- From the potato strewn studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another tuberose episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks...

I'm your host...

Yes.

Organic store bought potatoes are inexpensive, but the taste of a fresh grown potato is incomparable.

On today's show, we'll explain some of the ways you can grow your own super spuds.

Plus, it's another fabulous phone call show, cats and kittens.

Yes, potential guests are busy Yukon golding.

So we will take that heaping helping of your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and jarringly judicious justifications.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than you biting into a fresh red fingerling...

Right after this.

In life, we have many kinds of partners, school bus partners, business partners, even gardening partners.

Shouldn't you have one for the most important aspect of life, your health?

Lehigh Valley Health Network... - Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma company offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma natural gardening community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, I will praise potatoes.

If you haven't been planning on planting potatoes, I want you to change your plans.

In the meantime, lots of your fabulous phone calls at... Chelsea, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, thanks, Mike, appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you, Chelsea.

How are you doing?

- Oh, man, I'm I am glad to be talking to you.

- I am very happy to be talking to you.

Where are you?

- I am in... - All right.

What can we do you for?

- So, my brother and I were brainstorming what we wanted to do for our new houses that we each bought.

He bought his in Bend and the issue is that his front lawn is really just full of yarrow and crabgrass.

So he's been mowing at the highest setting the mower can go, leaving all the grass clippings on his lawn watering once or twice a week.

But, yeah, the crabgrass seems to be receding a little bit but the yarrow is just nuts.

So I know that you've talked a little bit about using cornstarch for crabgrass.

- No.

- And really haven't... Oh, no.

Not cornstarch?

Is it cornmeal?

- No, but you're getting warmer!

- If I keep guessing, eventually I'm going to get something right!

- Yeah.

And, you know, we'll be into All Things Considered.

Crabgrass is an annual weed, believe it or not.

It dies out over winter.

But before it dies out, it literally drops hundreds of seeds per plant that remain dormant over winter and then sprout in March or April of the following year.

So, chemical companies have long promoted pre-emergent herbicides that deactivate the seed.

The organic version of that is corn gluten meal, which was discovered at Iowa State University to be a very effective pre-emergent and also a fabulous food for your lawn.

Now, it's probably too late for you.

You know, now that you've seen the emergence of the crabgrass, so to speak, it's too late to inactivate the seeds, but it sounds like he's doing the right thing.

Otherwise, I'm not... Well, I'm not going to go into the yarrow.

I'm going to pretend you didn't say that.

So as we get to the end of the season, he can get a flame weeder provided, of course, because he's in Oregon, there's somebody there with a hose ready to put out any disasters.

But if he just waves the flame weeder over the heads of the crabgrass at the end of the season, that'll burn the weed seeds.

And there won't be anything to prevent the following spring.

And then, I mean, he could also manually cut the plants out.

Yarrow... - Yeah, I would take forever.

- Which?

Is it a big lawn?

- Just cutting each one out... - Yeah, well, the thing I love about flame weeding is you're standing up the whole time.

There's no bending, and the seeds pop like little munchkin fireworks.

It's very exciting, you know.

- Just real quick, I just want to say you do a really good job being very gracious to your callers.

I really enjoyed that about your show that you can talk to just about anybody and that you do a really good job about engaging with them.

And I just think that you're very skilled at that.

So I appreciate that a lot.

- Thank you so much.

You take care now.

- Thank you so much.

- Bye-bye.

- OK, you too.

Bye.

- That's our new phone number.

So, Tim, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thanks, Mike, great to have a chance to talk with you.

- Same thing here, Tim.

How you doing?

- Just fine, everything's good in... - So what can we do for Tim in the Outer Banks?

- Mike, my question is regarding weeds in my compost.

Each pile, I collect my leaves in a big pile, my mower does a great job of shredding the leaves.

- Good.

And that combined with the grass clippings that are collected with the leaves, help them decompose really well.

After about the third year, I have a big pile of pretty nice dirt that I use in my 12 4x4 foot raised beds.

The problem is that we have a lot of hidden chickweed among other weeds in the yard and the seeds that are in the compost from collecting the leaves and those that are blown in during the couple of years they're decomposing, sprout in my garden beds and results in a lot of weeds.

So my questions are, what can I do to prevent seeds from getting in my compost pile?

And secondly, is there anything that would help kill the seeds that are in there when I collect them from coming up and sprouting in my garden beds when I use the dirt?

- Yes, yes to all.

Now you're using grass clippings.

The lawn, therefore, is not treated?

- That's correct.

Yes, sir.

- So you have an untreated lawn and you're only collecting the clippings in the fall, right?

- Right.

- OK, so, yes, mowing over clippings and leaves is a great way to get a combination of carbon and nitrogen, which will give you good quality compost.

But again, if your compost is sitting out for three years, let's not assume that the weeds even came in with the raw material, they could be blowing in over the years.

So here's what I want you to do.

You sound like already an experienced composter.

I think we can move you up to being a hot composter, all the girls are going to chase you, man.

It's going to be amazing.

- Oh, yeah!

- And that will destroy any weed seeds that are coming in.

Now, you say you have a pile.

It's just an open pile, right?

- Yes, sir.

- OK, so here's what you're going to do, you're going to go out and buy some welded wire animal fencing or you could even use concrete reinforcing wire.

But I want you to make a big circle instead of having the pile be open.

And I want you to take some more of the material and form it into a tube about the diameter of your thigh.

And in the middle of this open circle, nothing's been put in there, now.

I want you to drive a stake and then I want you to put that tube on top.

Now make sure the top of the tube extends over the top of the outside wire line, if you know what I mean.

And then, as you create your compost, as you put in your raw materials, you're filling in the space between the tube and the outside.

So you've kind of got a car tire going there.

What the tube will do, it'll bring air down to the center of the pile and that'll heat it up brilliantly.

I would also urge you to mix in lots of coffee grounds, spent coffee grounds as you go.

That'll add even more nitrogen to the pile.

Now, and I also want you to do a batch method.

I want you to wait till you have enough raw materials to fill this sucker up and do it all at once.

And then you'll see amazing things happen that, quote, "chimney" in the center.

You can go out in the morning or two after you make this pile.

Hold your hands over the chimney and they'll get warm.

I put my gloves there in the late fall to warm them up so I can put them on.

a hot pile will compost more fully than a cold pile.

I mean, you have a fairly sophisticated cold pile.

So I think you don't have to do much more to make it hot, so to speak.

And even just enclosing the materials, making sure there is a real combustion area, if you know what I mean.

Making them tight, that really helps.

The chimney will help and the coffee grounds will put it over the top.

And if you want to have a lot of fun, it's very easy to buy a device called a compost thermometer.

You can stick it in your pile just like a turkey, and it'll show you when it goes up to like 120, 140, maybe maxing out at 160, and then you'll see it starting to cool down.

So that's... You know, as soon as it all looks like compost and feels like compost and it's going through that heating cycle, put it on your beds, just, you know, and then start another round, you know, have your raw materials next to it.

And if you've got compost made that is harboring weed seeds, just mix that in with every batch.

Make that maybe the middle layer and it'll heat that stuff up too.

- Right.

OK. - All right.

- I have access to a couple of large trash cans.

I'll do that.

Thank you, Mike.

- All right.

Good luck, sir.

At 888 492 9444.

Dan, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Well, hello.

Thank you.

How are you doing today?

- I am just ducky, thanks for asking, Dan.

Ducky always appreciate getting into the show.

How is Dan doing?

- I'm ducky myself, especially ducky as a University of Oregon alumni, so I'm doing great.

- OK, very good.

And where is Dan located now?

- Dan is in transit from Salem, Oregon, back to his home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

- Oh, OK, that's up there in Idaho, huh?

- Yeah, yeah, northern Idaho and I lament the short growing season, but, yeah, it's a nice place to live.

- That's my understanding.

OK, so what can we do for Dan of Idaho?

- My question is about seedlings and how to deal with having too many of them, essentially.

I put two seeds in every seed start that I started this... ..about a month ago.

And as they germinate, I've been successful and I've had multiple seedlings come up and just looking for best practices for how to deal with that.

- OK, so you've got two options.

You can either take a little pair of scissors like cuticle scissors and go into each cell, so to speak, each growing area, decide which plant you like the best.

Sometimes it's the tallest, but not if it's leggy.

So you have to decide which one you like.

Even the same plant grows at different rates.

So if you've got one that seems to be a week further along, you keep that one and you thin out the rest.

And, yes, this is heartbreaking.

This is difficult.

You can cry for many nights afterwards, but it's what the pros do.

If you are an experienced seed starter and you have friends with gardens and you have two absolutely beautiful, say, tomato plants, which really take to being separated very well, you just empty that container out, lift up one of them, put it back in, fill the dirt over the top and then plant the other one in a different container.

So it's really up to your needs and your ability to give away extras.

I personally do not use scissors.

I don't thin that way.

I can't stand the emotional destruction it has on my heart and soul.

So what I do is I just keep... You know, you don't have to start more.

You just move plants around and you get more and more.

And then when the season is almost ready to be open, e-mail all your friends, put something up on Facebook, tell them, I got extras of this, that and that, and it's my pleasure to give them to you.

And if you don't have enough people to give them away to and you got some extras on hand, I like to keep those in a separate but sunny location to use as my stunt plants.

Should anything happen to the existing plants, you bring the stuntman in, and that way you're set... - Redundancy?

I like it.

- Yeah, exactly.

They are your back door plants.

They are there if you need them.

And a lot of times, peppers, tomatoes, I'll get little fruits off them.

It's fun, and I don't have to worry if they die or not, because I didn't need them.

- Thank you very much for the information and I'm looking forward to speaking again sometime.

- Yes, sir.

Any time.

Give us a call.

1 888 492 9444.

That's the number to call.

Toni, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Well, thank you, Mike.

You are my hero of the garden.

I'm so excited to talk to you.

- I'm so excited to talk to you.

So this is clearly Toni with an I.

- Yes, it is.

It sure is.

I've had a question about what to do and how to revitalize my hydrangea bushes that actually were my grandmother's and my mother's, and I've cultivated them and they're absolutely outrageous.

I think you saw some pictures of them.

And they went away for the weekend.

And my husband had my house power washed, unbeknownst to me.

He asked the professionals, do you want me to cover things?

Do you want me to water the plants first?

And they said, oh, no, this product won't hurt your plants.

I got home Monday and they were gone.

They were gone.

I had a funeral.

I cried my eyes out.

I really did.

Because people come up and say, they'll grow again, they're just flowers.

But the plethora of the flowers that I have had this particular year took me 27 years to really get this like this, so profuse, like it was in my old neighborhood in Delaware County.

That's really where they're from.

- OK, so...

Wait a minute.

Where are they located now?

- They are on the northwest side of my house.

That's where I always put them.

- Yeah, but where's your house?

- They do exceedingly well there.

- I live down in Westcosville.

- Oh, OK. Sure.

I know where that is.

- Yeah.

I'm your neighbor.

You are going to run into me one day.

- You might see me shopping at the Whole Foods there, that's for sure.

All right.

So now you're in the same basic part of southeast Pennsylvania as I am.

What is happening with the plants right now?

Are you getting any greenery?

- I have greenery but I don't have any buds, and the greenery is down at the bottom, but it's very sporadic, and it goes through the stem and, you know, they're few and far between.

- That's the good news.

They're not dead.

Have you contacted this company and said, don't give me any nonsense - tell me what was in this stuff?

- I did, I contacted him.

I had the owner come over.

- Yeah.

- And he looked at it first and said, they're flowers, they'll grow back.

That hurt me to the core.

Then he said that, I have never had this happen to anybody else... - Aha.

That's what all the girls say.

- I said... Yeah.

He did my next door neighbor that day and I took pictures of their hydrangeas.

They were burned out.

- Yeah.

So did we find out what was in the mixture?

- Yeah, it is...

It's a product...

It's a product called Simple Green All-Purpose Cleaner.

- Mm-hmm.

It doesn't give me anything on the outside about the chemicals.

I have to really contact the maker and get the chemical compound.

- Yes.

What's going to happen is I want you to go on the internet.

I want you obviously to type in Simple Green and then it doesn't really matter if it's the manufacturer's website or somebody selling it, but you should be able to go to either a close up on the label, which divulges what it is, or there should be information sheets, legal information sheets, that tell you what it contains.

I might not remove any material this year and just let the plant produce as much greenery as possible.

You can give it a gentle feeding with a liquid organic plant food.

Now would be a good time, but gentle, and just keep an eye on them.

All right.

So treat them gently.

Water more than less.

Gentle feedings.

Maybe even two or three times over the season, as long as they're nice and gentle.

And have a sign made up.

These hydrangeas were killed by.... - Yeah, I will.

- All right.

Good luck.

Bye-bye.

- Thank you.

- My pleasure.

All right.

It is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling In Praise Of Potatoes.

Now, before we get to your questions, I want to emphasize one thing.

You really need to plant and grow potatoes this year.

Yes, organically grown potatoes are widely available and inexpensive, but nothing can replace the sensation of unearthing a fresh home-grown potato, rinsing it off right there in the garden and biting into it right there in the field.

If you have never grown potatoes, you have never really tasted a potato.

We begin with Diana in West Point, Virginia, which is near Williamsburg, who writes... A little bit of back and forth e-mailing revealed that Diana was talking about the flexible foldable fabric grow bags that are growing in popularity.

Now for true potatoes, sometimes called Irish potatoes or spuds, the answer is a loud yes.

In fact, potatoes may be the ideal crop for these above ground bags, but don't call them white potatoes.

White potatoes, like russets, are ideal for some uses, like the making of French fries, of which the best I've ever tasted were in Paris.

But for home cooking, you want to grow the gourmet varieties.

I now grow all of my potatoes in grow bags for their height, the ease of harvesting and the fact that they look good on the patio where the disintegrating decades-old half whiskey barrels are being slowly removed by time itself.

Some of these grow bags are planted with red potatoes, some are planted with buttery yellow varieties like the fabled Yukon Gold, and some are planted with wonderful variations, like red skinned potatoes with golden flesh and gold skins with red flesh.

But there are no white or purple potatoes in my garden.

I consider the purple ones a novelty that doesn't live up to the taste of red or gold.

And, more importantly, sweet potatoes are not potatoes of any kind.

Related to morning glories, honest, they spread laterally on the surface as opposed to being straight up plants that do the hard work underground.

Sweet potatoes will do much better in a raised bed where the leaves can roam on the surface.

We move on to Vina Jane in Coopersburg, PA, who writes... Well, potatoes that were poorly cared for and exposed to the sun while growing will develop distinctive green areas that are toxic, not poisonous.

You'd have to eat a lot of green potatoes to OD on them.

Continuous mulching of your crop throughout the season to protect it from the sun prevents the problem.

And if one energetic spud manages to break ground and go green, just cut off the green parts before eating.

But if more than a third to one half of potato is green, compost it.

Potato flowers are another story, and they are one of the most wonderful things about growing your own potatoes.

When the above ground growth is just about fully grown, it will often, but not always produce a flush of small flowers at the top of the plant.

These flowers will reflect the color of the potatoes growing underground.

Red flowers for red skins, yellow flowers for gold potatoes, bluish purple flowers for purple potatoes, and white flowers for white potatoes.

Lack of flowers doesn't mean anything.

It just happens.

But the appearance of flowers, which are staggeringly beautiful, can be important.

First, enjoy those flowers until they start to fade, then pinch them off.

Unless you want a green ball to appear on their place that contains potato seeds, which might produce potatoes in several, several years.

Then mark a date on your calendar three weeks to a month from then.

That's when you can harvest small new potatoes, AKA fingerlings, that have concentrated taste and nutrition.

But you doesn't have to.

You can let the plant alone until the first frost and then dig up and harvest full sized potatoes.

Be sure to root around the general area.

You can often find some big 'uns a foot or more wide.

Fun for the kiddos!

Bring the harvest inside, gently brush the dirt off, but do not wash them.

Store them in a cool, dark area because even ambient light can cause greening.

We finish up with Denise, my "biggest fan", in East Lyme, Connecticut.

She writes... Well, not without thanking you for your service first.

You people have replaced the Justice League and The Avengers as my favorite heroes.

Now feel free to chit away.

Many potato growers will place their soon to be planted spuds in a sunny windowsill or other bright area indoors a couple of weeks before planting in the hopes of developing good eyes and getting an early harvest.

When your planting stock is without eyes, this step is essential.

Well, that sure was some entertaining potato talk, wasn't it?

Luckily for you, this Question of the Week and many more of my articles about potatoes appear in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read them over at your leisure, just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week and you always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

You Bet Your Garden is a half hour public television show, an hour long public radio show and podcast all produced and delivered to you weekly by Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA. Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created when Colin Clive kept screaming, alive!

It's alive!

He screamed it so loud it woke him up a mile away.

Yikes.

My producer is threatening to poach my potatoes if I don't get out of this studio.

We must be out of time.

But you can call us any time.

888 492 9444.

Send us your e-mail, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming... ..teeming towards our garden shore at...

Please include your location or you'll be sorry that you didn't.

You'll find all of this contact information on our website... ..where you will also find the answers to all of your garden questions.

Why are you calling?

They're all up there.

Audio of this show, video of this show, audio and video of all the shows, and our internationally renowned podcast.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'd like to say something funny here, but I'm too busy planting potatoes.

And I want to hear that you have been planting them as well next week.