From the high-flying studios of Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for a very important episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

I'm always telling you not to feed your birds because you want them to eat your bad bugs instead.

But on today's show, we'll reveal a much more sinister problem that can occur when you innocently feed seed to your songbirds.

Otherwise, it's a fabulous phone call show, cats and kittens.

Yes, potential guests are busy buying up all the vinegar they can find.

So we will take that heap and help them.

All your telecommunicated questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and inherently innocent innovations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, true believers, because it's all coming up faster than you doing your part to avoid a really silent, silent spring.

Right after this.

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 espoma.com 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.

Today, we have an incredibly important warning about what you may be innocently doing to your birds that could wipe out songbirds if people don't stop doing it.

As Groucho would have said, it's a common thing, something you do every day, but when the duck comes down, that may be the last bird you'll see unless you stop doing this common thing, which we'll reveal at the end of the show.

We're also going to take lots of your fabulous phone calls, but now it is bragging time.

During the time I took off from my summer vacation...

Thank you very much for allowing me to do that.

I pulled up my garlic and I want to show it off now.

I'm looking at the monitor so I can try...

This is one of the bigger ones here.

Let's... Oh, God, that's a great shot, guys.

As you can see, it has some red, some purple in it, showing that this is one of the heirloom hard neck garlics.

But this is what it's supposed to look like.

You don't want to pick it when it's smaller and you don't want to wait until this wrapper splits open in any way, shape or form.

Yeah, here's another one.

And of course, by the way, I guess we got 75 heads.

That was my count when last I checked.

Oh, look at the colors.

Next week I'll bring one in and I will pull it apart and show you the colors of the wrappers.

They just can't be beat.

And again, I'm showing off the biggest ones.

Although to tell the truth, we got 75 full-size garlic heads.

We had a couple in one bed that just didn't drain well and we had another in a raised bed that just, the winter was too much for it.

But we still got 30 or 35 small heads and they will be dried in... That's a beautiful shot, guys, thank you so much.

They will be dried in a food dryer and used to make my fabulous famous garlic powder.

So 90% of this is bragging.

But the other part is, if you're garlic sitting out there and it's the leaves are more than one third brown, meaning the brown is extending up close to the top, pull them out now, even if they have split open a little, you can use them.

But don't let them sit in the ground too long, and it's not going to be that long before we start next year's garlic, Do if you've got a head like this... Oh, baby, look at the size of him!

This is the kind you'll split open into individual cloves and replant, and the rest you can use fresh and dry into garlic powder, but do use it to plant garlic.

It is one of the most fun things we can grow.

And more and more, I'm convinced it's one of the healthiest herbs that we can ingest.

Right, Ducky?

Good boy.

All right.

And now it's time to start taking your fabulous phone calls at... Sara, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you very much.

- Well, thank you, Sara.

How you doing?

- I'm super, how are you?

- I'm just ducky.

Matter of fact, I'll say Super Ducky, which was an obscure Marvel comic in the '50s.

Super Duck, the cock-eyed wonder.

I hope I am the only human left on the planet who knows that.

All right.

Where is Sara?

Wonderful.

- Colorado Springs, Colorado.

- All right.

So, Sara, what can we do for you?

- Well, I need to know whether to prune or not to prune.

I have a baby locust tree that sprung up from the roots of a large locust tree that we cut down a couple of years ago.

And it's rather bushy, but it's near the bird feeders, and my yard is full of beneficial perennials, so I don't want to prune it for ornamental reasons.

My main concern is to benefit the birds and the bugs and stuff like that.

So if it's good for tree health, then I will do it.

But do I really need to do it?

- Locusts are very unusual trees.

We have a lot of black locust here in Pennsylvania, and the reason they're are unusual is they are leguminous, like peas and beans.

They have the ability to suck plant-feeding nitrogen out of the air and feed themselves.

It's very cool.

They also have another great tendency in that they will regrow when cut back to a stump.

In the middle to late '80s, I worked with Bob Rodale on a book about world famine, and in many areas the famine was not caused by lack of food.

It was caused by lack of firewood.

There are so many ways that firewood is used in the Third World.

For instance, if you're living in a big hut, maybe a communal one, you always want to have a smoldering fire going because it not only keeps bugs out, but it kills the bugs in the quote-unquote ceiling and does a tremendous amount of good.

It is also prevalent in religious rituals and storytelling.

And perhaps the most important part is that it gives the family a place to gather around.

It's kind of like our TV set, but on a much more spiritual level.

So, around the fire at night, these are where the really good stories are told.

And at the time we wrote the book in the '80s, firewood was becoming really scarce.

Women, of course, women doing all the work.

Women would have to travel further and further every day to get firewood to bring home.

And then a couple of different organizations, like the Peace Corps, introduced black locust trees that once they got to be like two years old, you could cut them down.

You could use the fresh greenery, the leaves and stuff as animal fodder, and anything big enough you could use in a fire.

But it was 100% recyclable and useful and then it would grow back and you wouldn't need fertilizer to help it grow back because it's taking it out of the air.

These are magnificent, magnificent trees.

And if that wasn't enough, they're also rot resistant.

We use them to make raised bed frames and trellises and compost slats.

It's a remarkable...

It's a remarkable wood.

So the answer is you will not harm the tree one bit by cutting it back, pruning it to shape and things like that.

But please consider, I mean, even if all you do is compost the fresh young growth, the leaves, the tips of the branches, that will add so much nitrogen to your compost pile.

There's really almost nothing that locust wood can't do.

OK?

- Wonderful.

That's great to hear.

- Hey, my pleasure.

All right.

We got to go.

- I'm excited about it.

- Great talking to you.

- Thank you so much.

- My pleasure, really.

All right.

Bye-bye for now.

All right.

That number to call... Charles.

Welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thank you so much for taking my call.

How are you?

- I am just Ducky.

Thank you.

And should I call you Charlie?

- Charlie is great.

- OK. - Thank you.

Where is Charlie?

- I am in Nashville, Tennessee.

- Excellent, excellent.

What can we do you for?

- I am hoping you might be able to help me with some damage control with my wife.

- Um... No, no, no.

That's Judge Judy.

That's another show.

That's Maury, you know, there's plenty of them out there, you know.

I mostly stick with garden pests.

- I know, and I might be one of them.

- Yeah.

- I... Basically, about a month ago, I was working in the garden and I was weeding one of my large planters that has one of my tomato plants.

And I pulled up a large, like, strange-looking leaf and it happened to be attached to a larger root.

The long and short of it, it turns out my wife had saved this peony plant from a construction site that had mowed down all the other peony plants.

And so I pulled up this root and panicked.

And the moment I realized what I did and I put it in its own pot with its own soil, but added about an inch or so of compost directly from our compost pile, from the very bottom.

And I am hoping to do what I can to nurse this root to health and undo the damage.

- OK, well, I don't think you... She neglected to tell you that she had smuggled this pirate's chest into your tomato plant.

- Yes.

Yes.

And definitely, you know, I was reserving it for one of the yellow pear tomato plant that was growing, didn't tell her.

And she kind of... What ended up happening was she saw these peony plants on this abandoned kind of housing lot.

The lawn service came by, mowed down these beautiful peony plants that were so ready and ready to bloom.

And then she just, that day, grabbed a shovel, gardening gloves, saved it and put it in one of the plants that looked empty and unused.

And so... - OK. - There you have it.

- OK, good.

So the plants were mowed down... ..in the spring, just before they were about to flower.

But... - Exactly, I have the photos of... Oh!

- That also means that at least the leaves got some amount of sunlight.

So I predict nothing but good things, but not immediate good things.

I don't want you to try to force it or do anything like that.

As you're well aware, peonies are herbaceous perennials.

All the above-ground growth dies and then it comes out from the ground when it's ready to get ready to bloom.

So the most important thing, I'm glad you put it in a dedicated pot, label the pot.

Leave the pot out, leave the pot outside, and then when we get into the fall, I think the smartest thing would be to simply bury the pot up to around the rim.

That'll give it some insulation down below.

And with any luck... Well, no, with no luck whatsoever, you'll get leaves in the spring.

If you have a lot of luck, you may get a flower or two.

But the year, and leave those flowers alone.

Make sure they get fed and watered.

And by the year after that, you'll get your real peony plant back again.

- Perfect.

Thank you so much.

I really, really, really appreciate your time.

- My pleasure.

And I'm not even sure where this falls into the marital discourse file.

I think... - I hope not!

- I think she threw you a ringer here.

I mean, how are you supposed to know?

But... - I know.

You will forgive her even if she doesn't think she did anything wrong.

- Absolutely, yes, sir.

- At the very least, it makes you feel superior.

All right, we got to go.

- For a brief moment, thank you so much.

- Great talking to you, man.

Take care.

All right.

As promised, it is time for the Question of the Week, which is our question to you.

Years ago, I was a guest speaker at an entomologist conference when an audience member asked a question that I'm sure many of us had previously pondered.

What good are mosquitos?

What purpose do they serve?

My first thought was, like many predators and parasites, they eliminate the weakest members of a species and thus increase the overall health of the herd.

But I did not win the big money on Jeopardy that day, as the researcher's answer went in a very different direction.

Without mosquitoes, he calmly replied, the vast majority of songbirds would become extinct.

Wow!

Take away the prey and the predator must also fall.

Talk about being hit in the face with a condensed custard cream pie of reality.

And then I thought, Oh, dragonflies too.

They're the prime controller of mosquito numbers.

So much so that one of their common names is the mosquito hawk.

Now, that exchange led to a lot of articles about natural mosquito control, a big part of which was making sure that local birds had plenty of shelter and fresh water with nesting boxes provided for the most carnivorous bird families.

That tied nicely into my seemingly one-man crusade against feeding birds in the summertime.

Ever since the magazine that I edited in the '90s, Organic Gardening, had run a lengthy article on birds versus bugs, I had become convinced that bird feeders were counterproductive to this cause.

The simplest argument goes something like this.

If you artificially feed your birds in the winter, they won't bother chasing down their natural prey, which is big fat moths for larger carnivores, gnats, mosquitoes and such for the swifter, smaller ones.

The more bird feeders you hang and fill, the worse the damage to your crop that season, because your best insect eaters are busy chowing down at the sunflower bar and bill.

And one of the things that worried me most about that equation was that it could be twisted around and cited by agricultural chemical criminals as evidence that natural controls don't work.

I presented this argument many times in the pages of Organic Gardening magazine, and every time I made such a plea... ..it went over like a Mother's Day card in an orphanage.

"I love watching my birds!

"I spend hours every day watching dozens of "birds at my feeders!"

And the frequent but erroneous statement, "Because of climate change, "there isn't enough food in the "wild for them now," which is nonsense, of course, but nonsense seems to be very much in vogue these days.

The only people I could manage to convince somewhat were little old ladies who had watched Mary Poppins 100 or so too many times and loved to spend their days in the park, feeding stale chunks of bread to the birdies.

Bad enough to feed them at all, I explained.

But stale white bread contains less nutrition than the paper bag the little old ladies carried the bread around in.

But such easy pickings will always attract dumb animals like pigeons, mice, rats, and people who refuse to become vaccinated.

And so the birds will fill up on these empty calories and essentially starve to death with full bellies.

I also ranted against bird feeders because their spillage would attract mice, rats, voles, evil squirrels and raccoons, maybe even that vegan couple next door.

Oh, and the Humane Society recently chipped in by warning that, if fed by humans, baby birds would lose their instinct to find food in the wild, food that is amazingly abundant in the spring and summer.

But there is this ancient and unique human trait that allows people to ignore several levels of reality if the topic involves something they really want to do.

But then a kind of tragic miracle occurred.

A secondary argument emerged from researchers that feeders had the potential to become disease vectors.

Seed that got wet became moldy, harboring God knows what kinds of nasty organisms.

The birds were crowded into an unnaturally small space when they were feeding, which is a surefire way to spread disease quickly.

And then there's the poop factor, or TPF, when wet, moldy seeds are topped with lots of bird poop.

Looking back on it, it's hard to imagine disease not making the special guest appearance it has in these feeders.

And the name of that special guest is salmonellosis - a member of the dread salmonella family that is responsible for so many grocery store recalls, sicknesses, and yes, even death.

With birds, the symptoms are even more horrifying.

From the Pacific Northwest and Canada across to New Jersey and affecting every state in between, homeowners are horrified to find dead and diseased birds in and around their feeders.

Some of the birds are blind in both eyes, with one eye protruding out of its socket.

Some display troubling neurological symptoms, falling over, with eyes that are swollen shut and crusty.

Some have protruding eyes and some are just plain blind.

The disease seems to affect most, if not all, varieties of songbirds.

So do your part.

Wearing gloves, take down your feeders, clean them well, soak all parts with plain white vinegar and then store them where birds can't get at them.

Then wash your hands thoroughly.

Same with any bird baths you have out.

Lots of bird poop going into that water.

So as you go forward, select and install plants that provide lots of food and shelter for the birds so that you can continue watching them... ..safely.

Well, that sure was some interesting advice on how to save our precious avian insect eaters, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for those of you who wish to read this information over in detail, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

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 will 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 he accidentally ate a chunk of red kryptonite, which he thought was a gummy bear.

Yikes!

My producer is now threatening to fill my bird feeders if I don't get out of this studio!

Whew!

We must be out of time.

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Eggs with our beer?

It's all at our website.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'm tearing down the last of the spring peas, planting the first of my bush beans, harvesting potatoes and garlic and berries and staying out of the sun, so I can see you again next week.