know, you can do this on a balcony. You can do this. You can do this.
    And then a window garden and an atrium and all kinds of things. So basically everything we’ve talked about in our previous episodes, I think include Zen gardening in one way or another, because you want your garden to be the kind of place when you’re showing it off to someone, their mouth drops open and they just want to sit in and go, I love it here. I’ve forgotten about all my stress. Let’s just sit here for a while and forget about the, the daily
    toil. And in fact, when someone does that in your garden, that’s the greatest compliment they can pay to a gardener. Absolutely. Anyway, enough on this. Just go over what we chatted about, auspicious spaces. Pick a really cool spot. A couple of them. A couple of them. Curve pathways. Yeah. That’s just a line of beauty. Curves are beautiful. Balance your yin and yang. That’s important in all aspects of life. You know, plant with intention. What you love.
    You think will be a yellow will be good here. Red will be good there. Mix up your colors. They do say that you’re better off using it, making a bench of natural material, not metal for Feng Shui, but if the metal is all you got, well, by all means, use it. I’m not going to get rid of that nice metal outdoor table your your cousin gave me. I think it fits in well. It’s purple. So, you know, plant with intention and water features are
    always great if you can incorporate them and a cool place to sit with friends or alone in meditate. That’s right. All right, folks. Thanks for listening. So goodbye from weed and wack. Join us next week. We’ll be back.

  • Spring Ephemerals

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Spring Ephemerals
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    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens and today we’re going to talk about spring ephemeral Now they need to be planted in the fall. Are these bulbs or these? Can they be both bulbs ands. seeds? Generally speaking we’re talking about bulbs, but you know the the term ephemeral and the term spring ephemeral means that it completes its life
    cycle in the springtime early in the springtime before the tree canopy leaves out and Before you need to cut your grass, right? So in this instance, I’m mainly talking about two plants one is the crocus and as we know in Tacoma before the big monstrosity went up out the street here a Willow and Maple that field was filled with light purple crocuses and they were very
    Beneficial to the insects as well because you know, they’re they’re the earliest ones that come up in the spring I suppose that’s earliest flower First flower and also So it’s good to grow this Well, it’s yes, it’s good to grow it’s good to plant them in your yard and you can plant them in your yard and though they will bloom and complete their life cycle before you need to cut your grass
    for the first time wonderful and the mower blade will be cutting above the mature height of the plant so the mower does not hurt the plant at all and it’s just beautiful my neighbor has these and It looks like a little carpet of flowers Coming up Yeah, and as well before you’d have to cut the grass so the in crocuses the different colored flowers are the light purple type That’s extremely invasive. There’s a dark purple type. There’s a yellow
    There is a white and I believe there’s a white with a little bit of a purple streak to it And that’s those are the main colors. I was worried you might say invasive in there Probably were just to my knowledge just the light purple type are now the other thing that I I planted quite a bit when I was landscaping is the ice folly daffodil and that’s a daffodil that blooms
    in early February and so it can be planted in deciduous woods where you have basically very deciduous trees because they are they the this plant will finish its life cycle before the canopy leaves out so you can plant one in different spots and they will go ahead and multiply because daffodils is the Latin name is Narcissus and it is poisonous to the wildlife so they do not eat them hmm
    So no wonder they make it The wildlife will eat tulips but not daffodils, right? So if you’d like to have a little color the it’s the color of the ice folly is white on the outside and yellow on the inside Hmm, and it’s a very easy daffodil to to have in your in your garden So I just cleared off the snow on my giant pot of grass
    Arugula and it looks just like it hadn’t snowed at all. I’m extremely happy with that I’m letting mine my snow melt on my arugula bed, but the part that’s melted off already is looking I haven’t tasted it yet, but it looks good to go Radishes look good to go. I’ve been eating my radish leaves. They’re supposed to be really nutritious by the way. Yeah That’s another episode and you have anything in the hot in your hot box. No, no, not right now
    Everything’s outside. I don’t have a hot box. I usually just put a plant I have wiring right so you didn’t have I was going to and I thought you know what this this is gonna be a short Cold blast. It was colder than I thought it but the snow insulated everything so everything’s cool All right, folks. So next fall go out there and plant a bunch of crocuses in your yard and if you have a thermal spring ephemeral ephemeral excuse me springy
    Femurals and some crocuses in your yard and then you can enjoy them the next year and they’ll come up every year from that on and Think about some ice follies in your landscape. Absolutely Well, thanks for that. This is a species. I really don’t know much about I’ve always admired All right, folks until next time take care

  • Endocannabinoid System Reset

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Endocannabinoid System Reset
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    This is Weed. And this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show that likes to talk about all the aspects of gardening. And we like to use recycled products as much as we can for growing things. And today we’re going to divert a little bit from the task. And a growing cannabis is now legal in Maryland. And D.C. And D.C.
    would like to switch the subject a bit and talk about. Our endocannabinoid system reset. Right. And what is the endocannabinoid system? Let’s start with that first. The endocannabinoid system is the largest system we have inside our bodies. And it is in every single organ of our bodies and basically CBD mainly reacts to these different receptors that we have in our bodies known as a CB1.
    and CB2 receptors. And animals have this system inside our bodies. So that means our body produces a cannabinoid like substance. Yes, it produces its own cannabinoids on their own. And when you add CBD and the other cannabinoids to that, it really boosts the system, makes everything work better. So in order to make sure. No wonder people have been growing this stuff forever.
    Yeah. In order for your endocannabinoid system to work properly, it needs to be reset on a regular basis. And that means after a certain period of time, you need to stop all cannabinoids for four consecutive days. And the reason you need to stop for four is because they stay in your system for three days. So just as when you’re first starting to take a CBD product, you need to
    take a little tiny bit for the first three days. And then on the fourth day, you can increase your dose because it will start working for you. Just as you need to do that, you need to when you do the reset, you need to remove this stuff and it takes that long to get out of you. Just like it takes that long to get into you. So if you consume cannabis, whether you grow it yourself or you go to a dispensary, you should if you want the cannabis to work as well as it does,
    you need to take it out of your system. And if you don’t do this, eventually it will stop working for you. So some folks say, well, I’ve gotten this weed and I smoke it and it will work to the beginning, but now it doesn’t seem to get
    me high anymore. What’s wrong? Well, what’s wrong is you need to stop it for four days and then start it again and it’ll work just fine. Right. And this plays in with the idea of moderation and all things is probably probably the better way to go. Absolutely. On things. Absolutely. Don’t overdo anything. But do your reset on a regular basis.
    And your CBD will work for you and whatever you’re consuming for your recreational enjoyment will work as well. Right. Yeah. Take a break from anything that you do consistently. It’s always good to have variety in things. That’s right. So what did we learn from today’s episode? What did we learn? A fascinating science about the endocannaboid system that
    I quite haven’t wrapped my head around and I have a feeling the scientific community hasn’t either. I just know taking a break from cannabis and then using it again is a good way to consume the stuff. CBD blocks COVID on a molecular level. It’s by far the best thing you can do to protect yourself from COVID. And speaking of which, if you want
    to protect yourself from COVID, you want to stay away from folks on that last day of your endocannabinoid system reset, because on that last day, on that fourth day, you have zero CBD in sight in your system. Interesting. They’re not protected. Interesting. So that’s a little off topic, but it’s a good thing to know anyway. So our takeaway is with your CBD products is take it consistently for what? How many days? Well, a couple months and then stop for four days in a row.
    And then start again. And same thing if you want to, you know, looking for recreational use of cannabis flower. Follow the same rule. Follow the same rule. Well, that’s great advice. And thank you for listening. So goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week because we’ll be back.

  • Daffodils and Tulips

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Daffodils and Tulips
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    This is Weed. And this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on keeping beauty in the garden year-round when we can. Right. And it’s springtime and we’re going to talk daffodils and tulips. Cool. Now, we picked the two of them. First, we’re going to do daffodils, but we decided we’d throw tulips in because they come up at around the same time and they’re bulbs, etc. And they’re planted together quite often.
    Yeah. Well, why don’t you give us some background on the Latin name and a little bit about planting the thing and what you’ve learned over the years, working with this species. And then I’ll talk about the history of the plant. Okay. So the Latin name for daffodil is actually narcissus. That’s a genus, right? That is, yeah, that’s a genus. And they’re different species of narcissus.
    And so daffodil is one of them. That feels a common name and daffodils are native and they spread and they will come true to color year after year. So that if you plant one in one spot, you know, it’s going to come back the same year and be the same color and put off some offsets. So more, more daffodils will pop up as the years go by and they can be planted in
    deciduous forests as long as they bloom before the canopy leaves out. And I planted quite a few of this one type called ice folly, which does bloom really early. There’s a bunch of my yard right now. And so that completes its life cycle before the canopy leaves out. It’s considered a spring ephemeral. Since daffodils are poisonous, farmers tend to plant them underneath fruit trees, trying to deter the wildlife from going over to the fruit tree and eating the fruit.
    Let’s see, what else? Because they’re poisonous, they don’t need to be have any special things done while planting. While I can say tulips are definitely eaten by the squirrels and the deer. And I believe the tulip Latin name is tulipa. Like the tulip poplar.
    The tulip poplar is Leriodendron tulipaphera. So we’re going to have to look that one up. I’m just going to escape my Latin memory at this point in time. Well, it’s a beautiful spring flower symbolizing resurrection in Easter and all that kind of stuff. But it has a fascinating history. I’m talking about the daffodil now.
    The name Narcissus. You can picture some Greek gods staring at himself. And the flower is sort of that beautiful. You want to stare at it all the time. They’re from the Middle East and Europe. The Romans introduced them to the British islands around 300 BC. So this flower has been domesticated for a very long time.
    You know, when you’re walking in the woods and all of a sudden, you know, out in a state game land or something like that. And you come across a bunch of daffodils in the spring. You can be pretty sure that that was a homestead.
    At one time or another because they planted daffodils around there. And if you do some digging around, you’ll probably find signs, other signs of human activity in that in that area. But, you know, the modern ones were bred in the 1800s and in Britain. And where I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, we call them junk junk junk. And that is the
    It’s the genus Narcissus junk old species is a variety. But we used it as a common name growing up in Western Pennsylvania to cover, you know, any of them you saw. You saw growing around. But that, you know, that’s about all I want to say about the history of them and tulips. I really didn’t do my research on tulips. But all I remember about tulips was economics class and Dutch tulip mania bubble that burst in on

    1. But it was often considered our first speculative bubble because tulips became such a sign of wealth and prestige that people invested. But the reason that the bubble burst is because the tulips did not come true to color the next year. They had ones that were almost black. They were the most valuable ones. They were almost completely black. And actually,
      this apparently this one guy traded his house and his business for one bulb. And when he got it, he dropped it on the ground and smashed it because he had the only other one. Right. So instead of having the only two, he had the only one and that was supposed to be so much more valuable. You know, as a collector, I don’t I don’t see that logic. But at any rate, it because it did not come true to color that in successive years, that’s why the whole thing fell
      through. Now that color can actually be found very easily these days. It’s the dark, dark purple. Right. And I’ve seen them. Well, real quick, before we sign off, this go over, you plant these things in what October, November, the bulbs, you get the ball from, you know, find them at the hardware store or go to the culture club. Right. I most of mine, I’ve been really lucky in my in my neighborhood,
      gardeners like to, when they thin out their bulbs and stuff, they’ll put them in a little box in front of their house with the sign saying free. And that’s where I end up getting most of my dad. Yeah. And Tacoma Horticultural Club has a stand at the fairs and they always sell their bulbs very inexpensively. And so it’s good to get it from those guys. They do like full sun. They like to be well watered.
      And you can’t put them in a place that’s too wet or else they’ll rot. Full sun. But otherwise, they’re pretty easy. And as we said, daffodils are the go-to because you don’t have to worry about the squirrel and the deer going after them. That’s right. I have planted tulips in cages back when I was landscaping and that’s a royal pain in the neck. One thing that when we decide to talk about daffodils, my favorite daffodil sighting in the area is on Rock Creek Parkway.
      It’s awesome. We biked down there. We biked down to the Cherry Blossoms. Actually, my wife’s going down there today and checking out. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, daffodil hill is not to be missed in DC folks. All right. Let’s do our sign off. One more thing. You want to plant your bulbs three times the diameter of the bulb is the depth. Okay. So with that note, goodbye from Weed & Wack. Join us next week. We’ll be back.
      [BLANK_AUDIO]

  • Cut Worms

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Cut Worms
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    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. Yes, and we’re an organic gardening show Focusing on the benefits of gardening. That’s right And we like to encourage you to go out there and grow your own food because growing your own food keeps you healthy and is therapeutic for you and we get a real kick out of Reusing things and keeping gardening a little bit up. You know as inexpensive as we can that’s right and inspected as possible
    Right, right. Well today I’m gonna vent because we’re going to discuss the cut worm and it is I have always had a problem with this critter and It’s a caterpillar turns into a nasty moth. See I’m upset Nothing’s more they do the damage at night. They love nice succulent little seedlings corn tomato Anything you stick in the ground that comes up on its
    own outside You know, you have it if you come out one morning and and a beautiful little sunflower seedling that wasn’t Into too tall is now toppled over or just disappeared cut in half generally is what they why they’re called cut worms They’re not worms at all. They are caterpillars of different types of moths, right and they’re they’re really annoying fortunately I’ve over the years I’ve just plant extra sunflowers because
    I know I’m going to lose some but this year when I noticed it happening I decided to try to organically Go after them, you know, I have a question for you Do you think I would enjoy gardening so much if there if there were no challenges out there? That if there were no bugs going after things no deer going after things would it be as much fun? That’s hard to say. Yeah, because gardening is a challenge folks particularly if you try to do it organically and
    The cut worm is just one of many things that you’re up against I think gardening might be a bit more rewarding if we didn’t have all these pests and creditors right attacking our plants Well, you you you don’t have as much of a problem with the the that’s right I have never really had a problem with cut worms and that is because I remove all the leaf litter around my plants and I’d like to bring this up again We had an episode earlier about whether whether we should raise
    or not to raise and it turns out you really should rake and get all the leaves out from under the shrubs and out of your beds because that is where bad bugs overwinter in other words they stay there through the winter and then they come out and eat your stuff well reading up on these cut worms they hide in the leaf litter as well and then they come out at night to eat the plants because they’re basically protecting themselves from being eaten themselves I read about one species I think it was
    in the Pennsylvania Ag Extension website that burrows into the soil during the day and it will disappear your seedling it will literally pull it in pull the whole plant into the ground down into this burrow and you’ll come out in the morning and like I like to do with my cup of coffee every morning and check by what’s coming up and you’ll go and say oh there was a sunflower plant there and it’s gone and
    this article confirmed that that can happen well I think if you find that that’s the problem you need to dig up that soil and get rid of that soil because you know that rub is only going to be a few inches down okay I always get around it by growing extra stuff figuring I’m going to you know sort of like a sea turtle laying a hundred eggs knowing that only one or two will survive of course I don’t know if they lay that many eggs but I plant extra plants that are
    acceptable to this and this year I it’s too late now to pull up all the little small leaves that I miss I’m using I’m spraying it and I’m using how do you pronounce it diet diet makes earth earth which is a it’s isn’t a clay like something I don’t know what exactly it is but it’s supposed to be a non-toxic and I think the worms just hate it or the caterpillar just hates it so it’s probably a clay like so we’ll see
    I’ll have some flowers but I won’t have as many as I had originally planted all right folks so take away from this is a plant extra seeds remove your leaf litter yeah yeah before you plant right in the planters and everything and you can learn to identify this caterpillar and crush it and and you can get a magnifying glass and look for eggs I haven’t found out if neem oil works on it yet but I’m going to try that
    uh… okay well the best thing to do would be to remove your leaf litter that’s the first and uh… say break the soil around your plants right lightly because they will be writing in your plan and another thing I’m doing I’m saving my eggshells and crushing them and putting them around the plants as well because uh… slugs and caterpillars don’t like that don’t like uh… sharp objects to crawl over right so I’m doing that as well alright folks well thanks for listening again and
    tune in next week because we are weed and whack and we’ll be back take care

  • Copper Wire

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Copper Wire
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    This is Weed and this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We are an organic gardening show that talks about all aspects of gardening I was just saying earlier just caught caught me there. It’s amazing what copper does and that’s what I was saying because Today we’re gonna talk about the idea of coppers isn’t police cops are coming No copper copper You know how great how copper
    Helm my works the cops are coming coppers Yeah, copper But we’re talking about how it’s it maybe it’s possible that coiled copper wire around a Doyle stuck in the ground could collect Ions From the atmosphere and send them down to the ground and get the roots to grow more which is gonna better for your food now I don’t know is this a why wives tale well
    I hadn’t heard about it, but you know I’ve noticed is really attractive copper Doyle like things is that what they are? Yeah gardening stores, and I never knew what they are They’re actually little antennas in the theory as you plug it into the soil and that picks up electromagnetic You know water air through the air a charge a tiny tiny charge and it gets into the soil and enhances The growth of your roots and your plants I did a real quick
    Little bit of research on this and ran it by a science friend of mine Nothing in peer reviewed on this, but there’s two scientists who? Put together a machine to do all of this and they did their experiment. They didn’t use the copper They use a machine to charge the soil that that collected the energy from the ambient air as well But it was an expensive machine and they did their experiment with peas and they had great
    success in germination and in What they produced with their peas, but they had to plug the machine in or what I’m not sure on that, but all I got from my scientist buddy was that It did made what what these guys scientists did even if it worked It’s just not practical for the back for the back yard garden and he said he he’s interested in the Doyle thing, but he He suspects it probably nothing to it, but couldn’t
    harm anything one of the guys I like on the web is The gardening professor and he says it’s a bunch of you know what? And don’t bother with it. Well, it could be a husband’s tale not a wife’s because my wife just thinks it’s it’s a bunch of Well, you know, that’s what I liked that when you first told me about this You know one thing I love about gardening is I love folklore and gardening is a great source of folklore a lot of it is
    Real wisdom and really works. This is probably a case of something that may not work But you were the one who told me when I complained about slugs one time the copper wire mesh will Repel them repel them and I looked it up and sure enough the copper wire mesh from ambient Atmosphere creates a static charge. It’s enough to a tiny one. That’s enough to make the Slug not want to crawl over the mesh
    There’s real signs behind that years ago. I knew a guy who grew Escargo in his basement closet and he did it with five gallon buckets that were stacked on their sides slightly Around the edge of the doorway and the floor so this other things wouldn’t climb out
    Successfully was but as soon as I heard about copper lined doorway I said that’s it and also You know if you’re an investor the price of copper is constantly growing up You buy a ton of these things and you can watch your wealth grow in the backyard. That’s right Well, they stopped they stopped making copper pennies in 1982 right And of course it’s illegal to melt down your your coinage But the takeaway from this is those things that you are very attractive
    Copper always looks nice in the garden. It does copper does Deter slugs, but you have to use it differently and it can’t harm your plants at all and The way you should get one stick it in see if it works. See if it works. Oh, yeah, we’re gonna do an experiment or not We’re gonna do an experiment piece. We’re trying to do an experiment with something and they have to and the experiment the plants have to they can’t be too close They can’t be right next to each other because you and they have to be in separate
    Bins electrical charge But same type of soil and everything same seed batch and everything Yep, same size. We might have to wait till next spring Yeah, well, hey, I find this bit of folklore just fascinating Hope you did too and this is weed signing off from Wadi gardens and this is whack from Wadi gardens by the way to come radio org 94.3 LP
    FM the place to be right to come to DC, right? Join us next week. We’ll be back

  • Cloning or Rooting

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Cloning or Rooting
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    This is Weed. And this is Wack with WOWDY Gardens. We’re an organic gardening show focusing on ways to continue our green harvest into winter. Right. And one way I like to do that is that old-fashioned method of taking a clipping and rooting it. Sticking it in some water. Sticking it in some water. For example, I like to have basil and mint on my
    windowsill throughout the winter. So what I do is before a frost comes, I clip a couple mint sprigs and basil sprigs and I bring them in and put them in the windowsill in water and wait for them to root. Sometimes I just keep on adding water all winter and I’ll have a small supply of mint leaves. In other words, you don’t have to put transplant them. Do you have to put anything else in the water?
    Just more water. You use distilled water or just regular tap water? I use regular tap water, but I know people who swear that, you know. You’re better off with distilled water. Distilled water. But I just use regular water. But you don’t use rain water, right? I don’t use rain water for indoors because sometimes my rain water has a bit of an odor to it. Could have some back pain or something. And you want it to be as sterile as possible. You do want your winter clones. For me, it’s usually the
    things I like to use in my cooking, the basil, the mint, or rosemary even will root and things like that. Although I can go pick my rosemary most all winter long outdoors. But I love to have a little spice garden going. And so I don’t have to hit the grocery store up for a sprig of mint. For sure. That sounds like a great idea. It’s unfortunately too late for me to do this year, but I’m just
    definitely going to try that next year. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, you can probably pull up a root of your mint right from the soil and bring it inside and warm with light. Oh, also, I leave my kitchen lights on all night long, which is probably a waste just to keep those plants on thinking it’s still a longer days. So anyway, if you’re like me and like
    to have some green some some spice and you can do this with your flowers. I do it with my geraniums and you do with the Gonyas and other things where I don’t want to drag the whole whole pot in for the winter. So I’ll make four or five cuttings of a geranium and a glass of water and come next spring. I’ll have four or five geraniums to move outside and I won’t have to go to the green house. Nice. Unfortunately, I’m down to all red. I don’t know why I only clip red.
    It could be that they revert back to that color. Yeah. Is that being cheap cloning? Okay, so if you’re going to do cloning, start with some clean water. Ideally use a clean tool to make a cutting tool to be sterile. You want to wipe it down with maybe some. The sooner you put that the sooner you put that cutting in the water and get it
    in a nice one to seal the better. But you can’t let it dry out. You have to add water. That’s right. You got to add water because it will be sucking up that water as those roots will start to grow. Right. Right. So enjoy. And can you think of any other tip for cloning? That’s it. That’s it. All right. See you. See you folks later. Goodbye from weed and whack. Join us next week and we’ll be back.

  • Cinco de Mayo Hot Peppers

    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    WOWDY Gardens with Weed and Wack
    Cinco de Mayo Hot Peppers
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    This is Weed. And this is Wack with WOWDY gardens and we’re an organic gardening show. Focusing on the health benefits and environmental benefits of getting out and digging in the soil. That’s right. Grow your own food. You’d be so much happier. Right. And today we’re celebrating Cinco de Mayo. And the first thing that came to mind for us was growing hot peppers. That’s right. I used to love hot peppers. I had a hot pepper poster and
    hot sauce poster up in my man cave. And you know, we used to collect hot sauces. In fact, my neighbor makes his own hot sauce. Right. I make my own hot sauce. I made three different varieties last year with some buddies. A yellow one, a green one and a red one. Wow. That’s cool. And they’re sitting on my dining room table. I made them rather mild. Most of them I took the seeds out. We all got together with the peppers we had grown in our backyard and cooked them down.
    took the seeds out and used a lot of bell peppers, yellow bell peppers to go with the yellow hot pepper and so on. What would you cook them with? That’s a good, I’d have to, you know, that was last fall. All I know is when we were cooking them down. In water? Must have been water. Yeah, it was boiling them down, you know, and it was quite strong. But to
    it really didn’t come out overpowering because we used a lot of bell peppers, as I say in garlic. And, you know, we experimented, we read. Onions. I’m pretty sure we did onions, but I can’t say positively. I know we did. But you might see me in hot sauce. It’s a delicious hot sauce. And I grew a pepper last year that I discovered by mistake because my mom’s from North Carolina and this pepper has
    the word Carolina in it. It’s called the Carolina Reaper. You may have heard of it. Super hot, but it takes a tiny is a pinch of a dried Carolina pepper to give a dish a really, to give a cilantro salsa dish a really nice flavor without being overpowering at all. Of course, if you take a bite out of the thing, you’re going to go to the emergency room or at least fill as if you should go to the emergency room. Yeah. When I grew pepper,
    I mainly grew this one little tiny type called plicky new and plicky new means mouse turd in Vietnamese. And it was about the size of a mouse turd. These little tiny peppers say it. Say it would be a size of a jalapeno for Barbie doll. Okay. It was a tiny, tiny pepper, really considered an ornamental pepper. And the things were tiny. I’d say the whole pepper plant stood about eight inches tall. You can grow them on your windows. Yeah, you can. And the each plant will put off about 400.
    Peppers. So it’s extremely prolific. And you can have these things on your windows. So then I bring them in and then keep them up all the way up until Christmas where you have some green and red on your windows. So from these tiny peppers is kind of cool. And I did that for a while and we saved the seeds and it would come true from seed every year, which, you know, not all cultivars do tiny, tiny seeds, tiny pepper, the smallest pepper I’d ever seen. And of course you would not cut these open. You would basically just throw one or two
    in a dish and then, you know, make sure you don’t eat the thing when you’re eating the dish. Spice it up just fine. You want to take them out. But I do love hot peppers and I don’t overdo it. I can’t eat Thai Thai hot style like I might have been able to as a young person. But one of the highlights of my week this week as far as gardening goes was I had saved some of my Carolina Reaper seeds. These are the coolest little
    globe like wrinkly things with a little tail on them, a rather large bush. Anyway, I planted some of the seeds about five days ago. I thought they weren’t going to come up and lo and behold, they’re there. Popping up. Popping up. So and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me to come down and see a seed popping for sure. And not getting it. So if you’re like me and you like Mexican food, you might like spice. It’s not too late.
    You need to start your hot peppers in the garden right now or pick some up at your local market. That’s right. We have the orange pepper in our garden design and our hoodies in our shirts. Right. And I, you know, we do grow quite a few orange peppers myself. These are mild peppers and they are heirloom. There’s supposed to be an heirloom type. So we’ll see. They weren’t nearly as prolific as my tomato seedlings. So we’ll see what happens. If you leave the plant standing, the seeds will drop and you’ll have
    volunteers the next year. Yes, that’s the theory anyway. So take away from this. Start your, Cinco de Marz, a good day to start your chili peppers. Yeah. Or buy some from the farmers. Or buy some from the farmers market. They’re quite easy to grow. They do need a little bit of space. Most hot peppers put out more fruit than sweet peppers do. Right. Yeah. I always have an abundance of peppers hence making hot sauce. And some of the ones that are
    considered ornamental are still hot. They’re just tiny and most people don’t want to use them culinary wise, but you can. Yeah. The hot pepper is a large part of my cooking arsenal. I’m always reaching for my jar of dried peppers from the garden. It’s nice. It’s nice to be able to grab your own spices that you’ve made from your own garden. Yes. So celebrate the holiday and make up a spicy dish. Plant some peppers.
    No. This is Wack from Wiredy Gardens. Join us next week and we’ll be back.