- Hi, I'm Ben Futa,
host of PBS Wisconsin's gardening series
Let's Grow Stuff .
On behalf of PBS Wisconsin,
welcome to the Garden & Landscape Expo
Virtual Spring Kick-Off.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a live Q&A after the presentation.
After our session, be sure to explore everything else
the Virtual Spring Kick-Off has to offer,
including 360 video garden tours, a panel discussion
with UW Extension horticulture experts, and more.
Thank you, and enjoy.
- Hello, everyone.
My name's PJ Liesch
and I'm an Extension entomologist here at UW-Madison,
and the director of the UW Insect Diagnostic Lab.
Thanks for joining me today.
I'm excited to be talking about insects
in home gardens and ways that you can manage
and deal with those pests,
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And with that,
I'd like to thank you for your attention today
and joining me as I talked about managing insect pests
in your garden while reducing impacts
to beneficial creatures and the environment.
and you have to make some decisions
based on your particular desires.
If you want to do no pesticide versus organic
versus conventional and so on,
but you have to pick and choose wisely.
But again, with pesticides,
we wanna use this from the very top
of that pest management period as a last resort,
and use them sparingly because as I discussed,
there's lots of other things that we can do to help prevent
PESTICIDES
>> I'D LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR
YOUR ATTENTION TODAY.
JOINING ME AS I TALKED ABOUT
MANAGING INSECT PESTS IN YOUR
GARDEN AND REDUCING IMPACT TO
BENEFICIAL CREATURES AND THE
ENVIRONMENT.
>> WELL, THANKS AGAIN FOR
JOINING US FOR THIS YEAR'S
VIRTUAL SPRING KICKOFF.
THIS EVENT IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH
YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.
YOUR SUPPORT ALLOWS
- Hi, I'm Ben Futa,
host of PBS Wisconsin's gardening series
Let's Grow Stuff .
On behalf of PBS Wisconsin,
welcome to the Garden & Landscape Expo
Virtual Spring Kick-Off.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a live Q&A after the presentation.
After our session, be sure to explore everything else
the Virtual Spring Kick-Off has to offer,
including 360 video garden tours, a panel discussion
with UW Extension horticulture experts, and more.
Thank you, and enjoy.
- Hello, everyone.
My name's PJ Liesch
and I'm an Extension entomologist here at UW-Madison,
and the director of the UW Insect Diagnostic Lab.
Thanks for joining me today.
I'm excited to be talking about insects
in home gardens and ways that you can manage
and deal with those pests,
but also reduce impacts on the environment
and protect beneficial organisms in our garden,
such as pollinators and predators and parasites
that may be helping control those pests.
Now, there's two main things I want to talk about today.
The first is how to actually scout
and look for pests and problems in our garden,
and as well, discuss some resources
to help you identify those insects that you do find.
The bulk of today's talk, though,
is gonna focus on the second bullet point,
which is how to manage insect pests in our garden.
And the main take-home message I will mention up front
is that there's a whole bunch of different techniques
that you can use, but you really need to tailor them
to your specific gardening situation.
What I mean by that is some folks have big gardens
that might be a couple hundred square feet,
other folks may have small raised bed gardens
that are only five by eight or some similar size to that.
And so that's gonna impact the amount
of resources you can use
and the techniques that you can use.
You also have to think about the amount
of free time that you have.
If you work a 9:00 to 5:00
and can only spend time in your garden on the weekend,
that's very different than someone who might be retired
and can spend an hour or two in their garden every day.
And that's gonna influence the types
of management approaches that we can use.
Now, two things I just won't have time to talk about today,
how to manage and deal with specific insect pests.
That's just beyond the scope of today's talk.
Rather, I'm gonna focus on, very broadly,
different management techniques.
I also won't have time to get
into discussing specific plant care scenarios.
Now, before I discuss today's topics,
I do want to introduce a couple of really helpful resources.
And today's talk is really based on this book on the left,
IPM for Gardeners by Ray Cloyd,
Phil Nixon, and Nancy Pataky.
This is a relatively new book.
And if you're interested in the overall theory
and practices of managing pests in gardens,
this is an excellent book.
A lot of good details in there.
And again, today's talk is kind of
a condensed CliffNotes version of that book.
So if it interests you,
I'd encourage you to track that one down.
Otherwise, if there is a single book to purchase
to help you identify and understand the insects
in your garden, I would highly recommend this book
on the right, Garden Insects of North America ,
by Whitney Cranshaw and Dave Shetlar.
This book is several hundred pages long,
it's loaded in color photographs
and important details about how to identify
and understand the biology and life cycles
of insects found in gardens and yards in general
because this book does also discuss insects
that are found in trees and shrubs as well.
So really a great resource.
There's also a chapter to help identify
and understand beneficial organisms.
Here at UW-Madison Extension,
we do have a number of really helpful resources
to help you out in your gardening,
with your gardening goals.
The first is our website, hort.extension.wisc.edu.
That website serves as a repository of all sorts
of informational fact sheets that discuss insects,
diseases, general horticulture topics, and so on.
But also on that site,
there is a way that you could submit gardening questions
and get them answered by an Extension expert.
So you can submit your name, your question.
There is even a way to upload photographs
that will get sent to someone in Extension,
who will get back to you
and help you out with your gardening questions.
Now, when it comes to your actual garden
and finding those insects,
the single most important thing you can do is scouting.
That means you're going out, looking for the insects.
If you don't spend a whole lot of time in your garden,
it may seem like problems pop out of nowhere.
But in most cases, those problems have been present,
kind of smoldering at a low level
and maybe increased over time.
So the way to do this, to look for insects,
is going out and doing visual inspections
and looking for clues that something may be amiss.
That may be holes in leaves or notches in leaves.
It may be discoloration or distortion of plant tissue.
And we'll talk more about those clues
and what they could mean in some of the coming slides.
In terms of timing, when and how often to do this,
ideally, if you could do it daily, that would be excellent.
I realize, though, many of us
have realistic time constraints due to family matters
or work and things like that,
and we might only be spending time
in our garden on the weekends.
And that's perfectly fine too.
But if you can scout at least once a week
or more frequently, that's really helpful
so that you can stay on top of what's going on
in your garden.
A couple of really basic tools can also be very helpful
to look for and identify insect pests in your garden.
One of my favorite tools
is a magnifier commonly called a jeweler's loupe.
If you went to a jewelry store,
they may use these to look at diamond rings
and things like that.
This is basically a magnifier
that has about a 10X magnification.
Really helpful identifying insects
and scouting purposes as well.
Another thing that can be helpful is a flashlight.
And the reason I say that is many of our insects
are active during the daytime,
but certain insects are primarily nocturnal.
They may feed or be active almost exclusively at night.
And if we look for 'em during the day, they may be hiding.
And so if you see something going on in your garden
and you suspect insects are involved, but can't find them,
it may be worth the effort and time
to go out after dark with a flashlight and look for them.
And then, lastly, one other tool that can be helpful,
you're gonna bump into insects
that you just aren't sure what they are,
and it's really handy to have some sort of Tupperware
or other small container on hand,
so you can put the insect in there
until you can identify it.
That way you can take some time, dig into those resources,
and figure out is this insect a friend, or is it a foe?
Now, before we get into the details of managing insects,
it's really important to understand a few basic details
about insect anatomy.
And that is their mouth parts
because that's how a lot of insects interact
with our plants.
They use mouth parts to feed on those plants.
Now, there's two main types of mouth parts
that we see in plant-feeding pests.
The first type is chewing mouth parts.
And these essentially function like a pair of pliers
or a pair of scissors.
So that's the tool that they have
in the toolbox, so to speak.
When they use these mouth parts,
they're gonna be physically cutting
or tearing away pieces of plant material.
As a result, we may see holes in leaves
or notches in leaves, or in some cases,
the leaves could be gone entirely.
Now, why is it important to understand this?
There will be cases where you're gonna go out
into your garden and the insect may be gone entirely,
or it may be hiding and hard to find.
We can look at these clues
and work backwards to try and figure out
who done it in these types of cases.
And so when we see holes and notches
and other indicators to show us
that it's an insect with chewing mouth parts
in a home garden,
that almost certainly is going to be either a caterpillar
or a beetle of some kind.
So we can start to narrow down our search
and figure out the culprit.
There are a few other pests from time to time that pop up,
like grasshoppers and slugs and things like that,
and even earwigs and sawflies,
although those tend to be less common
in home garden setting.
Another type of insect mouth part
are sucking-type mouth parts.
So these are tubular structures
that essentially function like a hypodermic needle
or a soda straw.
They're essentially restricted to a liquid or fluid diet.
So they suck fluids from plants.
And these insects couldn't chew holes
in your plants if they wanted to.
They just don't have the right tool
in the toolbox to do that, when you think about it.
So when they suck fluids out,
what are the symptoms and clues that we see?
We tend to see discoloration or speckling
or sometimes distortion of plant tissues.
So again, we sometimes have to work backwards,
look at these clues,
and try and figure out what insect caused the damage.
Now, with sucking-type mouth parts and these symptoms,
it can sometimes be vague.
And these symptoms can mimic other conditions as well,
such as drought stress or fertilizer stress
or herbicide drift.
So if you see symptoms that look like this,
you can't assume it's from sucking insects.
You would need to do some additional detective work
to really get a better idea of what's going on.
Now, if insects are involved, there's one particular group
that entomologists call the true bugs,
the order Hemiptera.
These are things like aphids, plant bugs,
stink bugs, squash bugs, leafhoppers, and so on.
These all have these sucking-type mouth parts.
A few other pests that we see pop up from time to time
in home gardens would be spider mites and thrips.
Also can cause damage that looks a lot like this.
So again, the most important step in your garden
when it comes to scouting and pest management
is to look for and scout,
and then identify the insects that we have found.
In my mind, once we've done that,
the battle is half over.
Because once we know what the insect is,
it's very easy to look up some of those fact sheets
or other online resources, or dig into some of those books
to learn more about the particular insect.
We can learn aspects about their life cycle
and their biology.
Is this a minor pest, or is it a significant pest
that you really need to be worried about?
Is it something that we might see again next year?
But unless you identify the insect you're dealing with,
it's very difficult and may not be possible
to answer many of these questions.
Now the rest of the talk is gonna focus on managing
and dealing with these pests.
And there's really a bunch of different approaches
that we can use.
And I like to think of these approaches as a pyramid.
We have at the base of the pyramid
a lot of preventative things that we can do.
We call these cultural approaches.
We also have a lot of physical
or mechanical control tactics that we can use.
We can rely on biological control.
And then up at the tip-top of the pyramid, chemical control.
And remember, today's talk is focusing
on reducing environmental impacts
while we're managing pests in the garden.
So very similar to our food pyramid,
we should be using chemical controls
only as needed and sparingly.
So there's lots of other things
that we can do to help manage or prevent pests outright,
so that we don't get to that point
where we need to use chemical pesticides.
Now, again, just a reminder,
I'm gonna show you a bunch of different approaches,
and you really need to take these approaches
and tailor them to your specific gardening situation.
The size of the garden,
how much free time you have on hand,
and other factors as well might make some
of these approaches more feasible for you than others.
So let's talk about cultural practices.
These are basically ways
that we can modify the local environment,
and we can make some decisions
and do some planning to help us out.
So there's a lot of things I'm gonna be talking about
separately when it comes to these particular topics.
And first and foremost, one of the most important things
is really understanding the history of your garden.
If you have been gardening
for several years, you'll realize
that you have seen certain problems pop up year after year.
And keeping a gardening journal can be really helpful
in understanding these patterns that you see.
So that can involve maybe sketching out a map.
That way, you have a better understanding
of what was planted where and when.
But also keeping notes on what type of insects
and pests and diseases that you saw pop in your garden.
Looking back over time, that can help you understand
these patterns better and better.
So this is an invaluable approach
that can be helpful for planning purposes
in your own garden.
Also, there's a lot of decisions that we can make.
And many of these decisions for planning occur
in January, February, March, and April,
before we even started planting things outside
in our garden.
Some of these considerations, picking the correct plants.
If you look at the climate in Wisconsin
and plant hardiness zones, the climate in Kenosha
and southeastern Wisconsin is very, very different
than northwestern Wisconsin.
So make sure you pick plants
that are suitable for your growing zone.
Just as an example,
if I told you I wanted to grow bananas out in my garden,
you'd probably give me a weird look
because I'd be setting myself up for failure.
That's just a plant that isn't suited
for our climate here in Wisconsin.
So pick plants that are suited for our climate.
Also, look back over time and think,
have you bumped into particular problems before
with an insect or with a disease?
Sometimes you can dig through those seed catalogs
and find varieties that may be more resistant
or tolerant to help avoid some of these problems.
So again, these are decisions we're making ahead of time
that can set the stage and help prevent issues.
Some other things to keep in mind:
Planting at the correct time and timing.
So make sure to read those seed packets.
They have valuable information there to let you know,
should those seeds be started inside or outside?
Before frost or after frost?
Do those crops do better in cool conditions
or warmer conditions later in the summer?
So keep that in mind,
and make sure to heed that information
that is on the seed packets.
We also wanna put plants in the correct spot.
So again, read the seed packets
and understand, is that a crop or plant
that needs full sun, or can it tolerate partial shade?
And depending on your yard and situation,
you might have to make some decisions there.
Also keep in mind that certain plants are different sizes.
And so if you have corn
on the south-facing part of your garden,
or south part of your garden,
that may shade out things to the north of it.
So we do have some considerations to make there.
And then also understand the correct spacing.
This is a challenge, especially for new gardeners.
We sometimes put plants too close together.
And spacing can really pose some challenges
for us in the garden.
Our plants are competing one another.
We can inhibit airflow, which might incur diseases.
But from an insect standpoint,
if the plants are really crowded together,
it makes it harder to scout for pests
and identify 'em when they are there.
So by having the correct spacing,
our plants are generally gonna be happier and healthier,
growing more robustly, and it makes it easier for us
to scout for and look for problems
before they really start causing significant headaches for us.
When it comes to watering and the soil and fertility,
the mindset I like to think about is Goldilocks.
Not too much, not too little.
We want things to be just right.
So make sure you're using good watering practices.
If we have a year like 2021
where the summer growing season was quite dry in many areas,
make sure those plants are getting appropriate amount
of water so that they aren't stressed because of that.
But likewise, if we have a very rainy year,
we don't want to be overwatering our plants either.
That may cause some problems.
So use generally good watering practices.
From a disease standpoint,
we don't want foliage on those plants
to remain wet for too long either.
So make sure you're watering things properly.
In terms of the soil, in some situations,
we may have control over the soil
that we can pick and choose,
such as with raised bed gardening.
But if you have a large garden,
it's gonna be quite difficult to modify
or change that soil outright.
It may not be feasible.
And some of you may be doing straw bale gardening,
where soil is out of the equation entirely.
So everyone's gardening situation
is a little bit different.
But if you're using soil or potting mix,
make sure to get a soil test.
That helps you understand what's there,
what are the properties of that soil,
and what is the nutrient profile like.
You might find out that your soil
is perfectly fine as is,
and you don't necessarily need to add any fertilizer.
That's important and invaluable information to know
because if we apply too much fertilizer,
that can actually have negative impacts
from an insect point of view.
There are certain creatures like aphids
and spider mites that can thrive on overfertilized plants.
So again, think Goldilocks.
We want these things to be just right in the middle,
not too much one side or the other,
going to the extremes.
Some other considerations
that are cultural practices would be crop rotation.
So certain insects or diseases may keep popping up again
and again over time, unless we rotate.
We can rotate both in space and time.
If you have a large garden, for example,
you could take corn from one side of the garden
and plant it at the opposite side the following year.
That can be helpful.
If you have a smaller garden
where you can't move things terribly far,
it may be more helpful and feasible to rotate over time.
So you could skip a year or two for a particular crop,
and then come back to it at a later stage.
So this can be really helpful for certain insect pests,
but also diseases as well.
And some important crops
to consider rotating would be things like corn.
We have a particular insect, corn rootworm,
that can really cause root damage extensively
if corn is planted in the same spot year after year.
But other crops can benefit as well.
Cole crops, brassicas like kale and broccoli,
solanaceous crops like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and so on,
and then cucurbit crops like cucumbers
and squash and things like that can benefit
from rotation over time.
And then last for cultural practices is tolerance.
It turns out that a lot of plants can tolerate quite a bit
of insect damage before yield is actually affected.
So keep that in mind.
If you're a new gardener, you may not have a stomach
to tolerate a whole lot of insect damage,
but realize some plants are really pretty robust.
So think about beans and Japanese beetles.
It turns out Japanese beetles can defoliate
about 30% of the leaf area of bean plants
and yield will not be affected at that point.
So you'll still have the same number of bean pods,
and they'll be just as big.
If we get more damage than that,
then yields are gonna start dropping
and we won't get as much of a bounty
from our garden that year.
But we can tolerate some fairly low
to moderate levels of feeding activity.
Now, we also have keep in mind the parts of the plants
that we're concerned about.
If we are concerned about tomato leaves,
you know, I may be able to tolerate some damage,
but if the insects are feeding directly
on the developing tomato fruit,
I'm gonna draw the line in the sand at that point
and probably intervene.
Also, we need to be aware that sometimes insects
and plant diseases can interact with one another.
So a good example would be cucumber beetles
and a disease called bacterial wilt.
It turns out that cucumber beetles can carry
and transmit that disease.
And they might only be present in low numbers in your garden
and causing a little bit of nibbling here and there,
but if they transmit that disease,
that could be headaches for us later on
in the growing season.
So you really need to understand the crops in your garden,
and also the pests that you're dealing with.
That's gonna influence how much damage we can tolerate
from those particular insects.
Now let's talk about physical or mechanical control.
So these are things like handpicking and squishing
and blasting insects like aphids off
with a stream of strong water.
We have some options here.
And these do not involve a chemical pesticide.
So these are any physical activities we can do
to deal with pests or help prevent them.
And we'll talk about these in more detail.
So first and foremost,
getting good weed control can be really helpful.
So if you have a smaller garden, handpicking or hoeing
or using other tools can be very helpful.
And the reason for that is weeds can do a number
of bad things in our garden.
First and foremost,
they directly compete with our crops for nutrients.
So if we take them out of the situation,
that means that our carrots
or tomatoes or other plants are growing.
They can get those resources
and it's not being taken away by something else.
Some other things that are important to keep in mind.
Increasing airflow from a disease standpoint.
If we have a bunch of weeds growing in our garden
and we don't have as much airflow,
that could cause some issues.
From an insect standpoint, if we get the weeds out of there,
it can make it easier for us to scout and look for problems.
So that can be very helpful.
And then, lastly, weeds can sometimes serve
as a reservoir of insect pests and diseases.
And so if we eliminate those from the situation,
that can really help us out.
Couple of other things to keep in mind along these lines.
We can sometimes use mulches
and other ground covers to help us suppress weeds
and help us prevent issues like this in our garden.
Some other physical and mechanical controls we can use.
We can do things like handpicking,
or knocking insects into a container of soapy water,
even just squishing them,
if that doesn't make you too squeamish to think about.
What's nice about these approaches
is they have an immediate impact
because you are taking one insect out of the situation.
However, keep in mind that handpicking
in these approaches don't have any residual protection.
So, for example, if you're picking Japanese beetles today
and it's 9:00 AM, well,
more beetles could fly in in the afternoon.
So you do have to understand the pros and cons
and strengths and limitations
of all these different approaches
and tailor them to your specific gardening situation.
Now, this technique is also best for insects
with limited mobility.
If you have tiny insects or things that are highly mobile,
it's simply going to be hard to grab them by hand.
To help out with that, sometimes it can be helpful
to have a container of soapy water
that we can hold underneath the insects,
and then tap them down into that container from above.
So for cucumber beetles and Japanese beetles
that like to tumble down or fly off when disturbed,
that can sometimes be pretty helpful in that regard.
Now, some good candidates for handpicking,
again, things that tend to be larger, less mobile.
So caterpillars this can work very well for,
certain beetles.
I do this in my own yard for Japanese beetles.
And in my own garden, it works pretty well.
If I can do that on a daily basis,
that can actually help out.
But again, anything that's a little bit bigger
or a little bit slower.
It's not gonna work well
for tiny things like aphids or rapidly moving insects.
We also can use this approach for insect eggs in some cases.
So if you train your eye to look for the eggs of pest species.
And as an example,
I show in the bottom right-hand corner some eggs
from squash bugs.
If you were to look for those while scouting
and you find 'em on the undersides
of cucumber or squash leaves,
you could take your thumb and squish those.
And by doing so, you've just taken 15 or 20 insects
or future insects out of the equation.
So you've done something
to help prevent issues down the road.
Some other physical and mechanical approaches
that we can use; we can use barriers.
So this is netting and row covers, things of that nature.
This is gonna create a physical barrier
between the insects and those plants.
If the insects can't physically get to your plants,
they can't cause damage to them.
So we can use screening and mesh netting.
Sometimes we can actually find larger mesh sizes,
which we use to deter birds and mammals
and things like that.
But for insects, keep in mind, we do need a fine mesh size
'cause many insects are relatively small.
So some considerations with this, though.
We have to keep in mind the size of the plants.
It's gonna be easier to cover low-growing plants
that don't get terribly tall.
We also have to consider pollinator access.
If we have plants that produce flowers
which require bees or other pollinators
to visit to actually produce our crop,
we're gonna have to take this covering off
so that pollinators can get access.
And then also there's the aesthetic side of things.
If you are growing particular plants,
such as flowers, purely for the aesthetic aspect,
it kind of defeats the purpose
to have them covered up with a sheet.
Or maybe if there's a peak period of pest activity,
you could consider covering them
just during a certain window of time.
Some options and plants where this might work well for:
things like leafy greens, seedlings, and transplants.
Sometimes these row covers can actually work somewhat like
a greenhouse, so they can help extend
the growing season earlier and later in the year.
And there are some other situations.
If we have crops that don't require pollination at all,
such as herbs,
sometimes row cover can be a really simple option
to help prevent insect damage.
Some other mechanical and physical things we can do.
In certain cases, we can use traps,
but it's always important to think about
what those traps are going to do.
Are they going to catch insects,
or are they actually providing meaningful control?
Because that doesn't always happen together.
There are plenty of traps that will catch insects,
but have no impact on the damage that's occurring to the plants.
And sometimes traps can actually backfire,
and you get more damage if you use that.
We'll talk about an example here in a second.
So we have to think about traps, are we using them for monitoring
and scouting versus control?
Sometimes they can help out for different purposes.
In other cases, they may not help at all.
So think about Japanese beetle traps.
And if you're a home gardener,
you see these all the time at hardware stores
and garden centers.
They sell like hot cakes sometimes.
But several research studies have found
that if you use Japanese beetle traps,
it actually draws more to the general area
and you end up with more damage on nearby plants.
So yes, those traps catch a lot of beetles,
but you get more damage overall.
So we actually discourage gardeners
from using those particular traps.
There are situations, though, where traps may make sense.
If you grow apple trees,
we have these red sphere traps that can be useful
for monitoring or control
if you just have one or two apple trees.
In home gardens, we can use harborage, or hiding traps,
maybe an old board or shingle,
that we can put down on the ground.
And if we have insects or creatures
that like to hide during the day,
such as cutworm or armyworm, caterpillars or slugs,
they may seek shelter during the daylight hours
under those objects, which we can flip over,
and then squish or pick 'em up
and throw 'em into a container of soapy water.
So we can use tools like that to help us out.
We also have some sticky card traps
which can be useful for monitoring
for small insects like aphids and thrips and so on.
So we do have some traps out there can help,
but keep in mind,
read up on the particular traps you're trying to use
and see if they will accomplish the goal
that you're trying to accomplish.
Then remember from the pest control pyramid,
we have some biological control options.
And this basically means relying on the good guys,
relying on Mother Nature
to take care of the problem for us.
So that involves insect predators, insect parasites,
and in some cases, there are actually
beneficial disease pathogens
that specifically attack and kill insect pests for us.
Now, there's really two main ways
we can go about doing this.
One is not really feasible for us.
The other one is really quite feasible in most situations.
So the first is direct intervention.
This is where we would directly add beneficial predators
or parasites to the equation.
Unfortunately, this isn't really feasible
for home gardens here in Wisconsin.
We can't run down to the garden center
or Target or Walmart and buy a box
of 10,000 lady beetles or lacewings.
And if we did release them,
because there are sometimes companies online
where you can order such beneficial insects,
in many cases, they may fly away or otherwise disperse.
That approach can be much more effective
in a greenhouse setting where the beneficial insects
will be contained and will be forced to feed on the pests
in our particular area.
But outdoors,
that generally has limited effectiveness overall.
However, the second approach can be quite helpful.
This is the more indirect route,
where I think of it as the Field of Dreams approach.
If you build it, they will come.
We can create habitat around us
that will draw the beneficials in,
and then they can help us out in our garden.
And the key way to do that is
to diversify the landscape around you
with a wide range of flowering plants,
because it turns out many beneficial predatory
or parasitic insects that can help us out
will be drawn to different types of flowers
to get nectar as a fuel source.
And then they may hang out in the general area
and help control and feed upon pests in our garden.
Now, also, it's really helpful to understand
and be able to identify beneficial insects.
So I'd like to draw your attention
to the publication in the upper right-hand corner.
And you can find this publication
via that short link in the upper right-hand corner,
the Bitly link.
This is an Extension publication which is over 100 pages long.
It's freely available as a PDF,
or hard copies are available for purchase for $12.
And this book is loaded with colored photographs,
and it explains the biology
and benefits of having these beneficial predators
and parasites and pathogens around your garden.
It also discusses ways that you can encourage them
in the landscape around you.
So if this interests you,
I'd strongly encourage you to track down that publication.
Also, the garden insects book I referred you to
earlier by Whitney Cranshaw and Dave Shetlar,
that has an excellent chapter discussing beneficial insects
that you're likely to bump into out in your yard.
So recognize the good guys,
because if that's all we're finding,
or they seem to be taking care of the pest problem for us,
we don't want to spray and take out the good guys.
So keep that in mind.
And biological control can be quite successful
under the right conditions.
And then just to finish up,
I want to talk about chemical control.
So remember, this is at the top of the pest management pyramid.
We want to use chemical control sparingly
and only if needed.
Now, there's two main types I'll discuss briefly.
We've got biorational pesticides and also conventional ones.
It's important to keep in mind that each product
has a different personality, if you will.
They differ in how long they last,
how long you have to wait before you can harvest,
the types of insects that they control, and so on.
And just as a disclaimer,
I will be showing some ingredients and also products,
but this is not an endorsement.
These are being included for educational purposes only.
And always read and follow all the directions
on the pesticide label.
So we have biorational products.
These are generally based
on naturally-occurring products or sources.
So often plant-based, but not always.
Many of these are gonna be approved for organic gardening.
And in general, they tend to be less toxic
than our synthetic conventional products.
And in many situations, they don't last as long.
And we have a number of options out there.
I'm gonna discuss the pros and cons of these here
in a coming slide.
We have insecticidal soaps and oils, pyrethrin, spinosad,
and also Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt,
which is a bacterial-based product.
Then we've got our conventional insecticides.
So these are synthesized in a lab or manmade.
However, they can be based
upon naturally-occurring products.
So pyrethroids are based
upon naturally occurring pyrethrins, for example.
Now, in general, these tend to be a bit more potent
than those biorational and organic products,
and they tend to last longer, in many cases,
for several days to maybe a week or longer,
depending on the situation.
And these are generally broad spectrum products,
meaning they can control pests,
but they also have the possibility
of harming beneficial organisms too.
So we really wanna reduce the usage of these
if we're trying to reduce overall impacts
of our gardening practices.
And there's two main ones you'll bump into
at the garden center.
That would be the product Sevin.
The older formulation contained carbaryl.
And then there's a whole bunch of products
that contain pyrethroid ingredients.
These end in the letters T-H-R-I-N.
So permethrin, bifenthrin, cyfluthrin, and so on.
They all work very similarly against the insects.
And then just to wrap up by discussing some of the pros
and cons of these different approaches,
I have a table here to summarize some of the main points.
So we see that some of the biorational products,
like soaps and oils, really only work by context.
You have to spray insect pests thoroughly.
The soaps and oils primarily work against soft-bodied
or squishy insects like aphids, caterpillars, and mites.
And they basically work until they have dried,
which can be a very short period of time.
If it's a hot, sunny day,
that might only be about 10 to 15 minutes.
What's nice about these is a trade-off.
They have a short harvest interval,
meaning that you can spray and use these products,
control aphids or small caterpillars,
and you could harvest those same plants later that same day.
We have pyrethrins, which come from a natural extract
from certain types of Chrysanthemums.
These only work by contact,
but they can work against a very wide range of insects,
which unfortunately means they can pose risk
for beneficial insects, too.
The good predators and parasites.
They break down rapidly, though, usually within a day,
and they have a short harvest interval.
So we could use it today
and be able to harvest our products tomorrow.
But again, always read your product label
for those exact details.
Then we have spinosad, a bacterial-based product.
Works by contact or ingestion,
and it has some residual activity.
It works for several days.
So we could spray this on a plant,
an insect could show up a while later and ingest it,
and it would be controlled.
Now, spinosad works best against chewing insects,
such as certain beetles, caterpillars,
and leaf miners, and so on.
The harvest interval, though,
does vary depending on your crop.
Sometimes you might have to wait up to a week
before you can harvest.
Then we've got Bacillus thuringiensis, Bt.
This is an ingestion insecticide,
so it has to be consumed by the insect.
So we can spray down the plant.
The insect will have to nibble on it
to consume it and ingest it, and it works on their gut.
There's two main strains, though,
and you have to pick these carefully.
Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki works only
against caterpillars.
It's a very narrow spectrum product.
Bt galleriae works against certain beetles,
such as Japanese beetles.
There's usually generally some decent persistence,
several days, maybe upwards of a week.
And luckily, these products are very specific
to insects and essentially harmless
towards humans and other mammals,
so they have a very short harvest interval.
You can essentially use them and harvest later on
that same day in many cases.
And then those conventional products,
these work both by contact and ingestion.
These have a broad spectrum of activity,
meaning they could pose risk to beneficials,
as well as helping control the pests that we want.
They tend to last longer,
usually several days to maybe a week or longer,
depending on the conditions.
And also, that harvest interval varies.
So again, each insecticide product has pros and cons,
and you have to make some decisions
based on your particular desires.
If you want to do no pesticide versus organic
versus conventional and so on,
but you have to pick and choose wisely.
But again, with pesticides,
we wanna use this from the very top
of that pest management period as a last resort,
and use them sparingly because as I discussed,
there's lots of other things that we can do to help prevent
and minimize pest problems in our gardens.
And with that,
I'd like to thank you for your attention today
and joining me as I talked about managing insect pests
in your garden while reducing impacts
to beneficial creatures and the environment.
>> WELL, HELLO, EVERYONE, AND
WELCOME.
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
REDUCING OUR PESTICIDE USE IN
OUR GARDEN MANAGEMENT.
TJ IS JOINING US NOW TO ANSWER
QUESTIONS YOU SENT IN LIVE.
BEFORE THAT, A REMINDER THAT YOU
CAN KEEP ASKING AND WE WILL GET
TO THE QUESTIONS AS WE HAVE
TIME.
PJ, THANKS SO MUCH FOR BEING
HERE WITH US.
>> SURE.
PLEASURE TO BE HERE TODAY.
>> WE'VE GOT A COUPLE QUESTIONS
FROM FOLKS ASKING FOR EITHER
REFERENCES TO THE BOOKS YOU
SHARED OR THE LINKS AND SO I
JUST WANT TO MENTION THAT YOUR
PRESENTATION WILL BE AVAILABLE
ONLINE HERE SHORTLY AT WI
GARDENEXPO.COM.
TUNE BACK INTO THE GARDEN EXPO
WEBSITE SHORTLY.
OUR FIRST QUESTION IS IF THE
PAGE YOU SHARED FROM EXTENSION
IS AVAILABLE TO FOLKS NOT IN
WISCONSIN.
>> IT IS TECHNICALLY AND
ESSENTIALLY WHEN YOU GO TO THE
EXTENSION HORTICULTURE WEBSITE,
THERE IS THIS ASK A QUESTION
PAGE.
AND ON THAT PAGE THERE IS A
FILLABLE FORM.
SO YOU SAY WHO YOU ARE AND
GENERALLY WHERE YOU'RE LOCATED.
THERE'S A PULL-DOWN MENU WHERE
YOU CAN CHOOSE A WISCONSIN
COUNTY OR IF YOU'RE OUTSIDE THE
STATE, THERE'S AN OPTION FOR
THAT AS WELL.
IN SOME SITUATIONS IF YOU'RE
OUTSIDE OF THE STATE, WE MAY
HAVE TO DIRECT YOU TO YOUR OWN
MORE LOCAL EXTENSION RESOURCES.
AND A REASON FOR THAT IS
SOMETIMES WE HAVE PESTS THAT ARE
NOT NECESSARILY HERE IN
WISCONSIN OR THE BIOLOGY MAY BE
SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT IN
ANOTHER STATE OR THE MANAGEMENT
COULD BE DIFFERENT.
FOR EXAMPLE, WE MAY HAVE A
PESTICIDE REGISTERED HERE IN
WISCONSIN WHICH MAY NOT BE
REGISTERED IN NEW YORK OR
FLORIDA OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
BUT IN GENERAL IF YOU ARE IN A
NEARBY STATE, WE CAN OFTEN
ANSWER A LOT OF THE SAME
QUESTIONS.
>> EXCELLENT.
SO JB IS WONDERING A QUESTION
ABOUT THE WATERING YOU
MENTIONED, FINDING THAT GOLDYLOX
LEVEL.
BEST TIMES OF DAY TO WATER?
>> YEAH.
THAT'S A REALLY GOOD QUESTION.
IN TERMS OF WATERING, JUST A
COUPLE OF THOUGHTS.
AND, AGAIN, I HAD MENTIONED THE
IDEA OF WE DON'T WANT TOO MUCH,
TOO LITTLE.
ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION TO THE
LETTER.
THAT'S ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS IN
MY MIND.
WITH IN GROUNDWATER, ESPECIALLY
IF IT IS LIKE A DRIP HOSE OR
SOAK ERER HOSE, THAT CAN BE HELPING
NOT AS MUCH FROM AN INSECT
STANDPOINT, BUT FROM A DISEASE
STANDPOINT.
DR. BRIAN HUTLESON IS THE EXPERT
THAT ANSWERS DISEASE QUESTIONS,
BUT I KNOW HE WOULD SAY WE WANT
TO MINIMIZE THE LENGTH OF TIME
THAT FOLIAGE REMAINS WET FOR A
DISEASE PERSPECTIVE BECAUSE IF
WE HAVE PLANT LEAVES THAT ARE
SITTING THERE DAMP FOR EXTENDED
PERIODS OF TIME, THAT COULD
ENCOURAGE POTENTIALLY SOME
DISEASE ISSUES.
SO WE CAN LOOK AT THE TIME OF
DAY PERHAPS AND SEE IS THERE A
TIME OF DAY THAT MAYBE THAT
WATER IS GOING TO DRY OUT
QUICKLY SO IT LIMITS THE LENGTH
OF TIME.
THAT COULD BE A CONSIDERATION AS
WELL.
FROM AN INSECT STANDPOINT, IN MY
MIND THE TIMING ISN'T SUPER
CRITICAL.
IT MAY PLAY MORE INTO THE
DISEASE SIDE OF THINGS.
>> I'M ASSUMING TOO THAT FOLKS
MIGHT HAVE AN AUTOMATED WATERING
SYSTEM AS WELL, SOMETHING THAT'S
ON A TIMER.
ARE THERE WAYS THAT -- AGAIN,
YOU MENTIONED LOOKING TO
PRECIPITATION.
SHOULD PEOPLE NOT RELY SO MUCH
ON THE TIMER AND USE THAT IN A
MORE MANUAL WAY?
>> YEAH.
THAT'S DEFINITELY A GOOD
THOUGHT.
IF YOU ARE WATCHING THE WEATHER
AND YOU KNOW THAT -- WE JUST GOT
A HALF-INCH OF RAIN YESTERDAY.
IT MAY NOT MAKE SENSE TO POUR ON
ADDITIONAL WATER DURING THE
OVERNIGHT HOURS OR SOMETHING
LIKE THAT.
SO DO TAKE THAT INTO
CONSIDERATION.
>> PERFECT.
WELL, LYNN IS WONDERING, SHE HAS
A VEGETABLE GARDEN THAT IS ABOUT
EIGHT TIGHTEN FEET.
BY TEN FEET.
SHE'S WONDERING WOULD THAT BE A
LARGE ENOUGH SPACE TO ROTATE
TOMATOES AND PEPPERS OR THEY
STILL WOULD BE A LITTLE TOO
CLOSE TOGETHER?
>> YEAH.
THAT MAY BE SMALL ENOUGH THAT
CROP ROTATION IN SPACE MIGHT NOT
BE ABLE TO DO A WHOLE LOT.
AND YOU REALLY HAVE TO ALSO PAY
ATTENTION TO -- AND I MENTIONED
THIS IN MY TALK.
WHAT ARE THE ISSUES THAT YOU
HAVE SEEN?
I MENTIONED THE IDEA OF KEEPING
A GARDENING JOURNAL.
IF YOU SAW A PARTICULAR INSECT
OR DISEASE LAST YEAR, LEARNING
MORE ABOUT THOSE INDIVIDUAL
PROBLEMS CAN BE REALLY HELPFUL.
WE KNOW FOR DISEASES SOMETIMES
THE SPORES FOR EXAMPLE CAN LAST
LONG TIMES IN THE ENVIRONMENT,
SO ROTATING OVER A SMALL AMOUNT
OF SPACE MIGHT NOT HELP.
FOR THE INSECTS, YOU WOULD HAVE
TO LOOK AND SEE, IS THIS AN
INSECT THAT CAN'T MOVE A WHOLE
LOT OR IS IT SOMETHING THAT CAN
FLY AROUND?
IF IT'S AN INSECT THAT CAN FLY
AND IS VERY MOBILE, PROBABLY
WON'T MAKE MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE.
IN A CASE LIKE THAT YOU COULD
CONSIDER ROTATING MORE IN TIME
RATHER THAN SPACE.
SO MAYBE DON'T HAVE THE TOMATOES
OR EGGPLANT THIS YEAR.
MAYBE TAKE A YEAR OR TWO OFF AND
THEN COME BACK AND PUT THEM BACK
IN.
IN SOME SITUATIONS THAT MAY HELP
US OUT.
PERSONALLY, I HAVE A SMALL
GARDEN KIND OF LIKE THAT.
I HAVE TWO RAISED BED GARDENS
THAT ARE 5X10, SO THAT'S
SOMETHING I HAVE TO LOOK AT AS
KIND OF SKIPPING SOME YEARS HERE
AND THERE IF I SAW A PROBLEM
THAT POPPED UP WHERE ROTATION
MIGHT HELP OUT.
SO NOT JUST IN SPACE, BUT ALSO
TIME CAN BE AN IMPORTANT
CONSIDERATION.
>> CROP ROTATION IN TIME AND
SPACE SOUNDS LIKE THE NEXT GREAT
BLOCKBUSTER, SPEAKING
PERSONALLY.
SUSAN IS WONDERING CAN YOU
ADVISE ON MULCH DEPTH FOR PEST
REDUCTION IN GARDENS?
>> YEAH.
ANOTHER GOOD QUESTION.
AND I DON'T HAVE THAT LEVEL OF
TECHNICAL DETAIL IN TERMS OF HOW
DEEP TO PUT THAT MULCH.
I MENTIONED MULCH SPECIFICALLY
WITH REGARD TO LIKE SUPPRESSING
WEEDS.
SO YOU MIGHT HAVE TO JUST KIND
OF WATCH AND OBSERVE AND SEE IF
YOU PUT OUT A THIN LAYER OF
MULCH AND WEEDS ARE POPPING UP,
PERHAPS IT WASN'T DEEP ENOUGH.
WE NEED TO MAKE SURE WE'RE NOT
SMOTHERING OUR CROPS, EITHER.
I DON'T HAVE A GOOD, CLEAR-CUT
ANSWER FOR THAT.
PART OF IT MAY BE YOU HAVE TO
LOOK AT YOUR PARTICULAR
GARDENING SITUATION AND IT COULD
EVEN MAYBE DIFFER WITH THE WEEDS
THAT ARE PRESENT IN YOUR GARDEN.
SOME WEEDS MAY BE EASY TO
SMOTHER AND SUPPRESS WHERE OTHER
ONES MAY KEEP POPPING UP THROUGH
THAT AND YOU MIGHT NEED A DEEPER
LAYER.
>> JULIE HAS AN INTERESTING
QUESTION.
SHE HAS AN ORNAMENTAL TREE NEAR
HER VEGGIE GARDEN.
THE JAPANESE BEETLES COME TO IT.
IS THERE SOMETHING SHE COULD
USED THAT WOULDN'T BE USED
DIRECTLY ON THE GARDEN OR DRIFT
OVER?
HOW CAN SHE THINK OF THAT
ORNAMENTAL VERSUS EDIBLE CROP
SITUATION.
>> SURE.
IN ALL THE INSECTS I DEAL WITH
IN MY JOB, JAPANESE BEETLES ARE
WAY UP ON THE LIST.
I GOT A LOT OF QUESTIONS ON THAT
PARTICULAR INSECT.
I WOULD REALLY VIEW IT AS KIND
OF TWO SEPARATE SITUATIONS.
I WOULD LOOK AT THE BIRCH TREE
AND THINK ABOUT IT, AM I
CONCERNED ABOUT THE HEALTH OF
THAT BIRCH TREE.
AND WHAT I MEAN BY THAT IS IF
I'M SEEING THAT BIRCH BE
DEFOLIATED YEAR AFTER YEAR I
WOULD WORRY ABOUT THE LONG-TERM
HEALTH.
THERE ARE SECONDARY PESTS THAT
CAN GET IN AND MAY END UP
CAUSING FOR SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE
DOWN THE ROAD.
SO THERE ARE SOME TREATMENTS
INDEED AVAILABLE THAT WE COULD
APPLY TO PROTECT THE BIRCH TREE,
BUT I DON'T THINK IT WOULD
REALLY HAVE MUCH OF A BEARING ON
WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE GARDEN.
JAPANESE BEETLES CAN BE
ATTRACTED TO A VERY, VERY WIDE
RANGE OF PLANTS, AND THERE ARE
CERTAIN GARDEN PLANTS THAT THEY
JUST REALLY LOVE.
JAPANESE BEETLE IS KNOWN TO FEED
ON AT LEAST 300 DIFFERENT TYPES
OF PLANTS.
THEY LIKE BIRCH TREES.
BUT IF YOU HAVE BEANS, INCLUDING
POLE BEANS, WHICH THEY REALLY
LOVE, YOU COULD TREAT THAT BIRCH
TREE, BUT THEY'RE STILL PROBABLY
GOING TO BE COMING INTO THE
GARDEN SITUATION.
I WOULD ALMOST LOOK AT IT
INDEPENDENTLY AS TWO DIFFERENT
ISSUES THAT YOU'RE DEALING WITH.
AGAIN, IF YOU SEE A LOT OF
SIGNIFICANT DAMAGE ON THAT BIRCH
TREE YEAR AFTER YEAR, THERE ARE
SOME PRODUCTS THAT CAN BE
APPLIED TO THE SOIL, MOVE
UPWARDS AND WILL PROTECT THE
FOLIAGE.
I DON'T THINK THAT'S GOING TO
INFLUENCE JAPANESE BEETLES IN
YOUR GARDEN A LOT.
>> YOU MENTIONED REMOVING
BEETLES FROM BEANS OR OTHER
CROPS.
IF YOU GET SQUEAMISH AROUND
THAT, I FOUND A DUST BUSTER
WORKS.
VACUUM YOUR PLANTS EVERY DAY AND
EMPTY THE CANISTER INTO THE
SOAPY WATER AS WELL.
SO DB IS WONDERING IS THERE
ANYTHING YOU CAN SHARE ON THE
STATUS OF JUMPING WORMS IN
WISCONSIN RIGHT NOW?
>> I DON'T HAVE A WHOLE LOT TO
SAY ABOUT JUMPING WORMS.
I DO DEFINITELY GET QUESTIONS
ABOUT JUMPING WORMS.
THEY ARE AN INVASIVE SPECIES OF
EARTHWORM WHICH COMES FROM PARTS
OF ASIA ORIGINALLY, AND THEY CAN
GET INTO GARDEN AREAS AND
FLOWERBEDS AND THINGS LIKE THAT
AND THEY CONSUME ORGANIC MATTER
VERY, VERY QUICKLY.
AND ESSENTIALLY WHAT I THINK OF
IN MY MIND AS A JUMPING WORM,
IT'S ALMOST LIKE YOUR
RUN-OF-THE-MILL EARTHWORM THAT
YOU GAVE A TRIPLE ESPRESSO TO.
THEY CAN OCCUR IN DENSER
POPULATIONS.
WHAT CAN HAPPEN IN A WORST CASE
SCENARIO IS THEY CONSUME ALL THE
ORGANIC MATTER IN THE SOIL AND
THE SOIL TAKES ON THIS TEXTURE
OF LIKE CRUMBABLY COFFEE
GROUNDS.
THAT CAN DISRUPT THE
WATER-HOLDING CAPACITY OF THE
SOIL.
SO YOU CAN HAVE SOME PLANTS, BE
IT A SHRUB OR FLOWERS AND YOU'RE
WATERING THEM, BUT THE WATER
PERCOLATES THROUGH VERY, VERY
QUICKLY AND THE SOIL CAN ALMOST
CAVE IN ON IT IF YOU WERE TO
PUSH DOWN ON IT WITH YOUR FEET.
AT THIS POINT WE KNOW THAT
JUMPING WORMS ARE ESTABLISHED
HERE IN WISCONSIN.
THEY'VE BEEN AROUND FOR QUITE A
FEW YEARS.
THE LATEST MAP I'VE SEEN,
THEY'VE BEEN DOCUMENTED IN 40 OR
MORE COUNTIES IN WISCONSIN.
SO MOST OF THE SOUTHERN PART OF
THE STATE WE HAVE RECORDS OF
THESE WORMS, INCLUDING AREAS
LIKE THE GREATER MADISON AREA,
THE GREATER MILWAUKEE/WAUKESHA
METRO AREA.
THEY'VE BEEN DOCUMENTED FROM
THAT PART OF THE STATE AS WELL.
IF YOU GET INTO FAR NORTHERN
WISCONSIN, IT'S MUCH MORE HIT OR
MISS.
WE HAVEN'T FOUND IT IN SOME
COUNTIES, BUT THE SOUTHERN HALF
OF THE STATE THEY HAVE AT LEAST
BEEN FOUND IN LOCALIZED SPOTS IN
THOSE COUNTIES.
AGAIN, NOT A WHOLE LOT THAT WE
CAN DO ABOUT THEM,
UNFORTUNATELY.
WE DON'T HAVE ANY PESTICIDE
PRODUCTS THAT ARE REGISTERED
WITH THE EPA TO SPECIFICALLY
KILL EARTHWORMS.
THERE HISTORICALLY HAD BEEN
FERTILIZER-TYPE PRODUCTS THAT
WERE USED THAT SHOWED PROMISE IN
HELPING CONTROL THEM, BUT THEY
ARE NO LONGER ON THE MARKET.
IT'S SOMETHING THAT AS GARDENERS
WE NEED TO BE AWARE OF.
IF WE DO HAVE THESE IN OUR
GARDEN, WE HAVE TO FIGURE OUT
WAYS TO ADAPT WITH THEM.
ONE CONSIDERATION, IF YOU HAVE A
SEVERE PROBLEM WITH THESE IN
YOUR GARDEN, YOU COULD CONSIDER
MAYBE GROWING SOME PLANTS IN
CONTAINERS OR EVEN TRY OUT SOME
STRAW BALE GARDENING, PERHAPS.
THERE'S A LOT OF RESEARCH THAT
NEEDS TO BE DONE IN THE NEXT
COUPLE YEARS IN TERMS OF
PRACTICES THE EVERYDAY HOME
GARDENER CAN DO TO ADD EXTRA
NUTRIENTS TO THE SOIL TO SEE IF
THAT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND
HELP OVERALL.
BUT THEY CAN DEFINITELY BE A
HEADACHE FOR GARDENERS HERE IN
THE STATE OF WISCONSIN.
>> WE HAVE AWESOME QUESTIONS
COMING IN.
SAI IS WONDERING DO WE STILL
NEED A SOIL TEST WITH A SMALL
GARDEN?
HOW FREQUENTLY DO WE NEED TO
TEST OUR SOIL DEPENDING HOW
LARGE A SPACE WE'RE GROWING IN?
>> THAT'S A REALLY INTERESTING
QUESTION TO THINK ABOUT.
IN MY MIND, THE MORE DATA WE
HAVE, THE BETTER WE KNOW OUR
GARDEN, THAT ALLOWS US TO MAKE
MORE INFORMED DECISIONS.
NOW, IF YOU HAVE PUT IN A SMALL
RAISED BED GARDEN AND YOU HAD AN
IT A COUPLE YEARS AND THINGS ARE
GROWING WELL, THEN YOU MIGHT NOT
NEED TO TEST IT AS FREQUENTLY.
BUT AT LEAST INITIALLY I WOULD
DO THAT TO KNOW WHAT YOUR
STARTING BASELINE IS.
MAYBE CONSIDER CHECKING IT EVERY
OTHER YEAR.
BUT IF YOU NOTICE SOME ISSUES
WITH CERTAIN CROPS JUST ARE NOT
GROWING WELL, YOU KNOW, AN
EVERY-YEAR SOIL TEST CAN BE SOME
VALUABLE INFORMATION.
IT'S NOT AN EXPENSIVE TEST TO
DO.
IT USUALLY RUNS ABOUT 15 TO 20
BUCKS OR SO.
IN MY MIND, THE MORE DATA WE
HAVE, THAT AGAIN ALLOWS US TO
MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS.
YOU CAN ALSO LOOK AT CERTAIN
GARDENING SITUATIONS MORE ON THE
SMALLER END OF THE SPECTRUM,
WHERE IF WE ARE PURCHASING AND
USING SOIL OR POTTING MEDIUM
THAT ALREADY HAS FERTILIZER IN
IT, IT'S SOLD IN BAGS
SPECIFICALLY FOR GROWING
VEGETABLES, THAT'S PROBABLY
GOING TO HAVE A GOOD SOIL
NUTRIENT PROFILE TO BEGIN WITH.
IF YOU HAVE INGROUND SOIL, MAKE
SURE YOU KNOW THAT BASELINE AND
THEN CONSIDER DOING IT ON
OCCASION JUST TO SEE IF NUTRIENT
PROFILES ARE CHANGING OVER TIME.
SO MAYBE EVERY OTHER YEAR.
BUT AGAIN EVERY YEAR IDEALLY.
>> SO OUR LAST QUESTION IN JUST
THE LAST MINUTE OR SO, A VIEWER
IS WONDERING DOES A RAISED BED
GARDEN MAKE A DIFFERENCE WHEN IT
COMES TO REDUCING PESTS VERSUS
JUST GARDENING IN OUR EXISTING
SOIL?
>> YEAH.
AN INTERESTING THOUGHT.
FROM A PEST STANDPOINT, YOU
COULD HAVE CERTAIN PESTS THAT
AREN'T AS MOBILE AND SO IT MAY
BE HARDER FOR THEM TO PHYSICALLY
CLIMB UP AND GET INTO A RAISED
BED GARDEN.
THAT COULD BE A CONSIDERATION.
AGAIN, A LOT OF OUR INSECTS,
THOUGH, ARE FAIRLY MOBILE,
ESPECIALLY IF THEY CAN FLY.
IF IT'S RAISED UP A LITTLE BIT,
THAT PROBABLY ISN'T GOING TO
MAKE A WHOLE LOT OF DIFFERENCE.
THERE CAN BE SOME BENEFITS,
THOUGH, FROM A PLANT HEALTH
STANDPOINT, WHERE THAT RAISED
BED GARDEN PERHAPS MIGHT WARM UP
A LITTLE BIT EARLIER.
YOU CAN ALSO REALLY CONTROL THE
SOIL IN THERE, SO YOU MIGHT GET
BETTER DRAINAGE WHICH COULD KEEP
MAYBE NOT SO MUCH WITH THE
INSECTICIDE OF THINGS, BUT THE
DISEASE SIDE OF THINGS.
IF YOU HAVE GOOD DRAINAGE, THERE
DEFINITELY CAN BE SOME BENEFITS
IN THAT REGARD.
IN MY MIND, THOUGH, THAT RAISED
BED GARDEN, WHICH IS WHAT I'VE
GOT, IF IT'S DESIGNED WELL CAN
ALLOW YOU TO SCOUT THINGS VERY
EASILY AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU
HAVE BAD KNEES OR SOMETHING LIKE
THAT, IT CAN BE EASIER TO CHECK
THINGS WHEN THEY'RE ELEVATED A
BIT COMPARED TO IN THE GROUND.
SO THERE ARE SOME BENEFITS.
>> EXCELLENT.
PJ, THANK YOU AGAIN FOR BEING
WITH US.
WE REALLY APPRECIATE YOU TAKING
THE TIME.
>> SURE.
THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
>> WELL, THANK YOU AGAIN
EVERYONE FOR JOINING US.
A REMINDER THAT WE ARE JUST
GETTING STARTED TODAY AND THERE
IS SO MUCH MORE GREAT CONTENT TO
COME.
ALSO A REMINDER THAT THIS EVENT
IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH YOUR
CONTRIBUTIONS.
WHEN YOU SUPPORT US, YOU ARE
HELPING TO MAKE THESE FREE AND
ACCESSIBLE EVENTS AVAILABLE TO
ALL, A PLACE WHERE WE CAN COME
TOGETHER AND CELEBRATE OUR
SHARED LOVE OF GARDENING AND GET
EXCITED FOR THE SEASON AHEAD.
VISIT OUR WEBSITE AND CLICK ON
DONATE.
WE APPRECIATE ANY AMOUNT YOU'RE
ABLE TO CONTRIBUTE.
THANKS SO MUCH AGAIN AND DO STAY
WITH US.
THERE'S MORE TO COME.
- Hi, I'm Ben Futa,
host of PBS Wisconsin's gardening series
Let's Grow Stuff .
On behalf of PBS Wisconsin,
welcome to the Garden & Landscape Expo
Virtual Spring Kick-Off.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a live Q&A after the presentation.
After our session, be sure to explore everything else
the Virtual Spring Kick-Off has to offer,
including 360 video garden tours, a panel discussion
with UW Extension horticulture experts, and more.
Thank you, and enjoy.
- Hello, I'm Susan Carpenter,
and I am the Wisconsin Native Plant Garden curator
and native plant gardener
here at the UW Arboretum in Madison,
and today my presentation is
"Bumble Bee Conservation in Your Garden."
So just to step back, gardening that supports bumble bees,
which is mainly what I'll be talking about today,
will also support many other pollinators
and wildlife as well.
So these include, these other pollinators include
butterflies, moths, flies,
wasps, beetles, ants, and hummingbirds,
but bees and the entire group of bees
are the most effective pollinators.
So Wisconsin has a great many native bee species.
We have between 400 and 500 native bee species
here in the state, and most of these species
are very small, solitary species, about 85% of them,
and you might not even notice them.
They have small home ranges, they visit flowers.
They might visit flowers that you're not familiar with.
They're very tiny, as I said,
but they live in a solitary lifestyle,
so they're nesting either in cavities in logs
or in small hollow stems, or in the ground.
So we have a great many native bees,
and those are very important to the ecosystems in Wisconsin.
The 15% of our bees are social or semi-social,
and you can see on this diagram
that each of those squares represents a species,
and that upper left corner shows you
the social or semi-social bee species.
And within the social species, we have the bumble bees,
and I'm going to focus mostly on bumble bees today.
They are very familiar to us.
We have have quite a few species in Wisconsin.
You can see there are 20 species,
about 12 to 14 of which you would find
in the southern part of the state.
I do wanna point out that when we think about bees,
we often think about honey bees,
and honey bees are not a native bee in Wisconsin.
They are important agriculturally.
You could think of them as a domestic animal, basically.
They're kept in hives and humans care for them,
for the most part.
There's only one species of honey bee,
and that's why you see it there on the lower left.
One single species,
and it is a social species, perennial species,
and they originated in Europe, so those are the honey bees.
Just to keep that in mind.
They're not native to Wisconsin,
so they don't have special relationships
with any of our native flora here in the state.
Wisconsin bumble bees do need our help.
There are 20 species, as I mentioned.
One of them is federally endangered.
This is the rusty patch bumble bee,
which is found throughout many counties in Wisconsin,
we know now, and I'll talk a little bit later
about how you can add to that information
that we're gathering throughout the state.
Five more species are...
Yeah, five more species are considered to be
species of greatest conservation need.
So this means that they are showing signs of decline
or are relatively rare,
and they're ones that we're keeping a close eye on.
And three more species that are circled here in black,
that we don't have enough information about.
We just simply don't know enough about them
to know whether or not they are endangered or not.
We don't know what their populations are,
their life histories, and where they are living.
So how can we help bumble bees?
The main way to do this is to plant native plants.
That's a way that's accessible to all of us,
usually if we have a home garden, obviously,
or if we're involved with community gardens,
school gardens, civic spaces,
anywhere where plants can be planted,
and where people take care of plants.
If we plant native plants, this will create habitat,
and bring bumble bees to the area.
Then another way to help bumble bees
is actually to photograph them, make discoveries yourself,
and learn about bumble bees so that we can all learn more.
Then after you have a number of photographs
and discoveries made,
joining a group like the Bumble Bee Brigade,
participating in that project,
will help you share your photos, share your findings.
You can learn more from others within that group
and from the website,
and then you're contributing along the way
to statewide conservation projects
that protect bumble bees.
So, as I mentioned, the best way to create habitat
for pollinators and bumble bees
is to create native plant gardens.
This is a pretty simple formula.
We have pollinator habitat, we have native plants,
we have pollinator habitat, and it's pretty surprising,
after you start planting native plants,
how quickly you will see an increase
in the number of bumble bees
and the number of other pollinators coming into the area
as those plants start to bloom.
I'll go through a few of my favorite plants.
Everyone wonders, what are the best plants for bumble bees?
And I've drawn from several resources
that I'll mention in a moment,
but I wanna show you some of these plants
and show you some of the bumble bees that visit them.
I will travel through the seasons with this little tour,
and so the first one we'll start with is the shooting star.
This is a very lovely plant
that grows in the early, early spring.
It can grow in prairie settings or in semi-shaded woodlands.
It comes up before the trees have,
the leaves come up before the trees have leafed out
in a forested setting, and these flowers are pendulous.
You can see they are pointing downward
when they're blooming, and they're at the left.
You can see a bumble bee in the center
hanging on to the flower,
and it hangs onto the flower upside down,
and it creates a buzzing,
a special buzzing noise with its wings, wing muscles,
and it shakes the pollen from the flower down onto the bee,
and then the bee can groom the pollen
from its back and front, in this case,
to pack it into its pollen-carrying corbicula.
And there you can see in the center,
that bee has already collected a lot of pollen,
and it has the pollen collected in that yellow ball
there on its leg, and soon will fly back to its colony
to deliver that pollen to the young of the colony.
Wild geranium is another one
of our spring-blooming wildflowers.
This is very common in oak woods,
and it can be grown very well in home gardens.
It provides a mass of plants,
like you see in this photograph at the right,
and the flowers are fairly open,
and that will be visited by bumble bees
and by other early season pollinators.
A little bit later in the season here,
we see the spiderwort and the downy wood mint.
These are both obviously blooming
at the same time during the season,
and the spiderwort has an open flower.
You would want to go see bees
visiting spiderwort in the morning,
because each spiderwort flower only opens
for half a day, usually,
and by noon, that flower has finished blooming
and is closing up,
so there are a great many buds on a spiderwort,
and they continue to bloom for several weeks,
but each flower is only open for actually less than a day.
The wood mint is another,
it's a member of the mint family, obviously,
and it has tiny little flowers.
You can see at the right, the tiny little flowers.
The bees can move around
those little levels of flowers on the mint,
and take nectar from them, and that nectar is important
to provide the bee with nutrition.
The adult bees are gaining their carbohydrates.
It's a good source of carbohydrates
for the adult bees as they fly, forage,
and collect more pollen for their colony.
Wild roses are another spring to summer blooming flower,
and these wild roses, you'll notice at the left there,
are wide open flowers.
They have five petals, a lot of stamens in the center,
a lot of pollen produced there on those anthers,
and the bumble bees go into the roses
and use that buzzing noise, again,
to kind of shake pollen loose
as they tumble around within the roses.
Those are...
You might notice it's quite different
from a cultivated rose that has multiple petals
and doesn't really have that many stamens,
so I do encourage you to look at all different kinds of roses,
and see which ones are being visited by the bees.
There are a great many species of wild roses
that can be grown easily in gardens,
and they spread by rhizome around the garden.
So they will increase from, say, if you just plant one of them,
they will increase throughout your garden.
The plant at the right-hand side of this slide
is the pale purple coneflower,
and this is a lovely member of the sunflower family
with those strap-like leaves at the base,
and then tall stalks,
the blooming in, say, June or so,
and those tall stalks holding,
each one holding a flowering head,
and the flowering head has drooping,
the drooping ray flowers
that look like petals there dangling down.
And then that cone in the middle
is where all the pollinating will be going on,
because each of those little red points there on the cone
is an individual flower,
and the bee that you see visiting this one on the inset
is visiting the first few flowers on the cone,
there at the base of the cone.
They're in bloom, and then they'll begin through time
to bloom all the way up to the top of the cone.
And so bees can be visiting this plant for quite a while,
even though the details are rather small
and you have to look carefully to see what's going on.
The prairie clovers are wonderful,
are a wonderful plant for pollinators.
Lots of pollinators will use them,
but the bumble bees especially love them.
The purple prairie clover
has this bright, bright orange pollen,
and you can see the two bees here kind of in this picture
are gathering that pollen, and you can see how bright it is
from the pollen that they're carrying.
They have to move around.
Each of those little purple individual things
that you see on the column there are individual flowers,
and those, each one is visited then.
So the bees kind of turn sideways
and run around the circle there,
and then the plant will continue to bloom.
As time goes on, it will start at the bottom
and continue to bloom up toward the top
of that inflorescence.
The white prairie clover doesn't have the same color pollen,
but it's still a very good source for the bumble bees.
And you can see how it grows in...
This is actually many clumps
of prairie clover growing together.
It doesn't spread by rhizome.
It spreads by seed, so it can be,
these two plants can be grown in any area
that's kind of open, full sun, medium to dry soils.
Even gravel, rocky soils are fine for this one,
and so it's pretty easy to grow.
You can grow it in a sand prairie, sand area, rock garden,
those kinds of places.
And then of course,
bee balm is one of the very best bumble bee plants.
It's easy to grow.
This is the native one,
so there are some cultivated varieties
you might be familiar with,
but this is the lavender-colored native one.
And it grows, it does seed itself well.
It does spread throughout an area, but it's not...
When you see it blooming, you'll see it fill the area.
When it's not blooming,
it makes room for other plants as well.
This is the picture,
the close-up picture of the bumble bee visiting
is the rusty patch bumble bee.
This is our federally endangered bee,
which we have a great deal of,
or we have a lot of sightings of here in Madison
and also around the state of Wisconsin,
also in Minnesota, Illinois,
a few sightings in Iowa,
a few sightings a little further east,
but it's been lost over most of its original range.
So it is pretty exciting to be tracking this one,
and to be involved with conserving
and recovery for its populations.
So bee balm has long, tubular flowers,
and the bumble bees usually use the tubular flower
to take the nectar from the flower.
The nectar's at the base of the tube,
but you can see the rusty patch bumble bee
at the right-hand photo there is actually puncturing the tube,
and she is taking the nectar direct.
She's kind of cheating and taking the nectar
directly through that hole,
and that's called nectar robbing,
and rusty patch is fairly unique in in its behavior
to nectar rob on that plant.
Most of the other bumble bees will use the tube.
So bee balm is a great place to do your monitoring.
I'll talk about that in a moment.
Here, we have 2 of the 12 native milkweeds
that are living in Wisconsin.
The butterfly weed is the orange one,
and the whorled milkweed is this white one.
Those are both suited for dry areas.
The butterfly milkweed
can grow in a medium soil moisture as well,
and they're both, of course, very, very, very,
all these milkweeds are very attractive
for all kinds of insects.
They have nectar, copious nectar
in the little cups of the flowers,
but they have a very specific pollination system.
And so this pollination system is really only,
there are really only a few pollinators
who can effectively pollinate milkweed,
even though lots of insects will visit it,
and bumble bees are one of those pollinators,
and you can see the bumble bee in this picture
has little golden structures hanging on its legs
and hanging near its mandible,
and those structures are the pollen packets
from the milkweed.
So when we see a bee flying around like this,
we know that it's visited a milkweed,
and chances are it will revisit a milkweed
and be able to drop off those into the little slots
on the milkweed flower,
where the pollen packets are received.
So it's a special relationship
when you have a plant that requires pollination
by bumble bees or by larger pollinators.
We need to have all those pollinators active
in order to keep the milkweeds propagating
and have them producing seed.
These are the blazing stars,
and again, we have several species of blazing star.
I have just two illustrated here.
On the left is the meadow blazing star,
which is a favorite nectar plant for monarch butterflies,
if you're interested in butterfly gardening as well.
These are flower heads that you're looking at there
all scattered along this tall stem.
Plants probably three feet tall in total height.
And then at the right, we have the prairie blazing star
where the flowering heads are more clustered.
The blooming there starts at the top
and then works its way down the stalk.
Again, these would be plants about three feet tall,
if we don't have a drought.
If we have a drought,
we see these plants are surviving just fine.
They may be a bit shorter than on a moister year,
but they are perfectly able to grow to handle drought,
and that's one of the advantages of growing the native plants,
you know, with a varied,
with varied weather and varied climate.
These are some late summer blooming plants.
So the tall white spikes, that is the Culver's root.
And again, very, very good for all kinds of pollinators,
but especially for the bumble bees.
And then the shorter white flower in this left photo
is the mountain mint, again from the mint family,
and this is another great nectar plant
for the bumble bees.
It also has a wonderful scent to it.
These would be growing in medium to moist soils,
all of these plants that are shown in these two photos.
So if you have an area that has a drain spout
or even verging into a rain garden area,
you could grow these plants very successfully.
The pink one in the right-hand photo is the red milkweed.
And that's another milkweed, of course,
but also growing in a moister area
compared to the ones that I just introduced earlier.
And this is Joe-pye weed,
one of our species of Joe-pye weed.
This is a very tall plant.
It can get up to eight feet tall,
depending on the conditions.
It does well with semi-shade.
It blooms late in the summer,
so it's blooming in August, usually,
and the flowers are clusters,
and you could see in the close up of a rusty patch
visiting the Joe-pye weed,
that actually each of those long, narrow clusters
is a cluster of individual flowers.
This is a male bee, so it's kind of dusty with white pollen,
and the male bees don't collect pollen.
So they get the pollen on their bodies,
but they don't actually pack it into packets
and bring it to the nest,
so they're just doing nectaring and out looking for mates
at this time of year, late in the summer.
And then also in August, or later in the summer season,
we find the bottle gentian,
and there are actually several species of gentians, again.
The bottle gentian is this blue one,
and it's a fascinating flower, very beautiful,
but also very interesting as it relates to its pollination.
So these flowers that you're seeing on the left there
are completely and fully in bloom.
The flower does not open.
It's got a small opening at the top,
and the petals are folded and pleated
around that little opening,
so a very large pollinator like a bumble bee
has to force its way in to that little opening,
pressing the petals apart,
and when it gets inside, the petals close back up
and look just like what you're seeing in this picture.
So the bee is inside, moving around,
moving the pollen around to the parts of the flower,
and then the bumble bee has to pop back out
of the top of the flower.
So this one is fun to watch.
If you've got bumble bees around,
it's fun to watch them pollinating that one.
And when the flowers are fully pollinated,
you'll see they turn a kind of purple color.
So some of them in the cluster are purple,
and those are ones that have already been pollinated.
There is another type of gentian that's not very,
it's not very common, but it's present in our area,
and this is the cream gentian,
and that one opens a little bit more at the top.
The petals come apart,
so you'll see the bumble bees going in and out,
as you see this small half black bumble bee
peeking out after being inside of that cream gentian flower.
Another interesting floral structure or floral anatomy
is on this white turtlehead.
White turtlehead is another excellent bumble bee plant,
and you can see that the structure of the flower
requires the bee to kind of manipulate the flower a bit
and kind of grab on and get itself organized,
so that it can pop into that,
into underneath the hood of the flower,
and so this is also very entertaining to watch,
but also a good way to document your bumble bees,
'cause they're sort of sitting there, working the flower
and you can get some good pictures of them
while they're doing that,
and see their identifying markings.
So these are all good plants.
These would both, all three of these plants
would grow in a medium soil, and medium to moist
for the case of the bottle gentian and the turtlehead.
Rain gardens would be suitable for both of those,
and the cream gentian,
sometimes in a little bit drier area than the other two.
And then at the end of the season, of course,
we have the goldenrod and aster season,
and there are dozens of species in these two groups.
I'm just giving you the two here that are the longest lasting
or the latest ones to be blooming,
so after everything else is done blooming,
we have showy goldenrod
and New England aster still in bloom.
So these are visited by any insects
at the end of the season, migrating monarchs,
bumble bee queens that have come out,
just been born out of the nests,
and so they're very, very valuable,
and as everything else stops blooming,
these are present and continue to be...
The bees kind of focus on them or become focused on them
because of the lack of other resources
to use in the late part of the season,
so in September, usually.
So to create good bumble bee habitat, you want to plant
many and many different kinds of native flowers
that bloom from early to late in the season,
so we want things right at the beginning of the season
and we want things at the end,
and we want things blooming all the way through.
And usually not just one thing blooming at a time,
so enough plants that we maybe
have three different bumble bee plants
blooming at the same time.
And that may sound like a lot,
but as you get involved with gardening with native plants,
you'll tend to want to add more and more.
We want to leave suitable nesting and overwintering sites,
so this means that we leave some areas of loose, bare soil.
So even in wooded areas, we leave chipmunk burrows
and other small, like hollow logs, perhaps.
These would all be possible places
where bumble bees would be selecting nest sites
in our gardens.
And we do not use insecticides,
especially the systemic insecticides,
which are the insecticides
that are taken up in plant tissue,
and they remain in plant tissue
throughout the life of the plant.
They go into the pollen and the nectar,
so they can harm bumble bees and other pollinators
through their using the pollen and nectar for a food source.
There are many places
to learn more about these plants and other plants.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
has a rusty patch bumble bee plant list
that we put together for folks to use,
if they're specifically interested in rusty patch.
As I mentioned, rusty patch are fairly,
are fairly usual as bumble bees go,
so anything that encourages the rusty patch bumble bee
will also encourage lots of other bumble bee species.
The Xerces Society is an invertebrate organization,
invertebrate conservation organization.
They have lots of plant lists.
They have identification information.
They also are conserving other beneficial insects
besides pollinators, so that's a great resource
to get a lot of good gardening information,
as well as information about the insects.
The Pollinator Partnership has many planting guides
for really all over the country,
and that's a good place for some of these plant lists.
And you can check, depending on wherever you live,
you wanna have plants that are native to that area,
so you can check for your area
and then make sure that you're able to source the plants
that you need for your native vegetation.
Native plant nurseries are also a good source of,
of course of materials, but also of information.
So they have seed mixes for pollinators
in different types of settings,
and they have a lot of information
about the individual species as well,
and the Midwest has a lot of good native plant nurseries.
I wanna just look into the bumble bee life cycle
for a moment here.
This is something to understand,
because when you're gardening and you see bumble bees,
where are they and what are they,
where are they in their life cycle?
And this is important to interpret what you're looking at
when you see them.
So starting up at number one there,
right now in the winter, the bumble bees are,
the queen, future queens for next year
are each individually in a small cavity underground
that they have dug, and they're overwintering there.
So they're dormant, but they have already mated.
So keep that in mind that already mated females are now,
future queens are now individually
resting underground.
In about the middle of April for southern Wisconsin,
they will begin to emerge, and as they emerge,
they have to come out of their hibernation place,
and they have to find a suitable nesting spot,
and this would be a different spot
from where they spent the winter.
So it would be maybe a small chipmunk burrow,
and they go into there and they start to lay eggs,
and when they lay the eggs,
they have to bring pollen to feed the eggs.
So as the eggs hatch,
they begin to feed on the pollen that the queen brings back,
and she is raising now her first group of worker bees
for her colony.
This is an annual colony.
It's only going to last a year, so everything is riding on her
to get it off to a good start.
So the building part of the colony
is from the time that she starts laying her first eggs
until she's built up a good number of worker bees.
As soon as the worker bees are active and adults,
it takes a few weeks,
then they go and do the foraging,
and she can remain in the nest.
The queen can remain in the nest and just lay more eggs,
and the young workers will forage
and bring the pollen and nectar back to the nest
for the young that are still developing.
About midway through the summer,
the colony shifts from building up in numbers
to reproduction,
and reproduction is when midway through the season,
the queen will start laying eggs that will become males
and she'll lay eggs that become new future queens.
So what we see there at number four is the mating process.
This is going on anywhere from July, August, September,
and depending on the species
and depending on, you know, the conditions of that year.
And then after the queens are mated,
they will go into their dormancy.
So you see the mated queen there at the top.
She's a very large bee.
She's very fresh looking,
'cause she was just born in the end of the summer there,
and then she digs underground and goes into her dormancy
to start the cycle once again.
So we use photography to make discoveries about bumble bees.
I really recommend this, because it's a great way
not only to get pictures of them,
but also to just learn about them, to watch them,
to see what their behavior is.
We learn how to identify them from our photos.
We can learn about behavior.
We can learn about the timing of the queen emergence
and the males emerging from the colonies.
So it tells us about the seasonality of the colony.
And we can look at the flower use
by the different species of bumble bees,
and by any species that we're particularly interested in.
And some photography tips are to take a lot of pictures.
So you want to have a good picture of the back of the bee,
the side view, if possible,
and then maybe a front view of the bee, so a face view,
and that helps us see features of the face
and of the hairs on the face or the back of the head
that will help us with identification, possibly.
So I usually take a series of pictures of the same bee,
and then I take a spacer picture
so that I know that the next set of pictures
would be a different individual.
We can learn how to identify bumble bees.
Here you can see several examples of different species
with the different markings
of yellow and orange patterning on their abdomens,
different patterns of color on their heads and their faces
and on their thorax.
So these are pictures
that would help us identify bumble bees,
and sometimes one picture's adequate.
Like each of these pictures,
we could identify that bee from one picture,
but often it's good to have multiple pictures to be sure.
And we can document what flowers are used
throughout the season.
So rusty patch is using different flowers
throughout the season,
and if we can figure out what flowers they will use,
which we've pretty much done with rusty patch now,
we know what we could plant
and what gaps we would want to fill
if we were creating a garden or a large planting
that would support them.
We share our discoveries at Bumble Bee Brigade.
This is a DNR project.
It's in its fifth year now,
and so if you search for Bumble Bee Brigade,
it will come up.
We have online trainings,
basic and advanced trainings there,
descriptions of all 20 of Wisconsin's bumble bee species.
We have quizzes, maps,
and the IDs that you submit with your photos
are confirmed by experts for you,
so you have a good learning opportunity with this, too.
And then there is a bumble bee observers,
Wisconsin Bumble Bee Observers group on Facebook,
which is also a very good resource.
So I'd just like to thank
all the people who make the gardens
and this bumble bee conservation project possible,
and then all of you for your interest
and for what I hope you will be interested in helping with
on bumble bee conservation.
So thank you very much.
>> GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME BACK
TO THIS YEAR'S VIRTUAL SPRING
KICKOFF.
WE JUST FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT
BUMBLEBEE CONSERVATION IN OUR
OWN BACKYARD.
SUSAN IS JOINING US NOW TO
ANSWER THE QUESTIONS YOU SENT IN
DURING HER PRESENTATION.
AS A REMINDER, YOU CAN KEEP
ASKING THOSE QUESTIONS AS WE'RE
CHATTING HERE.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR JOINING
US.
>> GREAT.
GLAD TO BE HERE.
>> OUR FIRST QUESTION IS FROM
NICOLE.
SHE'S WONDERING OF THE PLANTS
YOU SUGGESTED, ARE THERE
ANYTHING THAT FOLKS COULD DO IN
CONTAINERS IF THEY'RE GROWING ON
A PATIO OR SMALL SPACE?
>> YEAH.
THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION.
USUALLY FOR CONTAINER GARDENING,
I FIND IT'S HELPFUL TO FOCUS ON
SOME OF THOSE SMALLER OR SHORTER
PLANTS THAT ARE SUITABLE FOR DRY
CONDITIONS, BECAUSE THE
CONTAINER MIGHT DRY DOWN.
IT'S IMPORTANT TO HAVE IT IN
FULL SUN IF YOU'RE USING THOSE
SPECIES.
SO SOMETHING LIKE THE SHOOTING
STARS COULD BE A POSSIBILITY.
PRAIRIE CLOVER, LIATRIS.
EXPERIMENT WITH IT.
SOME PEOPLE'S CONTAINERS ARE
HUGE AND YOU HAVE MORE SOIL AND
CAN HAVE DEEPER ROOT SYSTEMS.
FOR SMALLER CONTAINERS, FOCUS ON
THE SMALLER PLANTS.
ANOTHER ONE I DIDN'T MENTION
THAT WOULD BE POSSIBLY GOOD FOR
CONTAINERS WOULD BE PRAIRIE
SMOKE.
SO YOU COULD TRY THAT.
AND IF YOU LEARN A LOT ABOUT IT,
BE SURE WHAT YOU LEARN.
THERE'S A LOT OF INTEREST IN
CONTAINER GARDENING.
SO THANKS FOR THAT QUESTION.
>> IN THAT VEIN, AS PEOPLE ARE
THINKING ABOUT THE SOIL MIXTURE,
IS THE BASIC POTTING SOIL WORK
FOR NATIVE PLANTS OR IS THERE
OTHER THINGS PEOPLE SHOULD LOOK
TO?
>> YEAH.
THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION, TOO.
I WOULD ALMOST -- I WOULD NOT
FUSS TOO MUCH WITH THE SOIL.
IN OTHER WORDS, SOME PEOPLE
THINK YOU NEED A RICH SOIL AND
REAL RICH COMPOST AND
EVERYTHING.
BUT NATIVE PLANTS ACTUALLY DON'T
NEED SOIL AMENDMENT LIKE THAT.
SO REGULAR SOIL MIGHT BE THE WAY
TO GO WITH IT.
AND YOU DON'T NEED TO -- YOU
REALLY DON'T NEED TO ADD --
DON'T ADD FERT FERTILIZER OR ANYTHING
LIKE THAT.
NATIVE PLANTS ARE WORKING ON A
BIG ROOT SYSTEM INSTEAD OF A LOT
OF TOP GROWTH.
THE HIGH NUTRIENT TENDS TO
EMPHASIZE THE TOP GROWTH.
FERTILIZER ACTUALLY HELPS THE
WEED SPECIES MORE THAN THE
NATIVE PLANTS.
THAT'S A PLACE TO KIND OF
EXPERIMENT WITH WHAT SOILS WOULD
WORK AND WHAT IS PRACTICAL FOR
YOU IN YOUR SITUATION.
SOME PEOPLE DON'T HAVE ANY SOIL
AVAILABLE SO THEY ARE USING A
POTTING MIX.
BUT I WOULDN'T GO WITH ANYTHING
THAT HAS FERTILIZER ADDED TO IT
FOR STARTERS.
>> PERFECT.
YEAH.
THAT'S GOOD ADVICE AS WELL,
MATCH THE PLANT TO THE PLACE YOU
HAVE RATHER THAN TRY TO MAKE
YOUR PLACE FIT SOMETHING ELSE.
IF YOU HAVE CLAY, WORK WITH IT,
SANDY SOIL, WORK WITH IT.
THERE'S THINGS THAT WILL WORK
EVERYWHERE.
CAN YOU SHARE ANY RESOURCES FOR
QUALITY NATIVE PLANTS AND SEED
THAT YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH?
>> WELL, WE HAVE GOOD -- THERE'S
GOOD NATIVE PLANT NURSERIES AND
SOURCES HERE IN THE MIDWEST.
I MEAN, WE ARE FORTUNATE IN THAT
REGARD, MAYBE A LITTLE BIT AHEAD
OF OTHER PLACES IN THE COUNTRY
FROM WHAT I HEAR FROM GARDENERS
IN OTHER PLACES IN THE COUNTRY.
SO WE HAVE NATIVE PLANT
NURSERIES SUCH AS PRAIRIE
NURSERY IN WISCONSIN, PRAIRIE
MOON NURSERY IN MINNESOTA.
THERE ARE SMALLER NURSERIES.
THE DNR HAS A LISTING OF NATIVE
PLANT SOURCES AND ALSO COMPANIES
THAT ARE, YOU KNOW, ABLE TO HELP
WITH INSTALLATIONS AND PLANNING
AND SO ON.
SO THAT'S A GOOD LIST AND YOU
CAN JUST LOOK FOR THAT ON THE
DNR WEBSITE AND PULL THAT UP AND
SEE WHAT'S IN YOUR AREA.
>> SO JAMIE IS WONDERING, YOU
KNOW, YOU SMOKE SPOKE ABOUT POLLEN
FROM NATIVE CULTIVARS.
IS THERE ANYTHING DIFFERENT FROM
A POLLEN IN A CULTIVAR NATIVE
PLANT VERSUS IS STRAIGHT SPECIES
NATIVE PLANT?
>> I'M A NATIVE PLANT GARDENER
SO I CAN GET AROUND THAT ISSUE
BY SIMPLY GROWING THE STRAIGHT
SPECIES.
THERE ARE A LOT OF NATIVARS
AVAILABLE.
I THINK YOU NEED TO BE SPECIFIC
ABOUT IT.
THERE HAVE BEEN STUDIES DONE
WITH JOE PYE WEED OF DIFFICULT
DIFFERENT CULTIVARS.
SO THE ANSWER IS FOR SOME
SPECIES THE CULTIVARS ARE
ACTUALLY SIMPLY VISITED MORE AND
USE MORE.
FOR SOME SPECIES, LESS.
SO I THINK YOU REALLY WANT TO
FOCUS IN ON THE SPECIFICS OF THE
GROUP THAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT.
MAYBE IF YOU HAVE A CHANCE TO
VISIT AN AREA WHERE THEY'RE
PLANTED OUT AND YOU CAN COMPARE
THEM OR TRY IT YOURSELF, YOU CAN
MAKE A LOT OF OBSERVATIONS IN
YOUR OWN GARDEN.
SO IF YOU ALREADY HAVE CULTIVARS
GROWING, YOU CAN COMPARE THE
CULTIVAR TO THE NATIVE IF YOU
HAVE BOTH OF THEM OR TRY BOTH OF
THEM AND JUST SEE WHAT WORKS IN
YOUR AREA.
YOU MAY NOT WANT TO DO A
SCIENTIFIC, YOU KNOW, COMPLETELY
REPLICATED SCIENTIFIC
EXPERIMENT, BUT YOU CAN
DEFINITELY LEARN A LOT.
SOMETIMES THE CULTIVARS I FIND
THEY LOOK JUST LIKE MAYBE A
MINIATURE VERSION OF THE WILD
PLANT, YOU KNOW, THE STRAIGHT
SPECIES, BUT I NOTICE THAT IN
SOME CASES THERE ARE NO
VISITATION AT ALL.
AND THAT TELLS ME THAT SOMETHING
ABOUT THAT PLANT IS DIFFERENT AS
IT'S NOW SHORTER, MAYBE ONE FOOT
TALL INSTEAD OF THREE FEET TALL.
SOMETHING'S CHANGED AND THE
INSECTS ARE CLUED INTO THAT AND
WE AREN'T.
SO A LOT OF YOUR OWN
OBSERVATIONS WILL BE HELPFUL
THERE.
AND ALSO TALKING WITH PEOPLE AND
LOOKING INTO THE LITERATURE A
BIT TO SEE IF THERE'S
INFORMATION ABOUT THAT GROUP.
>> THAT'S EXCELLENT.
AND ANOTHER RESOURCE I LIKE TO
VISIT MYSELF PERSONALLY IS MOUNT
CUBA CENTER, A GARDEN ON THE
EAST COAST SPECIALIZING IN
NATIVE PLANTS.
THEY EVALUATE WHAT YOU'RE
SPEAKING TO, DO CULTIVARS GET
THE SAME VISITATION AS A NATIVE
SPECIES.
MOUNT CUBA CENTER, AWESOME
RESOURCE CENTER THERE AS WELL.
WE HAVE A LOT OF QUESTIONS ABOUT
DESIGN OF NATIVE PLANTS,
THINKING ABOUT HOW TO USE THEM
IN A SMALLER URBAN SPACE OR HOW
TO PREVENT THEM FROM SPREADING
TOO FAR OR THINGS LIKE THAT.
ANY TIPS OR GENERAL ADVICE YOU
COULD GIVE ON SORT OF PUTTING
PLANTS TOGETHER?
>> WELL, I THINK, FIRST OF ALL,
THE POINT THAT YOU MENTIONED
BEFORE ABOUT MAKING SURE THAT
THE PLANTS MATCH THE SPACE THAT
YOU'RE TRYING TO GARDEN IN.
THAT'S GOING TO SAVE YOU A LOT
OF FRUSTRATION, I GUESS, DOWN
THE ROAD.
BECAUSE IF YOU HAVE A SHADY SPOT
OR YOU'RE WORKING ON THE NORTH
SIDE OF A BUILDING, YOU WANT TO
KEEP THAT IN MIND AS YOU SELECT
THE PLANTS AND THEN AS YOU PLACE
THEM.
SO, FOR EXAMPLE, HERE AT THE
GARDEN, OUR VISITOR CENTER IS
ORIENTED EAST-WEST.
SO THE NORTH SIDE OF THE
BUILDING HAS ACTUALLY ABOUT A
FIVE OR EIGHT-FOOT MICROCLIMATE
AREA ON THE NORTH SIDE THAT
ACTUALLY WILL GROW WOODLANDS
SPECIES, LIKE FOREST WOODLAND
SPECIES.
AS YOU GET ABOUT TEN FEET AWAY,
THEY WON'T THRIVE.
SO SOMETIMES IN A SMALL SPACE
YOU HAVE THAT KIND OF
OPPORTUNITY TO REALLY ACTUALLY
PLACE THE PLANTS IN A SPECIAL
SPOT THAT JUST DOESN'T SEEM LIKE
IT WOULD BE VERY MUCH DIFFERENT
FROM A FEW FEET AWAY BUT IT IS
BECAUSE OF THE NORTH SIDE OF THE
BUILDING IS A LITTLE MORE MOIST,
IT'S SHADED BY THE BUILDING, SO
IT HAS THAT LITTLE MICROCLIMATE
THAT YOU CAN USE TO YOUR
ADVANTAGE.
ALSO, IN SMALL SPACES ONE OF THE
QUESTIONS I GET IS LOT IS HOW
CAN I KEEP THINGS FROM FLOPPING
ON THE SIDEWALKS, PATHS.
JUST REALLY FOCUS ON THE SMALLER
PLANTS.
SO SMALLER GRASSES, LIKE THE
SHORT GRASSES, THE SHORT NATIVE
GRASSES ARE LOVELY, AND THERE'S
ONES FOR FULL SUN AND THERE'S
ONES FOR MORE PARTIAL SHADE.
BE AWARE THAT THE PLANT IS -- IT
LOOKS SMALL WHEN YOU PLANT IT,
BUT THINK ABOUT THE SIZE IT'S
GOING TO REACH, HOW IT'S GOING
TO ARCH, HOW IT'S GOING TO GROW,
LIKE HOW TALL IT'S GOING TO
GROW, IS IT GOING TO FLOP OVER.
USUALLY JUST SCALING DOWN TO
SMALLER SIZES.
WE HAVE SOME EXAMPLES HERE AT
THE ARBORETUM IF ANYONE IS
VISITING WITH A CIRCLE GARDEN IN
THE PARKING LOT AREA AT THE
FRONT OF THE VISITOR CENTER,
WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE KEPT
DOWN AT KNEE LEVEL AND BELOW.
ANYTHING GETS TALLER THAN THAT,
WE HAVE TO KIND OF KEEP WORKING
ON THAT JUST TO KEEP IT, YOU
KNOW, GOOD VISIBILITY FOR THE
PARKING LOT.
SO THERE'S ISSUES LIKE THAT.
WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE.
IF IT'S IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE,
IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE
OVER IT, THEN YOU'RE TALKING
ABOUT A SMALLER PROFILE.
SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT SIZES THE
PLANTS WILL REACH AND YOU CAN
SEE THEIR COLORS AND ALL THIS.
USE THE NURSERY WEBSITES AS A
RESOURCE AND THE CATALOGS AS A
RESOURCE FOR WHAT -- SO YOU CAN
HELP VISUALIZE IT.
AND THE PLANTS WILL MOVE AROUND.
SO WHEN OUR GARDEN DESIGNER AND
I WERE PLANTING A NEW SHORT
GRASS AREA LAST SUMMER, HE
PLACED SOME OF THE FORBS IN
DRIFTS.
WE AGREED THIS WAS THE ONLY DAY
THAT THE PLANTS WOULD BE WHERE
WE PUT THEM.
SO THEY WILL MOVE AROUND.
THAT'S PART OF THE WONDERFUL
PART OF NATIVE PLANT GARDENING.
PLANTS WILL MOVE AROUND.
DON'T BE AFRAID TO ADJUST THEM
AS YOU GO.
RIGHT NOW IN OUR GARDEN IT'S
BEEN ESTABLISHED FOR SOME YEARS,
WE MANAGE A LOT OF THE NATIVE
PLANTS JUST TO MAKE SURE THAT
THE GARDENS ARE KEEPING IN THE
SPIRIT OF EACH OF THE AREAS.
>> YOU MADE A GREAT POINT ABOUT
VISITING THE ARBORETUM.
NO MATTER WHERE PEOPLE ARE
VISITING, I'M SURE YOU HAVE A
PUBLIC GARDEN NEAR YOU.
FIND YOUR NEAREST PUBLIC GARDEN,
CHECK THEM OUT.
MANY HAVE THESE PLANTS ON
DISPLAY TO HELP YOU CHOOSE WHICH
PLANTS YOU WANT TO GROW AS WELL.
WE HAVE SEVERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT
POLLINATOR LOW TELLS, HOTELS, ARE THEY
BENEFICIAL.
HYGIENE, DO WE NEED TO CHANGE
OUT THE MATERIAL?
IF SO, HOW OFTEN?
>> THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION.
WE HEAR THAT A LOT.
THOSE HOTELS ARE BASICALLY JUST
TO EXPLAIN FOR PEOPLE WHO MIGHT
NOT KNOW, LIKE USUALLY LITTLE
BUNDLES OF TUBES OR LITTLE DRILL
HOLES IN WOOD AND THESE ARE FOR
THE BENEFIT OF CAVITY NESTING,
SOLITARY BEES.
SO THERE'S QUITE A NUMBER OF
SPECIES OF THESE, OF NATIVE BEES
HERE IN WISCONSIN, AND THEY USE
CAVITIES.
NORMALLY THEY'LL BE USING HOLLOW
PLACES IN TREES OR LITTLE STEMS,
LIKE CREVICES, THAT KIND OF
THING.
THEY'LL JUST FILL IN.
THEY LAY THEIR EGGS, PROVISION
IT, SEAL IT OFF AND SO ON.
SO THEY'RE FILLING THOSE TUBES
IN THE HOTELS.
I RECOMMEND PEOPLE THINK ABOUT
THOSE AS A TEMPORARY PROJECT.
SO, SURE, PUT THEM TOGETHER.
PUT A BUNDLE TOGETHER.
YOU MIGHT EVEN USE TALLER STEMS
FROM YOUR OWN TRIMMINGS OF YOUR
GARDEN.
LIKE IF YOU HAVE ANY CUP PLANT,
YOU CAN USE THAT FOR SURE.
IT HAS TO HAVE A BACK ON IT.
SO IF IT'S JUST HOLLOW ALL THE
WAY THROUGH, THEY WON'T USE IT.
SO IT HAS TO HAVE A DIVIDER AT
THE BACK, BE SOLID AT THE BACK.
SO THEN YOU COULD USE IT FOR A
SEASON.
THE MOST COMMON BEES THAT I
ENCOUNTER USING THOSE ARE THE
LEAF CUTTER BEES.
THEY'RE OUT IN JUNE.
THEY'RE USING IT TO PROVISION
THEIR EGGS.
THEY FILL IT UP AND IT JUST SITS
THERE UNTIL THE FOLLOWING YEAR.
IF YOU HAVE ONE THAT YOU CAN
OPEN AND CLEAN, WE HAVE SOME OF
THOSE HERE FOR DEMONSTRATION
PURPOSES, YOU CAN PUT THAT LIKE
AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, YOU CAN
PUT THAT CONTAINER THAT'S FULL
OF THE LARVAE AND THE IP SIP
YENT BEES INTO A BOX THAT HAS A
TINY OPENING, LIKE A LITTLE
HOLE, AN EMERGENCE BOX.
ANY BEES CAN GO OUT OF THE BOX
AND YOU CAN PUT A CLEAN ONE UP
IN YOUR GARDEN SO YOU'RE NOT
ENCOURAGING DISEASE.
ON THE OTHER HAND, BEES ARE NOT
THE ONLY ONES THAT WILL USE
THOSE.
SOMETIMES YOU'LL SEE LITTLE
PIECES OF GRASS STICKING OUT OF
THOSE HOTELS AND THAT IS THE
GRASS-CARRYING WASP, DOING THE
SAME THING, PROVISIONING ITS
YOUNG.
THERE ARE SOMETIMES PARASITES OF
BEES WHO WILL COME TO THOSE --
OR PREDATORS OF BEES THAT WILL
COME TO THOSE AND CLEAN THEM OUT
DURING THE SEASON.
SO JUST BECAUSE -- YOU SHOULDN'T
CREATE THOSE AND MAINTAIN THOSE
JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU'RE
GOING TO BOOST POPULATIONS OF
BEES.
YOU REALLY AREN'T.
THE THINGS TO DO TO REALLY BOOST
THE POPULATION OF BEES IS TO
HAVE NATURAL AREAS AVAILABLE.
WHEN YOU CUT YOUR STEMS DOWN IN
THE SPRING, LEAVE THE STALK.
THEY'LL BE HOLLOW.
WE'VE SEEN LITTLE BEES USING
THOSE STALKS TO PROVISION AND
THEN HAVE THEIR YOUNG DEVELOP
OVER THE COMING YEAR.
SO HAVING NATURAL PLACES AND
HAVING -- I MEAN, HAVING THAT
OUT IN YOUR YARD JUST SCATTERED
AROUND WILL NOT LEAD TO THE FACT
THAT IF YOU HAVE IT ALL IN ONE
PLACE, A PREDATOR JUST COMES AND
GETS EVERYTHING.
THEY ARE INTERESTING TO WATCH.
THEY'RE INTERESTING TO DOCUMENT.
WE HAD A FILM-MAKING CREW OUT
HERE FILMING OSNIA NESTING IN
THOSE TYPES OF TUBES.
SO THERE'S REALLY A LOT OF
EDUCATIONAL BENEFIT TO IT
BECAUSE YOU CAN SEE BEES THAT
YOU MIGHT NOT EVEN NORMALLY
NOTICE.
BUT AS FAR AS LIKE THE
CLEANLINESS OF THOSE, I WOULD
JUST DO A SIMPLE BUNDLE AND THEN
YOU CAN SCATTER THOSE WHEN
THEY'RE FULL OF THEIR LARVAE.
YOU CAN SCATTER THEM OUT THIS
TIME OF YEAR AND CREATE A NEW
BUNDLE FOR THIS YEAR.
>> THE SO WE HAVE A LOT OF STILL
GREAT QUESTIONS COMING IN AND
WE'RE SORT OF ROUNDING INTO THE
FINAL MOMENTS HERE, BUT I'VE GOT
AN INTERESTING SORT OF DETECTIVE
QUESTION FROM CARRIE.
THEY HAVE A WOODEN DECK THAT'S
ABOUT TEN YEARS OLD AND THEY'VE
SEEN BEES DRILL INTO THAT WOOD.
NOT SURE WHAT TYPE OF BEES THEY
ARE, BUT THEY'RE NOTICING BEES
LYING DEAD ON THE DECK.
THEY DON'T USE INSECTICIDE, SO
THEY'RE WONDERING WHAT MIGHT BE
HAPPENING.
>> WELL, IF THE BEES ARE
DRILLING INTO THE DECK, I'M
GOING TO SUSPECT CARPENTER BEES,
AND CARPENTER BEES ARE
DISTINGUISHABLE FROM BUMBLEBEES
-- THEY LOOK SIMILAR
SUPERFICIALLY, BUT YOU MIGHT
WANT TO LOOK UP THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN THEM.
THE CARPENTER BEE HAS A VERY
WIDE HEAD COMPARED TO A
BUMBLEBEE, SO THAT WOULD BE ONE
WAY TO TELL.
AND BUMBLEBEES DON'T DRILL INTO
WOOD.
IF YOU SEE THAT HAPPENING, IT'S
PROBABLY A CARPENTER BEE.
AS TO WHY THEY'RE DYING,
POSSIBLY -- AND THIS IS JUST A
WILD GUESS BECAUSE I REALLY
DON'T KNOW ANY HISTORY OF THIS
OR HAVEN'T HEARD THAT BEFORE,
BUT IF THEY'RE DRILLING INTO
TREATED WOOD, PERHAPS THAT'S AN
ISSUE.
DECKS ARE OFTEN BUILT OF TREATED
WOOD.
SO THAT MIGHT BE SOMETHING TO
LOOK INTO.
IF YOU COULD GET A PICTURE OF
THE BEES THAT ARE DOING THE
DRILLING, THAT WOULD VERIFY WHAT
THEY ARE.
AND THEN I GUESS SOMETIMES WE
SEE DEAD BEES JUST BECAUSE IT'S
LIKE THE END OF THE SEASON OR
SOMETHING.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TIME OF YEAR
THIS DRILLING WAS HAPPENING, IF
IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW OR IF
IT WAS LAST YEAR.
SOMETIMES BEES WITH ANNUAL
COLONIES WILL DIE AT THE END OF
THE YEAR.
THAT MIGHT BE ANOTHER REASON.
I SUSPECT IF THE LISTENER THINKS
IT'S RELATED TO THE DRILLING,
THAT IT MIGHT BE THE TREATED
WOOD.
THAT WOULD BE A GREAT THING TO
INVESTIGATE MORE.
IN FACT, I'M GOING TO BE LOOKING
IT UP AS SOON AS I CAN.
>> THAT WAS MY GUESS AS WELL, IF
IT WAS TREATED LUMBER.
THERE ARE CHEMICALS WHICH COULD
BE TOXIC AS WELL.
IN THE FINAL LAST COUPLE MOMENTS
HERE, AGAIN, SEVERAL QUESTIONS
COMING IN ABOUT IF PEOPLE HAVE
PLANTS IN THEIR GARDENS ALREADY,
SAY HOSTA OR WHITE CLOVER THAT
THEY'RE NOTICING BEES ARE GOING
TO AND SPENDING TIME WITH, DO
THEY NEED TO REMOVE THEM OR IS
IT OKAY TO KEEP THEM AROUND EVEN
IF THEY'RE NOT A STRAIGHT NATIVE
SPECIES?
>> OF COURSE.
IF YOU'RE A NATIVE PLANT
GARDENER, YOU DON'T DO THAT.
BUT FOR GARDENERS IN GENERAL, I
JUST ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO LOOK AT
THEIR GARDEN AS IS THEIR GARDEN
A LIVING PLACE, IS IT SUPPORTING
LIFE.
IF YOU SEE NOTHING IS VISITING A
CERTAIN PLANT, THEN MY PERSONAL
IDEA IS WHY NOT REPLACE IT WITH
SOMETHING THAT IS.
AND SO OBVIOUSLY THERE ARE
NON-NATIVE PLANTS THAT ARE GREAT
POLLINATOR RESOURCES.
THERE ARE NON-NATIVE PLANTS THAT
ARE NOT INVASIVE IN THE
ENVIRONMENT LARGELY.
LIKE HOSTAS ARE NOT GOING TO
TAKE OVER ANYTHING.
SO YEAH.
I THINK WHATEVER YOU CAN GROW IN
YOUR GARDEN THAT YOU LIKE AND
THAT YOU WANT TO FOSTER AND THAT
YOU SEE FOSTERS LIFE IS -- I'M
ALL FOR IT.
>> PERFECT.
AND ACTUALLY ONE MORE QUESTION
WE'LL SNEAK IN HERE AS WELL.
YOU KNOW, SOMEONE WAS WONDERING,
THEY NOTICED THAT YOU MENTIONED
SHOOTING STAR WILL DO WELL IN A
SHADYER CONDITION.
IF YOU COULD PICK OR TWO OTHERS
FOR SHADY YARDS, ARE THERE
PLANTS THEY COULD LOOK TO THAT
WOULD BE GREAT CHOICES?
>> YOU HAVE TO MAKE THE
DISTINCTION BETWEEN SHADE AND
SEMI SHADE OR HEAVY SHADE BUT AT
THE EDGE.
SO SAVANNAH SPECIES COULD BE
QUITE GOOD TO USE.
CULVER'S ROOT WILL GROW WELL IN
A SEMI SHADED.
JOE PYE WEED WILL GROW THERE.
SO AS LONG AS IT'S NOT DEEP,
DEEP SHADE.
IF YOU HAVE DEEP, DEEP SHADE,
THEN YOU'RE LIMITED TO THE
SPRING EPHEMERALS, IF THEY'RE
SUITABLE THERE, OR TO FLOWERING
TREES LIKE THE BASSWOOD WOULD BE
EXCELLENT FOR BUMBLEBEES.
AND TO SOME OF THE LATE SEASON
ASTERS OR GOLDEN ROD THAT CAN
GROW IN THE WOODS.
BUT DEEP SHADE IS GOING TO BE
CHALLENGING TO GET THAT FULL
SPAN OF NATIVE PLANTS GROWING
THROUGHOUT THE SEASON.
PEOPLE WOULD GROW IN DEEP SHADE
OFTEN COMMENT ON NOT HAVING
FLOWERS IN THERE DURING THE HEAT
OF SUMMERS.
>> ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN
NOTHING, TOO.
EVEN IF WE ONLY HAVE A FLOWERING
IN THE SPRING, THAT'S BETTER
THAN NO FLOWERING.
>> AS WE SAID, MATCH THE PLANTS
TO YOUR SITE.
IF YOU LOSE A BIG TREE, ALL OF A
SUDDEN YOU HAVE AN OPEN SPACE SO
YOU'RE READY WITH OTHER SPECIES
TO FILL THAT.
>> NEW OPPORTUNITIES.
ABSOLUTELY.
WELL, SUSAN, THANK YOU AGAIN SO
MUCH FOR JOINING US TODAY,
SHARING YOUR EXPERTISE WITH US.
WE REALLY APPRECIATE IT.
>> THANKS.
>> AS A REMINDER TO ALL OF YOU,
WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED.
THERE IS A LOT MORE TO COME THIS
AFTER.
THIS EVENT IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH
YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR
CONTRIBUTIONS.
BECAUSE OF YOU, WE ARE ABLE TO
OFFER THIS FREE AND ACCESSIBLE
EVENT.
AND SO YOU CAN HELP US CONTINUE
THIS WORK RIGHT NOW.
VISIT wigardenexpo.com AND
CLICK ON DONATE.
THANKS SO MUCH AND STAY WITH US.
THERE'S MORE TO COME.
- Hi, I'm Ben Futa,
host of PBS Wisconsin's gardening series
Let's Grow Stuff .
On behalf of PBS Wisconsin,
welcome to the Garden & Landscape Expo
Virtual Spring Kick-Off.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a live Q&A after the presentation.
After our session, be sure to explore everything else
the Virtual Spring Kick-Off has to offer,
including 360 video garden tours, a panel discussion
with UW Extension horticulture experts, and more.
Thank you, and enjoy.
- Hi, my name is Tony Gomez-Phillips,
and I'm the horticulturist
at Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.
Today, we're gonna talk about our gardens
and the process that we've taken to design our gardens
from a conventionally gardened landscape of the past,
to a forward-thinking and ecologically focused landscape
for the future.
Starting out our video,
we take a fly-by down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
And it's a wonderful shot,
lending an idea as to the site and location
of the building on the Isthmus, as it relates to the Capitol.
On the left and the right,
you can see the Madison Municipal Building
and the City-County Building.
As we proceed further along this flight,
we come across Olin Terrace,
which is the walkway leading up to the building.
And then we float over our wonderful fountain,
leading and floating out
over the William T. Evjue Rooftop Gardens
and out towards the lake,
which truly holds the greatest view of the Terrace,
no doubt about it.
And those of us fortunate to get that view out on the lake
know how great it is.
Monona Terrace has key mandates,
and those are to be an economic catalyst for the city,
a community gathering place,
and a tourism destination for the city of Madison,
Dane County, and State of Wisconsin.
For those that aren't familiar
with Frank Lloyd Wright's Monona Terrace,
it was designed by him,
and it is a facility that is owned by the city of Madison,
yet it was funded by funds from the city,
the state, and the county.
And currently, it's GBAC STAR certified facility,
which basically, it's a standard established
that we're maintaining a cleaning, disinfection,
and infectious disease prevention program
to minimize risks associated with a current pandemic
or any sort of infectious outbreaks.
It's also a LEED Platinum building.
So the building achieved LEED Platinum status,
which is quite an accomplishment for the building.
And we'll touch upon that in a second here.
Typically, the building hosts 500 to 600 events a year,
and this was pre-COVID,
generating over $33 million in economic impact
for the community.
We also provide over a hundred free,
low-cost community events each year.
And one of my favorite quotes about this building,
as we look at it on the shores of Lake Monona,
as Frank Lloyd Wright said,
"Monona Terrace, the long-awaited marriage
between the city and beautiful Lake Monona."
This year, we're gonna celebrate our 25-year anniversary.
And in July, we have some wonderful events planned
to mark that milestone.
The building itself is over 250,000 square feet.
It is a multilevel convention center,
and it has curving geometric forms
that converge with the breathtaking beauty
of its natural environment.
The building itself extends 90 feet over the lake,
and the building is designed to withstand pressure
from lake ice, up to 40,000 pounds per linear foot.
It's quite a strong building
and quite a strong sight from the lake.
In this image, we can see a nice, beautiful shot
from the rooftop, kind of capturing the sun
as it lands on the building in the morning hours.
The terrace has planters and beds, total,
and this is kind of the greenscaping of the building,
equal around 61,000 square feet.
So those green space areas include
the William T. Evjue Rooftop Gardens,
the planter ledge that's in front of Community Terrace,
Olin Terrace, which is the walkway
leading up to the building,
and then our lakeside planter beds.
Getting back to the LEED Platinum certification,
this is quite an accomplishment for a building
that has already been built
prior to trying to attain the certification.
The U.S. Green Building Council certifies this rating,
and it's the most widely used green building rating system
in the world, which prioritizes sustainability,
not only in the structure of the building,
but also in its operation for improved environmental
and human health performance,
and it positively impacts our environmental footprint.
In this image, we can see a retention pond,
and that retention pond is being managed
by the city of Madison
to help offset the concrete hardscaping
that the Monona Terrace sits on itself,
the footprint that it sits on itself.
So to help us kind of achieve this LEED Platinum status,
we had to ensure that we were going to manage green spaces
with native plants that were gonna help contribute
to sustainability within the city
to offset the hardscaping that the terrace itself occupies.
And here's some images that we're seeing
of some of these other retention ponds
that city engineering has vouched to take care of
for the next 10 years.
And also a nice list of some of the plants
that you can find in those spaces.
I'm coming to you right now from our lecture hall,
which is a wonderful space.
It is a theater-style setting.
And behind me, you can see the chairs,
you can see to my immediate right,
one of our sconces,
one of our saucers that helps kind of carry on
the architecture throughout the building.
We have other wonderful rooms
that many clients come to use at our facility.
Those include our ballroom,
and then we also have our Grand Terrace
that is fully available for any event,
from the small is five to ten people,
to over 2,000 people.
We have a full catering service
that provides any sort of meal plan that you would care for.
And also we have a wonderful AV team
that can provide any sort of production
that anybody would ever want.
And we have a lot of corporations and companies
that come here and take advantage
of that technological expertise that we carry in this building.
So who is Frank Lloyd Wright?
Well, in our area, he's quite well-known.
He is from the area.
He was born in Richland Center in 1867,
and died in '59 at 91 years old.
He was married three times, had seven children,
practiced architecture for seven years,
70 years, I'm sorry,
and designed over 1,100 works with over 500 completed,
and around 400 or over 400 still stand.
He has eight UNESCO World Heritage sites, no small feat.
And a lot of these are familiar to many of you.
Fallingwater, Guggenheim, Taliesin.
Some of these other ones like the Frederick Robie House,
the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House,
Hollyhock House, and the Unity Temple are also located
east to west, from the coasts.
Hollyhock House is all the way out in Los Angeles.
Obviously, the Guggenheim is out in New York.
And then a lot of those are actually located here
in the Midwest, where a majority of his home
or majority of his life was spent.
He was quite a cantankerous individual.
He was notorious for ticking people off,
and he certainly faced a lot of adversity
from changing politicians and officials,
and his controversial persona.
So, needless to say,
he was quite an eccentric architect,
and he cared little about conventional standards.
But he was quite a designer and quite innovative.
In 1938, Wright sketched a drawing
as he described his dream civic center
for his home state or home city.
He was committed to designing a public space
in his boyhood home,
and pursued it for the last 21 years of his life.
It was a labor of love.
In this slide, we can see a conceptual drawing
from the 1930s of what was then called Olin Terraces.
And as you can observe it,
it's quite expansive and quite large,
and nothing like the building is today.
But the process went through a lot of different renderings
and input sessions from parties about what the space should be
or what the building should be.
Here, we see the rendering by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1959,
seven weeks before his death.
He never lived to see it built.
It was completed in 1997.
So it was 38 years after his death
and nearly 60 years after the original concept.
The estimated cost was around $5.6 million.
The actual cost was $67 million
because it was built nearly 60 years later.
And today, if you were to build it again,
it would be over a $100 million to build a facility like this.
So here we see a wonderful view of the lake,
from the lake of Monona Terrace.
And as I toggle back and forth between the image,
I'll go back once, and then go back forward again.
You can see it's pretty spot-on
from his latest and last rendering.
The design and the lead architect of the building
was Tony Putnam, and he was a Frank Lloyd Wright pupil.
And as he said,
"It celebrates the look of relationships of the building
"to the lake, and of man to nature.
"It's a recognition of the human wish for space,
greenery, and vista."
So when I came in to the Terrace, I asked myself,
"What kind of landscape should an urban community
and convention center designed by Franklin Lloyd Wright have?"
And what I did know is that it should be low maintenance,
it shouldn't be the prior,
which was almost all annuals and non-natives,
not water and chemical dependent,
drought, heat-tolerant,
and plants that are tolerant to wind,
which isn't something that you normally garden for,
but this can be a plus because it can capture the movement.
And there certainly is a lot of wind up here.
There's a lot of movement, and that's wonderful.
So boiling that down,
I really just wanted to do right by Wright.
It's a very simple saying, but it sure is catchy.
And it's a nice way to remind yourself
that if you follow the principles
and you listen to the architect and how nature inspired him,
that you really can't mess this up.
So as Frank Lloyd Wright put it,
"The good building is not one that hurts the landscape,
"but one which makes the landscape more beautiful
than it was before the building was built."
So I hit the ground running,
started exploring and doing a little bit of research
about the gardens and landscapes of Frank Lloyd Wright,
as it was completely foreign to me, and read some books.
And a couple that I came across were Wrightscapes
and The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright by Derek Fell.
I also contacted and visited Taliesin
and Taliesin West, out in Scottsdale,
and then I was able to get in contact
with the head horticulturist at Fallingwater, who was generous
and shared their horticultural maintenance practices
with us on their site.
And what I observed is a very naturalized approach
to maintenance, and basically allowing the environs
of your outdoor experience be a part of your landscape,
and not to fuss too much about it.
A lot of those sites really kind of elevated
the natural site that they were in,
and didn't try to disturb the natural elements
that surrounded those buildings.
As Derek Fell put it in his book,
there are some tips that are Frank Lloyd Wrightian ways
to look at garden design or landscape design.
And here's just a few of them.
And these are quite ahead of his time.
Use of natives are vital in making the home
part of the regional sighting
to create interesting sculptural accents.
Indigenous plants or native plants are more reliable
and less maintenance than non-natives.
This is something that we know now, he knew then,
but it's something that, it's coming back around
in terms of appreciating low-maintenance qualities
of plants.
Another is flower color among plants
is secondary to texture and form.
So he really appreciated the texture and form of plants,
leaves, grasses, the bending reeds.
He did like flowers.
He liked them for cuttings to bring them inside the house,
to bring a little bit of the outside in
and have that repetition from the indoors to the outdoors.
He allowed trees and shrubs to grow naturally,
hated hard pruning, hated meatball pruning of any sort.
He created and preserved vistas,
so a view of the water, a lake or river,
is especially desirable.
Another one is to expose a house foundation
to show where it meets the ground,
use sculptures as focal points,
and also, don't copy
or slavishly copy other garden styles.
And that's a reference to celebrating your own locality,
your own regionality, 'cause there's value in that.
So Frank Lloyd Wright's principles at work.
Simple geometry.
so natural forms could be reduced to simple geometry.
Organic architecture.
This is a philosophy developed by Frank Lloyd Wright,
that the spirit in which buildings are conceived
sees that building,
the furnishings and the setting and the environment,
all as one thing.
And we'll see examples of that here.
Grammar, the language used
to describe the architectural design of a structure.
And we'll see examples of that here too.
We're surrounded by them.
And then compress and release,
which is this idea that you design a space
to invite the person or the individual
through that space and into an opening.
So you compress them in the entrance of a space
to force them subconsciously,
or to lead them into an area or room that is more expansive,
and that's your release.
So what is Monona Terrace's grammar?
Well, our grammar is curvilinear,
the design vocabulary linked with the state Capitol.
Frank Lloyd Wright basically reduced the rotunda
of the state white Capitol to a basic geometry.
The circle, which is the basis for designs.
So the Capitol influenced the symmetrical design as well,
which was not common for Frank Lloyd Wright.
In addition, he also wanted to make sure
that he had the same color as the Capitol,
or at least approximate.
And we do share the same off-white tone, shall we say.
But the grammar is circles and arcs and saucers
and curves and arches, all curvilinear.
Here's a good example here.
Here's a shot of the fountain with the dome in the back,
and you can see the rounded shapes and forms in this image
almost framed by the blocked buildings
that are framing this shot on the side.
Two very different...
Two very different shapes.
At night, we do have many events.
We have Dane Dances and Concerts on the Roof,
and Shake the Lake during the 4th of July,
events like Moon over Monona.
So those are wonderful times to come visit us at night.
So here's another example of the curvilinear design grammar
that's being used in the building.
Here's our east rotunda.
And then, if we kind of climb a few stairs and we look down,
here we're looking down at multiple levels
of that same exact space,
and it has a little bit of a Guggenheim feel to it.
And our grand entrance on level four,
this is leading into our promenade.
And although this is pretty grandiose,
you do walk straight through
in between those two saucers and spires
into a smaller hallway
that then opens up into our grand terrace.
In addition, all of that
is tied into other elements in the building.
Here's a shot of the carpet that is designed to copy
and mirror that curvilinear architecture
that you see in the building in forms,
and even up to our chairs that we use for the building,
all have this circular grammar and language to it.
So let's talk about the William T. Evjue Gardens,
a name for a garden that is hardly known.
Everybody talks about the Monona Terrace rooftop,
but we do have a name, and it is the William T. Evjue Gardens
that are considered the crown jewel of Monona Terrace.
Now I've taken this and run with it,
and tried to create a space that is worthy of that moniker,
and try to bring some design to that.
Prior to me arriving 17 years...
Prior to the 17 years that the building was in existence,
most of the work was done by contracted landscape help.
And in 2016, I was hired to bring landscape vision in house.
So I knew it was gonna take some time,
three to five years, to explore the paths,
learn the building, get to know the microclimate,
understand the resources and the logistical challenges,
and really, what would Frank Lloyd Wright do, right?
We wanna do right by Wright.
So the shot we're looking at now
is my favorite picture I've ever taken
while being here for the last five plus years.
Here's a shot of our East Prairie planting,
our prairie plant planting,
and it is just chock-full of native plants.
And you can see them all,
they're dancing and crowding into each other
and creating this feeling, this elegance,
this exuberance of life.
Because the more biodiversity an ecosystem has,
the healthier it is.
And so coming up, we'll also see some images
of how this native planting has increased our biodiversity
here on site.
Looking at the gardens here from this view,
we're looking at the roof,
and we're looking out at the lake,
and you can see it's just a large structure
that is made out of concrete.
And I think our nature would be to say
that we see a lot of concrete,
but I like to say that we see a lot of design
in form and function,
and a lot of opportunity to frame this with greenery.
In this shot, this is the rooftop
not long after it opened.
You can see the trees, you can see the open beds
that have a lot of mulch planted,
or I should say, thrown in between the sparse plantings,
and in addition to some turf,
which is actually used quite a lot around here.
When I got here in 2016,
the gardens were still being treated this way,
in a conventional way,
with a lot of block plantings of annuals
and a lot of mulch that was thrown around
in these open spaces
to kind of keep this clean and tidy look
that we all like to see.
It's a normal thing for us to want to see things tidy
and kept up, and things delineated and separated.
And that's how the garden was tended.
But that wasn't always the best for the plants
that you had on the site.
In this image, we're seeing a row of Monrovia junipers
that are dead halfway up,
mainly because the plants that were planted in front of it
shaded all those branches out on the lower half of those,
and caused massive branch dieback.
And those will never grow back green again.
So needless to say, these were ripped out
maybe the second year I was here
and thrown over the building. [chuckles]
That was a fun day.
So what do we have here for the Frank Lloyd Wright landscape
that we're looking at?
We have a garden,
we have a large terrace roof that is used for many events.
So to give a couple examples of the projects that we've done,
we'll start with our prairie plant beds,
which is the first big project that I did when I got here.
When I got to the Terrace, I went up to the roof,
and one of the first things that hit me
when I came around the corner
was the fact that I couldn't see the lake.
There were some giant Norway maples that were planted,
and in between them, there were a bunch of ninebarks.
And essentially, it was just like this big, giant wall.
There wasn't anything that was leading me past
or through that space, just that it was there.
And then of course, a ton of mulch, a ton of wood mulch,
and some plants that were just basically holding the space
of their annual neighbors to come on down the line.
So what I ended up doing after research
and a lot of back and forth
and figuring out what we should do with this design,
because we lost two of those trees,
and so the symmetry wasn't there anymore.
And to replace these old Norway maples,
we were gonna have trees
that weren't gonna be quite the same size.
So we cut the trees down.
And we cut the trees down for a couple reasons.
One, to buy and crane trees up onto the site
is incredibly costly, and then to maintain them as well
is also quite costly at that size,
'cause they would've come in as ball and burlap trees.
At the same time, in doing my research,
I was interested in trying to apply some sort of principles
that I had discovered to the site.
And by that, basically using indigenous plants
and native plants that were going to help tie the site
locally and regionally to its surrounding ecology.
So we were able to convince people
that that was a good idea, and we took the trees down.
Then we went ahead and ordered a bunch of prairie plants.
And in this image, we can see this time-lapsed image
of all our volunteers coming in to help us plant.
And what I like about this
is looking at the rain kind of dripping down the side
of our east drum, kind of showing
that we're actually working and time is passing.
But this was a really fun day.
This was a way for us to connect with the community
and to allow other people to share in building spaces
for each other.
None of this would've gotten done without volunteers.
Volunteers are everything for us here at the Terrace.
We depend on them to care for plants, to water,
and to come in and basically fill in holes
where they're needed, literally and figuratively,
to ensure that our gardens are looking great.
And so, here we have our volunteers planting
part of the prairie on our east side,
and then one of our young individuals
that came from a corporate volunteer opportunity
to take part in this.
And that was a wonderful day, sharing these experiences,
not only with our full-time volunteers
that were here all the time, but also with new visitors,
younger visitors who probably weren't as adept
with their green thumbs.
And so it was a wonderful exchange.
So the prairie was planted and now we look here,
and we have just a wonderful, wonderful ecosystem
that has kind of sprung up.
And I'll call it a tiny ecosystem.
You really can't have a big ecosystem on a 14-foot wide,
over 100-foot long planter bed.
But what you can do is encourage some sort of adaptability
within the insect population that lives in your area
to come and look at this site as a resource.
So in this picture,
we see a lot of wonderful spring blooming forbs,
our echinacea pallida, paradoxa,
we have our white flowered Parthenium integrifolium,
which is wild quinine, and I love that plant.
We have liatris, which are blazing stars,
and then we have some prairie docks coming back
in the background there.
In this picture,
we're looking at the same shot of the prairie.
However, this was taken around June,
late June, early July.
And it's just a wonderful shot of all of these plants
and forbs just going nuts.
And it's really the best time to see all of these plants
in concert together.
It's planted, so the blooms are relatively early
in the season,
and then they really fade into this husky fall design.
Here's another nice shot of some echinacea paradoxa,
which is a yellow coneflower,
embedded with our native prairie drop seed.
And you can see that I played in the shot
with the symmetry of the flower head
as it related to the symmetry of the lamp post,
so kind of funny. [chuckles]
But as being a landscape designer here on site,
I'm aware of those things,
and those realizations are gifts that you come across
when you're on a site.
Here's another planting of a prairie drop,
I'm sorry, our little bluestem.
I call it my little bluestem river,
and it's really just a patch that I planted
from one end to the other of three different sports
of little bluestems.
And in between them, I planted Royal Catchfly
or Silene rigens.
And it's a wonderful combination.
You can kind of see the reds that are bouncing off
the reds in the grasses with the flowers,
and then that wonderful blue tone,
that cool tone of the other little bluestem
interacting with that.
So it's a wonderful combination, not one that works all the time
because the Catchflies fall a lot,
so it's one that has to be edited
and figure out a way to get those plants
to kind of better live with each other.
And usually, the answer is more plants. [chuckles]
More species of plants help attain that,
'cause these plants form relationships with each other.
They essentially support each other,
literally, figuratively.
We're also a sculpture garden.
And here's a wonderful sculpture by Michael Burns,
called They Won .
He had a second one that was similar to this one
in terms of, it was its partner, I should say,
on the opposite side.
And what's great about the sculptures
is that they began as an exhibit,
as an outdoor pilot program in 2014,
to help showcase the rooftop
and to get people to come and visit us,
and to create another must-see destination.
And it's been wonderful.
It's been nice to see people come and see the art.
It's been wonderful to have our artists come up
and expose their work on a site by Frank LLoyd Wright.
So it's really wonderful to kind of marry art with design.
So that's the prairie, and it's been a wonderful,
wonderful project to get that done.
And I will tell you that we're still gonna be editing
the prairie planting because it's never finished.
You know, gardening, you're never really finished.
You're always trying to find the best combination of plants
that are gonna do well on your site.
Next, we're gonna look at Community Terrace.
Community Terrace is a space in the building that sits in
the lower level, below Grand Terrace.
And it's a room that can be used for any sort of function,
just like any other room in the building,
except it has a wonderful lake view.
One of the things about Community Terrace
is it does have a planter ledge right outside of it.
And outside that planter ledge, when I got here,
there was a planting of ground cover juniper.
There was some Achillea, there was day lilies and salvias
and a whole bunch of other plants
that just were not happy to be there.
And in this image, we can kind of see that process,
although to be fair, this picture was taken late
in the season when things were pretty much done,
but I would like to point out that this space
is only accessible via scissors lift.
And so any sort of gardening or tending needs to be
attacked purposefully because you can't just
go out there and get a weed.
You have to plan for it and then spend an entire day out
in that area to make sure that this is well taken care of.
So taking into account that I didn't have the resources
to go out there all the time, the idea was to find a planting
that was going to be compatible with this space,
the southwest-facing view
that was getting hit by the sun all day long.
That was constantly hot, constantly dry.
What plant will do well out there?
Well, there is a plant that's gonna do well out there.
There's many plants that are gonna do well out there.
You just have to go find them and then engage
the process of bringing those there
and seeing and distilling what's gonna work.
And in my case,
I wanted to do a planting that wasn't going to distract
from the view of the lake.
Even though that planter ledge is there,
when people come and use the Community Terrace space,
they're not using the space to come to the window
and look down at a bunch of flowers.
They're there to look out across and at the lake,
at the view.
So my thought was to keep the planting simple
and try to find a planting
that wasn't gonna distract from that.
And what I came down to was a little bluestem planting
of many different strains and sports
of that particular grass.
We cleared out all of the plants of the old planting.
And in this picture,
we're looking at everything after it was cleaned out,
but you're seeing the remnants of our landscape fabric there.
And we had to go and rip out all of this landscape fabric,
approximately 1,500 square feet worth of landscape fabric
that was already buried underneath years of mulch
and years of roots going over and under them.
And it just was a big process to get that done.
But once we did that, we were able to go ahead
and start our new planting moving forward.
So right now, we're looking at our three nice, brand-new lines
of our drip irrigation system.
And you can see the spots that are sprayed there,
outlining where those plants are gonna be placed.
And then also you can see the plants that we have over here
on the side as we line them up.
And these all had to be carried up by scissors lift.
And so finally,
after planting and a whole lot of hard work
and a couple years in this image now in this video,
what we're looking at is three years later,
what this little bluestem planting looks like today,
and it's quite stunning.
In fact, it carried a lot more symbolism
than I was expecting once inside the building.
'Cause when you look outside from the space,
as we see in this video right here,
what you're noticing is the vista.
And then just a quick, a little tease of those grasses,
just letting you know that we're out here, the wind is blowing,
and we're all in this together, essentially.
This whole idea that there's an interconnectedness
that even though you're inside,
you're still a part of this great world,
and those grasses and that movement
are reminding us of that.
So moving on to the next project that I was able to complete
here at Monona Terrace, and this was done last year in 2020
during the shutdown due to COVID.
And it was the only project that I was able to get done,
understandably because budgets were frozen
and nobody knew what was gonna happen.
But fortunately, all of this had been pre-planned in 2019
and all the foundation was set for things to kind of go down
in 2020 once spring arrived.
So on our rooftop,
we had a row of eight Japanese tree lilacs.
And in this slide, we have a wonderful image
of what those trees looked like right before
they were taken down.
They're severely, severely ill and stressed
and unpleasant to look at.
They suffered from severe branch dieback.
They had mildew problems and after we excavated them,
we saw that a lot of them were cage girdled.
So when they were dropped in place,
a lot of those cages weren't even removed
and the trees tried to grow their roots through them
in this amazing soil that we have,
and just kind of end up girdling themselves,
which probably led to their decline.
By midsummer, you would see that they were suffering a lot.
And essentially, this is just a poorly sited tree.
It really shouldn't be anywhere in this kind of space,
in this kind of area, in this hot, hot sun
on essentially what's a heat island
surrounded by hot concrete.
It never did really well for those trees.
So the thought was, well,
let's just do what we did last time.
Let's take 'em out. [chuckles]
So we did, we took the trees down
and came up with this idea that let's see if we can increase
the number of trees on the site because we need shade dearly.
And then also let's see what tree will do best.
And in exploring what kind of tree planting we wanted to do,
whether we wanted to do a species diverse planting,
where we would have different species of trees,
or if we wanted to do a mono species.
So a single species of tree planting.
Those were the two issues that came head to head.
And what we ended up doing is siding on the aesthetics side
and going with a single species of tree
so that we can have one continuous tree canopy
throughout this space.
And so I decided, with a lot of help from many people
and many inputs, to go ahead and plant redbuds,
redbuds being a wonderful native tree.
One that's probably catching on a little bit more now.
I'm hearing a lot more about redbuds being planted
in people's yards, which is wonderful.
And another wonderful thing about redbuds
is their bloom period, which is in April.
They're one of the first things to flower.
So we're very lucky to kind of plant those trees there
and try to coordinate plantings
that are gonna enhance that bloom.
So the redbuds went in,
but we had to get 'em up to the roof.
And so logistically, it's not easy.
We had to take things up an elevator.
So here we are going up an elevator and then figuring out
a way how to drag this 200 to 350-pound root ball and tree,
depending on the size and how big they were dug out
at the nursery, onto the space.
So here we are looking at the beds after they've been graded,
after a whole lot of work has been done
with the infrastructure to clear that space,
to get these trees in place.
And then today, here they are, happy as can be.
You think of redbuds that are trees that can probably go
for a little bit of shade as an understory tree,
but they really thrive here on this site.
And I look forward to them kind of growing into each other,
and they're growing quite quickly.
We have amazing soil where we can finally start,
have branches that are touching each other
and creating a seamless canopy
that's gonna provide some nice shade for our visitors.
And then finally, with our tree project this year,
we were able to put in our landscape lighting.
So this has been awesome.
This has also been a project that's been in the work for two
or three years, to get some updated landscape lighting
that gives us the function to create an atmosphere at night
and to enhance the building with either events
and functions that want to say, personalize their event up here.
So it's a wonderful way to do that.
Underneath those trees, you saw a lot of turf.
It is a 50/50 mix of Black Beauty fescue
and Kentucky bluegrass.
So it provides a lot of wear and tear resistance.
And then also as those trees do grow into each other
and provide more shade, that fescue will also
kind of help fill in those spaces
as it will tolerate that shade.
Right here is a shot of that irrigation.
And that irrigation will be overhauled this coming year.
So we're really quite excited about that.
So as I kind of close out some of these projects
and what we've done,
how has that impacted the ecology of the space,
or what have I noticed that's different in the gardens
and in the outdoor areas?
And what I've noticed is that we have a lot of new visitors.
We have a lot of pollinators that visit us now.
We have a ton of birds,
particularly goldfinches that visit us quite often.
In this shot, you can see these guys just going to town
on the seedheads of the coneflowers.
And I'm literally right on top of them,
and they're not minding me because they're having
a gorgeous feast right in front of them.
To the east and west of us,
and even to the south, there's a lake,
there aren't a whole lot of opportunities
to probably find food sources
like they're experiencing right now.
And so it's really a treat to see these guys come,
land, stay for a while, have a meal,
and then take off again.
Here we're looking at a shot of a fountain.
And across that shot, we're seeing
the garlic chive planting with some tropical milkweed.
And this, as you can tell is just teeming with pollinators.
They're crawling all over the place.
You can't even look to the side, to the left or the right,
without seeing something kind of moving
in your field of vision.
And as we zoom in on this shot again,
as we kind of get a little bit closer look,
it's just kind of like doors opening and closing
with little pollinators coming in and out,
weaving in between the reeds and the flower tops
and just trying to find their food source.
And it's wonderful 'cause this is late in the summer.
And so there's not a whole lot of, particularly up here,
I have a lot of flowers that bloom earlier in the season.
I have not yet selected for a lot of late blooming forbs,
and that will change as we edit that.
But this is just a wonderful sight to see when you come up
and you see just thousands and thousands
of pollinators going to town.
And we're talking about butterflies, as you can see
and little tiny bees as well, flies, wasps,
they're all great pollinators.
Here we're looking at a shot of some goldfinches
that are going to town on a blazing star or Liatris,
however you wanna call that.
And they're just enjoying their space here.
They're enjoying, they're relaxed.
I'm right there.
And what I like about this shot is in the background,
we have two visitors that are visiting the space,
they look like conference attendees,
but they're taking the sights in, you know?
And even though they're here for a conference,
we're able to attend to our clients' needs
as providing a site,
but also we're attending to the needs of our local ecology
by feeding our goldfinch population, in this case,
and other pollinators and providing some ecological value
and some ecological function.
Here, we're looking at a shot of monarchs
and as you can tell, it is bonkers.
They're going crazy, they're going nuts.
And this happens every July, August
when the blazing stars start blooming
and the goldenrod is blooming and it's monarch season.
And it has been an increase year after year
with the amount of plants that we've put in here,
the amount of visitors that come to us, it's quite amazing.
We have a lot of people that like to stop and take pictures
and kind of get lost in this swirl, in this whirlwind.
And then our final visitor shot is one of my favorite.
We're looking at another goldfinch kind of going to town
on a prairie dock seedhead that's closed up here,
and he's prying that puppy open
and just trying to get that meal.
And I'm sitting here enjoying what that goldfinch is doing.
I'm also enjoying the view past the goldfinch into the lake.
And I get a little bit of architecture in there as well.
So what we're seeing is that native plants
provide ecosystem services.
There's value to embracing ecological value,
but aesthetics do matter too.
It's not just for bugs and for pollinators.
It has to be for us as well.
So plants are essential to a healthy urban living.
Clean storm water, they trap nitrogen.
It brings life to cities, as we see here,
and it brings wellness and joy.
So the purpose here at the Terrace is to invite people in
and to enjoy a new experience,
and also to create beautiful backdrops
as we're seeing here in this video.
And I took a video of that same shot
that I described as my favorite picture,
just to capture the serene moment,
the stillness of the morning with the dew
as it delicately balances and the seedheads
of this prairie drop seed as it lends a jeweled blanket
over the surrounding plants
and really creating this dramatic and glam effect.
Planting a garden in this naturalized and loose,
wild style involves a lot of risk-taking.
Public perception isn't always gonna be in your favor.
Even managerial or client expectations come into play.
It involves some educating to the benefits
of why we're planting this way.
Pivoting to ecologically focused plantings,
as opposed to conventional horticulture is always bonus.
Particularly as we look forward
in today's day of climate change.
We wanna prioritize sustainability
while also telling the story about the architect.
Thank you so much for your time.
And I appreciate the opportunity to share with you our story.
>> WELCOME BACK TO OUR VIRTUAL
SPRING KICKOFF, AND WE JUST
FINISHED LEARNING ABOUT THIS
SORT OF AMAZING TRANSFORMATION
AT MONONA TERRACE AT NATIVE
PLANTS UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF
TONY.
YOU CAN KEEP ASKING QUESTIONS AS
WE'RE CHATTING HERE AS WELL.
TONY, THANKS SO MUCH FOR BEING
WITH US.
WE APPRECIATE IT.
>> HAPPY TO BE HERE, BEN.
THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
I'M GLAD TO SHARE OUR STORY
AGAIN.
>> ABSOLUTELY.
THE FIRST THING TO NOTE IS THAT
MANY PEOPLE HAVE CHIMED IN AND
SAID WOW, THAT'S A LOT OF WORK.
>> RIGHT.
>> AND OF COURSE GREAT VISION.
OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE A TREMENDOUS
DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE.
CONGRATULATIONS ON THE
ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
I THINK FOR OURSELVES SPECIAL
ALL OFESPECIALLYHAVE HAD WEIRD GARDEN MOMENTS.
OUR FIRST QUESTION COMES FROM
MARY.
SHE'S WONDERING AS YOU WERE
REMOVING THOSE TREES, I ASSUME
YOU DIDN'T JUST CUT THEM DOWN.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO PREPARE OR
REMAKE THOSE BEDS?
DID YOU HAVE TO THINK ABOUT SOIL
COMPOSITION IN A DEEPER OR
DIFFERENT WAY AT ALL?
>> YEAH.
THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION.
IT REALLY KIND OF LENDS ITSELF
TO THE LOGISTICS OF THE JOB.
IT'S EASY TO GO PLANT A TREE IN
THE BACKYARD WHEN YOU HAVE WANT THE
DEPTH OF SOIL BENEATH YOUR FEET.
HERE WE HAVE ABOUT 18.
WHEN YOU PLANT IN ENVIRONMENTS
THAT ARE NOT IDEAL FOR THEM,
THEY'RE NOT GOING TO BE AROUND
FOR AS LONG AS THEY WOULD BE IN
A CONVENTIONAL LANDSCAPE.
SO TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION, WHAT
WAS NICE IS BECAUSE WE WENT --
IN THAT SHOT THAT I THINK I
SHOWED THE AUDIENCE, THERE WAS
FOUR JAPANESE TREE LILACS.
NOW THERE'S NINE ROSE BUDS.
WE STILL HAD TO GET RID OF THE
CAGES THAT WERE KIND OF LEFT
OVER AND DIDN'T EVEN SEEM TO
START RUSTING, QUITE HONESTLY,
AND REMOVE THAT ROOT MASS FROM
THE OLD TREES.
SO THAT WAS A LOT OF WORK.
THAT WAS GETTING A CHIPPER,
STUMP GRINDERS UP THERE.
A LOT OF IT WAS CONTRACTED OUT.
AND VOLUNTEER HELP.
WE HAD TO GET SAWS-ALLS UP THERE
TO CUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE
BEDS THAT LIGHTS THE LAMP POSTS.
A LITTLE BIT OF A PROJECT.
NOTHING CRAZY, BUT A LITTLE
CHALLENGING BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO
WORK AROUND THE BUILDING.
>> I'VE WORKED IN PUBLIC GARDENS
MYSELF, SO I KNOW OF FUN OF SORT
OF DODGING ALL OF THOSE MOVING
PIECES THAT ARE UNIQUE TO PUBLIC
SPACES, ABSOLUTELY.
SO AMANDA IS ASKING -- SHE FIRST
COMPLIMENTS YOUR GOLD FINCH
POPULATION.
THEY SEEM TO REALLY ENJOY IT UP
THERE.
SHE'S WONDERING IF SHE CAN GROW
SOME OF THE PLANTS YOU TALKED
ABOUT IN YOUR BACKYARD.
IS THERE A PLANT LIST OF WHAT
YOU HAVE GROWING UP THERE THAT
FOLKS COULD REFERENCE OR YOU
COULD SHARE.
>> I DON'T HAVE A PLANT LIST
ONLINE.
I WOULD LIKE TO GET THAT ON DOWN
THE LINE AS WE START DEVELOPING
THE GARDENS TO EDUCATE THE
PUBLIC ON WHAT WE'RE DOING AND
THAT INCLUDES GETTING PLANT
LISTS UP THERE.
THOSE ARE THINGS THAT ARE GOING
TO COME WITH THE RESOURCES AS
THEY BECOME AVAILABLE TO ME,
PARTICULARLY POST-COVID WHEN WE
START RAMPING UP AGAIN, THAT WE
CAN START -- NOW THAT THE
GARDENS ARE STARTING TO GROW
AGAIN IN THIS NEW DIRECTION,
THIS NEW IDEAL OF TRYING TO
PROVIDE ECOSYSTEM SERVICES THAT
WE CAN HELP THE PUBLIC COPY US
OR AT LEAST COME TO US FOR SOME
SORT OF INFORMATION ON WHAT THEY
CAN DO AT HOME.
WHAT I WOULD ANSWER TO HER WOULD
BE TO USE THE RESOURCES THAT ARE
IN HER AREA.
I DON'T KNOW WHERE SHE'S COMING
TO US FROM, BUT EXTENSIONS ARE
WONDERFUL RESOURCES AND CAN
PROVIDE A NICE LIST OF NATIVE
PLANTS IN YOUR AREA.
IT ALSO COMES DOWN TO YOUR SITE.
WHAT I'M PLANTING MAY NOT DO
WELL WHERE SHE'S PLANTING.
IT'S NOT SO EASY TO EXPECT
PEOPLE WHO AREN'T AS FAMILIAR
WITH PLANTING PRACTICES OR WHAT
ARE THE REQUIREMENTS OF PLANTS
TO KNOW EXACTLY THAT.
SO THAT'S WHY I ENCOURAGE YOU TO
SEEK OUT THOSE RESOURCES AND
EXTENSIONS ARE WONDERFUL WAYS TO
DO THAT.
>> WE KNOW FROM PRESENTATIONS
EARLIER TODAY THAT NATIVE PLANTS
TEND TO BE MORE RESILIENT AND
ADAPTABLE.
THE GREENER QUESTION, IF YOU'RE
LIMITED TO THAT 18 INCHES OF
SOIL, EVEN WITH THOSE PLANTS
THAT ARE SO ADAPTABLE, DO YOU
FIND YOURSELF NEEDING TO DO
MAYBE EXTRAORDINARY OR DIFFERENT
THINGS TO KEEP THOSE PLANTS
THRIVING BECAUSE OF SUCH A
UNIQUE ENVIRONMENT?
>> YEAH.
YOU KNOW, THAT'S ANOTHER GREAT
QUESTION, BECAUSE I HAVE GREAT,
GREAT SOIL.
AND PRAIRIE PLANTS DON'T NEED
GREAT SOIL.
ESSENTIALLY I'VE TAKEN A BUNCH
OF PLANTS THAT CAN THRIVE WITH
NOT MUCH THERE AND I'VE PUT THEM
IN A PLACE TO CREATE AN
ENVIRONMENT FOR AN EDUCATIONAL
PURPOSE, MIRRORING THE ARCHITECT
WITH THE NATIVE PRAIRIE PLANTS.
BUT THE PLANTS ARE THERE IN A
HIGH, HIGH, NUTRIENT-RICH SOIL.
THEY ACTUALLY GET TOO BIG
SOMETIMES AND START TO FLOP
OVER.
THAT'S SOMETHING I LEARNED SINCE
I'VE BEEN HERE.
I DIDN'T STEP INTO THIS JOB
KNOWING NATIVE PLANTS THAT WELL.
I CAME FROM A HORTICULTUREAL
BACKGROUND.
I WASN'T AS FAMILIAR WITH NATIVE
PLANTS.
SO THAT'S PART OF THE LEARNING
PROCESS.
THAT'S WHAT I TELL PEOPLE TO
TAKE HOME WITH YOU.
IF YOU WANT TO DO BETTER IN YOUR
BACKYARD TO PROVIDE PLANTS THAT
ARE GOING TO FEED THE FAUNA IN
YOUR AREA, SEEK THOSE PLANTS
OUT.
A LOT OF THEM, MOST OF THEM ARE
VERY ADAPTABLE.
BUT THAT'S THE JOY OF GARDENING.
SOME PLANTS ARE GOING TO SURVIVE
AND SOME WON'T.
THAT'S HOW YOU START LEARNING
WHAT'S GOING TO DO WELL AND
WHAT'S NOT GOING TO DO WELL.
YOU WEED DOWN THE PLANTS THAT
ARE GOING TO DO WELL ON YOUR
SITE.
THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING
HERE.
AS YOU SEEK THAT ULTIMATE GRAIL
OF HAVING THIS FINE, BALANCED
PLANTING, YOU GO THROUGH THESE
PROCESSES AND EDIT OUT.
IT'S OKAY TO FAIL.
I'VE FAILED A LOT.
THAT'S WHY WE'VE HAD SOME OF
THESE FEW SUCCESSES THAT I'VE
BEEN ABLE TO SHARE WITH YOU.
>> SO A GREAT SEGUE FROM THAT
ANSWER, TERESA SAYS ABSOLUTELY
JURORGORGEOUS, BUT AS YOU STARTED
YOUR JOURNEY OF LOOKING FOR WHAT
WOULD GROW WELL TOGETHER, PLANT
SOCIALABILITY, WHAT WERE YOUR
RESOURCES?
>> I'M FORTUNATE JUST BECAUSE OF
MY BACKGROUND OF KNOWING PEOPLE
LIKE YOU, BEN, MY BACKGROUND
BEING AT OLE OLBRICH, WE START
TALKING ABOUT THESE REALITIES OF
WHAT ARE OF THE KIND OF NEW
SCIENCE WE'RE DISCOVERING ABOUT
PLANT RELATIONSHIPS.
SO I JUST JUMPED ONLINE.
A LOT OF THESE ARTICLES ARE
COMING OUT RIGHT NOW THAT
DESCRIBE THE RELATIONSHIPS OF
PLANTS AND THE IMPORTANCE OF
RELATIONSHIPS UNDERGROUND WITH
THEIR ROOTS AND HOW IT LEADS TO
THEIR RELATIONSHIPS ABOVE
GROUND.
SO TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION, IT'S
JUST MY LUCK AND THE COMMUNITY
THAT I'M IN AS A PROFESSIONAL.
BUT, AGAIN, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND,
BEN, MAYBE YOU CAN THROW A
COUPLE OTHER OPTIONS OUT THERE,
I USE THE EXTENSION RESOURCES
ARE WONDERFUL.
I HAD SUSAN OUT HERE A FEW YEARS
AGO, WOULD LOVE TO HAVE HER OUT
HERE AGAIN.
I HAD NEIL DIBOLL FROM PRAIRIE
NURSERY, AHEAD OF HIS TIME.
I'VE BEEN ABLE TO RELY ON
PROFESSIONALS TO GIVE ME THEIR
EXPERTISE.
I'M JUST TRYING TO GROW MY OWN
KNOWLEDGE AND GO FROM THERE.
AGAIN, I WOULD RECOMMEND GETTING
ONLINE AND START TO KIND OF LOOK
UP TERMS, LIKE ECOLOGICAL
FUNCTIONING PLANTINGS, NATIVE
PLANTINGS, AND YOU'LL KIND OF
START FALLING ON PAGES LIKE
THAT.
AND YOU'RE ALSO GOING TO FIND A
LOT THAT IS NOT NATIVE PLANTING.
THOSE ARE GREAT.
BUT THERE'S ALSO OTHER PLANTS
THAT WE HAVE IN OUR GARDENS.
I'M NOT TELLING PEOPLE THAT
YOU'VE GOT TO GET RID OF THEM.
ALL PLANTS HAVE A HOME.
WE'RE WANTING TO BRING NATIVE
PLANTS BACK IN OUR YARDS.
YOU GO TO EUROPE, THEY'RE CHOCK
FULL OF OUR NATIVE PLANTS OVER
THERE.
THIS IDEA THAT OUR PLANTS AREN'T
AS DESIRABLE, IF YOU SPOKE TO
SOMEONE OVER THERE, THEY'D BE
LIKE THEY'RE ACTUALLY GORGEOUS.
IT'S TRYING TO FIND WHAT'S GOING
TO WORK FOR YOU IN YOUR SPACE.
>> WE'VE GOT A FOLLOW-UP
QUESTION ON THE SOIL PROFILE.
YOU MENTIONED YOUR SOIL IS
ALMOST TOO GOOD FOR NATIVE
PLANTS.
HAVE YOU FOUND YOURSELF AMENDING
IT?
I THINK GARDENERS THINK OF
ADDING ORGANIC MATERIAL AND
NUTRIENTS.
HAVE YOU FOUND YOURSELF ADDING
THINGS TO MAKE THE SOIL MORE
APPROPRIATE OR JUST WORKING WITH
WHAT YOU HAVE THERE?
>> YEAH.
IT'S GOING TO BE A WORK IN
PROGRESS.
FOR ME TO AMEND THE SOIL WOULD
BE TO BRING GRAVEL UP THERE AND
STRIPPING AWAY THAT ORGANIC
MATTER.
I HAVE TO WORK WITHIN WHAT I
HAVE.
THERE'S A LOT OF LOGISTICS.
I'M ON TOP OF A BUILDING.
THERE ARE WEIGHT RESTRICTIONS IN
TERMS OF HOW MUCH WEIGHT WE CAN
HAVE UP THERE.
THAT'S A BIG PART OF IT, YOU
KNOW?
AND SO TO AMEND THE SOIL, TO
OBTAIN A PLANTING THAT I WANT
GOES AGAINST WHAT I'M TRYING TO
TELL PEOPLE.
WORK WITH THE SOIL, EVEN THOUGH
I'M DOING THE OPPOSITE.
BUT I'M DOING THAT BECAUSE I'M
TRYING TO TELL A STORY ABOUT AN
ARCHITECT.
SO THAT'S WHAT GARDENS ARE.
WE GARDEN TO KIND OF TELL
STORIES OR TO CREATE SOMETHING
OUT OF NOTHING.
BUT THE IDEA IS THAT WE CAN HAVE
BEAUTIFUL GARDENS THAT WORK WELL
IN OUR SPACE WITH PLANTS THAT
ARE HIGHLY ADAPTED TO THOSE
SPACES, NATIVE AND NON-NATIVE,
SO THAT WE CAN HAVE A
SUSTAINABLE AND RELATIVELY
LOW-MAINTENANCE SPACE THAT'S
BEAUTIFUL AND THAT CAN PROVIDE
GREAT ECOSYSTEM SERVICES.
>> WE SAID IT BEFORE.
MATCH THE PLANT TO THE PLACE.
ONE OF MY REACTIONS -- AND I
LOVE THAT YOU HAVE VIDEO AS WELL
BECAUSE I THINK A HUGE PIECE OF
WHAT YOU WORK WITH IS MOVEMENT
AND AIR AND WIND, BEING SORT OF
UP AND EXPOSED ON THE LAKE.
WHEN THINGS MOVE, IT'S A WHOLE
DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE IN AND OF
ITSELF.
SO IN OUR SORT OF LAST COUPLE OF
MINUTES HERE, YOU MENTIONED
VOLUNTEERS BEING SUCH A HUGE
PART OF THE WORK THAT YOU DO.
IF PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED IN
GETTING INVOLVED WITH YOU AFTER
HEARING YOUR STORY, WHAT'S THE
BEST WAY FOR THEM TO REACH OUT
OR GET INVOLVED THEMSELVES?
>> THEY CAN GO TO OUR WEBSITE,
MOWMONONATERRACE.COM AND CLICK ON
COMMUNITY RELATIONS.
THEY'LL FIND A LINK FOR
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES NOT ONLY
IN THE GARDENS, BUT IN THE
BUILDING, DOCENTS THAT SPEAK
ABOUT FRANK FLOYD WRIGHT.
THERE'S A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES
FOR PEOPLE TO VOLUNTEER AND HELP
OUT.
>> TONY, THANK YOU AGAIN SO MUCH
FOR BEING WITH US AND SHARING
YOUR STORY.
I HOPE PEOPLE WILL COME UP AND
SEE WHAT YOU'VE CREATED HERE
ESPECIALLY AS SPRING IS
HOPEFULLY SOON.
THANKS SO MUCH.
WE APPRECIATE IT.
>> THANK YOU, BEN.
IT'S ALWAYS A PLEASURE.
THANK YOU.
>> AS A REMINDER, THERE IS MORE
OF OUR VIRTUAL SPRING KICKOFF TO
COME.
THIS EVENT IS MADE POSSIBLE BY
YOUR CONTRIBUTION, SO YOU CAN
SUPPORT AN EVENT LIKE THIS THAT
ALLOWS US TO BRING YOU FEE FREE AND
ACCESSIBLE GARDEN PROGRAMMING.
YOU CAN CHIP IN RIGHT NOW AT
wigardenexpo.com AND CLICKING
ON DONATE.
ANY AMOUNT YOU ARE ABLE TO
DONATE IS PREESHED AND APPRECIATED AND
VALUABLE.
THANK YOU SO MUCH AND SEE YOU
BACK HERE IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS.
- Hi, I'm Ben Futa,
host of PBS Wisconsin's gardening series
Let's Grow Stuff .
On behalf of PBS Wisconsin,
welcome to the Garden & Landscape Expo
Virtual Spring Kick-Off.
Please add your questions for the presenter in the chat
and stay tuned for a live Q&A after the presentation.
After our session, be sure to explore everything else
the Virtual Spring Kick-Off has to offer,
including 360 video garden tours, a panel discussion
with UW Extension horticulture experts, and more.
Thank you, and enjoy.
- Hi, I'm Megan from "The Creative Vegetable Gardener"
and today, we're going to talk about
design inspiration for a creative vegetable gardener.
So I live in Madison, Wisconsin
and because I teach gardening and I have a large garden,
a lot of people assume that I grew up on a farm,
but I actually grew up on the opposite of a farm,
which was a row home in Philadelphia.
So I didn't know anybody that had a garden,
we didn't have a yard.
I actually didn't even really know that growing food
was something that people did in their free time.
I was definitely an urban person.
So a few years ago, I emailed my mom and I said,
"I know that we had a yard for a very short amount of time
at one of the houses that we lived in when I was young."
I said, "Can you look through the photo albums
and send me a picture of me in the garden?"
And this is what she found and sent me,
a me with a picture of an azalea bush,
which I thought was really funny.
That was the extent of my gardening.
And she sent me this great note.
"Here are the only photos I have
"where you are even near a plant.
"Apparently after your sixth birthday,
"we never let you near another flower or garden.
"I can only plead that we are city folk
"and always have been.
"We have plenty of photos of you on concrete.
Love Mama, Queen of the Concrete Jungle."
So when she sent me this note,
I thought, "I have to put that into one of my talks,"
because it really illustrates
that I come from a very urban family,
not a farming family, like a of people in Wisconsin.
So then after college in Philadelphia,
I moved to San Francisco.
And while I was in San Francisco, I started to think,
"I kind of wanna learn how to grow food."
Looking back, I have no idea where those thoughts came from.
I can only chalk it up to living in California.
Sometimes strange things happen to your brain.
So I applied for an internship in a small town in Missouri
and ended up getting accepted.
And so I went and moved to a farm
in a town of a hundred people in northeast Missouri.
So from Philadelphia to San Francisco to northeast Missouri.
It was a big shock, to say the least.
I had no idea how to live on a farm,
no idea how to live in a rural area.
It was very stressful for those first few weeks,
but things really started to look up
when I met this guy, [chuckling]
who is now my husband.
I love this picture because it shows
that he's trying to get into the farm,
Missouri farm guy vibe.
He looks very different now; he is a business owner.
His hair is cut, doesn't really wear overalls,
but I love this picture.
So things were really looking up
when I met Mark, and we ended up shacking up
in this tiny little square foot, 90-square-foot cabin.
So often I say that we lived in a tiny house
before tiny houses were cool.
No running water, no electricity,
and in front of this garden was where, or this cabin,
was where I created my first garden, with Mark.
There's lots of mistakes in this garden,
a lot of things that I wouldn't do in the present day,
but I think it was a pretty good first start.
You can see the cabin in the back right-hand corner.
So we lived right by our garden.
So lots of gardens and things have happened
between Missouri and now.
I live in Madison, Wisconsin,
I've run a lot of different gardening programs.
I've had lots of different gardens in community gardens
and at various houses where I lived.
And this is me in my current garden, in Madison.
So I have a pretty extensive front yard garden.
I love having a front yard garden.
We have met so many people in our neighborhood.
I don't know that I would ever buy a house again
that doesn't have a front yard garden.
People stop by, they take selfies in front of my garden.
They tell me stories about how they interact with my garden
on their own time.
So it's a really, it's a really special experience.
Few more pictures, a big harvest in the summer.
So we're gonna talk about some of the elements
in this garden; as you can see,
I like to have a very productive garden,
productive garden that's also very beautiful.
So I'm always looking for those two things.
And we're gonna talk a lot about the beauty today.
I like to grow a lot of flowers, which we'll talk about today.
And then here's another shot
with me with one of my trellises,
which we'll talk about, and lots of flowers and veggies
at the height of the season.
And then, between my vegetable garden
and the street is a pretty large perennial garden,
which offers a little bit of buffer
between the vegetable garden and cars in the street,
but also is the great introduction to our property.
We live on a corner
that's pretty highly traveled by walkers and bikers.
And so it's a corner that a lot of people
in our neighborhood know about.
And then my garden actually wraps around
the side of my house; this is the south side of the house.
And so we, this is the second part of the garden.
Again, it's still on the corner,
so lots of people biking and walking.
Here's me harvesting some flowers
and then another shot of a trellis,
which we will talk about later in class.
So I'm The Creative Vegetable Gardener.
And I'm here to inspire you to try some new things
and have more fun in your gardens.
But I think a lot of us get stuck in a rut sometimes.
I know I have, I do the same things over and over.
And one time when I taught the class,
somebody said, "I do the same things over and over
in my garden, even when they're not working."
And I've been there too.
So I'm hoping that you come away
with some creative ideas for the garden.
So one thing that I think that happens
is that people, a lot of people think
that vegetable gardens are ugly, right?
That perennial gardens, flower gardens
are where all the beauty lies
and then the vegetable gardens are just utilitarian.
So I'm on the mission to get people
to really elevate their vegetable gardens
and make it a central part of your landscape.
Something that is really beautiful
and has lots of color and texture
because then your garden
can feed your body and your soul.
And I think for a lot of us gardeners,
our gardens do really touch us on a very deep level.
So today we're gonna talk about four high impact ways
to add beauty to your vegetable garden.
Creating your canvas, adding height,
adding flowers, and growing unique varieties.
So the first thing to do is create your canvas.
So if you think about your garden like a painting,
maybe like a Monet painting, you need the canvas.
So this is a picture of my last house.
My husband and I bought a new townhouse, new construction,
not the greatest for a garden.
You can see it basically looks like a wasteland.
This was the first day that we went out to our garden
to start, to get started really, to start building the garden.
I looked at this the other day and I said to my husband,
"Wow, that looks really sad.
There's nothing growing."
So we got started.
How are we gonna design our garden?
So I think what a lot of people do
is they just go out and start tilling it up.
But instead, we decided we're gonna create our canvas.
And our canvas really is the beds and the paths
that offer some structure to the garden.
And then we can use the plants and the colors
and the flowers and the textures to paint upon that canvas
and to make our artwork, which is our garden.
So you can see that immediately,
we're trying to figure out, okay,
what's the design of the garden, what's the layout?
And we're using some scrounged rocks
that we found on the property since it was a construction site
to create some of those beds.
You can see that one is a little bit curved.
They're are a little bit different shapes.
And then we're adding some soil and compost.
So this is definitely a process.
This has not all happened in one year.
This is the after picture.
So before, after, I like to joke,
this is what it looked like the next weekend,
but that is not true; this is seven years later.
So it took a while,
and you can see that it's a little bit different now.
We ended up taking away some of those rocks
and using logs instead.
But the basic layout was the same.
We built upon it year after year
to extend the garden a little bit.
And you can see, we built a little pergola
and added some more plants and some more elements.
So what happens, I think for a lot of people
is they do the flat style of gardening,
which is kind of mimicking farming,
which is, we live in an agricultural state
with a lot of farms, so that makes sense.
But this is a picture from the community garden
where I used to garden
and a lot of people would garden like this.
They would just run their tiller through
and then just plant in straight rows, like a farm.
And it's not really clear where do you walk?
Where are the beds?
Where are the aisles?
And then, this is gonna be
very, very weed-intensive by June.
This person's gonna be in a world of hurt by the summer.
It's just gonna be explosive weeds.
So in contrast, you can have a garden that's more designed.
That has raised beds and paths, that has some kind of structure.
So this is right after we bought our current house;
you can see there's a little work happening on the roof.
My mom came to help us visit
and once we got everything into the house,
we came outside and said,
"Okay, now we're working on the garden."
And my mom said,
"I never knew how much you loved gardening
"until I saw how you moved,
"where you didn't really care about the inside of the house,
you just wanted to work on the garden."
Now in our defense, it was June, so time was short.
So here we are at the second garden,
we're a little bit more organized this time.
This is probably the third garden
we're laying out at a house.
So we're laying out the beds,
the raised beds to see where we're gonna put them.
And then we're using a measuring tape
to actually start to lay out that perennial garden
that you saw in the earlier picture.
So I love this picture,
'cause I feel like my husband is making a case for something
and I don't remember if I agreed to it or not,
but we work pretty well in the garden together.
So we do a lot of big projects together.
And so we're laying out the garden
and then we put down cardboard, we put down wood chips,
really leveled out the beds, made them look really nice,
and then started to fill with some soil that we ordered.
And then we're making a little bit of a berm in the front
so that we can plant the perennial garden.
This is what it looks like later that season,
actually, this was like the next season.
So still a work in progress.
And then this is later that season.
So you can see the perennial garden starting to grow in,
the vegetable garden's behind it.
And then over the years, we built it and tweaked it.
And this is the picture that you saw before.
So this is the expanded garden, but you can see at this picture,
that things look really neat and organized,
even though there's a wild characteristic to this garden
where I like to have vines and I like to have flowers
and I like to have a lot of things going on,
but underneath it, there's the organizing principles
of the beds and the paths,
and I think it's a lot easier to maintain a garden
over the long term with those beds and paths.
And I think it's more attractive.
So less work.
And I'm all about that for gardening.
Gardening's already a lot of work,
so if we can cut down on some of the labor, that would be,
that's always a win in my book.
And then it's better for soil health.
So running a tiller through your garden every year
multiple times a season really destroys the soil structure.
So one of the things I like about having
established beds and paths is that I never till.
I've never tilled my garden in 20 years.
I just work on working on the soil, adding compost,
growing cover crop, and really focusing on the soil
that's in the beds, and in the soil in the aisles,
I don't need to worry about.
I just cover it with wood chips and walk all over it.
And then like we said, it really makes a tidier garden.
And I think a tidy garden
is a more attractive garden because like me,
then you can build upon it and put different elements
in there that make it a little bit more wild
or a little bit more artistic or more colorful.
But you still have that structure
that makes it easy to maintain, or let's say easier to maintain.
So here's a couple examples of some different gardens
I worked in and some pictures I found.
This is a garden that I designed for somebody,
very simple, raised beds,
don't have to be anything complicated.
This is the more traditional style
where we just used cedar and I made boxes out of it.
This is my old community garden plot.
So you can just use scrounged materials,
which I do a lot in my garden.
We found lots of bigger stones and rocks and some logs.
The benefit of that is really then
you can start making organic shapes,
if you like to have a little bit more free-flowing design.
I found this one online; I thought was really cool.
It would be fun to have a circle garden someday.
And they have, you could have a little fruit tree
in the middle of it, which would be cool.
And again, it looks like they just use some urbanite
or something that they scrounged
so it looks like there's some old bricks.
It's nothing that expensive, nothing that fancy,
but it still looks really great.
And then you saw in an earlier picture
how we were laying out those first raised beds
in the front yard garden.
Well, later that fall, I actually extended the garden.
I had no more raised beds left
and I didn't really feel like buying more lumber,
and so the second style that I have is what I call
mounded raised beds.
So this was all grass,
all I did was lay down cardboard.
And then I used some twine and some stakes to shape my beds.
It's a little hard to see here,
but they're a little bit curved in the picture.
And then I just started dumping soil
that I had from a pile that I ordered into those beds.
And then I used a rake and then just shaped them
into how I wanted them and then dumped wood chips
all over the cardboard in the aisles.
So that was pretty, that was pretty quick.
That was like an instant garden.
And then I started to,
this is going into the fall, so then I mulched all the beds.
You can see the two far beds are mulched.
And then I thought, "I better take a picture
before I mulch them," so the last three are still soil.
There's another shot.
So it's just a rounded raised bed.
But that slight difference between the,
almost like that little topography,
I think makes it a little bit easier to maintain
than having a completely flat garden.
And this, this is the side of my house.
Also that first fall, we worked on the side garden.
You can see this is actually another style.
So I have three different styles of beds in my garden,
so you can certainly mix and match.
Same thing, we had some logs and rocks
and decided what we wanted the beds to look like,
filled them with soil,
and then just put cardboard over all the grass,
dumped in wood chips, mulched all the beds,
and then it was ready to go for the fall,
for the next season, so just sat there over the winter.
We probably, we might've planted garlic in one of the beds.
So I think this picture's a good illustration of these beds.
So when you look at this picture, it looks neat and tidy.
It looks pretty organized, you can see the beds,
gives some structure to the garden,
but there's still that wildness and color and some trellises,
so that's what we're gonna talk about next.
So I thought this was great,
this is someone that took this class
a few years ago and she said,
"I just had to write and thank you
"for your inspiring class this past spring.
"We live in an old house and struggled over the years
"with our garden.
"You encouraged us to add some beds
"to our already established plot.
"Instead of our garden being a chore,
"it has been an awesome year of harvest and delight
"to be out there picking and weeding.
Thank you."
So I'm gonna let this person sell the idea
of established beds and paths in your garden.
Okay, so that was creating our canvas.
And now that we have that foundation laid,
we're going to add some height.
So this is my garden, I think this is the second spring.
And I came out in the spring
and there was actually no landscaping around our house
and I thought, "Ugh, it looks so boring."
The vegetable garden in the spring can be,
everything's little and it can be kind of flat.
And there's not a lot of interest.
So I thought, "I need some quick height."
And this was only a second season.
So we still didn't exactly know,
are we gonna keep the garden like it is?
Are there other things that we wanna build?
Do we wanna change things?
So I thought, "I just want some temporary trellises."
And so I went out and bought some cattle panel
or livestock panel, and you can just get that
at Farm & Fleet or Fleet Farm
or any other kind of store near your house.
And I set about making trellises.
So the first one I made,
I cut in half with some bolt cutters,
then put the feet in either side of an aisle.
So one side's in one bed, one side's in the other bed.
Then it comes together at a point
and then I wired it together.
And then I put, you can see some green T-posts in,
or really U-posts, 'cause they're a lot shorter.
So some short, green U-posts, pounded them into the ground,
and then attached the wire to the U-posts.
Very easy, definitely a two-person job,
but doesn't take very long.
And there it is later in the season.
So on this one, it looks like I have
some winter squash on the left-hand side
and then some cherry tomatoes on the right-hand side.
There's another one, more in the middle of the season.
I have some winter squash and it looks like some cucumbers
'cause I can see the yellow flowers,
and then cherry tomatoes on the other side.
I almost always plant cherry tomatoes
on some of the trellises.
And then there it is in a different season.
You can see the tomatoes all the way, cherry tomatoes,
all the way up above the trellis, it's coming,
reaching for the light, and then eventually,
it'll flop over and start to grow down.
And then one more shot, cherry tomatoes on the right,
looks like some more winter squash,
some black-eyed Susan vine.
You can see the little flower poking through.
So I like to mix and match a lot of things in my trellis,
and we'll talk about that before we end
this part of the topic.
So the second one I did,
I decided to make an arch, same thing though.
I wanted it to go over an aisle in the garden
because it's fun to be able to go under the trellises.
So we didn't cut it in half, we just bent it over,
used the same U-post method,
and then attached the trellis to the U-post.
So originally I used zip ties,
but they don't last very well in the sun,
they tend to photo degrade.
So when we rebuilt them a couple years ago,
we used wire and that lasts a lot longer.
And then this is what it looks like later
in one of the seasons, this is when I grew love vine,
which I wouldn't necessarily recommend
because it doesn't flower till pretty late in our area,
but it was a jungle.
By the time I wanted to go under the trellis,
I'd have to kind of duck and make my way under the trellis,
which was really fun.
This is it, another year.
One of my favorite things to grow
on these cattle panel trellises is winter squash.
I think this looks like delicata squash.
I can see a little delicata squash.
The leaves are big and dramatic,
and it actually gives them a little bit more airflow.
So they tend to have fungal issues less when they're up.
And then sometimes the squash hangs down
through the trellis.
So that is also something that I always plant on my trellises
is just because the impact of the squash leaves is just,
it's really beautiful.
Here's another one, this one's another really jungley year.
I had some fall blooming clematis on there.
That was, it didn't like that spot.
So it didn't end up surviving,
but that was quite an amazing year.
So I had lots of white flowers and the squash,
the squash leaves, there's some tomatoes on the side.
So it was really lots of colors and textures happening.
And then one more year, it looks like
I have some cherry tomatoes, I have a hyacinth bean,
which is those big purple flowers sticking up.
That was a fun year.
So I definitely recommend trying to mix some flowers in.
So now we're back at this photo,
and I like this photo because I think
if I took away those cattle panel trellises,
the garden wouldn't be as nearly as interesting.
So just by a couple hours of work, not that expensive,
the cattle panel trellises are usually $30 or less.
So for less than a hundred bucks,
I made two trellises that have a lot of visual impact
in my garden and are a lot of fun to grow things on.
So if we photoshopped those two trellises out of the picture,
I don't think it would look as interesting.
So then our COVID project,
at the beginning of COVID this spring.
I had never really had an entrance to my garden.
So we come out the front door
and you come towards this part of the garden,
and I have a two-foot rabbit fence
and I would just climb over the fence,
sometimes trip over the fence or rip my pants on the fence.
So I said to my husband, "I think it's time to build.
I want a nice entrance to the garden."
So, and I thought, well, I really love those cattle panels.
So why don't we just make another cattle panel?
So we went to the store, got another cattle panel.
I cut the fence and we positioned it,
and then I filled in the beds around it.
And then there's an old screen door.
That's the entrance door right now,
until we build something nicer.
But here it is later that season, again,
a lot of impact just for a little bit of a trellis.
And now I have to say, it's much more enjoyable
to go into my garden, it feels like a real entrance,
a welcoming into the garden.
And then we ended up building a mixed media path
that goes from the garden entrance to our front steps.
So it used to just be grass.
So we had scrounged a lot of different materials,
bought some materials, and then made a really nice path.
So now it really feels like an entrance to a garden,
the grand entrance that my garden deserves.
And then I actually decided to make another one
in the, this is what I call the back door of the garden
because you can see my back door,
which is my kitchen door.
Sometimes I run out to get something for dinner
and then I would just hop over the fence.
So I thought, "Let's make a back door as well."
And so we just did same thing,
another cattle panel trellis with some soil.
I just added some soil so that I could plant
at the base of the trellis.
And here's me later that season.
Actually, I had climbing nasturtium on the left,
which is really fun to grow.
I didn't even know there was climbing nasturtium
until a few years ago.
And then on the right are those cherry tomatoes.
Most of the time, I grow Sungold.
And a few other ideas for trellises.
If you don't have room for any cattle panel trellis,
although I highly recommend them because you can add a bunch more
growing space to your garden, as well as beauty and impact.
This is another little teepee trellis
I had in my garden.
My husband is an arborist and he cut down some birch,
and I said, "Ooh, bring it home
so I can make a little teepee trellis,"
just tied them together at the top.
And then I grew sweet peas.
There it is again.
You can see that when you're looking at the whole garden,
your eye is really drawn to that trellis.
And even if there's nothing on it, there's still,
it still offers some impact.
And so if you photoshopped that out,
it wouldn't be quite as interesting.
There's not an element that's really drawing your eye in.
After I got rid of the birch one, I built this tuteur
and painted it my favorite color, which is turquoise.
I'm not a carpenter, so if you look close,
it doesn't look that great.
But from far away, it's really fun.
And I have a clematis that I grow up it,
and also later in the season, climbing nasturtium.
There's a climbing nasturtium almost to the top.
And then there it is from a distance.
Again, it's something that draws your eye in.
My eye goes to that trellis first
and then starts to bounce around the picture,
and look at the other elements.
So one other way to use a cattle panel trellis,
I often, I also use them as flat trellises.
So I grow peas, I grow cucumbers.
You can grow pole beans.
Anything that climbs up
is also a fun way to use the cattle panel.
I found this one online.
This person really went all out with their cattle panel trellis.
So you could, that's pretty beefy,
and you could grow a lot of things on there.
So I like how they made almost a tunnel in their garden.
I found this online as well.
I thought this would be really fun if you have kids
or grandkids that are younger because they like tight spaces.
This is easy to find at a big box store or a nursery.
These kind of trellises aren't very expensive.
And then you could grow some things
and make a little bit of a jungle for the kids.
And then this one,
a lot of people use these bamboo trellises
and I have a few, or teepees.
I have a few and I never really, I don't know,
I never really liked them that much
until I saw this picture and I thought,
"What I've been doing wrong
is I don't use a whole bunch of them."
So the repetition in this picture,
I think really provides a lot of impact.
And so that's what I've done now.
In the past, I'll try to make two or three or four or five
bamboo trellises all together.
And then you can also scrounge a lot of materials.
If you have a lot of woods on your property,
you can just grab branches and limbs
and make your own trellis.
All right, so the best veggies for trellises,
beans, cucumbers, and peas, you know,
they naturally climb, so they have little tendrils.
You can see the little cucumber tendril in the picture.
And so they're very easy to grow on trellises.
I also like to grow cherry tomatoes or regular tomatoes,
particularly cherry tomatoes
because they're so vigorous and they get so tall,
they can just kind of go up and over the trellis.
And it's easy to pick the cherry tomatoes.
I also sometimes grow tomatillos on those trellises.
They don't get quite as tall, but I like to be able to,
tomatillos get big and floppy, and so it's easy
to kind of tie the tomatillos to that trellis.
And then I've said a couple times,
I love growing winter squash on those trellises
because the leaves are just so dramatic.
And it's so cool when the squash hangs down
through the trellis.
And then there's lots of flowering vines
that you can experiment with.
I particularly like flowering nasturtium.
Okay, and so I have lots of favorite varieties.
We're gonna talk a little bit about varieties
before we finish the class,
but this is my book, Smart Start Garden Planner
and I have a whole section in the back
where I talk about my favorite varieties
for all the different vegetables
and herbs and some flowers as well.
So you can find that on my website,
CreativeVegetableGardener.com,
which we'll also talk about before the class is over,
and I have print and digital copies.
Okay, and then lastly,
you can search for trellis ideas on Pinterest.
If you like to use Pinterest, gardeners are very visual;
we like to look at lots of pictures of gardens,
and so you could just go into Pinterest
and say "vegetable garden trellis"
or "vegetable garden cattle panel trellis."
I also have an article on my website
that is "Cattle Panel Trellis,"
and I show more pictures and talk about how I built mine.
Okay, so we've created our canvas,
we added some height, and now we're gonna add flowers,
which you could kind of think of as our paints, right?
Because flowers come in lots of different colors.
So now we're gonna get out our paint palette
and start painting our canvas.
So I also send out an email every Sunday morning
with articles and videos and upcoming classes
and lots of resources for vegetable gardeners.
So you can sign up on my website,
there's a little pop-up that comes up
at CreativeVegetableGardener.com.
All right, adding flowers,
here's me harvesting some flowers in my garden.
I love growing lots of flowers.
And I think in the past, people think,
"Okay, flowers and vegetables, they're separate.
They don't go together."
And I say, "No, no, no, bring them together."
Because then it adds really to both of them.
So one way you can do it is a perennial border.
You saw in the earlier pictures,
the pictures of us building this garden at our house.
We decided right away, we wanted some kind of border
between the street and the vegetable garden.
Eventually we got rid of all the grass and it's all flowers,
but this was the first crack at it.
And so if you grow perennials,
is there a way that you can bring the perennials
closer to your vegetable garden?
One of the benefits really is my perennial garden
is just teeming with insects
throughout the spring, summer, and fall.
And those insects make their way into the vegetable garden
to help pollinate things.
And so it's just so rich with life.
And it's a great way to bring some more activity
into your garden ecosystem.
So can you bring the annuals
and the perennials closer together?
Here's a shot of the perennial garden with the...
And this is in spring too,
where sometimes the vegetable garden's
not super interesting so if I have,
when I have this perennial garden
around my vegetable garden, it offers a little extra color
and texture and interest in the spring
when the vegetable garden's kind of boring.
There's another shot, getting closer to summer.
There's me, harvesting.
So this is getting closer to fall,
so things are really big and really dramatic.
One more shot.
So by, at this point,
you can barely see the vegetable garden
'cause the perennial garden's just bursting.
And then I like this shot
because it's going down the side,
where on the right hand is the perennial garden
with some asters and some goldenrod,
and on the left side is the vegetable garden,
which has some annuals planted in it,
and they're really interacting and working together
and the colors are kind of just
relating to each other and the textures,
so it's really bringing that part of my property together.
And a couple pictures I found online.
I thought this was an interesting one
where sometimes if you have some kind of fence,
you could do the perennials outside the whole fence
or maybe just on the corners or in front of,
at the front of the garden on either side of the gate.
So lots of different options for bringing
some perennials and flowers closer to your vegetable garden.
Ooh, and I like this one too.
That'd be fun to have, basically a raised bed
along the whole outside of her garden.
So the other way you can incorporate
some more flowers are spring bulbs.
So I like to use bulbs,
really for a little bit of added color
and interest in the spring.
Again, when the vegetable garden is really boring,
I had lots of different bulbs around my garden,
around my property, and then one year,
I went out to my vegetable garden and I thought,
"Why don't I plant bulbs in the vegetable garden?"
And I thought, "That's a great idea."
So I just took some of the corners of the beds,
dug some holes, put some bulbs in there,
and now I have a little bit of color.
You can see there's not much going on
in the vegetable garden, this is pretty early,
but I have some bulbs
that are really offering some color, which is fun.
So a few more pictures of bulbs in the garden.
I love to hunt down really unique varieties.
And then finally, you can use annuals in the bed end.
So when I'm planting my garden,
I always reserve a little bit of space
at the end of the bed, not necessarily every bed.
Sometimes it's both ends of the bed.
Sometimes it's just one end; once in a while I don't have,
I just plant all vegetables.
But you can see in this bed, I have four rows of beans
and then in front of that,
I have dill, and then I reserved a little space,
I have a rudbeckia, I have a sage, tricolor sage,
and then I have a verbena.
And those are just to offer
a little bit of color and texture
to mix with the vegetables.
So here that bed is later in the year.
It was actually a happy accident that the purple of the verbena
and the yellow of the dill really worked well together.
And then you can see the rudbeckias
a little shorter down at the bottom.
Yep, there they are, two together.
So lots of, it is really fun to mix and match
a lot of different flowers.
Here's another bed end.
I have carrots growing in most of the bed
and then I have some rudbeckia and globe amaranth
and then some purple verbena on the other side.
And then one more, this is a corner, pretty,
this is by one of those trellises
on the side of the house.
So it's the corner of the property,
a lot of people see it,
and so I always plant a lot of flowers there.
And here's me harvesting another bed end.
Sometimes I just put flowers in every bed end.
And then again, if we go back to this picture,
if we took out the trellises, then there's less interest.
And then if we took out all the flowers,
then it really becomes more boring.
So it's the trellises, my eye goes to the trellises,
and then starts to bounce around, oh, yellow, red, purple.
And then I start to look at some of the green.
So it's really a way to draw your eye into the garden.
And then like we talked about, flowers really attract
a lot of visitors, mostly good visitors.
And then it's really fun to go out
and see what insects are in your garden.
I love to go outside with my camera
and then I try to look for insects
and see if I can take pictures of some of them.
And sometimes, the insects match themselves
perfectly to the flowers
and then you can take a really cool picture like this one.
So I've seen lots and lots of monarchs.
This is a little sweat bee, this little green torso.
I don't even know what kind of bee that is.
Sometimes I don't figure out what the different...
That could be a fly or a bee.
There's a honey bee, they really like the alliums.
And then there's cool webs that form in the flowers.
This is on a dewy morning where I took some pictures.
I found this little frog, this toad,
in my spiderwort, in the perennial garden.
One time I was just taking pictures
and all of a sudden I looked in and I thought,
"Oh, my gosh, a frog or a toad."
And then the trellises actually bring in birds.
A lot of birds like to perch.
This is a hummingbird on the trellis.
So one thing you wanna think about
is growing flowers from every season.
When you start in the spring,
there's lots of early, mid, and late season bulbs,
and then you can plant all the way through the summer,
and then you can plant some frost-hardy flowers.
Sometimes I have flowers all the way up through,
into November, depending on what flowers I have.
So some of my favorites are Lady in Red Salvia.
This is what the hummingbirds really like
or any kind of Red Salvia,
but I particularly like Lady in Red.
Strawberry Fields Gomphrena,
there's a lot of really pretty Gomphrenas.
This is my favorite and because, and I like the taller ones.
There's a lot of shorter Gomphrenas,
but the red, tall one, it's very frost-hardy.
So it lasts for a bit in the fall.
And then I love to mix the Gomphrena
with Prairie Sun Rudbeckia.
And I love this Rudbeckia
because you can see the middle of the flower,
there's no black; it's a greenish,
and then it's a dark yellow and a light yellow.
So I really love that combination.
So those two are a classic combination
in my garden for many, many years.
And then verbena is very tall and airy.
And that's a really good accent plant as well
because it doesn't block other things.
So you can plant it in the bed end
and you can still see the vegetable plants.
And then lots of beautiful zinnias out there.
The Queen Red Lime or the Queen series
is really interesting,
there's Queen Red Lime, Queen Red Orange,
all these different combinations.
And I love the subtlety of the colors on the petals.
Okay, so then this picture is,
well, if we took out the trellises,
if we took out the beds, if we took out the flowers,
it's a much less interesting garden.
So a lot of times people ask me where to find varieties.
I buy most of my seeds
from Johnny's Selected Seeds and High Mowing.
And then you can also go to nurseries
and your local farmers market to try to find unique varieties.
All right, so we created our canvas,
we added height, we added flowers,
and now we're gonna end on growing unique varieties.
So I say, you can buy a red tomato, an orange carrot,
and a green bean from the grocery store
any time of the year.
That's why I always hunt for the most unique and colorful
and interesting varieties to grow in my garden
because I don't wanna grow things
I can get in the grocery store.
So I'm gonna share a few of my favorites.
I'm always trialing new varieties
and I only like to grow things that perform really well,
that taste great, and are also really beautiful.
So I don't grow things just for the looks, because again,
I want a lot of food outta my garden, as well as beauty.
So Lively Yellow pepper.
A lot of people struggle with growing colored peppers.
My suggestion is to grow the long, Italian-style peppers.
Those are a lot more successful, at least in my Wisconsin garden.
These yellow ones are a nice pop of color in the spring
or in the summer, and they do pretty well in Wisconsin.
Purple Ruffles basil is just a gorgeous basil,
it, purple basil is gorgeous on its own.
But this one, if you look at the edges of the leaves,
it does have a little ruffle to it
that makes it very attractive,
especially if you mix it with green basil
in one of your garden beds,
or you could put it on a bed end with some flowers.
Trilogy beans, I don't like to grow just green beans.
So there's some mixes that have purple, yellow, and green.
It kind of reminds me of a little Mardi Gras color scheme.
And so it's really fun to go out and harvest a whole bunch
of different colored beans from the same row.
Golden Sweet peas, I don't know about you,
but a lot of times when I harvest peas,
I come out the next day
and there's still a whole bunch on the vine,
and I think, "How did I miss all of these yesterday?"
It's because the peas are the same color as the plant,
so it's hard to see them.
Yellow Golden Sweet peas are so beautiful,
they're really easy to spot.
And I had these where I could come out my front door
and I would, this trellis would always catch my eye,
and the yellow peas were like these little jewels
that were just twinkling in the sunlight
and just hanging out there in the garden,
just brought me a lot of joy.
And then Deep Purple carrot.
You should definitely be growing
lots of different variety of carrots,
there's so many beautiful colors.
This one in particular is a very deep purple.
This one was cool, 'cause it had some white stripes
and those three little white lines.
When I cut into it, I thought,
"Oh, my gosh, I have to take a picture,
it's so beautiful, almost too beautiful to eat."
And then Green Zebra and Moonglow tomato.
If you've never grown Green Zebra, it's a fun tomato.
That's what it looks like when it's ripe
and yellowish green.
And then Moonglow is an orange tomato.
Both, I always grow every year in my garden.
And then finally, Dancer eggplant,
there is no other purple like this in the garden.
I call it electric purple.
It's a very prolific eggplant, pretty easy to grow,
and it's somewhere between the fat Italian-style eggplant
and the skinny Japanese eggplant.
So it's an nice shape and a nice size
for cooking and chopping.
All right, so there is an example
of a colorful harvest from my garden.
And for me, it brings me even more joy
to harvest this amazingly beautiful food
that I want to take a picture of.
So again, Johnny's and then Seed Savers and High Mowing
is where I get a lot of those varieties.
And then you can find lots more varieties in my book,
CreativeVegetableGardener.com is where you can find that
and some of the other books I've written.
Okay, so, we learned four different ways
to add impact to your garden.
And I wanna end on reminding you
to make sure you create a seating area
so you can sit and enjoy all your hard work
and all the beauty that you've created.
So here's me and my husband in that first townhouse
that you saw us building the garden,
and a few other seating areas of people I know
or things I've seen online.
This is somebody that I know, very simple, really cute.
Maybe it's even just a bench in your favorite color
that's in the corner of your garden,
where you have coffee or tea.
Mosaic bench.
That would be pretty cool.
I love this one, this is obviously an artist's house.
So you could commission somebody to make you a really cool bench.
And then this is somebody that's from,
in my gardening community and she said,
"Thanks for making gardening fun.
"I now have an eye-pleasing garden
"that yields an abundance of produce.
"This year, I planted a bench in the middle of it all
just so I can sit and enjoy the view."
Thanks, Abby.
So I encourage you this season
to really think about how can you add color and uniqueness
and your own personal touch,
your own artistic impression, expression on your garden
to bring more joy to the gardening experience this year.
So thanks for coming, I'm Megan,
and you can find me at CreativeVegetableGardener.com.
I wish you an abundant
and beautiful gardening season this year.
>> WELL, WELCOME BACK TO THIS
YEAR'S VIRTUAL SPRING KICKOFF.
WE JUST HEARD AMAZING IDEAS,
LOTS OF INSPIRATION FROM MEGAN
ABOUT HOW WE CAN SPICE UP OUR
VEGGIE GARDENS.
MEGAN IS NOW JOINING US LIVE TO
ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU'VE
BEEN SENDING IN DURING HER
PRESENTATION.
YOU CAN KEEP ASKING THOSE
QUESTIONS AS WE'RE CHATTING
TODAY.
MEGAN, WELCOME.
THANKS FOR BEING WITH US.
>> THANKS FOR HAVING ME.
>> WELL, WE'VE GOT SOME AUDIENCE
QUESTIONS SO WE'RE GOING TO DIVE
RIGHT ON IN.
FIRST ONE FROM NATASHA, SORT OF
A NUTS AND BOLTS QUESTION A
LITTLE BIT, BUT IN YOUR CITY
GARDEN THAT YOU WERE SHOWING,
DID YOU HAVE TO LOOK INTO CITY
ORDINANCES OR HAVE YOU
ENCOUNTERED ANY SORT OF TENSION
IN THAT REALM, SORT OF CODE
BUTTING UP AGAINST WHAT YOU WANT
TO GROW?
>> NO.
WE DO NOT HAVE ANY -- AS LONG AS
YOU'RE NOT BLOCKING VISIBILITY,
I BELIEVE THAT MADISON DOESN'T
HAVE ANY PARTICULAR ORDINANCES.
WE CERTAINLY PICKED A
NEIGHBORHOOD THAT WE KNEW THAT
IT WOULDN'T BE A BIG DEAL IF WE
HAD AN OUT OF THE ORDINARY FRONT
YARD, AND SO IT ACTUALLY A VERY
WELCOME YARD IN OUR
NEIGHBORHOOD.
A LOT OF PEOPLE STOP BY AND TALK
TO US, SAY HOW MUCH THEY LOVE
IT.
WE LIKE TO THINK IT'S ADDING TO
THE NEIGHBORHOOD, NOT BREAKING
ANY LAWS.
>> AGAIN, THERE'S SOME REALLY
STIMULATING STORIES OUT THERE
FROM OTHER AREAS OF THE COUNTRY,
OF COURSE, THAT HAVE RUN INTO
SOME OF THESE ISSUES.
SO IF YOU'RE LIVING IN ANOTHER
PLACE, CHECK YOUR CODE BEFORE
YOU DIVE IN AND JUMP IN.
A LOT OF THESE SUGGESTIONS MEGAN
HAS GIVEN TO MAKE YOUR GARDEN
BEAUTIFUL WILL ALSO HELP TO
MAYBE SILENCE THE HATERS A
LITTLE BIT, TOO.
SO ANN IS WONDERING WHEN YOU'RE
GROWING WINTER SQUASH ON THE
CATTLE PANELS, DO YOU HAVE TO
TRAIN THOSE VINES OR DO THEY
FIND THEIR WAY ON THEIR OWN?
>> THEY FIND THEIR WAY ON THEIR
OWN.
THEY HAVE TENDRILS THAT HOLD ON.
SOMETIMES I DIRECT THEM IN A
DIRECTION I WANT THEM TO GO IF
THEY'RE GETTING OUT OF CONTROL,
BUT THEY DON'T NEED MUCH HELP AT
ALL.
>> AWESOME.
WELL, ANOTHER SORT OF SEGUE OFF
OF THAT ONE AS WELL, MICHELLE IS
WONDERING IF SHE CAN GROW LOOFAH
GORDZLOOFAHGOURDS ON A TRELLIS.
>> YES.
>> ANOTHER QUESTION, SOUNDS LIKE
THEY'RE CREATING NEW GARDEN
SPACE NEXT TO A SIDEWALK OR
DRIVEWAY.
YOU SHOWED A LOT OF GREAT
MATERIALS, THE WOOD OR STONE,
MAYBE SOME LOGS, BUT ANY OTHER
MATERIALS PEOPLE CAN THINK OF TO
SORT OF KEEP THINGS WHERE YOU
WANT THEM TO BE AND KEEP THEM
FROM WASHING OUT INTO THE WALK
OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.
>> YEAH.
SO WE TALKED ABOUT WOOD.
WE TALKED ABOUT STONE.
I THINK I SHOWED A PICTURE OF A
METAL GARDEN BED.
WHATEVER FITS INTO YOUR BUDGET
AND YOUR AESTHETICS.
SO CERTAINLY THE PRICE OF THE
LUMBER HAS GONE UP IN THE LAST
FEW YEARS, SO IF YOU DON'T WANT
TO USE LUMBER, YOU CAN SCROUNGE
MATERIALS LIKE WE DID.
MY HUSBAND IS AN ARBORIST, SO IT
WAS EASY FOR US TO GET LOGS.
YOU CAN USE ANYTHING THAT IS
GOING TO CONTAIN THE SOIL.
YOU COULD GO TO THE BIG BOX
STORE OR LANDSCAPING YARD AND
SEE WHAT KIND OF INEXPENSIVE
LANDSCAPING STONES OR BRICKS
THEY HAVE.
I'VE FOUND THINGS ON CRAIG'S
LIST, SO YOU CAN LOOK ON CRAIG'S
LIST OR FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE.
SOMETIMES PEOPLE ARE RIPPING UP
A PATIO OR PATH AND JUST TRYING
TO GET RID OF THINGS.
WE'VE GOTTEN THINGS FROM OUR
NEIGHBORS BECAUSE THEY'RE
CHANGING PARTS OF THEIR
LANDSCAPE.
SO IF BUDGET IS AN ISSUE, SEE IF
YOU CAN GET REUSED THINGS.
IF BUDGET'S NOT AN ISSUE, THEN
THINK ABOUT WHAT FITS IN WITH
YOUR AESTHETIC AND THE STYLE OF
YOUR HOUSE AND THE STYLE OF YOUR
YARD.
>> AND THEN ANOTHER RAISED BED
QUESTION AS WELL.
YOU SHOWED THE SORT OF MOUNDED
RAISED BED, SO NOTHING ON THE
SIDES.
HAVE YOU NOTICED ANY PROS OR
CONS IN TERMS OF ACTUAL GROWING
OR PRODUCTIVITY OF EITHER ONE OR
IS RAISED BED IS A RAISED BED?
IS THERE A DIFFERENCE IN TERMS
OF PRODUCTIVITY?
>> I HAVEN'T NOTICED ANY
DIFFERENCE IN TERMS OF
PRODUCTIVITY.
I HAVE NOTICED THAT OVER TIME
THOSE MOUNDED RAISED BEDS CHANGE
SHAPE A LITTLE BIT.
THEY ERODE A LITTLE BIT.
THEY'RE NOT QUITE AS DEFINED ON
THE EDGES.
SO A COUPLE YEARS AGO I RECARVED
THEM A LITTLE BIT.
I FIND THAT THEY SEEM TO SETTLE
AND SPREAD OUT OVER TIME, AND SO
I JUST USE THE SHOVEL ON THE
EDGES AND SHAPE THEM AGAIN.
BUT FOR ME THAT'S NOT A BIG
ENOUGH CON TO SAY, OH, DON'T
MAKE THEM.
THEY'RE CERTAINLY VERY COST
EFFECTIVE BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE
TO BUY ANY MATERIAL TO BUILD
THEM UNLESS YOU WANT TO BUY SOME
SOIL.
SO I THINK IF I HAD MY IDEAL
GARDEN, I WOULD PROBABLY JUST
HAVE ALL RAISED BEDS.
BUT BECAUSE MY GARDEN IS PRETTY
BIG, I'M OKAY HAVING SOME OF THE
BEDS BE THE MOUNDED RAISED BEDS,
PARTIALLY BECAUSE OF THE LABOR
AND THE COST INVOLVED IN
BUILDING RAISED BEDS.
IF YOU HAD A SMALL GARDEN, I
WOULD JUST GO WITH ALL RAISED
BEDS.
>> I'M IN THE PROCESS AT A NEW
HOUSE OF BUILDING MOUNDED RAISED
BEDS.
IN TERMS OF COST IT'S NOTHING
EXCEPT SWEAT EQUITY.
THAT IS NICE.
YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK AND ADD
EDGING LATER.
SO MARY IS WONDERING, HOW DO YOU
COPE WITH OR WHAT SORT OF
CRITTERS DO YOU ENCOUNTER IN
YOUR CITY GARDEN?
I'M ASSUMING YOU DON'T HAVE
DEER.
BUT THINGS LIKE RACCOONS, MICE,
CATS AND DOGS.
SORT OF HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH
THAT AND DO DO YOU HAVE THOSE
ISSUES?
>> YES.
I'M LUCKY THAT I DON'T HAVE
DEER.
WHEN I TRAVEL AROUND WISCONSIN
AND SPEAK AT CONFERENCES AND
DIFFERENT EVENTS, THAT'S A VERY
COMMON QUESTION.
WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT DEER?
WE DON'T HAVE THEM IN OUR
NEIGHBORHOOD.
WE DO HAVE LOTS OF RABBITS, SO
IN MY FRONT YARD GARDEN, I HAVE
A TWO-FOOT FENCE AROUND THE
GARDEN.
THAT KEEPS RABBITS OUT.
ON THE SIDE OF MY HOUSE, WHICH I
CAN SEE RIGHT NOW THROUGH MY
WINDOW, THERE ISN'T REALLY ROOM
FOR A FENCE, AND SO IT IS
EXPOSED, BUT THE RABBITS DON'T
TEND TO COME OVER THAT SIDE OF
THE HOUSE BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT
OF PEOPLE AND DOGS WALKING BY.
I ALSO PLANT THINGS OVER THERE
THAT ARE LESS SUSCEPTIBLE TO
RABBIT DAMAGE.
SO A FENCE IS DEFINITELY A GREAT
WAY ESPECIALLY FOR RABBITS.
CERTAINLY RACCOONS DO GET OVER A
FENCE.
I HAVE SEEN RACCOONS IN OUR
NEIGHBORHOOD, BUT THEY DON'T
TEND TO BOTHER MY GARDEN, AT
LEAST NOT THAT I KNOW OF.
SQUIRRELS ARE GOING TO GET IN
AND OVER ANYTHING.
THEY CAN BE A LITTLE BIT OF A
NUISANCE.
CHIPMUNKS OR VOLES OR MICE CAN
EASILY GET INTO A GARDEN.
SOMETIMES WHAT I USE IN THE
SPRING IS ROW DID YOU COVER.
IT'S A LIGHT WHITE FABRIC THAT
YOU CAN COVER NEWLY-EEEMERGED
SEEDS AND THE SUN GETS THROUGH
AND THE WATER GETS THROUGH, BUT
I FIND THAT IN THE SPRING WHEN
THINGS ARE VERY TENDER AND YOUNG
IS WHEN ANIMALS AND CRITTERS
BOTHER THINGS MORE.
AND ONCE THINGS GET TO MORE
MATURE SIZE, AT LEAST IN MY
GARDEN, THEY TEND TO LEAVE THEM
ALONE.
SO ROW COVER.
I HAVE A FEW ARTICLES ON MY
WEBSITE ABOUT IT OR YOU CAN JUST
GOOGLE IT AND READ A LITTLE BIT
MORE ABOUT ROW COVERS.
IT'S A GREAT WAY TO KEEP OUT THE
EARLY SEASON PESTS.
>> I'VE DEFINITELY NOTICED, I'VE
JOKED I THINK CRITTERS CAN SMELL
A GREENHOUSE.
THEY KNOW IT.
THEY CAN FIND IT.
SO LYNN IS WONDERING FOR YOUR
RABBIT FENCING, IF SHE'S GOING
TO GO TO THE FARM STORE AND LOOK
FOR THIS, IS IT GOING TO BE
CALLED RABBIT FENCING OR WHAT
SHOULD SHE LOOK FOR IN THAT
PRODUCT?
>> YEAH.
I PREFER -- IT'S CALLED CAGE
WIRE.
THERE'S CHICKEN WIRE, BUT I
DON'T LIKE CHICKEN WIRE BECAUSE
IT'S NOT VERY STURDY, SO IF YOU
HAPPEN TO TRIP OVER IT OR DROP
SOMETHING ON IT, IT TENDS TO
SMUSH DOWN AND GET WRINKLED AND
BENT.
THERE'S CAGE WIRE.
I'VE GOTTEN MINE AT FARM &
FLEET.
IT HAS PRETTY SMALL HOLES.
SOME OF MINE ARE REGULAR TANG
EWE LAR AND SOME ARE SQUARE.
IT'S MORE BEEFY, DOESN'T BEND
EASILY.
THAT'S WHAT I WOULD RECOMMEND.
>> AWESOME.
DEBRA IS ASKING FOR THE CATTLE
PANELS, ANOTHER DEER QUESTION.
ARE THOSE HIGH ENOUGH USED IN A
DIFFERENT SETTING TO KEEP OUT
DEER?
IS THERE A HEIGHT THAT DEER
DON'T GO FOR?
>> YEAH.
SO WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT DEER
FENCING, IT SHOULD BE AT LEAST
SIX FEET AND I'VE HEARD PEOPLE
SAY THAT THEY'VE HAD DEER GET
OVER SIX FOOT HIGH FENCES.
SO I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND IT FOR
FENCING.
>> GOT YOU.
>> I HAVE SEEN PEOPLE IN THE
CITY USE THE CATTLE PANELS FOR
FENCING AND THEN BUILD WOOD
FRAMES AROUNDT AROUND IT, BUT I FEEL
LIKE IT'S MORE DECORATIVE.
IT'S NOT GOING TO KEEP MUCH OUT.
IF YOU DID WANT TO USE IT, I
WOULDN'T USE IT FOR DEER
FENCING, BUT FOR FENCING AROUND
YOUR VEGETABLE GARDEN, YOU'D
PROBABLY HAVE TO LINE THE INSIDE
OF IT WITH CHICKEN WIRE OR CAGE
WIRE, SOMETHING THAT HAS SMALLER
HOLES SO THAT THE SMALLER
CRITTERS CAN'T GET THROUGH.
>> JUDE IS WONDERING, ANOTHER
CATTLE FENCING QUESTION HERE,
THEY'D LIKE TO PUT A PERENNIAL
CLIMBING VINE ON THEIRS.
IS THERE ANY VARIETY YOU LIKE
THAT YOU WOULD RECOMMEND?
>> YEAH.
WELL, IT DEPENDS WHERE YOU'RE
GOING TO PUT IT AND HOW MUCH
LIGHT IT GETS.
THE ONE THAT WAS ON THE SOUTH
SIDE OF MY PROPERTY, I PUT SOME
KLEMMCLEMATIS ON IT.
IT WAS SO HOT.
IT GETS BAKED IN THE AFTERNOON
SUN.
IN THE FRONT OF MY YARD IT GETS
AFTERNOON SUN, SO I DID PLANT
THAT ON TWO OF THEM IN THE FRONT
YARD GARDEN.
THEY GIVE YOU EARLIER SEASON
COLOR WHICH IN WISCONSIN SEEMS
VERY IMPORTANT AND CRITICAL.
SO THE EARLIER COLOR I CAN GET,
THE BETTER.
THAT'S WHAT I WOULD RECOMMEND.
>> PATRICIA IS WONDERING, SHE
NOTICED FOR YOUR PATHWAYS, WHAT
DO YOU LIKE TO USE FOR THOSE?
IS IT WOOD MULCH?
STRAW MULCH?
DO YOU HAVE A GO-TO THAT YOU
REALLY LIKE?
>> I'M A BIG PROPONENT OF MULCH.
I KEEP MY GARDEN MULCHED AT ALL
TIMES.
THE ONLY TIME I HAVE BARE SOIL
IS WHEN I'M WAITING FOR SEEDS TO
GERMINATE.
SO I'M A BIG PROPONENT OF MULCH.
IT'S A GREAT WAY TO CUT DOWN ON
A LOT OF WORK.
WHEREVER THERE'S BARE SOIL,
YOU'RE GOING TO GET WEEDS,
BECAUSE THAT'S THEIR JOB TO GROW
AND PROTECT THE SOIL.
I PREFER STRAW OR HAY ON MY
GARDEN BEDS.
ON MY PATHS, I LIKE WOOD CHIPS.
THE ONE DOWNFALL IS WOOD CHIPS,
YOU HAVE TO MAYBE ORDER SOME.
THERE ARE WAYS TO GET FREE WOOD
CHIPS.
BUT THEY DO BREAK DOWN
THROUGHOUT THE SEASON.
SO EVERY SPRING, LIKE I SAID, MY
HUSBAND'S AN ARBORIST, SO IT'S
EASY TO GET WOODCHIPS.
WE GET A HUGE PILE AND MULCH ALL
THE GARDENS AND AISLES.
BUT I DON'T LIKE USING WOOD
CHIPS ON MY VEGETABLE GARDEN
BEDS.
IT'S FINE FOR PERENNIALS, BUT I
DON'T RECOMMEND IT FOR VEGETABLE
GARDEN BEDS.
BUT IN YOUR AISLES, YOU CAN USE
GRAVEL, PAVERS.
MY DREAM GARDEN, SOMEDAY I'LL
HAVE BRICK PATHS.
I DON'T LOVE HAVING GRASS IN THE
AISLES BECAUSE IT TENDS TO
TRAVEL ALL OVER AND GET TO THE
BEDS AND INVADE EVERY CORNER.
>> LISA IS WONDERING THAT SHE
NOTICED YOUR USE OF CARDBOARD AS
SORT OF A TOOL AND SHE'S
WONDERING IF YOU COULD SPEAK TO
THE BENEFITS AND YOU USE IT AND
WHY YOU WOULD SUGGEST OTHER
PEOPLE USE IT.
>> I PRIMARILY USE IT WHEN I'M
ESTABLISHING A NEW AREA.
SO WHEN WE FIRST BOUGHT OUR
CURRENT HOUSE, THE WHOLE SIDE OF
THE HOUSE DIDN'T HAVE ANY
LANDSCAPING.
IT JUST HAD GRASS.
WE KNEW WE WANTED TO PLANTS PLANT TREES
AND SHRUBS, SO I COVERED THE
AREA I WANTED A PERENNIAL GARDEN
WITH CARDBOARD AND COVERED IT
WITH WOOD CHIPS.
WHAT THAT DOES IS HELP KILL THE
GRASS.
I DON'T REALLY WANT TO STRIP SOD
OR REMOVE GRASS.
I'M MORE OF A LAZY GARDENER.
SO I JUST WANT TO KILL THE
GRASS.
AND GRASS ISN'T SUPER TOUGH.
SO UNLESS IT'S SOME KIND OF
INVASIVE GRASS.
BUT THE REGULAR GRASS THAT MOST
OF US HAVE, IT'S NOT GOING TO BE
ABLE TO SURVIVE CARDBOARD AND
WOOD CHIPS.
THE CARDBOARD BREAKS DOWN OVER
TIME.
USUALLY TAKES ABOUT A SEASON OR
SO.
IN OUR VEGETABLE GARDENS WE DID
THE SAME THING.
SO PRIMARILY TO KILL THE GRASS.
SO WE WOULD PUT A LAYER OF
CARDBOARD DOWN OVER THE GRASS
AND THEN COVER IT IN WOOD CHIPS.
I DON'T GENERALLY USE CARDBOARD
AGAIN.
I DON'T THINK I'VE PUT IT AGAIN
IN THE AISLES OF MY VEGETABLE
GARDEN.
ONCE IN AN AREA WE'LL USE IT
WHERE THERE'S STUBBORN WEEDS.
WE COVER IT WITH CARDBOARD AND
WOOD CHIPS TO KEEP IT DOWN.
THAT'S HOW I USE CARDBOARD, IS
TO ESTABLISH A NEW AREA BY
KILLING THE GRASS.
>> PERFECT.
KATHY HAS GOT A PLANT-GROWING
QUESTION FOR US, AND SHE'S
WONDERING IF YOU'VE HAD ANY LUCK
OR TRIED YOUR HAND AT TREES,
PLUMS, NECTARINES.
>> OUR LAST HOUSE WE HAD PLUMS.
WE HAD HARSH WINTERS WHERE WE
LOST SOME FRUIT TREES.
ON MY PROPERTY, I ACTUALLY HAVE
SOUR CHERRIES, ONE SOUR CHERRY,
WHICH DOES GREAT EVERY YEAR.
AND THEN WE HAVE A PEACH TREE.
WE'VE ALSO HAD PRETTY GOOD LUCK
WITH ASIAN PEARS.
BUT WE DON'T HAVE ANY RIGHT NOW.
THOSE ARE THE THREE THAT I'VE
HAD THE MOST LUCK WITH IN THE
MADISON AREA.
>> SO VICKIE IS WONDERING A
COUPLE FLOWER QUESTIONS RELATED
TO YOUR TALK.
SO THE PERENNIALS THAT YOU
INCLUDE IN YOUR GARDEN BEDS, HOW
DO YOU KEEP THEM FROM SORT OF
OVERTAKING OR GETTING IN THE WAY
OF THEOF THE JEJGIES? VEGGIES?
>> I DON'T PUT ANY PERENNIALS IN
MY GARDEN BEDS EXCEPT THE BULBS.
EVERYTHING IS ON AN ANNUAL
SCHEDULE.
I PREFER TO PLANT ANNUAL FLOWERS
SO I CAN CLEAR OUT THE BEDS AT
THE END OF THE SEASON OR IN THE
EARLY SPRING.
MY PERENNIALS ARE IN AN ADJACENT
BED THAT'S OUTSIDE OF MY
VEGETABLE GARDEN.
I THINK YOU CAN STILL PLANT
PERENNIALS IN YOUR VEGETABLE
GARDEN BEDS, BUT SOMETIMES THEY
MULTIPLY, GET BIGGER, YOU MIGHT
HAVE TO DIG THEM OUT AND DIVIDE
THEM.
SO I PREFER JUST TO KEEP THEM
SEPARATE BUT CLOSE TOGETHER.
SO YOU COULD THINK ABOUT IF YOU
HAVE SOME ROOM ON THE OUTSIDE OF
YOUR VEGETABLE GARDEN, LIKE
OUTSIDE THE FENCE I PLANT SOME
PERENNIAL GARDENS, ON THE
OUTSIDE OF THE GARDEN WE HAVE A
BED NEXT TO THE HOUSE AND THEN
THERE'S A PATH AND THEN
VEGETABLE GARDEN PUT.
SO CLOSE BUT NOT INTERMINGLED.
BUT THAT'S JUST PERSONAL
PREFERENCE.
>> NOT YOU.
T.L. IS WONDERING DO YOU HAVE A
FAVORITE POLE BEAN VARIETY THAT
YOU WOULD RECOMMEND?
>> I DON'T GROW POLE BEANS THAT
OFTEN.
LAST YEAR -- I THINK I MIGHT
HAVE THIS IN MY CLOSET.
I CAN'T REMEMBER THE VARIETY
NAME, BUT IT WAS AN ASIAN LONG
BEAN THAT I GREW, WHICH WAS
REALLY COOL.
I TEND TO GROW BUSH BEANS
BECAUSE WHEN I GROW POLE BEANS I
JUST FORGET TO GO BACK AND
HARVEST THEM.
I DON'T KNOW WHY.
I FEEL LIKE I ONLY GET A LITTLE
BIT AT A TIME, WHERE WITH PUSH
BEANS YOUBUSHBEANS YOU GET A BIGGER AMOUNT
WITH EVERY HARVEST AND I PREFER
THAT.
SO I TRIED AN ASIAN LONG BEAN
LAST YEAR, BUT PRIMARILY I GROW
BUSH BEANS MOST OF THE TIME.
>> SO WE HAVE A DESIGN QUESTION
COMING FROM C. DAVIS ON YOUTUBE.
IT SOUNDS LIKE THEY'RE WORKING
ON A STORY BOOK WALK FOR A
SCHOOL GARDEN AND THE STORY IN
QUESTION IS GROWING VEGETABLE
SOUP.
SO ANY SORT OF THOUGHTS OR IDEAS
ABOUT HOW YOU MIGHT BRING THESE
TWO CONCEPTS TOGETHER THAT YOU'D
BE ABLE TO SHARE?
>> STORY BOOK GARDEN, GROWING
VEGETABLE SOUP.
SOUNDS LIKE IF YOU'RE GOING TO
PLANT VEGGIES, I WORKED IN A
KIDS' GARDEN FOR A LONG TIME, SO
I THINK IT DEPENDS IF YOU'RE
HAVING KIDS WORKING IN THE
GARDEN.
SO I WORKED WITH KIDS IN THE
GARDEN AND SOME OF THEIR
FAVORITE THINGS TO HARVEST WERE
POTATOES ARE REALLY FUN,
ANYTHING THAT THEY CAN DIG UP
FROM THE GROUND AND THAT WAS A
SURPRISE.
SO CARROTS, WHERE YOU HARVEST,
OH, MY GOSH, IT'S A CARROT.
POTATOES IS ANOTHER ONE.
SO I THINK THAT IT DEPENDS ON IF
THERE'S KIDS WORKING IN THE
GARDEN OR GOING TO BE
HARVESTING, WE'RE DEALING WITH
THE PLANTS, THEN I WOULD PLANT
THINGS THAT KIDS LIKE TO TASTE,
THAT KIDS LIKE TO HARVEST,
INTERESTING VARIETIES OF THINGS.
FOR SOME REASON THE KIDS THAT I
WORKED WITH LOVED DRAGON-TONGUED
BEANS.
I COULDN'T FIGURE IT OUT IF IT
WAS THE NAME OR TASTE OR COLOR.
BUT I WOULD PLANT KID-FRIENDLY
FOOD IF THEY'RE GOING TO BE IN
THE GARDEN.
>> PERFECT.
WE HAVE A LOW LOGISTICAL QUESTION
FROM MARY.
FOR THE WINTER QUASH SQUASH THAT YOU
GREW ON THE TRELLISES, DID YOU
HAVE AN ISSUE WITH WEIGHT?
HOW DOES KNOW WHAT THEY'RE
GETTING INTO MAYBE BEFORE THEY
PLANT?
>> YEAH.
YOU KNOW, I HAVE HAD ONE OR TWO
YEARS WHERE I OVER-PLANTED.
I HAD ONE YEAR THAT ONE OF THE
ARCHED TRELLISES YOU COULD TELL
WAS GETTING WEIGHED DOWN.
I NEVER HAD ONE COLLAPSE.
AND LAST YEAR I GREW SOME LONG
ISLAND WINTER SQUASH.
THEY'RE PRETTY BIG, LIKE A
CINDERELLA PUMPKIN.
THE TRELLISES SEEMED FINE.
I'VE NOTICED THAT THE ONES THAT
ARE SPREAD OUT MORE, THE ARCH,
HAVE A TENDENCY TO BOW A LITTLE
BIT.
THE ONES I HAVE IN A TIGHTER
FOOTPRINT SEEM TO BOW LESS IF
THEY GET HEAVY.
BUT I'VE PLANTED A LOT OF THINGS
ON MY TRELLISES AND I'VE NEVER
HAD ONE COLLAPSE.
CROSS YOUR FINGERS.
>> PERFECT.
I NOTICE YOU USE THOSE FENCE
POSTS TOO.
YOU SUPPORT IT AS WELL.
IT'S NOT JUST THE FENCING.
IT NEEDS A LITTLE EXTRA SUPPORT
TO GO WITH IT.
>> EXACTLY.
>> JB IS ASKING IS THERE A
RECIPE OR A LAYERING MECHANISM
YOU WOULD RECOMMEND?
IS IT JUST CARDBOARD AND THEN
COMPOST ON TOP OR SHOULD THEY
INCLUDE WOOD CHIPS OR STRAW,
SORT OF THAT LASAGNA TYPE
GARDENING THAT WOULD HAVE THE
MAXIMUM BENEFIT FOR WEED
SUPPRESSION?
>> YEAH.
IF YOU'RE TRYING TO DO -- IF
IT'S JUST IN THE PATH, ALL I DO
IS CARDBOARD, WOOD CHIPS.
USUALLY A DOUBLE LAYER OF CORD
BOARD.
MY HUSBAND AND I HAVE A RUNNING
DISAGREEMENT ON WHETHER WE
SHOULD TAKE OFF ALL THE TABLES LABELS
AND TAPE.
I SAY NAH.
HE LIKES TO REMOVE ALL THOSE
THINGS.
THAT'S TOTALLY UP TO YOU.
SO AISLES, JUST WOOD CHIPS -- OR
CARDBOARD, THEN WOOD CHIPS.
IF YOU'RE BUILDING YOUR GARDEN
BEDS, YOU COULD PUT A LAYER OF
CARDBOARD AND THEN I USUALLY USE
A MIXTURE OF TOPSOIL AND
COMPOST, SO HALF AND HALF.
I ORDER IT.
IT JUST GETS DELIVERED TO MY
HOUSE, HALF COMPOST, HALF
TOPSOIL.
BEFORE I PLANT I MIX IN ORGANIC
FERTILIZER.
ON TOP I ALWAYS PUT HAY OR
STRAW.
SO ARE MY LAYERS I USE, A LITTLE
BIT DIFFERENT WHETHER IT'S A
PLANTING BED VERSUS AN AISLE.
>> MEGAN, YOU HAVE ANSWERED ALL
OF OUR QUESTIONS.
THIS HAS BEEN SOME GREAT
INFORMATION YOU'VE SHARED TODAY.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FORIC AT AT FOR TAKING
TIME TO BE WITH US.
>> HAVE A HAPPY SPRING.
>> YES.
SPRING WILL GET HERE.
WE KNOW IT WILL HAPPEN.
WE KNOW IT'S COMING EVEN THOUGH
WE'RE IN FOURTH WINTER.
THERE IS MORE EXPO YET TO COME.
NEXT UP IS A Q&A SESSION WITH
HORTICULTURE EXPERTS.
THIS EVENT IS MADE POSSIBLE WITH
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YOUR SUPPORT ALLOWS US TO CREATE
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TO CELEBRATE OUR LOVE OF
GARDENING.
SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THIS EVENT
AND FUTURE EVENTS BY GOING TO
wigardenexpo.com AND CLICKING
ON DONATE AND THANK YOU SO MUCH.
WE APPRECIATE ANY AND ALL SORT.
WE'LL SEE YOU BACK HERE JUST
SOON.