(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
- Good morning and welcome to Lifestyle Gardening.
I'm Kim Todd,
and we've got another great show for you today.
We'll be taking a look at new hardscape trends,
reducing pesticide usage in and around your garden,
and ideas for a home hydroponic growing system.
But first we're going to show you what can be done
with a color near and dear to our hearts.
Red is the color of our beloved Huskers.
And there are a number of great ornamentals
you can try to show that spirit around your home.
So let's take a minute to talk about red.
(upbeat music)
Since Valentine's day is just behind us,
I'm hoping you bought your valentine something red
or something edible,
or something a different color for Valentine's day.
But we are of course at Nebraska.
Our color is go big red.
And this is the N 150 year.
150 years of being big red in Nebraska.
Red as a color in the landscape
is a little hard to come by sometimes.
Lots and lots of annuals available,
like this incredible Pentas, which blooms all summer long.
It's an annual.
You can get lots of red
in the foliage of some of the Coleuses.
And you can get what passes for red
in some of the grasses.
Now one of the things about using red in the landscape,
however is that it will fight with green.
You think about where red and green are
on the color wheel, they're opposite.
So what that really means is you need to figure out
what is the saturation of the red
in comparison to the green.
Do you want it to pop against a dark green background?
Do you want a mass that is all blooming at once?
Which really is probably going
to have to happen only with annuals.
Or do you want to be a little more subtle?
Now clearly red with white, pure white,
is not very subtle.
But it certainly is something that's high contrast.
You can also put red with purple.
And the purple will tone it down a little.
One thing for you to keep in mind about choosing your reds,
for your landscape, is also
are you looking at red that has some blue tones in it?
Or you looking at red that is really a little bit hotter?
It tends toward the oranges and the yellows.
Because again, surprisingly you can end up with
what you thought was going to be a great color combination
of reds together.
Instead you're gonna end up with just enough of
a subtle color clash that you're not gonna be happy with it.
We do have a lot of perennials that are available.
That provide red in the landscape.
Starting with our early American Columbine, that native.
We have some Peonies that are red.
You move through the growing season,
we have Monarda or bee balm.
Jacob Cline which is absolutely go big red
and stands in those wet spots in a rain garden
or in a low place in your yard.
It attracts those pollinators.
Poppies, we think of the orange Poppy
as being really the one that's most available.
But there is one called Scarlet O'Hara
that is red with the most amazing black center.
We also have some perennials that
are a little bit less common in the landscape.
That are red and bloom a little bit later.
And that would include ones that are Lobelia.
Which again is cardinal and it's maybe a little touchier.
It likes a wet environment.
We of course also have the monster big Hibiscus.
They're getting more and more red, deeper colors,
bigger flowers, beautiful in the landscape.
And in your face when they are in flower.
We have Gaillardia if you choose wisely.
You can choose Gaillardias for sort of
a short term perennial in the landscape.
I haven't even really talked about day lilies
because of course we have many day lilies
that are in the deep shades of red.
And of course, then we have that old stand by
shrub roses.
Be careful with the shrub roses
if you are going after red consistently.
Because again what you're going to look at
is how much red against the green.
Make sure you choose wisely
for shrub roses that really want to live in Nebraska
and survive the winters.
But there is really no good reason,
other than not thinking about go big red,
to not use red in your landscape.
As you can see there are plenty of choices for red.
But it does take a little thinking
about those backdrops and the combinations.
If you want that red to stand out as a focal point.
Now is the time to get that planting done
if you're going to enjoy those plants
this upcoming growing season.
We are working our way through some fundamental design tips
for new homeowners on our go gardening series.
We touched on hardscape placement last time we saw you.
So today we're going to give you ideas
for the pieces you can place around your landscape
to make you outdoor living spaces beautiful and practical.
(upbeat music)
In a previous go gardening series
we talked about how to figure out
where your hardscape elements
and other features that are not green and growing
should actually go in your landscape.
So let's take a little bit of a look
at some of the options that are available.
You're now down to figuring out how do you actually choose
what you want to install, sit on, look at,
live with in your landscape.
The options are tremendous.
And of course as with any industry,
we have a lot of change over time.
Perhaps not as much as in the technology world,
but every single year there are new pavers.
There are new furnishings,
new lighting choices for you to make.
So how do you go about
actually choosing those specific materials?
Well certainly cost is going to be an object.
And you can always come up with a lower solution to a paver
or to a swing or a bench or lighting.
However what you also truly want to look at
and think about is the experience you're trying to create.
Do you want to have something that is
a very low key, subtle sort of a hardscape
plus furnishing plus lighting.
Are you going with brighter colors,
are you going with a rougher texture?
What exactly are you after?
And there are a couple of good ways
to go about thinking about that.
First off, you collect catalogs.
You go to the suppliers,
you look not just at the catalogs
or at what you can find on the Internet,
but you also actually explore those materials directly.
Think about how you're going to walk on them
or sit against them
or sit on them.
Think about how they will look in your own landscape
with your home or with your business
before you make the jump
into specifically choosing a material.
And this goes for everything
from the boulders around your pond,
to the retaining wall materials you choose,
to the pavers or the patio surfaces as I suggested.
To the pergola, if you want an up
a structure that is overhead.
We think in terms of being limited to wood as an example.
But you could certainly use steel or you could use
material that is a composite material.
For anything from decking, to the structure itself.
We think in terms of low-level landscape lighting.
That is, kind of, these funky little button-looking things.
And yet, the lighting itself can be an incredible sculpture
in your garden.
Depending on what you're after.
It's a little bit like buying tennis shoes at this point.
Used to be, you could pick black, white, high top, low top.
Now there are whole stores set up just for running shoes.
It's the same thing in the hardscape,
or those other site amenity sorts of worlds.
Lots of choices.
Fire pits can be something that is a glass,
glass block, glass bubble, lava rock.
Sort of a fire pit that's low and long.
It can be a fire pit table.
Where you're using stone or slate or a concrete top on it
to be able to make it something
that is obviously going to be fire retardant.
But it has little bit of a different feel to it
than sitting around the campfire
when you were at camp when you were a kid.
So again, exploring the options for materials,
aesthetics, cost, ease of installation.
Especially if this is something
that you really want to try to attempt yourself.
Being able to match it over time if you have a failure
or if you wanna change something.
Or you don't wanna match it.
So you deliberately choose a material
that you can blend with something else as an option.
And certainly, the long-term management of that,
of that material.
You don't wanna pick a brick, as an example,
or a paver that is so slippery
that when we get those little bitty pieces of ice
or those tiny little ice storms,
you're going to go scooting on your keister
as opposed to being able to stand around your own fire pit.
(water gently trickling in fountain)
We've come a long way in our choices for hardscape.
When it used to be a few folding lawn chairs on concrete
and a grill, to fire pits, pergolas and designed pavers.
You can be as creative as you are with your landscape beds
and your garden.
Whatever you choose,
the goal should be making your outdoor surroundings
comfortable, beautiful and practical.
Shifting gears to our landscape lesson for this week,
I've been promising to help you choose plants
and now we can finally do it.
However, we're not really going to get into specific plants.
We're rather going to show you how to make good decisions
when you purchase that plant material.
(jaunty acoustic guitar)
When you're picking a perfect plant for the landscape
we always tend to look at the top first
and that's very important.
But it's the roots that make the shoots.
So let's take a peak here at what we've got.
Of course in the dormant season,
these have been sitting in the greenhouse.
You can see this particular prairie smoke
has a reasonably good root mass.
But it's pretty root bound already.
We're always looking for those good
nice, new, white root tips.
This one has a great top.
It's in need of re-potting.
The size of the plant makes a big difference.
As does the size of the pot.
These are both rosemary.
You'll notice on the small one here,
we have a root system that really is actually
to the point where it needs to be re-potted.
So you could take this home.
You would have to do a little manipulation on this.
Do some pinching of course,
to make sure that plant stays healthy.
If you look at the rosemary in the big pot,
what you see is this one really probably just got re-potted.
And has some nice root initiation starting.
The height of that pot
or the height of the soil against the plant
is also very important.
You don't want a lot of soil
covering the root mass of the plants.
Because that is essentially buried too deep.
Look at this one which is a vine
that's a little hard to trellis.
But this is a pretty small pot.
And this again is a root system
that doesn't look terrible
but it's been in that container a long time.
It's got good root initiation here though.
And it's also got decent stems.
So it is that combination
of the roots to the shoots
that you look at if you're really gonna pick a good plant
for the landscape.
Your landscape will be ever-evolving,
so when you're getting started,
keep in mind that some plants might thrive,
others might need some re-thinking,
and you might have to get rid of some of them altogether.
And that's part of gardening,
which is getting the right plant purchased,
getting it in place and helping it live.
One of our primary goals of both Backyard Farmer
and Lifestyle Gardening is to help you reduce
your chemical pesticide usage.
For this week's industry interview,
we'll hear from Tim Creger
from the Nebraska Department of Agriculture
about integrated pest management.
(flowing guitar music)
We get so many questions about
"What is this in my landscape and what can I do about it?"
And that is all about pest management.
So, I'm fortunate today to be talking to Tim Creger,
who is pesticide program manager with Department of Ag.
And Tim is going to give us all of the skinny, if you will,
on exactly how we do integrated pest management.
Alright Tim, exactly what is IPM?
- Integrated pest management is what IPM stands for.
And it is, the choices that a person makes so that
they don't automatically go to the pesticide container
for pest control.
It involves three fundamental concepts:
mechanical, biological and cultural control the pest.
And so, for mechanical, or physical control,
a person would choose to, perhaps,
pick the cabbage loopers off of their vegetables,
or intentionally change the structure of a plant
or a landscape.
In the case of biological control, we're talking about
using beneficial insects to control
a pest that we don't like.
And there's plenty of options out there for,
for those kind of organisms.
They're a biological organism that controls a pest.
In the case of cultural control,
now we're talking about landscape design.
We're talking about plant pruning.
And also about the
varieties of plants that we put in the landscape.
The types of turf grass species that we use
that might be disease-resistant or drought-resistant.
All those ways of approaching a pest-control problem
help us avoid the use of pesticides.
And then eventually, if nothing else works,
our last choice would be pesticide.
- Are there environmental issues that really would impact
their ability to use some sort of chemical if they
really need to go that far with it?
And what should they do before they actually start spraying?
- Well, there are some excellent guidelines.
Our university has extension bulletins on IPM
and how to incorporate those practices in your home garden.
The idea is that, first of all,
you need to understand the pest.
You need to be able to identify the pest.
So that you really know what you're up against.
Then you can decide whether the cultural,
the biological or mechanical control would work.
And if none of that works, then pesticides may be an answer.
But, even then, with integrated pest management,
we ask people to look for the lowest toxicity pesticides
first, instead of going after the most toxic products
thinking that they're gonna cure the problem.
- So, Tim, they have decided they really can't stand
the threshold that they're looking at.
They really do want to do something that is still
an integrated pest management practice.
What do they need to look at
or know about the product itself?
- The homeowner should understand
basic concepts about pesticides.
They all have a label.
The labels are approved
by the Environmental Protection Agency.
And registered by our agency for use in the state.
There's a lot of different types of pesticides
in the marketplace.
A homeowner would go into their home garden store,
or perhaps a hardware store,
to find a pesticide to use for
the problems that they think they've got.
And they need to understand
there's a degree of concentrations.
The low impact pesticides I mentioned earlier
are typically ready-to-use formulations.
You would a squirt bottle
or a bag of fertilizer with pesticide in it
is a good example.
They would read the label.
We always encourage people to read the label.
And, importantly, to wear protective gloving
and perhaps eyewear and footwear
when they apply those products.
And then follow the instructions on how to use it.
They don't need to further dilute it.
It's ready to go right out of the container.
But it's also important to know
that it may not be a multi-use product.
It may be a one-time use and then wait to see how it works.
Contrary to that, we also have concentrate pesticides.
Those take further dilution, or mixing with other products.
It's a little more concerning
for people to follow the label directions correctly.
To dilute it correctly and use it correctly.
People need to understand,
when we're dealing with a concentrate pesticide,
the toxicity has increased.
And so it's even more important
to wear proper protective clothing when they do that.
The pesticide labels inform the user
on what those protective clothing should be.
- Tim, I really appreciate your coming in
and talking to us today about this.
And hopefully, our audience will have learned
a little bit about
"Don't just kill it.
"Let's use best practices to manage it first."
- Well, thank you, Kim. And I've appreciated being here.
- Sometimes, the only choice is to use chemical pesticides.
We do wanna touch our home landscape very gently.
So keep in mind that there are other methods and techniques
that you should choose first
before you reach for that spray bottle.
And as always, responsible gardeners
read and follow those label instructions.
It's time now to answer a few of your questions.
If you've got a question you'd like to submit to the show,
drop us an email at byf@unl.edu.
As always, tell us as much information as you can,
including where you live.
Attach those pictures as JPEGs.
Very clear JPEGs, please.
Our first question comes to us from Broken Bow.
This is a viewer who has a very old tree.
She loves this tree.
She knows it's not in the best of condition.
It does provide shade for her home and for the landscape.
But she is worried about
what appears to be quite a large area of damage
high in the crown of the tree.
And if you look closely at this picture,
what you will see is poor structure to begin with.
It appears as though maybe this tree was not pruned
when it was young.
So, multiple main branches coming from one point.
We have little bit of what we call included bark.
And that is the bark that turns in like this.
As opposed to pushing out like that.
Which means that connection between the branch
and the trunk is weak and getting weaker and weaker
as everything grows together.
And then there's a big hole in the top.
Any time we see a big hole like that,
especially when it looks like there has not been any
compartmentalization around that hole,
that's a perfect spot for additional rot to occur.
Moisture gets in. Who knows?
She might even have a family of resident raccoons
that have decided to live
in that particular spot in the tree.
What I would recommend on this tree,
especially thinking that it is likely
pretty close to the house, based on the description,
have a certified arborist come out.
Take a look at the tree.
See whether in fact it is a hazard
to the extent that our next big snow event
or a windstorm or sometimes sudden limb drop happens,
could drop that tree on the house.
And really cause a lot of damage.
And we all know how difficult it is to lose
one of those big, beautiful trees
that has provided so much enjoyment and comfort
over the lifetime of a particular property.
Our second question, we don't know where the viewer is from.
But it could pretty much be anywhere, based on this one.
She is frustrated over what she says is her dogs
in the backyard are digging in these strange places.
And they go to the same place and keep doing the same thing.
And snuffling their noses around and looking for something.
Or going after something.
Which, first off, that's dogs. They do that kind of thing.
But, what we can't really see there is,
we don't see any vole trails.
We had a question about voles earlier on an earlier show.
We're seeing lots of vole trails.
You would see those trails as sort of, cupped upward,
little runs from wherever they've sheltered
and coming out under the snow.
In this instance, it could be that
they are actually after the droppings of a critter.
You know, something smells really good and it's under there.
It could be that they have had enough snow
in this particular location.
The vole trails are under
the snow that we can see in the picture.
The long and the short of it is:
short, short of actually fencing the dogs out of that area,
there's not a whole lot that I think we could suggest
that would really be affective for the long run.
I know that, you know, my dog, would go out and
he'll find something particularly delicious, in his mind.
That I can't even see, and then he'll, of course, either
try to dig it, or he'll roll in it.
Which can be pretty devastating
when he comes into the house.
So, not great pieces of perfect advice,
but that's pretty much what it looks like to us.
We have another question this week.
That actually could have come
apparently from multiple viewers
in different parts of the state.
As we had a gain those strange swings in temperatures.
Up, down, up again.
Thank heavens for all of us who are getting
a little bit tired of winter.
But this is a what is this critter,
that they found on their stoop.
And it's so fun and so sad at the same time.
Because what that critter is,
is the caterpillar of black swallow tail butterfly.
And it is one of the ones I know our entomologists love it
and we love love to get pictures of it
and talk about it.
Because what looks like that monster head
and those monster eyes, those are fake.
What that is intended to do of course
is great big head, great big eyes,
great big critter.
Which might in fact be damaging or dangerous
to whatever other critter is trying to eat it.
So he's probably no longer with us
because this was found on one of those warm weekend.
On a nice warm piece of concrete.
And the chances of finding his way into a place
where he could shelter, from the cold and the ice storm
is probably slim to none.
But the beauty of that guy is
there are lots of those around typically.
We had wonderful, wonderful black swallow tails last year
in our backyard farmer garden.
And all over lots of parts of the state.
You know if you see these insects,
some of which are pests some of which are not,
just be thankful you get to see them
and cross your fingers and hope they get to live through
whatever storm is gonna hit us next.
Let's wrap up today's program with something fun
that you can actually try at home.
Gardening doesn't just have to be
in the spring and summer months in Nebraska
and if you've got a little mechanical ability
you can try a hydroponic system in you own basement.
Here to tell us more is UNL
assistant AG and Horticulture professor Sam Wortman.
(upbeat music)
So what we have here
is a hydroponic lettuce production system.
There are many different types
of hydroponic growing systems.
This is what we call a gutter system.
Or a nutrient film technique
NFT system.
And this is great for growing leafy greens like lettuce
like you see here.
This is kind of a loose leaf green lettuce
that does really well in this shallow channel
type of system.
You can see that we've got roots that are freely suspended
in our water and nutrient solution.
So that's kind of the definition of a hydroponic system.
One that is without soil
and depends on water and nutrient solution for the media.
Now we are cheating a little bit
because we've got this little grow plug here
this is what we call a rock wool plug.
So this is actually heat expanded basalt rock.
And it's kind of like stone wool
that you would use to clean at your home.
But instead this is a propagation media.
So we can start lettuce from seed in here.
And then we can put it directly in this system.
As that seed germinates and grows
eventually the roots start
to grow through this rock wool cube.
And they just kind of hang out and dangle down
into that nutrient film solution.
And eventually you'll get lettuce big enough
that you can harvest and eat for your own.
What's cool about these hydroponic systems
is that it allows you to grow year round.
So you might be getting the itch
to garden this time of year
when we've got snow and ice coming down outside right now.
And you can build one of these systems fairly inexpensively
on your own in your home.
Some things that you'll want to think about
as you go to build these.
One is that you'll need supplemental light.
So to grow things like lettuce,
we're here in a greenhouse
where we get plenty of good intense sunlight
through our glass panels
even in the winter we're getting 10, 11 hours of sunlight.
But if you're gonna do this in your basement, for example,
you'll want grow lights that can be led lights
those could be florescent fixtures,
but you'll want a light source over this entire system.
You're gonna need a water and fertilizer solution
and a pump.
So down here you can see it's humming along.
We've got water and a submersible pump.
It's pumping water up into one end,
then it feed via gravity down to the other end.
Then it returns back into the reservoir
and pumps all the way back.
And what's good about these nutrient film technique systems
only a very small portion of the roots
is in the water and nutrient solution.
Which keeps the oxygen levels high enough
in that root zone.
So that we don't get any problems with plant growth.
So typically if we're in a field,
if you're in your garden too much water
in that root zone is a bad thing.
We get water logged soils and we usually get dead plants.
But in a hydroponic system
if we can get oxygen into that root zone
like in the nutrient film technique system,
the plants are happy and healthy.
So this is a great way, fairly low cost,
it's fun, it's a different way to grow plants
and allows you to have some fresh produce all year round.
- It's fun to see what a little creative engineering
can do for those of us who want fresh produce
of our own all year long.
Maybe you've got a space in your basement or your garage
that you can experiment with a hydroponic system
of your very own.
Well we've got one more show for you
and next time on Lifestyle Gardening
we're going to hear about chemical drift,
laying out your plants before they go in the ground
and promoting pollinators.
Don't forget to check us out
on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
So good morning, good gardening, thanks for watching
and we'll see you all next time on Lifestyle Gardening.
(upbeat music)
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