This episode originally aired on May 6, 2026.
Spring is finally here, and it's time to dust off those trowels and watering cans with the start of gardening season.
From edible plants to shrubbery herbs and flowers, gardening can be a rewarding and fun experience, but also stressful and nerve-racking.
What are some of the best tips for new and experienced gardeners, and is there anything different this year than in the past?
We will have experts ready to answer all the questions you have, from what you should plant this year to key dates and interesting tips.
Plus, we will have a preview of the popular Chadwick Arboretum Plant Sale.
Guests:
- Laura Deeter, director, Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens
- Katie Carey, owner and founder, Columbus Foodscapes
- Mike Hogan, extension educator/associate professor of agriculture and natural resources, Ohio State University
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. Spring is here, the flowers are blooming and trees are blossoming and home gardens are in season again. With all of the gardening trends for this year, are there any big challenges gardeners will have to worry about as we head towards summer?
And are you supposed to be starting your garden now? Do we have to wait till after Mother's Day? We're gonna get all important gardening timing tips. We have experts here to answer all your questions. Joining us in the studio, we have Laura Deeter, Director of the Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens. Welcome back, Laura.
Laura Deeter: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: And we also have Katie Carey, owner and founder of Columbus Foodscapes. Welcome back, Carey.
Katie Carey: Thank you.
Juravich: And we have Mike Hogan, extension educator and associate professor of agriculture and natural resources at Ohio State University. Welcome back Mike.
Mike Hogan: Thanks.
Juravich: So I wanted to say, you know, it's already May and what should we have been doing last week that we're already behind on? Laura, let's start with you. Do you believe in that whole, you should wait until after Mother's Day to really get down and in the dirt.
Deeter: I think you can do a lot of things like cutting back and cleaning up, getting things ready for gardening, but you do have to keep an eye on the weather because of the average last day of frost being May 15th, so generally after Mother's Day is when we're starting to think about putting our annuals and vegetable plants out, but all of the prep work can be done prior to that.
Juravich: All right. Well, Katie, you deal with a lot of planting of food, right? So you care more about this whole Mother's Day thing than maybe some other gardeners. What do you need to what do you tell people when they about that whole old adage of waiting till after Mother's day?
Carey: Yeah, so what we tell our clients is that Mother's Day is a great target date for a lot of our warm season crops, stuff like tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini. There's actually loads of stuff, though, vegetable plants that you can plant in the cool season in late March, early April, that will do just fine with a little bit of frost on their tips. So, mustards, leafy greens, root vegetables, that kind of stuff will actually do totally in the cool season.
Juravich: Okay, so we could get some of those in the ground now before Mother's Day, but we need to start keep our tomato plants inside maybe for another
Carey: a couple of weeks. That's exactly right. And you know, instead of boring you with every single plant and exactly when you plant it, we have a great planting calendar that's totally free for people on our website. So it might be helpful.
Juravich: Okay. And Mike, what about you? What do you think of that old adage of waiting till after Mother's Day?
Hogan: You really can't follow a set date on the calendar. Like Laura said, the average frost date is just that. It's the average. The definition of average is if it's your head's in the icebox and your butt's in the oven, on average you feel good, right?
Juravich: So I've never heard that one. Have you heard that? Okay. Are you did you just make that up?
Hogan: No, I think Ben Franklin did. Anyway, the point being is, I can remember we have frost in June, you know, and we're out there covering plants, both flowering plants and... Really? You're kidding.
Juravich: Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
Hogan: Now, certainly that's changing a little bit. We're seeing incremental changes with climate change, obviously, but you really just can't garden just according to the calendar. You really have to have your eye on the weather and do things correctly.
We're harvesting our lettuces and greens on campus that were planted a long time ago in our raised beds. And we've got radishes ready for harvest. We have beets that are getting close. So there's lots of things you can do, as Katie said, with cool seeds and vegetables. And like Laura said, a lot of the maintenance type of thing is getting mulch refreshed, doing things to make the gardening season easier for you.
Juravich: I wanted to talk about mulching because my husband is in a mulching zone right now. We're on bag 27, right? I try to keep track of how many bags of mulch we buy so that we buy the right amount each year. But to mulch or not to mulche? Laura, what's your thoughts? Do you like mulch? Mmm.
Deeter: For me, there's a benefit in terms of keeping the soil temperature more regulated, keeping the water in the soil more regulated. There's an appearance thing that a lot of people like with it, it's an esthetic thing, but you don't need a lot. And so I see people putting on two, three, four inches, two inches, that's all you really need to have some benefit from having mulch on there.
Juravich: All right, Katie, I mean, you're focused on food, so I think we probably are keeping our mulch away from our food, I would hope, right?
Carey: It's a mixture actually, you know a lot of our perennial stuff if it's in the ground raspberries blackberries I'm right there with Laura, you, know a little bit of hardwood mulch is great good for weed suppression good for soil and moisture You know in our raised bed vegetable gardens I tend to steer people away from mulch especially hardwood Mulch if you want to mulch in your vegetable gardens, especially in raised beds straw is a really good mulch
But actually the way that we garden in our company is that we plant so intensively so we kind of, it tends to look like we're over-planting the beds almost, to some folks, so that there's so little soil being exposed that you don't really end up needing to mulch.
Juravich: Mike, what about you? Do you like mulch?
Hogan: Oh, absolutely. I don't know how you can garden without mulch. You know, if you're gardening in the ground, certainly we don't mulch our raised beds and a lot of our community garden projects. But if you are growing in the ground, you know, if you were retired and you have lots of time to weed and manage other things, you can try without.
But, you know, sometimes we forget that mulches can be a good source of organic matter. Some can provide a little bit of nutrients to the soil as well. It's like Katie said, straws are great, one of the best mulches we have. Unfortunately straw is very expensive right now, but some living mulches like ground cover cover crops that we plant in the fall, we can till under, we can just cut and leave them lay as a mulch, as they decompose they add nutrients, and more importantly they add organic matter to make the soil more workable.
I'm like Laura, I have real problem with the way, especially not gardeners so much, but homeowners and even developers and operators of commercial facilities They do this volcano mulching. You know, Laura said two to three inches is appropriate. You see people 16 or 18 inches of these cones around trees. And it's really detrimental to the tree.
It's detrimental. It allows for insects and other pathogens to sometimes get into the bark, through the bark and into the cambium of the tree, it's actually not good for water infiltration on the root zone around. So really. That's got to stop. And I think a lot of times it's just a lack of awareness of the damage that too much mulch can cause.
Unfortunately, you know, a lot that is done by the commercial landscapers in the green industry and it's an organization OSU Extension has worked with their association to point out that, hey, you may be generating, you know, more income time of the season where you're not doing a lot of that, but it's really detrimental long-term to plant health.
Juravich: Okay, so Laura, what Mike was talking about, do we not use any mulch around our trees or we don't wanna do the volcano thing? Like tell me more.
Deeter: You definitely don't want to do the volcanoes. And you'll see it all over the place. If you drive around Columbus, even unfortunately on campus, you can find these trees where they've piled the mulch up six, eight, 10 inches. You can find them on commercial properties. If you have malls where you've got plants in parking lot islands, they are often mulched to the extreme.
And that's just, it's bad for the trees. It causes structural problems when they start rooting out into the mulche and those roots were not designed. To support the plant in any way, shape, or form. I always joke with my students. I say, look, if I catch you. I will haunt your children's children's children forever. And I'm not talking one of these hauntings where you're gonna get on ghost hunters. I am talking, I will throw chairs. So it is a bad thing that we're doing to our plants and it's causing premature death of these trees.
Juravich: So I saw a few trees recently where there was mulch around it. It was a brand new tree that was just planted and there was much around it, it wasn't a volcano though, I would say it was more of a bowl. So they put mulch and they made it like a valley. Does that make sense? Why did they do that?
Deeter: That is so that you can capture water right there at the base of the tree. So that water, rather than running down that kind of probably raised a little bit mound of soil, if you put a little donut of mulch around that, that will help capture the water so the water filters down into the soil rather than run off into the grass.
Juravich: All right, no volcano mulch, only doughnut mulch. Got it, doughnut. Just don't eat it, but doughnut munch.
You're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about spring gardening with Laura Deeter, Director of the Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens. Katie Carey, owner and founder of Columbus Foodscapes and Mike Hogan, Extension Educator and Associate Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Ohio State University.
Listeners, do you have a gardening question? Do you have concern for our experts? This is your chance, we have them here for the hour. Give us a call, 614-292-8513. That's 614 2 9 2 8 5 1 3, or email us at allsides at wosu.org. What are gonna be some unique challenges that Ohio has to face this year? Is this year. Going to be any different than any year past? I don't know if like, you know, the spring summer of 2026, can you predict the future? Like what, Katie, what are you thinking? Are we going to face anything that we need to be aware of?
Carey: Yeah, I mean, just in the immediate future, we're seeing some pretty cool temperatures in May so far. So maybe holding off on planting some of those warm season crops until we see some warmer temperatures. One of the other challenges that we have witnessed in the last few years is some longer drought in the summer, especially like in July and August. So that's just something to take into consideration. Like when you're setting up your systems in the spring and in early summer. How are we planning for, how are we preparing for the drought that we can now probably expect in later summer?
Juravich: Yeah Mike, I feel like last summer, was it July and August? Did it just not rain for like 30 days straight or something?
Hogan: If you think of the last two seasons, we've had that pattern. Last year was a little less pronounced. It wasn't as long, but the summer before was, was even worse. And, uh, you know, some of our climatologists, uh scientists are, are suggesting that, that that's a new pattern, um, that may be persisting. Uh, it may be related to climate change.
And so like Katie said, you, know, we need to plan for that. And there's, there's things that we can do with trickle irrigation. You know, even some of our trees and shrubs, everybody thinks about, you know, planting the containers full of geraniums and the tomatoes in the vegetable garden. And one thing we've noticed over the past few seasons, some of our trees in our woody ornamentals were suffering simply because they were, they were pretty mature, but simply because of a lack of water.
And so we don't often think about watering mature trees and woody shrubs. But that's something that if the weather pattern like that exists again. That's what we have to think about. And we, you know, we don't have to water them the same way. You know, we can get the water bags around trees. We can just take a bucket and put a couple of holes with a punch awl or a nail in the bottom, fill it up and let it slowly water the tree.
So we got to be prepared for that and take action. And a lot of times we don't think about that until we've been four or five weeks into it and we start to notice some of the leaf scorch and suffering with the foliage.
Juravich: Laura, at the Chadwick Arboretum, how did you have to do a lot of extra watering last summer? I mean, do you have students with you in the summer to help you with all that?
Deeter: We do have students and we do drag hoses around and set sprinklers and things, but it's impossible for us to irrigate all of the plants and the trees.
Juravich: I would figure.
Deeter: And so unfortunately, in many cases, those large trees don't get watered as we would like them to be watered. When we notice there are problems, we will water an entire area. But if you've got a 30 inch plus caliper oak tree, it's not getting a gator bag around it.
Juravich: You're gonna be like, you're on your own, kid.
Deeter: You might get some extra water from some of the other things that are now suffering, but we're not specifically going around and watering the large trees. And it does show. Those trees are showing drought stress symptoms.
Juravich: Katie, I'm assuming you do extra watering because you're trying to keep food plants alive, right?
Carey: Yeah, definitely. Vegetables tend to be more water-hungry. They need it more consistently than perennials usually after they're established.
Juravich: For your clients, do you set them up with like an irrigation system or you just send them out there with a hose and teach them what to do?
Carey: Yeah, it depends on the client. Some people really want to hand water. They want that experience day to day. For most of our clients, we set up what's called drip irrigation. So this is not a sprinkler system like what you'd see on your lawn. These are tubes with little holes in them and they just slowly drip into the soil, typically on a timer each day.
Juravich: Okay. So the timer turns on the water or, and is that how that works? So is it connected like to the hose to their house?
Carey: Yeah, typically it's connected to a spigot, connected to timer. It's like water Legos, it all connects to each other and then there's gradual water each day. It's really nice especially if people go on vacation in July, it's really to nice to come back and still see your garden alive.
Juravich: I pay a middle school student to come and water for me. All right, 614-292-8513. And we have a call from Nick in Columbus. Nick, what's your question?
Speaker 7: Hi, hello, thank you so much for having me on. I tried to plant elephant ears last year and a couple of the bulbs mowed it, but I was just trying to figure out, did I do something wrong or over water or kind of what advice do you have in planting and getting your elephant ears growing?
Juravich: All right, who wants to tackle an elephant ears question?
Hogan: I actually noticed a similar trend last year and I have a feeling that in my own garden I had a couple of three different varieties. I never had that problem before, but I had them in large containers and I really think I may have overdone the watering. Containers tend to dry out obviously quicker than in-ground plantings especially in warmer weather.
But when I I doctored and kind of baby those plants all season and when I gave up on them, pulled them out, I noticed that the significant rot on those bulbs, and I have a feeling it was related to too much water. Be sure that you put them in some decent medium if you have them in containers, even if you plant them in the ground, maybe incorporate some soil starting, mix some soil-starting mix media in with the hole that you're planting them in, but maybe make sure that they're not getting too much of water, which is hard to do when we have excess rain, obviously.
Juravich: Hmm, okay. Yeah, even if your containers are outside. Yeah
Hogan: Yeah, they're usually pretty hardy though, we usually don't see a lot of difficulty with with growing those bulbs.
Juravich: And Susan in Columbus, Susan, what's your question?
Speaker 8: So I think a memo went out to the bunnies and the deers in my neighborhood that I'm running a fast food restaurant.
Juravich: Ah, they got the call. All right. What is a humane way to keep them out of not just my vegetables, but even like the hostas and things of this nature? Bunnies and deers are eating all her stuff. Laura, what- what would you say? That is. Build a.
Deeter: It's a huge challenge that we have here at Chadwick with both animals and all of our small trees go into what I call jail. They get wrapped so that the animals can't get to them. But if you're dealing with a landscape, if you don't have the availability to put a fence in for whatever reason, then you may be looking at simply putting some fencing around an individual garden where they're struggling.
You might try baiting them to a different area of your yard where you put plants that they really like. And they can go to that area and you allow them to have that. I've had friends and colleagues who have good success with dogs and cats just running them off the property. Those animals are usually fast enough that they don't get caught, things of that nature.
There are some anecdotal success stories with some sprays that people can use that you can generally get at garden centers and things, but you do have to continually spray. So we've had fairly wet weather. Recently, that is something that every time it rains, you're gonna have to go out and spray again.
Juravich: Katie, thoughts on that with keeping animals away from the veggies. Exactly.
Carey: Exactly what you said. Fence is the surest bet, but of course not everybody has the resources for a fence. They can be expensive. With bunnies specifically, if you raise your beds up enough, they tend to not bother them. They don't want to hop their little bodies up in there.
Deer are trickier. You can get individual fences for individual garden raised beds. They sell them online. You could do hoops and insect netting as well, specifically before like, stuff that doesn't eat pollinated, so anything that's like a leafy green or a root vegetable, if you have a bed that's your salad bed that you really want to keep protected from the deer, you could try that just as a temporary solution or as kind of a one-off solution.
Juravich: Oh, I didn't really think about that. If you put insect netting around your bed, then the butterflies and bees can't get in too, right? Yeah, exactly.
Carey: Yeah, exactly. And it's okay because some stuff doesn't necessarily need pollinated, right? Kale, again, radishes, beets, carrots, that kind of stuff doesn' t really require pollination in order for us to enjoy it. I'd worry about, you know, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, that kind of thing, it needs to be exposed. It needs to have some kind of pollination in order to be successful. So that stuff, you have to get a little more creative with with your protection against the deer especially.
Juravich: What do you tell people about like the the balance of they want their garden to look pretty versus meaning if they want the deer and rabbits out then they need to put fencing like how do you um how do You can convince them that like what's more worth it having everything survive and not get eaten or the esthetic
Carey: Yeah, for sure. I mean, so we work with a wide range of esthetics with our clients and budgets too, right? So on the sort of lower budget and like kind of not as pretty esthetic and you can do like green metal T-posts and like plastic netting. It gets the job done, you know? And there's ways to kind of zhuzh it up. Like you can add a flower bed around the outside.
There are things you can so it doesn't feel feel like an eyesore in your yard, you now? There are also really pretty fence options. I mean we do like cedar and remesh fences for our clients all the time. They don't tend to take away from the landscape, they tend to add to it because they're really beautiful. But there's all kinds of ranges of options, but typically what I have found with our vegetable gardeners is that if they are growing food, they've put a lot of work into it. They wanna save the food. And they wanna save food.
Juravich: All right, Mike, what's your opinion? So we're fencing in the food. Laura can't fence in all of Chadwick because that's too much. So what do you do? That's too much, so what do you do?
Hogan: Exclude what you can, like the vegetable garden. But basically, if you're managing your home landscape, what you have to do is not fight the wildlife. The next time the caller sends out the invitation, put your neighbor's address on it. So direct them over there, right? But what we can do is if hostas are a good example, that's like the gateway drug for deer. They absolutely love hostas. So don't plant.
Juravich: So don't plant hostas if you have deer.
Hogan: If you have deer pressure, don't plant hassas. We have lists of rabbit resistant landscape plants, everything from annuals to woody ornamentals and herbaceous perennials. We have a separate list for plants that deer do not prefer. And so the best thing to do is if you have that wildlife pressure in your home landscape is to plant things that aren't very palatable to them. Doing the repellents, those are temporary type things. I always suggest people think about long term. How you're going to coexist with whatever the critter is.
Juravich: Alright, so if you if you live in a deer infested area, no hostas, right? Staying with us after the break, we have Laura Dieter, Katie Carey and Mike Hogan and listeners. Do you have gardening questions? Do you have concerns for our experts? Give us a call. 614-292-8513. Email us at allsides at wosu.org. All Sides continues in a moment on 89.7 NPR News.
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Juravich: You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. This hour we're talking about spring gardening and we're getting some tips to make your garden a success in the months to come. And if you're looking a way to make your garden stand out, the Chadwick plant sale might be the perfect place for you. It's a great place to explore plants of all shapes and sizes from fruits and vegetables to herbs and greenery to spice up your cooking. Or maybe you can find a standout centerpiece for your garden.
Still with us, Laura Deeter, Director of the Chadwick Arboretum and Learning Gardens. Thanks for being here, Laura.
Deeter: Thank you.
Juravich: Katie Carey, owner and founder of Columbus Foods to Apes. Thanks for be here, Carey.
Carey: Thanks.
Juravich: Mike Hogan, Extension Educator and Associate Professor of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Ohio State University. Thanks for been here, Mike.
Hogan: Absolutely.
Juravich: So Laura, let's talk about the Chadwick Arboretum. You're preparing for your plant sale. It's also a fundraiser. Tell me where it is, when it is and what people need to do to attend the plant sale. Well, basically...
Deeter: To attend the plant sale, you just need to show up. But our sale is the 14th, 15th, and 16th, so not this weekend, but next weekend. The 14th is our friends only night, so that'll be in the evening. It's friends only, so if you are a member of Chadwick Arboretum, you can show up that day. You get your first dibs on the plants, you get a discount on the Chadwick plants. All the vendors will be there.
We'll have a live auction that day as well. We do a live every single, every single one of those days. If you are not a member and you'd like to become a member so you can have first dibs at the plants, you can show up at the door and become a number and then walk in and get the same benefits for that.
Juravich: So you mentioned an auction. So are we auctioning off? Because I said that you can get a standout centerpiece. What are we auctioning? What do you have?
Deeter: In general, we're auctioning plants, so we have two auctions. We will have a silent auction. Well, there'll be a little bit more variety. There might be some books, some artwork, other gardening-related things, but for the live auction, we do have an auctioneer, and he comes in and he does his auctioneering thing with the voice that they do, which is so fun to listen to, and we describe the plants and then people simply bid on the plants, and at the end of the day, somebody's going to win a plant.
So every day there will be a live auction for approximately an hour. So on Thursday, it's from six to seven. On Friday, it'll be from four to five. And on Saturday, it will be at 10 in the morning. And both Friday and Saturday, you're completely open to the public. You do not need to be a member, though if you'd like to join.
Juravich: And so this is a fundraiser for Chadwick, right? Like is this your way you're trying to like?
Deeter: This is our main fundraiser. That's correct.
Juravich: Okay. So you want people to come out to support everything that you do. That's right. All right. And Mike, you're involved in the Chadwick Planets L2. Tell me about your role.
Hogan: I work with our Master Gardener volunteers that work almost year-round on planning for the Chadwick sale. One of the things they're doing this year is offering different vegetable transplants, some that we don't see available at plant sales or even at garden centers. What we've done is we do a veggie trials project on campus where Master Gardeners test different varieties of vegetables that you can get not for commercial production but for a homeowner to see which ones do best here in central Ohio.
We evaluate them for yield, we evaluate them for pest resistance. We evaluate them for taste. I always make sure I'm there on the day they do the tasting. Yeah, all right. That's the most fun part, right? We'll invite you next time. And then what we've done is chosen those, what we call top producers, and we've grown those in the greenhouse this year, and we're gonna offer them for sale at the Chadwick sale.
And so these should be plants that really help people have success with their vegetable gardening here in central Ohio. We'll also have some transplants of things we normally don't see offered for sale a lot. Things like potatoes. We'll have potatoes growing in bags. People can continue to grow them in plant bags or they can transplant them at home. We're gonna have microgreens, beet microgrees, a brassica mix of microg Greens. So some different vegetables and herbs that we don't often see for sale at garden centers and other plant sales in the spring.
Juravich: What so you just described to me that you test out all of these things and you have this taste testing everything. What can you give me some examples like what what are you what what did you figure out grows well and is pest resistant here that is.
Hogan: So it's not so much a specific crop or vegetable, it's which varieties seem to do best. Obviously, yield, you know, there are some varieties that produce different, greater yields, okay? There are some variety that are a little bit more pest resistant. Sometimes that's real important with some crops like tomatoes that have resistance spread in for certain disease pathogens.
So those are the types of things that we evaluate. There's another project on campus that Chadwick and Masty Gardener's work on, we call cultivar trials. And that's mostly ornamentals, flowering ornamentals. That's some of the color you see if you drive down Woody Hayes in the middle of the summer. We do about the same thing for vegetables.
It's been going on. We have data for about 20 years. And so when we see one variety that seems to outperform, we plant that again for several years to test it over different, even though we have some irrigation on our vegetable crops, we test it every different summers to take out the vagaries of weather and whether or not we had a late spring and factors like that.
Juravich: Katie, for your gardens that you do for your clients, I mean, this seems like great information, right? Mike's figuring out which tomatoes do best. I mean do you know that just anecdotally from your years of your business?
Carey: Not necessarily, I mean, we source from local nurseries, which tend to like inherently be selecting varieties that are good for central Ohio. But I'll definitely have to check that out and kind of take a look at for our clients what might be the best options.
Hogan: So we, every year we produce what we call our top producers sheet, it's actually one of the most popular fact sheets we have in extension here in Franklin County. And that's usually the result of several years worth of data. But we will have that this year available at the sale. It's available online. It's one of her most requested fact sheets because people can look at that and see wherever they order their seeds, wherever they buy their transplants, they can usually find those specific varieties that we're recommending.
Juravich: All right, and this is the time of year to be doing that. So this week, I mean, you have this plant sale right after Mother's Day for a reason, I'm sure, right?
Deeter: Well, this year, normally we do it the week of Mother's Day, but OSU's graduation is this weekend.
Juravich: Oh, did they tell you to stop?
Deeter: No, we did not want to interfere with that. One of the other great things about the sale, though, is there will be Master Gardeners there to answer questions. There will be Chadwick volunteers there to answer question. So, we have a learning lab where you can get three 20 to 30 minute talks on various topics every day. And so if you're trying to learn more, that's another place to come, not just to get a great variety of plants, ornamentals, vegetables, annuals, all kinds of different things, but you can also get information on how to help you grow these plants.
Juravich: Listeners, we are talking about spring gardening today. We're talking about the plant sale and you can join us 614-292-8513 or email us at allsides at wosu.org. Pete in Dublin, what is your question?
Speaker 10: I love gardening, but I'm 88 years old, and my son works all day, I'm home alone, and I have nothing to do but listen to the radio now.
Juravich: Oh, well, thank you for listening, Pete. Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I love WOSU. Anyway, I'm a Buckeye and my question is, is there any place in Columbus, Ohio where they sell established asparagus that you can just put it in your garden and let it grow for a couple years and then after that you're not going to have to do any gardening. It will come up by itself and you can have your asparagus there.
Juravich: All right, thanks for the question, Pete. Pete loves asparagus. Where do we get Pete some asparagus?
Hogan: I've seen it for sale at garden centers. It's certainly usually not up front. You have to ask for it. And it's usually available early. I haven't gone looking for it this year, but I have seen it at the professional garden centers, the year round garden centers maybe not at a big box garden center.
Juravich: Katie, does asparagus do well in Ohio? Is that, is it an Ohio thing?
Carey: Yeah, absolutely. It does great in Ohio.
Juravich: Okay, so why are we having trouble? Why do they hide it in the back?
Hogan: I think it's just a demand. There's not a lot of people requesting this very
Juravich: asparagus is delicious people. All right.
Carey: I will say you might want to compare prices. You might find a better price online, Pete. Sometimes you can get more bang for your buck. They'll sell smaller plants online than what you can find in the garden center. You might have a better experience there.
Juravich: Is that true what Pete said that if you plan it, it'll come back again and again? I didn't know. Yeah. Everyone's nodding. You have to say yes.
Hogan: It's a perennial vegetable crop.
Carey: There is some light maintenance in the fall and the spring, but absolutely it will come back year after year.
Juravich: Okay, I have never thought about planting asparagus. You know, we just do a whole bunch of green beans, but all right, I'm interested in asparagus now. 614-292-8513. Kitty in Dublin. Kitty, what is your question?
Speaker 11: Hi. I am volunteering at a school that has a really tall pine tree. I don't know what variety it is, but it's the bottom half of the tree is all dead branches and then it starts and the branches are pretty healthy. And I'm wondering if I can cut off, you know, it's probably three or four feet high. Up the tree where I could just cut it off because it's so unsightly, and would that hurt the tree?
Juravich: All right, Kitty has that pine tree maintenance. Laura, what do you think? In general, with a lot of our.
Deeter: Conifers they are often self pruning on the lower branches as the plants age and so you do find those lower branches dying off as the plant's get larger and larger. So the question of can you prune it is probably and the reason I say probably is because I'd like to know how tall the rest of the plant is, what kind of health it otherwise seems to be in, that it seemed to leaf out, it is growing well this year because we don't want to a whole lot of added stress. But if these branches are dead, they're not doing anything, then yes, you are probably good to go ahead and prune those off.
Juravich: Especially if it's at a school, because you can imagine that the kids will just pull on the dead branches anyway, right?
Deeter: Correct, correct, yes.
Juravich: And then before we take a break, we have an email from Neems. Neems wants to know that they're planning to grow olives and almonds. Do you have any tips? Can you grow those here?
Carey: We have an Iranian almond in our front yard that does really well. We had one fabulous, glorious crop and then the squirrels found it and we have not seen a single almond on it since. I don't know about olives. I have to be honest, I haven't ever seen olives growing here in Ohio, but the Iranian almond should be hardy enough. You just want to look for something that's hardy down to zone six, which is my recommendation.
Juravich: Have you ever grown a...
Carey: Absolutely not.
Juravich: Okay, not here. All right. And then we have one other email from Janet that just relates back to what we were talking about the problem with deer and rabbits. Janet is recommending a motion activated water spray. So basically she's saying that when the animal walks by they get squirted with water. Have you ever, have you tried that?
Hogan: Have and they work real well. It takes some diligence. You got to make sure, you know, you move the hose when you're gonna mow or things like that, but they are very effective. I actually live right behind Blendon Woods Metro Park and so we host lots of wildlife. The foxes have their kit under our shed and the deer there every night.
So I've tried almost every type of wildlife control there is, but the motion-activated sprinklers are great And what I noticed is, dear. Tend to learn from that. And when I used that, I was trying to protect a specific bed I had, and I noticed they completely avoided our pretty large yard and went to neighbors on both sides, even when I didn't put the sprinkler back on the timer. So yeah, I think that can be very effective.
Juravich: So they don't like getting wet.
Hogan: It just scares them. They think somebody's coming after them.
Juravich: Well, staying with us after the break, we have Mike Hogan from Ohio State University, we have Katie Carey, the owner of Columbus Foodscapes, we have Laura Deeter from Chadwick Arboretum, and we'll continue to take your calls, listeners, 614-292-8513. All Sides continues in a moment on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Even for the most experienced gardeners out there, everyone still has questions. They have worries about their garden. Luckily, we have experts here to answer some of those questions today, anything from soil management to the best starting plants.
Listeners, you can join us with your gardening questions, 614-292-8513, or email us at allsides at wosu.org. With us in the studio, we have Laura Deeter, director of the Chadwick Arboretum, Katie Carey, owner and founder of Columbus Foodscapes. And Mike Hogan, master gardener extraordinaire and extension educator, also an associate professor at Ohio State University. I'm gonna take a question from, if I can, there we go, Pat in Bexley. Pat, what's your question?
Speaker 12: Hi, I just received eight native plants at a free giveaway in the Bexley City Hall. Is it too soon to put those out? Cause I see some of the temperatures are going to get down in the low forties. I don't want to freeze them out.
Juravich: Do you know what kind of plants they are?
Speaker 12: Well, they're all different. Milkweed, I have a milkweed, a butterfly milkweed a swamp milkweed. Oh, wow. I can't remember. Wait, no, I do have the list right here. Foxglove, beer tongue, oxeye, sunflower, columbine, wild geranium.
Juravich: All right, so let's find out what Mike thinks. Should Pat hold off or put them in the ground?
Hogan: It's a gamble, but I think you'd be okay, especially with some of the species of herbaceous perennials that you mentioned. Those are not terribly, terribly tender. I think it'd be OK to go. The other thing, most of our home landscapes, they're not gonna get as cold as some more open areas, some larger acreages, some spaces outside a town of an urban area.
So I'm not advocating that we get our tomatoes and squash planted tomorrow. But I'd be comfortable with getting those native plants out. And I'm glad to hear that you got those native plants. I wish I knew they were giving them away free. Bexley is trying to become the native plant capital of Ohio. They're doing a great job with educating folks and facilitating folks planting native plants.
We've got a native plant workshop coming up beginning of June. It's a type of workshop where we're going to go inside in a classroom and show you which native plants are uh, good for different types of settings, which plants are. More shade, do better in shade, which plants are full sun plants. Then we'll go outside to our learning garden and show you some of the plantings we have of native plants and you will take home a whole native plant garden.
You get about a dozen different native plants that you can take home and you'll have the knowledge to plant and maintain those and expand the planting of native plant. You can choose when you register, whether you wanna have a shade garden at your home landscape or a sun garden and you take that type of collection of plants home. To register, just go to go.osu.edu forward slash native plant workshop. It'll be held on June 6th on Saturday, 10 to 12 at Waterman Farm here on the OSU campus.
Juravich: Wow, how much does it cost?
Hogan: It's $75, but you're going to get you're gonna get a dozen plants and all this education. Yep. Absolutely
Juravich: All right, and one of the things Pat mentioned was milkweed, and I had a whole big conversation about milkweed recently because the butterflies need it and the butterflies love it. Is that right, Mike?
Hogan: It is, yeah. Sometimes I think people only plant milkweed and there's so many other things that different butterflies are attractive and other pollinators, you know, parsley and dill.
Juravich: Oh, really? Okay.
Hogan: My wife always, she plants her herbs, but then she will wait till the end of planting season and when they mark down a lot of plants that are left over, she will buy flats of parsley. And the first time she brought home a couple flats of parsely, I thought, what are we doing? We're eating a lot. Just plant them out for the for pollinators and for butterflies. Same with dill.
Juravich: Yeah, Katie, you're nodding along. Do you add parsley, just sole it for the pollinators, or do people love to eat parsley? I don't know.
Carey: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people also love parsley, but it's dual purpose. You know, we add parsley, again, dill as well. Those plants can help attract some beneficial insects and make your garden a more beautiful place.
Juravich: Dan, Dan in Upper Ellington, what is your question about tomatoes?
Speaker 13: Uh... Yes uh... I was reading out gardening book uh... And specifically about tomatoes uh... Think the person wrote his name was jerry fault fall well if i can remember and uh... He said that you shouldn't use with tomato states when you stake your tomatoes you should use metal stakes and he also said would you go to tie them up not to use cloth or wire but to use up uh... All dot on stockings do you know anything i have you heard about that before.
Juravich: All right, let's start with the wooden stakes. Wooden stakes or metal stakes, does that matter?
Carey: We haven't noticed any particular difference in disease or the success of our tomatoes, whether we use wooden or metal. We tend to suggest that people use metal trellises anyway because they tend to be a more permanent and less fussy structure in the garden. I'm curious about why that author said that though. The only thing I can assume is that it has maybe something to do with fungal spores in wood or something, but do you guys have any input on what you think that could be about?
Hogan: I wouldn't really be concerned about that. The nylon I agree with, when I used to grow a lot of tomatoes, I would collect those and use those because they stretch. I think the idea is you don't want to constrict the tomato plant, especially when you're tying them up and then they get significant growth on the vine.
Juravich: All right, Laura, anything, any tomato thing to add? I definitely.
Deeter: Am not a tomato expert. However, what I agree with everybody said here, I can't imagine why you would choose metal over wood unless there's an esthetic reason, a budgetary reason. Metal tends to last longer outside. It doesn't decay. So I might choose metal if I could afford it at that point. But I am also prone to going around my yard and picking up and using those to hold plants up. Anything that you can use that's soft. To attach your plants to these posts. So nylon is a great way to do that.
Carey: I wonder if it's structural to like wouldn't like you said they rot and if they tomato tomato plants get quite heavy I mean, maybe they're concerned about the wood breaking off and then the tomatoes falling down potentially
Juravich: The metal trellises could hold it up better, maybe.
Carey: Yeah, if they're installed correctly, absolutely.
Juravich: Yeah, there's the key, if they're installed correctly. Got it. We also have an email from Alex, who wants help with strawberries that have been overtaken with thistles. I don't know, that sounds bad. What do we do?
Carey: Yeah, you know, thistle is such an intense problem in so many, so many of our gardens. I mean, so because we tend to not spray for thistle, because obviously it's in your food, right? So we're not trying to spray on top of our food usually, especially anything that's potentially harmful to us. Hand weeding is kind of the move gradually, it will just weaken the patch over years, but it does take quite a long time.
If you are like, I don't have the patience for that. I want strawberries sooner than that. We have seen success with tarping. That does mean that you would have to move your strawberries. So it could, I don't know how established this patch is, but it could be, again, a little bit fussy, but transplanting some of those strawberries to a new thistle-free patch, tarping it for however long it takes, and then hopefully having a nice garden space underneath that.
Juravich: So it's easier to move the strawberries.
Carey: I wouldn't say it's easier, I just, some people don't wanna have to continuously weed. Like if you have a lifestyle where you don't wanna have be continuously weeding and continuously pulling things up, you know, you'd rather just do one big project during the weekend and then not have to think about it again. Some folks would prefer that, but. Could you accidentally take the thistle with you when you move your strawberries though?
You could. Another concern is if the thisle is flowering, then that is another concern, is that especially if the thistle is flowery, I'd be concerned about moving it with the strawberries. Anyone want to add anything else about Thistle?
Hogan: Usually we renovate strawberries after several years. They're not producing as much. And so that would be the time, Kitty, to easily think about tarping, maybe even skipping a whole production season and dealing with the thistle for good. Never had thistle in any of my landscape or garden till I moved to Columbus and inherited a large bed with a significant thistle population. And I can tell you, it literally took me 10 years to get that under control.
Juravich: Oh no, and you're an expert. What are us laymen supposed to do?
Hogan: Strawberry bed or some other food garnets even more difficult. This was a bed of ornamentals and some perennial, small perennials. But yeah, it's a challenge.
Juravich: We have a call from Brian. Brian in Columbus wants to ask about soil. Go ahead, Brian.
Speaker 14: Yeah, just more of a comment. You know, as much as great conversation as this is, I definitely don't want anyone to forget about just the soil ecology and the food web that's below the soil with bacteria, nematodes, arthropods, small mammals, and birds.
And, you know, that can be just as impactful for increasing yields and understanding regenerative soil. And just learning about leaving the leaves is something that I think definitely needs to be discussed when it comes to planting native plants and gardening. Um, and that goes also with, you know, focusing on keystone species, learning to live harmoniously with beneficial insects.
Um, so kind of also to the point about planting partially and pallet of parsley, like learning about things like golden Alexander's and how that can support swallowtail butterflies and, um, things like that, just wanted to call in and say, you know, as much as what's going on above ground, there's so much going on below ground we got to learn about too.
Juravich: All right, well thank you, Brian. Brian had a lot in there. So let's talk about our soil health. Mike, how do we know if our soil is healthy?
Hogan: Well, you know, sometimes I just taught a class and we talked about what's more important for a productive, to grow plants. Doesn't matter if that is a perennial, a vegetable crop or a boxwood or a oak tree. First thing most gardeners, especially novice gardeners think about is fertility. Do I have all the nutrients? That's certainly important.
But soil health is, I think, equally as important. The caller made some really excellent points. Scientists tell us in a tablespoon of good quality high functioning soil. There is billions of living organisms.
Juravich: Am I allowed to say gross, or am I supposed to say cool?
Hogan: No, it's cool. It's great stuff, as far as he said, the food web. And so anything we can do to help improve soil organic matter, increase organic matter. Our native soils here in central Ohio probably don't have any more than two, two and a half percent organic matter unless we add organic matter and that organic matter can be anything.
It could be plant trash that we leave on the ground. It could compost that we add. Could be mulches that decompose, straw, anything like that. And so the more organic matter we can add, leaves at the end of the year, don't put them out to curb, compost them, chop them up, use them as mulch in the winter, it'll support some beneficial insects, maybe even some burrowing places for small mammals. Organic matter is really king. Not trying to doubt soil fertility, but sometimes we don't give, I think, organic matter as much credit for plant health as soil fertility.
Juravich: Katie do you have a favorite place you source soil from because I have to think if you're planting all these gardens you're bringing stuff in
Carey: Yeah, we really do. So we use the, if we're building a new raised bed vegetable garden, we use The Price Farms Organics Premium Blend Soil. That's kind of our tried and true for the last six years. Is that from a specific farm? Yeah, it's called Price Farming Organics. Yeah, It's up in Delaware. You do have to order it in. Like, you have to deliver. It gets delivered typically for most people.
I think you can buy it in bags as well. And then, like Mike said, any compost really will do. So, when we're talking to our... Our vegetable gardeners about soil. Sometimes we will compare it and say soil is like a bank. When we're growing like tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini and stuff, these are things that are, we want them to be pulling from the nutrients in the soil, right? Because they're giving in turn nutrients to us. But we wanna give some love back to the soil. We wanna put something back in the bank, right. So we're always adding compost annually or twice a year usually into our vegetable gardens.
Juravich: Is, I mean, the soil from the farm you said sounds great, but can you just go to a garden center and buy soil? Is that soil fine or no?
Carey: I think it just depends. I've seen compost in garden centers that's a lot more mulch than compost. So it just kind of depends on the mixture. I think a more experienced gardener can kind of physically feel it and touch it, but really what you're looking for for vegetable gardens is a combination of sand, topsoil, and compost.
Juravich: Okay, Laura, do you have a favorite soil source or?
Deeter: At Chetwick, we tend to use Kurtz Brothers for various things, but I have also spent the last semester teaching an organic gardening class, and Price Farms is one of the places that I recommend that students, if they're trying to start something locally, go. What you're trying do is make sure, and I do tend to deal with more with perennials and plants that are in the ground permanently than vegetables, and those plants are continually taking from the bank, and so you do have to make sure that if they are going to be there for. 10, 15, in the case of trees, hundreds of years, that you are setting things up to be successful. And getting people to understand that the soil is where everything starts.
Juravich: We have less than three minutes left. There's three of you. So you each can have like 30 to 40 seconds to give me like one final gardening tip that you wanna leave people with. Or just plug the plant sale. Why don't you plug, yeah. Why don't you plug the plants sale again while they think. Okay.
Deeter: So yes, the plant sale will be the 14th, 15th, and 16th. Thursday, the 14 th will be our members only night. The 15th and the 16th will be open to the general public. Be sure to check our website at Chadwick at osu.edu to make sure that you get the schedule for those because it's not an all day event. But if I could say one thing, we do have a learning lab there. Come, we will be talking about native plants. We're talking about pruning. Ask questions of all of the various master gardeners that are there and the volunteers to help you out.
Juravich: All right, Mike, do you want to give a tip or do you want to plug your workshop again?
Hogan: I would say don't stress about the oncoming onslaught of spotted lanternfly. Everybody freaked out last year. They are harmful to only a few crops. They are more of a nuisance in the home landscape. The best idea is to do your little stomp dance and kill as many of them as you can so they don't lay eggs. But really, it's not gonna be the end of the gardening or the home land scape when you have this invasion of spotted lanterfly.
Juravich: Alright, so Mike says they're coming, beware, but don't be scared.
Hogan: But don't be scared. You're already here, the first in-stars have hatched and we're getting lots of calls from people that are inundated with the first larval stage or in-stage and those are gonna continue to grow, so the quicker we take care of those.
Juravich: All right, stomp away, Katie, 30 seconds. Do you have anything you wanna add?
Carey: Yeah, I was just gonna say that I think our greatest superpower, whether you are a novice or an experienced gardener, is your attention and your observation in a garden. You can know all the facts in the world. There's three people at this table who know a lot of stuff about gardening. But if you're not in your space. Yeah, if you are not. I think you know more than you think you do. But if are not in you're space on a regular basis, you're gonna miss a little stuff. Just being connected to a space, I think, can make up for maybe sometimes what you do or don't know.
Juravich: Yeah, and keeping a journal. I've had several people on the show tell me that if you just like write down like what happened in your garden on a certain day and then you can look back for a few years and you can start figuring things out. Yeah.
Well, I want to say thank you to Katie Carey from Columbus Foodscapes. Thank you. And Laura Deeter from Chabacar Reuben, thank you for being here. And Mike Hogan from Ohio State University, thank for being her. And this has been All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.