- From the bubbling tar pits under the Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media, in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another impaired episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.

What can you do when you discover that a previous owner left behind a bunch of old railroad ties in your yard?

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And on today's show, I'll try and suggest some creosote corrections and explain how sunflowers might help save the day.

Plus, important news about compost and lawn fertilizers, and your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and luminously laconic lamentations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you turning a poisonous pond into a nice place to relax on a warm summer night 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... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden, from the Universal Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media, in Bethlehem, PA.

I am your host, Mike McGrath, because they still haven't caught on to me yet, cats and kittens.

And we have a very interesting show for you today.

What, all the other ones were boring?

What am I doing to myself here?

Anyway, in the Question of the Week, we're going to talk about a common problem that really doesn't get discussed enough.

The poisonous creosote used to preserve old railroad ties that always seem to find a way into people's organic gardens.

We're going to tell you how to remediate that soil and remind you not to touch it.

We're also going to talk to our old friend Jake Chalfin, from Laurel Valley Soils, about an exciting new law that has been passed in Pennsylvania restricting the use of chemical fertilizers.

And it's a lot to get done, so we be hopping!

Hopping right to your fabulous phone calls at... Laura, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hello.

- Hello, Laura.

How are you doing?

- I'm doing just fine.

- And where is Laura doing just fine?

- In East Texas, in Hughes Springs.

- Okay.

What can we do you for?

- Well, I stumbled across something that I was totally unaware of.

I wanted to share with your listeners, because I listen to you all the time.

I have a hobby blueberry farm, and I do it all organic.

But I've been having trouble with gophers.

I can't use poison, I wouldn't anyways.

I cannot stand trapping them, it horrifies me.

And I got to looking and checked on Google, and in the 1800s, I wondered what the farmers used to do about the gopher issue.

And they put up owl nesting boxes.

- Oh, that's amazing!

- And I had never heard of it, and I mentioned it, I belong to the Linden Texas Garden Club, and the ladies there hadn't heard of it either.

And I thought, "Oh, I need to call Mr. McGrath and "tell him about the owl boxes."

That is the number-one predator for a gopher.

- And the number-one predator of voles.

V-O-L-E-S. And also mice... - And rats.

- It depends what... now we're getting to... You must have some big owls.

Of course, everything's big in Texas, right?

- Oh, absolutely.

But I just found it so interesting because I had never heard of it before.

And you can order the boxes online.

They actually sell them in boxes.

- Yeah, putting up nesting boxes all over farmland used to be absolutely normal.

I mean, it was part of farming, not only for owls who prey at night, but for meat-eating birds during the day.

One year, my church asked me to help restore the grass in the graveyard, and I did that with the help of a couple hundred million Boy Scouts.

And then, they came to me and said they had all these little holes in the new grass.

And I looked at them and I could tell right away they were "vole holes," and voles are tenacious.

They're tiny, the size of a house mouse.

But I did some research and found something very similar to yours.

You put up a cross beam.

Six feet off the ground, with as long a beam on top as you can fit.

And the owls will roost on that cross beam at night and hunt the voles.

And we know this works because the ground is going to be littered with owl scat pellets showing what's left of their prey.

And now, I always leave snags on my property.

We're heavily wooded out back.

So when I have to take down a tree, I make sure they leave a good 6-8 feet of it standing, and it gets colonized by owls, woodpeckers, all sorts of beneficial creatures.

Do you know what kind of an owl that preys on your gophers?

- Screech, it's a screech owl.

And we have 48 acres, and the majority of it is in old trees.

And when we have one die, we don't touch it.

We let the animals house up in them.

So we don't touch our dead trees.

- Yes, and gophers... - We just leave them.

- Yeah, gophers, you know, I don't know, from gophers, you know, I've gardened in California, I've gardened in Pennsylvania, I've gardened in New Jersey, I've gardened in Virginia.

But I ain't ever had no gophers.

But I hear that they are just... - Oh, they're awful!

- ...incredibly pestiferous.

So I endorse your idea.

The more nesting boxes, the better.

I would suggest you also try the cross-beam idea.

- I will!

I had not heard of that either.

- Because the boxes are a place for them to live, but the cross beam is a place for them to perch, and they're going to do much better work if they can perch and wait out the varmint of choice that day.

Thank you for bringing up owls.

We haven't talked about owls in ages.

- Well, thank you so much.

I just wanted to share what I had learned about the owls with your listeners.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you, bye-bye!

Laura, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Thanks, Mike.

- You're welcome, Laura.

You're velcome?

I turned into a vamp.

"You're velcome."

How are you?

- I'm great.

I'm calling from sunny Seattle, Washington.

- All right!

Well, what can we do you for?

- My question is about leaf vacuum mulchers.

So I've been listening to your podcast for years, and you recommend them as a way to improve the garden.

And I bought one a few years ago and every time I try to use it, the leaves are always wet because, as you can imagine, we get a lot of moisture here, and nothing ever really dries out in the fall, and it clogs all the time.

And I'm unplugging it and sticking my hand in, which doesn't feel like a good choice, you know, with the blade and all.

So I'm wondering if there's a different alternative for those of us who live in moister climates, that we can achieve the same effect.

- Well, Laura, at least you know enough to unplug it before you send your hand down into there.

I have an intern who helps with my garden, and she carries a variety of sticks in her back pocket to clear the tube.

But it's a pain.

Now, do you have a lawn?

- We do, yes.

- Okay, do you have your own lawn mower?

- Yes.

- Is it a bagging mower?

- It is.

And do you treat your lawn with any kind of insecticide or fertilizers?

- Nope, we don't put anything on it but the clippings, per your advice.

- Okay, so my first suggestion is that you rake as many of your leaves onto the lawn as possible, and then, mow over them, because obviously the lawn mower blades are going to be much sharper.

And something we don't talk about enough on the show, you're really supposed to get your blades sharpened or replace the blades on your lawn mower every year.

Now they will tear through your leaves.

And the best part of this is now you've got a mixture of mostly shredded dry leaves with a little bit of nitrogen-rich lawn clippings mixed in.

So that combilation, combil...whoa!

I'm inventing lots of new words today!

Ohh, "That combilation just gets to me!"

That combination makes perfect compost.

- That's a great idea.

Thank you so much, Mike.

Appreciate it.

And love your show.

- Oh, thank you so much.

And it's my pleasure.

Bye-bye.

- Have a good one, Mike.

- Right now, it's time to bring on our special guest, our frequent guest, our old friend, Jake Chalfin from Laurel Valley Soils, who sent me an exciting news release the other day.

And I'm surprised I didn't hear about it from any other sources.

Well, first of all, Jake, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hey, Mike, great to be back.

- It's great to have you back.

Now, you sent me a copy of the Pennsylvania Fertilizer Act.

Is this proposed, or is this law now?

- So Governor Wolf signed it into law on July 11th of this year.

And it is the Senate bill...

Sorry, it's Act 83 is what it's called, Act 83.

- Now, I can tell that this was crafted by politicians from my native state because it makes almost no sense.

It goes back and forth, it's full of loopholes, but basically it's trying to say the same thing, although it, to me, is allowing more phosphorus than it should if it's designed to protect our waterways.

- Yeah, it's definitely not as strong or as comprehensive as I think many had hoped, but it's still an improvement on the what was before this.

And the main points that this bill covers is applications in a proximity of water.

They want you to not apply anything closer than 15 feet from a water source.

But then, as you mentioned, the loophole there is if you have a drop spreader or a rotary spreader that has a fender, you can apply closer as long as the application is kind of controlled where it falls.

They do limit nitrogen in the wintertime, but they don't ban it.

They just reduce the pounds per square foot and... - Well, wait a minute, I'm going to challenge you there.

Under number six, conditions and date restrictions, "No person may apply fertilizer containing nitrogen or "phosphorus to turf at any time when the ground is frozen to "a depth of two inches or snow covered, no person "may apply fertilizer containing nitrogen and "phosphorus to turf after December 15th "and before March 1st."

So that's pretty specific.

- Yes.

But then, it goes on to say that the restriction is based on a certain pounds per square foot.

But I believe that the loophole is if you have .5 pounds, you can apply it.

And then there's another loophole that says if it's a enhanced-efficiency fertilizer, meaning it's been designed to be a slow-release fertilizer, then you have more leeway when you can use that, as well.

- Boy, I tell you, these are weasel words in here, some of them, I mean, I can see it has a good intention.

But what you are doing, your company, Laurel Valley Soils, is promoting this as finally a reason for turf professionals to stop putting chemical salts on lawn and start feeding them naturally with compost, right?

- Precisely, yeah.

I think, as it becomes more restrictive to put the kind of classic petroleum-based fertilizers and chemical-based fertilizers, while it's not a ban, it's getting more and more complicated, which, you know, incentivizes people to look for alternatives.

It's a shame, the alternatives have been here all along, and they are very effective.

But sometimes it takes these types of bills to really get people motivated into exploring their options, which there are plenty of.

And compost, you know, is a really perfect option for both turf lawn, vegetables, and even conventional farming.

- Laurel Valley Soil specializes in a lot of different mixtures, and I love what you say in your accompanying release, that if you are a lawn professional and you want to try this, we'll try to pair you up with the right kind of compost.

"Think of us as the Match.com of compost."

- Yeah, yeah.

So basically, there are many different ways to apply compost.

And, you know, compost traditionally has been a little bit challenging in how to apply it.

It's a bulky product and it does take some elbow grease, and some physical effort to top-dress a lawn.

And for some people, that was a non-starter.

So we've come up with a couple of different blends that can be applied using different types of equipment.

So we have a turf-dressed compost that's designed to go through mechanical spreaders.

We have a cyclone compost that's designed to go through mulch blower trucks.

There's a lot of landscaping companies that have these tow-behind blower trucks that blow mulch onto commercial landscape beds in the spring.

And there's really no use for those machines after that.

And we've come up with a compost that is light enough that it can be blown through these mulch-blower trucks.

And so, those landscaping companies can then do commercial applications of top-dressing compost with these machines.

So it's opened up a whole sort of business for the landscaping companies.

And if you think about like homeowners associations and developments where you've had a lot of houses and tiny little lawns and interrupted by sidewalks and trees and driveways, it's a traditionally challenging place to top-dress, but with the ability to blow the compost on, these landscaping companies can do large developments quite efficiently.

We also have compost soil blends.

So, say you have a sports field that had a couple of rainy football games on it and there's some really bad divots, and some worn-out areas, the compost-enhanced soil can be top-dressed on there to fill in the divots and smooth out the surface so that it's safe again.

And so many other options, as well.

- All right.

Well, thank you, Jake.

It is always a pleasure to hear from you.

The website is LaurelValleySoils.com.

And you go there, you'll see all sorts of informative articles and you can read up about the different compost blends that are available.

Hopefully we're turning the corner on this, pal, you and me!

- Yeah, well, Mike, it's great to have this forum to be able to share with the local community what's available and give them options.

And I always enjoy chatting with you.

It's great.

It's a good time.

Thank you.

- Same here, pal.

All right, you take care, and I'll talk to you again soon.

As promised, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're either calling... Colin writes...

So I asked Colin a couple of pertinent questions about timing and seed selection.

Here's his reply.

Okay, here's my first thoughts.

Fescue is a cool season grass that should only be seeded in early fall, but fescue sod that is applied in April should thrive.

On the other hand, Bermuda is a warm season grass that should be planted in the spring.

I say planted as opposed to seeded, because Bermuda's typically installed vegetatively by putting little plants in the ground, just like Zoysia grass.

Anyway, your soil is almost certainly contaminated with a witch's brew of toxins, from the creosote used to preserve those railroad ties.

They've probably been leaking that nasty stuff into your soil for who knows how many years.

I think it's really important that you keep dogs and humans away from that area by erecting a temporary fence, and watch the dogs for any signs of illness or lethargy.

Dogs and cats have soft paws that easily absorb contaminants.

Blood tests for creosote are somewhat problematic, as "creosote is actually a complex mixture of chemicals that," according to a fact sheet from the state of Virginia, "contains at least 300 different toxins."

It is not a single element, like lead or cadmium.

So explain your situation to your vet.

They may choose to run some tests on your pooches, or send you elsewhere for a more sophisticated exam.

Now creosote is a "restricted-use pesticide," meaning that it can still be used to treat railroad ties, telephone poles, and even, gulp, the wood used to make some log cabin homes?

Yikes.

It is a known cancer-causer and is especially dangerous to chimney sweeps who clean the highly-flammable material off the insides of woodstove pipes and chimneys.

Technically, homeowners should not be able to buy it.

Now this material can be processed from the wood of the "creosote bush," also known as Chaparral, which is not a single plant but a community of like-minded plants that thrive in the torrid deserts of the southwestern U.S.

The plants are highly aromatic and highly flammable.

But the majority of creosote comes from coal and its residues, especially "coal tar," which in very small concentrations was, and in some cases still is, used as a remedy for psoriasis.

Increase the percentage, however, and you do not want to know what kind of cancer you're inviting.

Reputable sources report that creosote-laden products are somewhat too totally illegal to sell to homeowners, but huge piles of used railroad ties remain for sale at far too many big box stores.

Criminality without enforcement is just a grease mark on the wall.

Okay, remediation.

It sounds like the area is also constantly wet, so improving the drainage using drain tiles or frequent aeration should be your first step.

Then move on to physical removal.

Many companies perform this task for lead-contaminated soil.

They dig it up and take it to a specialized incinerator for disposal.

Then you'd be starting with at least a much lower concentration of creosote.

But what then?

I'm thinking that installing a concrete slab over the excavated area might be the best solution.

Concrete that is stamped and colored looks great.

That's my patio outside.

Have it cover a larger-than-necessary area and put a grill, a table, and some chairs out there to enjoy the long, outdoor, entertaining season you get in OKC.

That big tree might even provide some shade.

Otherwise, the Hail Mary pass here would be to drain the area then install plants that take up large amounts of toxic material.

Now, because matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed in form, the plants cannot be eaten, as they will become full of it.

They must be trashed.

This type of phytoremediation can be extremely effective.

For instance, Alpine Penny Grass is the choice for removing cadmium, and Indian mustard, a very attractive plant, removes lead selenium, zinc, mercury and copper from the soil.

And you're in luck!

The plants that have been shown to remove the most coal tar and pitch are sunflowers.

That's a very nice fenceline plant.

Just don't eat the seeds.

Well, that sure was some interesting information about creosote remediation, 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, an 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 when his ship crash landed on Earth and his giant robot accidentally incinerated the nation's capital.

Well, at least now they'll stop all that squabbling.

Yikes!

My producer is threatening to give me railroad ties for Christmas if I don't get out of this studio.

Wow, 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, teeming towards our garden shore at...

Please include your location.

I'm creosote-free Mike McGrath, and I'll be shredding leaves and cooking amaranth until I see you again next week.