You Bet Your Garden S4 Ep 26 Peonies and Hydrangeas

- From the blooming studios of Univest at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A.

It's time for another Oops, I Did It Again episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

A recent caller wanted to know what I thought about tree peonies, of which I knew bupkis.

I'm Mike McGrath, and on today's show, I'll reveal what I have since learned about these cool plants.

Plus, your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and maniacally mathematic manifestations.

That's a lot to get done.

So let's jump right in at... Johnny, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Congratulations there, Mike.

How you doing today?

- I am just Duckyyy!

How's Johnny doing?

- Well, I'm doing pretty good.

It's starting to warm up a little bit better.

We got some rain today.

But what I have, I've got some oak trees, and I wished I had never planted these oak and pines.. With the oak trees, the pine trees are bad enough.

I mean, you can't get rid of the pine needles.

At least you just pick them all up.

But the oak trees I noticed when they make a shade, they kill out the grass.

You know, the shade just eliminates all the grass around underneath the trees.

And I was looking for some grass that would be low maintenance and would be good covering for, you know, for under the oak trees.

- And do you want the grass to do anything else?

Like, get you a beer so you don't have to get up from the couch?

You know, go run errands for you?

- That would be great.

- Yeah, exactly.

- I'm located here in Texarkana, Texas.

Just a little community outside of Texarkana, Texas, called Red Lick.

- Oh, okay.

Would you say that every part of the lawn gets four hours of sun a day?

Oh, and better than that, just like I say, except under the oak trees.

But since I've raised the limbs up under the oak trees so they can probably get a little bit more sun, and I'm just thinking, what kind of grass... ...that I can plant, on my front acre, I've got quite a bit of Bermuda grass.

- Right.

- But I'm looking for something closer to the house here where I have that I could... - It's funny because our listeners and viewers in the north think, "Bermuda grass?

He's got a weed problem!"

And actually, it is one of the preferred grasses down south.

- Well, there is a lot of weeds down there, I have to say that for sure.

- Okay.

That would be a different phone call.

So, you have two basic choices, and you are calling at the right time of year, because you will grow warm-season grasses, and they are installed in the spring, whereby up in my neck of the wood, we need cool-season grasses that are installed in the fall.

And the two warm-season grasses that adapt best to shade are Zoysia and Saint Augustine.

So, those would be your two choices.

I believe Saint Augustine may be available by seed, but Zoysia grass is generally installed vegetatively.

You know, you get these big sheets, you punch out pieces, and you plant those, and they spread like wildfire.

So if you do choose Zoysia, be aware that it will spread outside the area of your lawn.

So if you don't want it to go into flowerbeds or something like that, install deep edging around that side where you are.

Zoysia is going to take over within two years.

- And you don't... - Oh, wow.

- Oh, yeah, because, you know, people grow it here in Pennsylvania where it's green for ten minutes in July.

But yours will be green, you know, most of the year, it'll go a little tan during the coldest parts of your winter, but it will survive.

And the thing is, you don't have to worry about weeds encroaching during that time it's getting established, because Zoysia grass will beat any weed.

It'll crowd it out, it'll give it a wedgie, it'll steal its lunch money.

It is indestructible.

Weeds have no chance.

And you mentioned low maintenance.

Well, Zoysia grass in my part of the world only needs to be cut once or twice over a growing season.

You may have to cut it four times, but it doesn't need to be fed.

For God's sake, don't encourage this grass.

And the other thing I would add is be aware that it's not just the shade.

You have big trees with thirsty roots, and you live in an area with little rain.

Right?

- Yeah, pretty much.

But when it gets towards the summertime, it's a zip-on rain.

- Yes, exactly.

- During the springtime, we get lots of rain.

So you will have to water during droughts.

But again, as long as there is some rainfall during those seasons, you really don't have to do anything.

And I grew up with a Zoysia grass lawn.

It's a fabulous one to have.

And Saint Augustine is prone to a couple of diseases in Texas that can be problematic, but not Zoysia.

This is a grass from Krypton.

You know, you plant it, you let it fill in, you water it during dry spells.

And that's all you're going to have to do.

- I appreciate it, Mike.

- Alright.

So you take care.

Good luck.

I think we got a good plan here and... Bye for now.

Kevin, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, Mike.

How are you doing?

- I am just Ducky!

Thank you for asking.

I have to be very gentle with Ducky these days, because he's holding up Sprout.

And that would just be a bad omen if Sprout fell over on this show.

Where are you?

- So I'm out of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

- What can we do you for?

- Hey, so I have, you know, on top of gardening, I have, I would say, eight pretty established potted citrus trees.

- Oh, excellent.

- Yeah, but, you know, as they grow, I run out of room, so I was able to rent some space in a greenhouse locally.

And not thinking about how they control their pests, I just dropped them off.

It was, you know, worth it for me.

And what they did was, I guess they treated everything with a translaminar pesticide.

And I was just wondering if my fruits are going to be bad for a year, or how soon it'll run its course.

- Do you remember the name of the pesticide?

- It was Rycar.

- Okay.

Because I did investigate it, when I went to the company that manufactures it, their website... Oh, my goodness!

"This thing is almost organic.

"It doesn't hurt anything."

So then I saw, let's see what the EPA says about this thing.

So "translaminar" means it is not just a contact pesticide.

It doesn't have to hit the insect.

It enters the leaf system so that when an insect shows up and starts feeding on the leaves, they get the pesticide in their body.

There is great discussion and disagreement on what's happening in the fruit.

I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I will tell you what I'm thinking.

I will add, by the way, that this stuff is tremendously toxic to fish and amphibians.

You have to be brutally careful about how you dispose of any leftovers.

And worker safety was all over the place.

But one of the things I did read was if the spray gets on fruits, you shouldn't pick and eat those fruits, and you shouldn't eat any fruits for 12 months.

- Right.

That's what I saw.

12 months.

I also saw it 21 days, which is what prompted me to call you.

- That's what I said, man, it's all over the place.

So, do you have standard fruit trees?

- Yeah, I have apple trees, I have everything out back, and then, I have a few citrus that are safe in my house, in a sunny window.

So I could easily pick all the blossoms off this summer, and just let them go.

I just wasn't sure if it was, I just had to burn the trees or what, how bad it was.

If it would ever go back to organic.

- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, you can recover.

- Oh, good.

- So you do have citrus in the house that's safe?

- Yep.

And how tall are the trees in the greenhouse?

- They're Finger Lime bushes and a Key Lime bush.

And they're only about probably three feet tall, but they produce a ton of fruit in the summer.

- Right.

So they're similar to Meyer Lemons, to some degree.

- Sure.

Yeah.

- Okay.

I think I would remove all the fruits and all the flowers, as you are kind of suggesting.

- Okay.

- Now, trans... What is it, translaminar?

- Yeah.

- You know, it's kind of a cross between a contact and a systemic, in that it does get into the leaves of the plant.

Now, why would the advice be to not eat any fruit from that plant for, you know, a year... - That's what made me nervous.

- ...if it didn't travel to other parts?

And if it's translaminar on a leaf, would it be translaminar on the fruit?

Would it enter the fruit in the same way?

Now, leaves and fruits are very different.

So in this case, we have to err on the side of caution.

Remove the fruits, remove the flowers, and then, remove the oldest leaves.

One thing we can be pretty much certain of is that the highest concentrations of this pesticide are in the leaves.

That's what it was designed to do.

And, you know, removing old leaves will stimulate new leaves, that hopefully will be less affected.

So, you know, you have to eat it for the summer.

But then, when you're getting ready to store them again in the fall, I would be comfortable allowing them to flower and eating the fruit then.

- Okay.

That sounds great.

- All right?

- I'm just glad it wasn't a total loss.

Thanks a lot.

- Oh, yeah.

You always got to ask first.

- Yeah.

- All right.

Good luck to you.

- Thanks very much, Mike.

- My pleasure.

Bye-bye.

- You too, bye.

Andrew, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi.

I'm glad to be here.

- I'm glad to have you here, Andrew, how are you doing?

- I'm doing well.

- And where is Andrew doing well?

- I'm in Richmond, Virginia.

- Okay, very good.

What's happening?

What can we do you for?

- So last summer, we've got this garden that was kind of inherited from my father-in-law.

And my wife uses the French term "alais" to describe what we have on the side of the yard.

But it's a line of a line of crape myrtles, and then, a lot of other things like hellebore and boxwood, and azaleas.

And Over last summer, around June, I started to notice this kind of sooty black growth on some of the leaves.

And by July, it had kind of covered up a lot of the leaves, and the trunks on the crape myrtles, which had also acquired these kind of white pustule-looking fungus growth.

It was even growing on some lawn chairs, and just kind of taking over.

I did some googling, and what came back was that it was probably some sort of sooty mold that wasn't necessarily going to harm the plants, but might have just been a factor of having a humid summer without a whole lot of rain to wash away any of the honeydew or other residue.

- Yeah, we wish.

I believe you are the latest victim of a very new invasive insect from Asia that is called Crapemyrtle bark scale.

So this is a brand new one.

Not to be confused with other kinds of scale or aphids, or anything like that.

This is brand-new, and it can be quite a bugger.

At last count, so to speak, it had just moved into Virginia.

So, it's really racing across the country.

And I can only presume that crape myrtle growers, in between you and I, are going to have to deal with it.

Now, are your crape myrtles the tree form, or the shrub form?

- They are tree form, they're about 20 feet high at the tops.

- Oh, so difficult to prune them?

- Not too difficult with a pruning saw, at least from the bottom.

- Okay.

Wear a hard hat.

- Yeah.

I learnt that the hard way.

- Oh, yeah!

That is the hard way.

You're lucky.

So are you feeding the trees and plants in this area?

- I occasionally will spray the leaves with a fish and kelp emulsion that I use on the vegetables.

- Oh, good.

Fertilization would make these pests much worse.

Now you prune crape myrtles in the spring, about two weeks after new growth appears.

And it sounds like you've been pruning them properly, just removing the amount that they grew the previous year.

You know, some people... - Yeah, just kind of grabbing any of the branches that are rubbing against each other or, you know, starting to hang in a weird way.

- Well, actually, the rule is these are fast-growing plants, and you should cut them back by the amount they grew the previous year.

Then, yes, removing some branches to open up the tree would be a good idea.

Now, prevention is going to be your best friend.

These things overwinter, and then I believe the females crawl out of, like, splits in the bark and stuff like that, and they lay these white egg cases.

That's when you really need to be available.

Using a pressure washer, loaded with just water, blast them off of every plant you see.

As soon as those white cases appear, get rid of them.

If they're down low, just wipe them off and drop them into a bucket with alcohol or soap in the bottom.

And then, I would urge you to use that pressure washer to reach the areas that are up high.

20 feet is not a problem.

- And the kind of black mold that's growing on the nearby plants, should I also just squirt them with the pressure washer to try to clean them off?

- It depends on, you know, how fragile those plants are.

- Okay.

- All right, man?

- All right.

Thank you very much.

- All right.

Good luck to you, sir.

As promised, the Question of the Week, which is actually a question from two weeks ago that I finally have an answer for.

And we're calling it... From the Department of Corrections Department, many of you groaned when I tried to answer a question about tree peonies from a listener two weeks ago.

In my defense, your honors, I plead ignorance about this... And many other issues.

I would also plead the Fifth, but I'm trying to stop drinking.

When I realized that the question was about peonies, I didn't fret.

After all, I had inherited a beautiful pink, herbaceous peony when we purchased our house circa 1985, and it has bloomed beautifully every year, despite being planted so close to the road, it could tell you the license plate number of the noisy truck that just rattled the windows while passing through.

So I knew what the flowers looked like, smelled like, and that you need to support them, or those big floppy heads will droop so much that some of them can hit the ground.

My solution was to cut the lowest ones, some for display in a vase indoors right away, and some to be wrapped in damp paper and stored in the downstairs fridge until summer, when they would appear prominently in the house, leading people to mistakenly believe that I might actually be good at this thing.

It's an old trick a florist once taught me.

And, as all herbaceous peony owners must do, I then ran string across the front of the rest of the plant to support the taller flowers.

Then I became a peony expert!

A new shoot had appeared next to the plant one spring, and I just let it be.

If you could see my garden, you'd realize that "leaving things be" is kind of our motto.

Relinquiatis eum solum.

My indifference was rewarded three seasons later when a bright red peony with somewhat different leaves appeared on this sprout, which I later learned is called a sport.

Now, I was a peony breeder.

Bring on the questions!

But the caller wanted to know how to plant herbaceous peonies, perennials that die back to the ground every winter, and tree peonies, woody, perennials whose aboveground growth persists over winter.

At that point, I realized I had never actually planted a peony and wasn't sure what the deal was with the tree form.

I was almost sure that it was a peony grafted onto a rootstock.

Luckily I added, "But I'm not sure," which is the second motto of my garden, and urged the listener to follow up on my useless advice with some research, which is also what I did as soon as I got home.

Turns out the tree peonies aren't grafted, and they're not trees.

They are woody perennial shrubs that bloom earlier than their herbaceous cousins, bearing their flowers up to five feet in the air when fully mature.

Come on, why are they called tree peonies?

Is "shrub" a dirty word in horticulture?

I thought I didn't like them because of a single stalk tree hydrangea a neighbor has on display.

A short window of loveliness, followed by a long period of looking like a dead tree with faded flower heads on top.

Special guest Martha Stewart will help me solve that four-season visibility problem in just a bit.

Tree hydrangeas do not naturally have a tree form.

All hydrangeas begin life as shrubs, and only one type, paniculata, can be trained to a single trunk.

And that's done to very young plants in the nursery trade.

So they are not natural.

They're, kind of, declawed hydrangeas.

But they're not grafted either.

So that's strike two, and now I have to try and hit the ball to the right hand side of the field, or my specialty, just lean into the next pitch.

Now, about Martha Stewart.

I met her a few times back in the 1990s when I was the editor-in-chief of Organic Gardening magazine.

In fact, we were the judges at the New York City Flower Show one year.

During that time, we talked about plants a lot, and I came away feeling that she was a charming and intelligent woman who had a true love of horticulture.

Now, to bring it all home, while doing my research on these "tree and not a tree" things, Google suggested I read an entry in Martha's blog called "My Blooming Tree Peonies," and that, cats and kittens, revealed the design concept I really liked.

Instead of displaying these plants alone in the open as, quote, "specimens," Martha has hers planted in a grove formation in the understory of large, mature trees, creating a flowering border whose blooms are 5-7 feet in the air.

Note, tree peonies can tolerate shade better than their herbaceous cousins, and they bloom before those big trees can fully leaf out.

Now, yes, Martha has helpers to take care of the plants, but so do I!

Like her, I do all the planting, and my tireless intern, Sean, does the dirty work.

Except with containers, where the dirt goes under my fingernails.

Anyway, big advantage with the tree form, because the flowers are held up high by sturdy wood stalks, they don't flop, so you don't have to struggle to keep them off the ground.

And their height makes the flowers much more visible than the ground-huggers, so that visitors can better enjoy the flowers that Marco Polo once described as, quote, "roses the size of cabbages."

Well, that sure was some interesting information about the taller forms of peonies and hydrangeas, now, wasn't it?

Luckily for yous, the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

To read it over at your leisure or 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 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 and hour-long public radio show and podcast all produced and delivered to you weekly from the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A.

Our radio show is distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

You Bet Your Garden was created by Mike McGrath.

Mike McGrath was created by Lerner and Loewe.

Yikes!

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

We must be out of time.

But you can call us anytime at... Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shores at...

Please, I have enough gray hairs already, please include your location!

Thank you.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I have peppers sprouting, tomatoes waiting, peas propagating and lots, lots more going on.

And I'll keep picking my plants to pursue until I can see you again next week.