In The Garden

Hey, Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. I've got Jason here with me today. Many of you guys know Jason as our resident beekeeper, manages our bee department, and takes care of everything related to bees. With a little bit of help from me every once in a while. Jason talked the other day, and swarm season's right around the corner.

Jason, what causes a swarm as I 

Bee Expert: I was going to say, swamp, this natural tendency is to make more bees as they grow in a colony or the cavity or space they're living in. Since that approaching, they will tend to outgrow that bee since that approaching and will naturally divide themselves, which means they'll cast out a queen and about a third to half of the existing bees in that colony.

And they'll relocate to another or try to leave [00:01:00] relocate to another location. If you see that, it's a great thing to see. Like in a cartoon, we, the cloud of bees coming through the sky. But when they land, they're going to land into groups all cluster together, usually on a branch or in a shrub or on a 

Keith: fence post or something like that.

So the queen and the queen land on the branch first, and the bees go from what. 40-foot swarm to, kind of get smaller and smaller you all are until it's telling us they're 

Bee Expert: attracted to the queen. So, when the bees swarm, many workers leave first, and they start to fly around. The activity inside the hive gets chaotic, and the other workers are forced to queen out with them.

They all fly up into a cloud or a group into this, in the sky, before flying back until they reach a spot where they can use all cluster together to rest and regroup before moving to their permanent home. 

Keith: Everything about bees is interesting. It's like a non-stop learning curve.

But the old queen leaves, and she goes with all the old. The fun thing about that is [00:02:00] they know what they're doing. They know that the whole deal, and they've all got a position in the hive. And they go pop as much honey as they can too.

So they can start building wax and start collecting resources. 

Bee Expert: Which in that whole process. So they'll engorge themselves with honey. They want to take as many resources with them to the new location. It takes a lot of energy to make wax and rebuild. They're reconstructing the whole.

So we're when they've done that, and they are in their resting group. They tend to be relatively docile when they've clustered on the branch. No need to be scared of them, really, as long as you're don't, I wouldn't recommend approaching them necessarily, but they're not going to leap off of where they are and come stinky or attack you.

They're in a resting mode. They don't have anything to protect. Home or brewed that they have to defend homeless bees, homeless B. So they're just looking they're in transition. Yep. 

Keith: Migraine. So, the other thing that I've found interesting is that there are many feral bees left. 

Bee Expert: No. When people talk about feral bees, it's [00:03:00] usually bees that a beekeeper has been managing or mismanaging, and they've either swarmed, or they've missed the swarm or the colony has left and relocated to another 

Keith: spot.

But Winnie the Pooh tree. They aren't around because of mites, insect problems, or disease problems. 

Bee Expert: So, these don't tend to live very long in nature. The honeybee is not native to North America in the first. 

Keith: place. So they need management.

They need 

Bee Expert: management. Absolutely. Because of pests that have been introduced over the years, mostly through commercial beekeeping practices. Have spread to all the bees, and without specific management, they will die. Yeah. 

Keith: That has to be a bummer if you're a beekeeper. If your swarm leaves, it's they're breaking up with you.

Like we're out. Yep. You got one job, beekeeper. 

Bee Expert: I'd wanted 

Keith: this one since I had an older customer and it was keeping bees for a couple of years, and he came in, and he said, These girls don't even know when they got a good home. They kept flying on [00:04:00] him. Probably because of 

Bee Expert: it couldn't be healthy bees.

I Healthy. Like I said, bees want 

Keith: to make more bees. Yeah. So when the old bees and the old queen leaves. And the reason they leave is that they're knowledgeable and they know what they're doing, and they have the resources and the Queen fertile, and she can lay an egg the next day.

And she probably will lay an egg in an unfinished cell the next day. So to start that whole process again, you got a thousand bees at the hatch out of a hive and in a given day and a thousand bees that die every day. So she wants to lay a thousand eggs as fast as they can build those cells.

But the exciting thing about it is you've got an infertile queen in the high. And she's got to do a mating flight. She's got to become fertile start to lay eggs. So there's a 12 or 15-day process there. But she. She's born into a hive. That's already got eggs and all stages of brood that are hatching now.

So she's got a 10 to [00:05:00] 10 days before you see any blip in the process. 

Bee Expert: And that is a healthy thing for them. They can prevent the disease from spreading throughout the colony when they do that. So if bees get sick, they may divide themselves. A lot of the sick bees end up leaving. What's left.

Can recover and 

Keith: maintain. Yep. It's really important that if you see bees are in short supply, they're in significant decline because of insect problems insect issues. But if you see a swarm, they're not going to make it on their own in the wild. You mustn't spray them, don't spray them.

We've gone out to rescue bees, and somebody's standing there spraying them with unbelievable chemicals. But reach out to garden supply company. And if you're local, if you're not local, reach out to Facebook B group, the county, almost every county in America has a big.

But you reach out to one of those guys, and they'll put, they'll get the word out there [00:06:00] to the beekeepers that, that are available, 

Bee Expert: the keepers want to catch these things, give them a home, and then take care of them. Sure, exactly. 

Keith: And you mentioned that there's not that many feral bees left.

It's probably somebody's. If 

Bee Expert: you see what 

Keith: Yeah, it's going to be somebody hive. There's a mite that's been around for about ten years, and that's a big part of the problem with bees. And it's why the loss rate with bees has gone way up, even when they're managed.

But if they're not treated for. Ultimately those hives are just going to decline over 24 months. And it probably won't make it to, it may not make it a year, but it was not going to make it two years. So when you lose a high. In a tree, say, they'll leave the resources behind, and you may get another swarm that goes to that tree, but you don't, but isn't that high as died out.

And then another swarm moves in because the resources are already there. I grew up in the country, and I remember honeybees would get in people's houses and stuff like that, but I haven't heard of like a swarm and a deck. Yeah. We could have to send you pictures that they happen mainly in the [00:07:00] springtime this spring.

It's a mid-March through mid June is getting way late for swarms, but you see a few then April and May. And it's, and again, as Jason said, there it's the natural way that a beehive, they multiply, you end up with two points. They seem to like houses branches in cars.

Yeah. So my dad tells this stor...

Keith: [00:00:00] Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. I've got Jason here today. Jason is our full-time beekeeper who manages the bee department. It helps people out with advice and does all of our pollination and honey chasing that we do up in, up, and down the red.

Jason, now we'll talk about the difference between nukes and packages. What do you think the biggest difference is between nukes and packages? Jason? 

Bee Expert: Timing. Timing is the. The advantage of getting an established colony over a loose assortment of bees, which is what a package of bees 

Keith: are.

And so packages usually come at what timeframe 

Bee Expert: packages are later in the season and are dependent on how the weather gums up through the south because most bees are coming up [00:01:00] from Georgia, and the lady gets them the less time you have to 

Keith: build. So if you get a package, you're not. You're likely not going to see honey that year.

Bee Expert: You be hopeful to build out your colony, fill out all the frames with wax, and have some food stores. You'll be supplementing to get 

Keith: that. I bought packages initially when I got into beekeeping ten years, 10, 15 years ago. And that was the thing I didn't even know about nukes when I got into it.

I knew I knew there were packages available, and I bought packages. But that was probably my biggest thing I learned down the road was that you could put a nuke in, and so our nukes come, what 

Bee Expert: 1st of March into February typically am. 

Keith: When you're in and how much, honey, could you harvest from a nuc?

It 

Bee Expert: is an established colony. So you've already got five full frames of these in different stages of development, a queen that's accepted and a colony that's actively working. So you put that into your hive, and in a few weeks, your calling will be filling out their box the amount of space they have to live in, and you [00:02:00] can start to gear them up to make honey.

So you can expect to get some honey depending on how well the weather and the season are. 

Keith: Sure. And the nuc and the queen, and there are many variables, but. The people look at nucs, and I think sometimes things think they're expensive. Or there's always a question of local nucs over Florida nucs.

I like Florida nucs because they come early. What's your 

Bee Expert: thought in general, I'm looking at bees. If I'm looking for something local, I'm probably looking more regional. So I wouldn't buy bees coming out of the Northwest and Northeast. I'd be looking for bees from the south or Southeast.

Sure. They don't necessarily have to be from the town I'm in, just from the general area that they're going to be forging on the same types of plants and have the same kinds of weather in 

Keith: general to deal with. So you, Florida bees that can handle humidity and heat, will thrive in North Carolina.

They'll do just fine. Excellent. Versus something that's acclimated to cold weather and, 

Bee Expert: general in general, any of the bees you're going to get, be it ones that are from more Northern climate or a Southern climate, they're [00:03:00] probably going to do fine. Anyhow, because bees will still go out and do what bees do forage on flowers.

Sure. It just, and it all depends on your goals as a beekeeper, too. So if you're looking to grow bees or if you're looking to produce honey for the different types of bees, you may. It May make a difference, but healthy bees are what you want in general. 

Keith: a healthy full nuc

It just gets you that quick start in the spring. We've started nucs in the last few years. Better than 60% of them, 70% of them produced honey. And, sometimes we'll begin to a nuc in a, in an eight frame or a ten frame box and let it build-out and then put a honey super on it and harvest honey depending on where we are with established hives.

But the other way you can do it is to build bees and build resources. 

Bee Expert: There'll be as if you're looking to have some pollinators. B's in general. Getting a nuc allows you to have to get them early enough allows you to take advantage of the full spring seat, 

Keith: right?

So you can put them in a hive body, and [00:04:00] then when they fill out, you can go ahead and add another hive body to it. So you have twice as many resources and the ability to split a hive maybe later on. 

Bee Expert: Absolutely. Yep. With the package bees, you're limited in time.

So you're going to get those later into this. Those bees are going to have first to accept the queen. That's been given to them to build out wax so that the queen can start laying eggs and start producing more of the colony and filling up enough of that space to reserve enough resources to get through. 

Keith: the summer and winter.

So then you're feeding, treating, and managing that hive from, say, April 1st or May 1st. All the way around until May 1st again, right before you're going to be able to harvest any honey. 

Bee Expert: Absolutely. So if you're looking at the cost of things and look certainly do are more, slightly more expensive overall, upfront, but overall over the year and trying to make them survive through the following year, you'll probably spend more than.

Providing resources 

Keith: for your package, be sure. So you're at Costco buying 25 pound bags of sugar to feed the bees instead of potentially harvesting honey the first year. [00:05:00] W what about the makeup of a package? As far as the workers, or how a package is, a package is just shaken out of a full-size hive, 

Bee Expert: right?

So the commercial guys are the producers of packaged bees who will go through their bee yards and select a solid colony and shake quantities of bees out of those hives to provide for the packages. So civil have a large box of many pounds of bees and take a scoop out, weigh them out 2, 3, 3, 2, or three pounds each, dump them into another box, and add a queen who's separated from that colony.

Keith: So you could have all forgers and no nurse bees potentially. Not all, probably, but not a good mix of. Absolutely. 

Bee Expert: You're getting a random assortment of bees that are pretty aggressively handled up until the time you put them in your hive. The likelihood of them doing well decreases as.

As all those issues 

Keith: occur to him. Sure. The other thing that I think with packages that people don't factor in is [00:06:00] that bees are something that we, it's a difficult scenario because we guarantee plants and stand behind our work and everything that we do at the garden center.

But these are something that comes with no guarantee. It's these fly. They're an insect. They and I've, we've had years where we installed 20 packages trying to build bees. We had extra packages, and we're going to install them in our own Hobbs. And, some of those packages fly away.

So you, you know, you don't know if it's worth it, you know, and you don't see what you're getting, you know, you, uh, sometimes you get crazy BS. Oh, we're going to build out this analogy. 

Bee Expert: to 

Keith: the end. No, but you could install ten hives and have two of them fly away or have five of them fly away.

So you've, if you have five, five of them fly away, and in one year, it's a 50% increase. Now you're paying 15, 15, $20 more than a nuc would cost. On the flip side, [00:07:00] You could buy a nuc, build out a hive, split it by in the first year, and have two packs. So there's a, there seems like there are so many advantages to buying a nuc. 

And when you think about it, i...

Hey, Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. I've got Shannon here. Shannon manages our house plant area of the garden supply company. She does all our buying. She's our go-to person when people have questions about new and unusual plants or plant care. Yeah. Today, we talked about just easy plants to have around a plant that you could buy for your son or your daughter.

Something that's for the, an interior designer. My favorite plant what's my favorite plant.

Mother-in-law's tongue. It never goes away. It's the easiest plant in the world. If you don't, over-water it, I've got about 20 of them, and there are so many different varieties, colors, and [00:01:00] sizes. It's great. It's excellent put it on a, in a pot, on a buffet, or put it on a pot on a shelf.

As long as you don't go over water and I've, overwatered one in the last two or three years and started to lose some, partial part of the plant and had to put a little bit of heavier light on it to get it to come back around. What other bulletproof plants do you like for customers who don't want to mess with plants that much and want to be successful?

Snake plans will let me say this real quick something our customers get a kick out of is on our care tag. It says tolerate almost any abuse, and it couldn't be more accurate. Yeah, absolutely. ZZ plants are another one that is very. Similar in care. Yeah, I think that's why it's easy.

Plants have gotten so popular because it's another plant that you can stick in a pot. And if you miss it for a week, it's probably not going to kill it. If you water it twice in one week, you might. Dragon trees, from the dressiness family or another one, can just be ignored. Yeah, that's a great plan.

So all of these plants are something that you [00:02:00] could pick up, and you can get into the house, plant craze without having finicky plants in your home. Something, they say houseplants they calm your mood. They're great for depression—clean, pure about the air.

There are so many positive points to it. So if you want a plant that you, that's not going to create a lot of extra stress in your life that, don't pick up the hardest plant to maintain. Maybe don't start with a rare and unusual $500 Bonzai and worry about every leaf falling off of it.

Start there another good one. Yeah. Patho is path is the original house plan. You go to the Mexican restaurant, and there's Panthers binding all over the ceiling. There's a. All, doctor's office, and they're so easy to propagate. So it's fun to take a cutting and watch that turn into a whole new plant for sure.

Jade plant is one to me. There's so Jade plant is a pass-along plant. Usually, people that, that are buying water or having. I've, I hear all the time, with all plants but Jay plant in [00:03:00] particular and my grandmother had one for, a hundred years, and she passed it down, or we broke it up and rooted cuttings off of it.

So it's a memory sake plant. But that's one that takes very little water and hardly loses a leaf. It's. And it is telling by the leaves when it needs water, how they wrinkle up a little bit. Yeah, exactly. That baby Jade is the other one. I think it is a bonsai plant, but it's also just an just. It's just as easy as a Jade plant.

But a different look than that red stem and the green leaves and the variegated ones are also gorgeous. Exactly. Is anything else that, that you have on your list.

Succulents for some people, succulent succulents are great if you've got bright light. Absolutely. It's a bright light or lights them up, there's. It has led lights fluorescent lights. It doesn't necessarily have to be an expensive grow light. You can use just a simple two two-bulb shop light and create a situation where, sometimes adding some light to [00:04:00] a room that way, from underneath a table or something, and then having a plant stand there.

And that makes seed hymns and succulents thrive. And that's such a great way to. That artistic value in the plant and water on those is almost non-existent it's it may be once a month scenario depending on the heat and the light. But certainly a tiny bit of work.

I think that's the, just adding the color of a pot and a plant to a room does make a huge difference. Finding those easy plants, the sands of areas, or the snake plants are the ones that we've always had a vast display of because I like them.

And it, and I like them because I might water once a week. I've got a house that's about an hour from here that and I'll leave about 10 of them there, and I water them every month and a half. And very rarely do you lose a leaf. Every once in a while, we'll lose a lethal age out, and you're pulling it out, but then we would water deeply, and it'll make it another month.

Yeah. I have a Hubba, that giant [00:05:00] leaf one. I was in bright lightroom, and it flowered for the first time a couple of months ago, and the flower was vast and stunning, and it lasted a good long time. And that was exciting for me because you don't typically see them flowering. I've got a close friend that built a house near mine and Dennis. He's with clear light electric.

He's a good friend of mine, but he's my electrician. And I gave him a snake. And If Dennis can keep a snake plant a lot, anybody can own a snake plan alive. It may be his wife Stacy may have saved that plan active, but anyway, he's still excited about it. It was a housewarming present, and it was two years ago, and it looks better than when I gave it to him.

So that's how that's the scenario with us and severity or snake plant. Everybody should have one because it's just super easy. The other thing I like about these selections we've talked about is really, they can come in a small four-inch pot, or they can come in a 14-inch pot and you can have it as a floor plant or as a [00:06:00] tabletop.

Yeah. So a sense of various, some of them, some of them, the maximum Heights, like eight or 10 inches. So you can put it in a tiny pot. And then, as you said, have a plan in the corner of and then, if somebody wants something that's five to six feet tall, put it on plant stand, and it still gives you that vertical, height than a corner.

I'm excited about all the new plants we've got coming in. We've talked about easy to care for plants. Everybody should stop by and take a look. It's a kind of calming, enjoyable scenario to walk around. Yeah. I picked up this tagline, it's our customer's happy place, but we hear that.

So it's come in and walk around and enjoy the house plants. Cold, rainy days are warm and sunny in our greenhouse. So kind of fun. All right. Until next time everybody wants your plants, we will talk to you soon.

Good morning, Keith Ramsey with the garden supply company. I've got Shannon here this morning and wanted to ask her questions about what's trending and houseplants. She manages our houseplant department and garden supply company and does all our buying, and there's just been a massive growth in houseplants, Shannon.

What do you think made the house plant trend spike up? I think COVID had something to do with it. It drove people to be at home and stuck and want to bring some life into their home. It also brought in some people with more disposable income and this new generation.

Who is starting to like house plants? Millennials seem like they've picked up houseplants. It's a—resurgence of the [00:01:00] the sixties and seventies. I was a kid at that point, but that was a time when houseplants were just huge. Macrame hangers and pathos growing all over, you're taking over your house.

We're back to that scenario, especially with young kids. I couldn't agree more. And the macrome trend is also back for sure, but I see the pictures of the people, the customers home, and it is like a greenhouse. That's the thing that gets me most excited is big plant shelves and hanging plants in front of a window and just people's plant collection and how excited they are about their collection of plants.

It's been a lot of fun from my perspective as well. Not only these younger people are coming in and teaching them about. Plants and caring for them, but also people who never got into it are now adults and have started to pick enough house plans. Yeah. The thing that amazes me a lot about it is the rare and unusual house plant scenario, and it's, it's gone crazy.

It's unbelievable. Yeah. [00:02:00] We brought in last year, like that tie constellation and the pink princesses, and just the opportunity for people to come in and see them was exciting. So these are plants that nobody else has. In many cases, people haven't seen before they're plants that are newly developed or newly crossed plants.

And, the first one I purchased them hard to believe that we're buying a house plant for $800. And scary for me too. Yeah. And now we've, we've—two of those in the $500 price range. And of course, there's the same plant available for $10 without the variegation and its uniqueness as a first-time out-of-the-box plan.

So everybody can get into houseplants at any price range, but it is truly unique. We've started the rare and unusual plant collectors that are out there. Showcase those and bring in more as they become available from our growers, right in the center of the house plant section. We have a couple of tables that are really [00:03:00] featuring all those right now.

And every week we get more on different Fridays. The houseplants do we have currently are just unusual or newer. And you two of my favorite are both anther Rams right now. One is called the king Ethereum, where the leaves will bend forward a little bit. Become about three feet long.

There's also. Black cardboard and thorium are spectacular. The black heart-shaped leaf with white veining and even spikes flowers. That's awesome. We're partnering with a couple of other local garden centers as well, too. Be able to buy in more plants that are harder to get, that have to travel a long distance, or you have to buy larger quantities.

Go into a local garden center. Not necessarily just a garden supply company, but there are so many of them that are just amazing. Fairview Homewood garden. Logan's garden hut down in a few coy about finding these unusual plants that you're not going to find necessarily a box store or something like that.

Absolutely. We [00:04:00] have a couple of them that I have seen a little bit of. Big box stores that were unavailable to us were under trademark. And now we're starting to get some of those in the Ravens easy and that Claudia network. Yeah. Some of the larger, there's an extremely large grower in the states and is rolling out some unusual plants to box stores.

And they're a little bit harder for us to get, so it's a little bit of a change of pace. They're there. They're growing them specifically for them. So it's a little bit harder to chase that. Definitely. What about caring for somebody that doesn't have that hasn't had houseplants before knowing what the light condition is or bringing in pictures helps us get a sense of what is considered bright light to them, or medium light, low light.

Low light plants can tolerate bright light and thrive in bright light, but colorful light plants need. Or need bright light. But watering is probably the number one issue I see with our customers who have problems with their plants. Too much [00:05:00] love.

. Babying it just a little bit too much, instead of letting it dry out between those waterings, they want to water a little bit every day or every other day. Yeah. The thing that I think what's interesting is when a plant looks dry if you're looking at the soil and it looks dry on the surface, if you push your finger into the ground, you can push it in half an inch and all of a sudden you can feel moisture.

And so the plant doesn't need any water yet. And, but people are watering them. I like to explain to people how to lift the plant in the grower. So they can feel the bottom, the holes, of course. And then also just the weight of it, right? Yeah. I always tell people the water every week, pick your day.

If you're off on Sunday and Sunday is a day you spend time around the house to water, try to water consistently on the same day. And that way, it's either a little teeny, a few drops of water or maybe no water at all, or, a good in good, heavy watering if a plant's dried out.

So yeah. It'll make it to the following week. Absolutely. And then when you're letting it dry out, that's decreasing your odds of fungal gnats. [00:06:00] Exactly. And, when a plant's overwatered, it's just not getting enough oxygen. So if it's sitting in water, it's smothering the planet. It just doesn't get the oxygen it needs.

And without the oxygen, it can't take up water. So it does. Letting a plant's not going to dry out as fast in the house, so it's just a check that with your finger almost as he is lifted. As you said, that's a great idea. 

Keith: [00:00:00] Good morning, Keith Ramsey with the Garden Supply Company. It's wintertime in North Carolina. And I always start thinking about structure in the garden in the winter. And you look out and you've got all these vacant spaces or dull spaces, and there are all kinds of things you can do to create structure.

Japanese maple in the wintertime with no leaves on it creates a fair amount of structure. So you can add plants and create the bones of a garden with hedges and screened plants and that kind of thing. And it, that greens the garden up with evergreen hedges and creates life.

That's there 12 months out of the year. And sometimes that plants when you look at plants that are boring it's because they don't do a whole lot, they don't change for the year. Giving them that the green and the [00:01:00] structure 12 months out of the year, really probably do more than something that puts on a big show for two, three weeks, or four weeks.

Something like a chameleon that limbs in the wintertime for two to three months. You create a green hedge behind something and it's there 12 months out of the year. Walkways and stonework are other ways to create structure in the garden. It gives you the definition.

It gives you something to look at what's there and it's there permanently. When you look at the cost of a walkway or a patio sometimes it's not really, something that's gonna last for 20 years or forever. So it's, the cost is not as much as, adding flowers to a garden or something you're going to, you're going to repeat and do over and over just boulders in the garden.

Very low maintenance but create a huge impact. People always hate buying boulders. They always think that you ought to be able to pick them up on the side of the road. Drive out to the mountains and throw on in your trunk, but it's the way that the Boulder and the shipping and the placement of it, but Boulder just adds a great accent to a garden.

And then, dry Creek beds, a lot of times solve [00:02:00] a drainage problem it just creates the definition and a backdrop or foreground for planning and adds a lot of winter interest ponds and streams are the same thing, pond and they add a lot of life to a garden.

It's you've got the running water and you've got you've created that structure and that backdrop for your plants through the year when they're coming and going. And then, the stone would be a one that's extremely low maintenance, not a whole lot to do with it.

Year in, year out. Would is another thing that you can add to do a garden in the wintertime. And when you've got a vacant space or you've got something that's really flat just adding a post or three posts to a garden gives you a place you can grow Vons on gives you some elevation, creating something.

That's got a nice finial on top or, a nice cut on. Or a light post so that you're creating some light in the evening so that you can see the garden and then put vines on it or something that's going to climb on its pieces, offenses or to give you some screen or, just even three sections of [00:03:00] fence, short, sorta short section, like a two or three-foot section that goes, it's either hung out there or that's on a post to give you a backdrop for like a perennial garden.

And then, gates or entryways are. Into new spaces do the same thing. They just create that structure that then in the spring you can come in or later when, or you can come in and plan around.

Yeah. Garden art adds interest. It adds color to all kinds of garden art, probably the most popular garden art that we sell these days is like a window. People are adding that to the garden and that's like a ponder or a fountain and you're adding movement in the garden, which is kinda nice.

That's an easy thing to do in the wintertime, and you're not spending a ton of time outside, but come out, look around, pick one out and then you're literally just stepping into the garden. Or sometimes people put it in a little bit of concrete, but it just it's a steak and it can just go straight into the garden and it adds, you look out and you see that movement.

I've got one in the [00:04:00] middle of a bunch of ornamental grasses. So when it's windy, the grasses are blowing around, and then I've got a windmill effect of the wind art. The other thing is from a focal point and a functional. Is having a fire pit when you look out there it's an inviting piece.

It's a reason to go out into the garden on a cool night. And I've said on another podcast, I love a fire pit when I'm working in the yard. On a fall day and you're picking up sticks and finding guns, you can enjoy the fire pit, but you're also getting rid of the sticks and the pine guns at the same time.

So it's an interactive way to be out in the yard and gardening benches, that, that same kind of scenario. It's a focal point in the garden. And when you look out into the garden and you see a bench it's inviting it's an, it's something inviting to the garden, it's although I find when I have a bench, I spend more time working in the garden or walking around the garden.

Yeah. They're fun to look at for me, but I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting on a bench. But it is a good focal point and, [00:05:00] planning a few plants around the bench and just creating a nice little quiet area parts in a garden is another one. I think most people think about it.

As being functional to hold plants, but structurally they're fun. Do you know what I mean? To do a bigger and in a garden or do a blue glaze pot and the garden adds the plants too. And a plant around it and really create the, using it almost like you would a Boulder. As the structure in a garden and then, a backdrop or a foreground in front of it gives you the color and it gives you a, gives you some in the garden, something to look at.

And then plants are always an easy way to create structure and a fairly low maintenance inexpensive way to do. But now it's just a good time to go to the window, spend some time looking at it on a cold day, walk around mark stuff out, figure out where you need elevation and where you need Heights.

And just get out in the garden. And, even if it's a few minutes here or there come out to the garden center and look around and take a look at stuff [00:06:00] inside and outside. And then pick out a wind feature or a fire pit to create something to enjoy in the garden. And as the weather warms up, we'll see you next time.

Keith: [00:00:00] Hey, Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. People are always asking what to do in the wintertime in the garden. And there's, there's a long list of, to do's in the winter. Not many people want to go out because we've got such cold weather. One of my favorite things to do while it's cool is spreading mulch.

It requires a minor cleanup picking up sticks and debris, raking the beds out, and getting everything ready for spring. You usually want to cut your perennial plants that need cleaning up or pruning. And there's lots of pruning.

That can be done during the wintertime, so once you get through some of those projects, we'll touch back on pruning further down, but Once you get all the beds cleaned out. Mulching is a hot process. The mulch itself [00:01:00] creates a lot of heat, and when it's cool out, it's a nice thing to you'll go out with a heavy coat.

And, as soon as you get into that mulch pile, you'll be shedding layers. And so it's something I like to do, it's probably not a bad thing this time of year because I don't know about everybody else, but I had way too many calories over Christmas. And that's a calorie-burning project for sure.

Get you out, do something good for your heart, and burn calories. Mulch also holds moisture in the ground, and it contains a lot of heat in the ground. So it's good for plant roots. We say our plants repeatedly, but winter, fall, winter, and early spring is the time to plant.

You can plant 12 months out of the year. There's no, no better time than when the plants are dormant. But you get a plant in the ground, and it's in the middle of winter, and you put mulch on it. The reason it places this stuff in the ground in the wintertime is so good is that we've got the plants will [00:02:00] grow roots all through the winter.

And, but when you mulch it, you're adding heat to the heat, to the ground. You're going to grow a lot more roots, a lot faster. It knocks the edge off of the cold for the plants. So it's an excellent thing for the plant in the wintertime and then suitable for weed control. You're getting ahead of the head of the schedule your molten and things that you might get to germinate that are on the surface.

And then the cold weather is going to kill them out. When I'm cleaning up prepping for mulch, a lot of the debris that we have, I've got a fire pit, so I'm picking up sticks and stuff like that. I drop them in the fire pit, and I'm prepping myself. I'll break them up and build a fire at the same time.

And it's an excellent way to get rid of that kind of stuff if all, and, or take it, taking it out to the street. But sometimes, when we're working in the yard, depending on the time of the year, if it's cool, I will fire up the fire pit and keep dropping the Dixon or pinecones in as we're working in the yard, makes it a little more enjoyable.

And then compost piles. If you've got a, you're raking up leaves and debris, and cutting [00:03:00] perennials back North Carolina soil needs compost probably more than the heavy clay soil benefits from top dressing or digging compost in. It's worth every penny by the bag when you're planting because you don't have.

A decent amount of compost and good soil. Plants aren't going to do as well as they could. They'll probably live, but they're not going to do as well as possible. But when you got compost, that's just coming out of your compost pile. A, it's probably more alive than a bag of soil.

But B, it's free. And it gives you it's a shorter walk. You don't have. Package it up in a bag and put it at the curb where it has to go to a composting facility, and then you're buying it on the other end. When you start a compost pile, that's a good winter project if that's something.

I usually use a little bit of nitrogen in there. Nitrogen-fixing organisms are what break down the compost. Adding just a handful of any fertilizer or just a nitrogen-based fertilizer is good. It's good to get a compass fired up and hot, and then some compost starter, like a [00:04:00] stoma, has an excellent compost starter and a few cups of that to the pile as you're adding stuff debris, it will just speed the process.

And then every spring, I have some fresh worms too. We always order in worms and have red worms in your compost pile. We'll undoubtedly speed the process of breaking stuff down. The other thing this time of year I started looking at is I'll begin collecting seeds, looking at the seed rack, and figuring out what I'm going to grow something new for this year.

Seeing what's available, just making sure that some of my favorite varieties are available, and the seeds in the last few years have been hard to come by. The availability just hasn't been there. I like to get my sources in early and have them sitting on the shelf ready to go, and I can plan out my garden at that time.

Soil testing is something that I always think about. Winter, time's a good time to do it. The state does it for free. It's probably the single best thing you can do for your soil. Figure out where you're at with pH so that you can make some adjustments to the. And then knowing what it's lacking in micronutrients and then nitrogen phosphorus and [00:05:00] potash so that you can make those adjustments in your plant is getting what it needs.

Lime is inexpensive to add to the soil, and it just makes a huge difference. So in the wintertime, if, even if you don't get a soil sample out, just lime in your landscape line, lime in your garden getting lime out on your grass, people usually come in and buy one or two bags.

It's probably something in most cases where people need three to five bags; more extensive lawns need 10 to 20. It takes a lot of property to make a difference. And when you're adding lime, you're adding calcium. In the garden, that will be beneficial to, or tomatoes or peppers and that kind of stuff.

And that gives it time to break down, and it's readily available in the soil. And your stuff's going to do a whole lot better. In the last few weeks, we just have started looking at what we've started prepping for putting some bags together. For people who don't have the space or don't have a big garden outside planning, lettuce bags are all kinds of fabric bags now that you can [00:06:00] buy seeding those indoors.

You can start to harvest them indoors, or you can move them in. They're small enough, they produce a fair amount, and you can stagger that crop. So you could plant lettuce every week if you wanted, and in five or ten bags and then cycle through them as they're ready. And we talked about pruning. The one thing about pruning as you can see into the plant, see where to plant, where branches are crossing over, and you need to remove those. You also know the plant's overall shape, so you can start to shape it. If the plant needs to be reduced in size, you can cut the plant. Structurally pruning things that are, we're limbs getting too heavy.

You can take some of the weight off of it, and it's just all there. And it's all visual in the wintertime. It's the other time. The other thing that I'm looking at while I'm looking at pruning is the hard part of the garden, the bones of a garden, and figuring out structurally where we're missing stuff.

You can all things that need to be screened or a neighbor's window that you could block out. It's a good time. You. [00:07:00] To see that stuff. And, you get used to it as the winter goes on. Still, if you take a good hard look putting a plan or two in this time of year, a year or so from now, you're not looking at your neighbor's window, or they're not looking into your backyard or side yard, or if you've got an eyesore trash can and that kind of stuff that you want to screen that's a good time to figure it out.

And sometimes you got a deciduous plant there in the springtime. And...

[00:00:20] Keith: Hey, Keith Ramsey with garden supply company. We've had a lot of questions recently about weeds how to rid your yard of weeds. And it's a constant problem for sure. The one thing about weeds that I always tell people is, if you just spend a few minutes figuring out what we do have and what the lifecycle is you can actually manage it a little bit better. 

[00:00:56] Most people don't want to delve in that deep, but like vegetables, you get warm season weeds and cool season weeds. And if you know what stage the weeds you're at, or if it's an annual or if it's a perennial. You can actually manage the problem a little bit easier. 

[00:01:10] There's things like chickweed that people come in the middle of spring and they said, I've got chickweed all over my yard and it's choking out my grass and I need to do something with it. And, it is choking out your grass and you do need to do something with it. 

[00:01:23] But the reality is it's not that crazy of a problem because the first hot day it's going to start to fade. it's On its way out. And it's knowing that you need to have the pre-emergence down ahead of that. So you don't get to that point is easier than managing the problem at that point. 

[00:01:38] And once if you're in a house or you're got a garden space and you've, and you start to understand what weed you have and what the life cycle is you can control them a whole lot easier. I always find that to me. Pulling weeds is a relaxing thing. 

[00:01:55] It's, you can walk through the garden and you can pull a handful of weeds until you can't walk through the garden and just pull a handful of weeds. You're raking a wheelbarrow loads of weeds, so it's staying ahead of the problem knowing when to put down pre-emergence.  

[00:02:10] If you put down pre-emergence, you can usually eliminate 90% of the germination and manage the problem and then pulling weeds is not actually painful. And it's something you can do in a short period of time. If you've got a weed problem, if it's a handful of weeds, you pull them before they go to seed. 

[00:02:27] So that you're not dropping new seeds. And then You just don't want them to get, out of control at that point. So you're going to, you're going to pull all the weeds or you're going to rake the weeds out or the other option is spraying them. And people always shy away from spraying, but there's  

[00:02:41] There are many organic sprays out there now that you can use. There's an iron-based product that works extremely well. And broadleaf weeds in you can't spray it on, on and around your plants, but it's not going to affect the roots of the plant. So it goes into the leaves. It's basically a toxic level of iron. 

[00:02:58] So it'll cause the plant to cave in. And then you've added iron to your soil for future say, you're going to have greener plants, which is a benefit. Fatty acids is another one. It basically just Smothers the plant can't take in oxygen.  

[00:03:11] And then there's all kinds of vinegar products on the market. Vinegar works really well. I recommend using a product that's that is the right percentage and something that's made for weeds over just experimenting in your kitchen, because I think people can cook up these recipes and then you don't really know what you're doing to the microbes in the soil. 

[00:03:32] You don't know what you're doing to the worms. So using a product that's labeled that's been tested is not a bad idea. There's a clove based product that does the same thing. It'll, take care of any kind of light weeds not a really serious perennial weeds, but it does a good job. 

[00:03:45] And then there's the standby that everybody's used for years that any more is the scariest thing on the market Roundup. I still think Roundup is a pretty safe product used in moderation. I've used it for years and been around it. I don't see, I don't see it being extremely detrimental in a home garden. 

[00:04:02] More of an issue when it's sprayed over our food in large quantities on farms that they could you'll see it over sprayed into, taking taken out native plants and that kind of thing. And. We're losing pollinators and that kind of stuff, but Roundup in the garden is not something that I'm shying away from. 

[00:04:18] It's something I use in my garden when I need to, otherwise I'm using something that's organic and and I would use it in the, in a perennial. I'd use it in a veggie garden, but I'd use it ahead of season over during, at the point that you've got food in there. And then the other end of that is pre-emergent, you're catching the weeds before the germinate. 

[00:04:35] That's the pre part it's before that seed germinates, you get the pre-emergence out and then it stops that seed from getting to the point where it's going to get a root into the ground and start to grow. And there's an organic option there too. Corn, gluten Corn gluten is a is a product that it'll do exactly what the chemical products do. 

[00:04:55] . It just slows the growth of the cuddle lead, and when it comes out of the seed, the seed will dry up and you'll eliminate probably 90% of the germination. Dimension is a product that we use both for crabgrass and the lawn And for weeds in beds. 

[00:05:11] It's not something that I would use in a veggie garden, but there's two or three different pre emergencies you can use in a veggie garden as well that are labeled for veggie gardens. And don't go into the plant. And then the other part of it is, it's like weeding, but cultivating the soil turning the soil and digging around the plants. 

[00:05:27] That makes a big difference in weed control. When you're in a perennial situation or within trees and shrubs, you can mulch, and mulching it'll either smother out weeds or it keeps the weed seeds from getting to a moist enough space that they can germinate. 

[00:05:40] And all kinds of mulches can be used. You could. You can shred your leaves and use leaf mulch. It's very effective, and it's good for the soil. You can use a Woody-type malt or bark mulch. In a veggie garden, a lot of times, we'll use paper or cardboard. Usually, you can just recycle cardboard from packages or a dumpster. 

[00:05:58] And then You can also buy just cheap rolls of brown paper and roll them out in a row. That does an excellent job because it stays dry. It's going to keep cutting down the light that weeds underneath it will get. And then it just gives you a good, hard walk-in surface in between yours. 

[00:06:16] Get to know the weeds you have and what you have. You can always bag of weed and bring it in. Now we got people that can. They can tell you what you've got and when it needs to be sprayed or when the pre-emergence needs to go out. The more you understand the weeds you're trying to manage, the easier it'll be. 

[00:06:34] Just walk through the garden and pull a handful of weeds. Just keep them under control and managed. And it's not the end of the world to pull a few weeds. We'll see you next time.

Keith: [00:00:00] 

Wintertime in North Carolina is a great time to start prepping your veggie garden, pulling out, finishing up excellent seeds and stuff from the fall. And you can do additional seasonal plannings and cover them, or you can do cover crops, which is a perfect way to get green manure back into the soil.

When I do a cover crop, I usually do rye or like annual ryegrass or oats or, or white Clover, medium red Clover. The one thing I wouldn't do that sometimes you'll see in books is Crimson Clover, tall and beautiful in a field. It's beautiful on a farm, but it's big for a, for a residential garden.

Joe: And when you say cover crop, I'm not familiar with that. That means when you're not using it as a garden; you put something over the whole thing. [00:01:00] And what's the benefit of that. 

Keith: You're pulling nitrogen out of the soil. So you're holding the nitrogen at the top level of the soil.

So you're, you're pulling nitrogen up into the plant, and then you're creating green manure. So the, in the early spring, you go back in, and you cut it back down, and then you dig it around in, or you don't even have to cut it back down. If it's low enough, you dig it back into the. 

Joe: So it's better than just leaving it as open dirt.

Exactly. Which doesn't look good if it rains and gets all over your lawn. Anyway, that's the one thing I was going to say 

Keith: sometimes, I'll dig everything out. I'll turn the soil a little bit. I'll rake it smooth. And then I'll take something like oats, winter oats, or annual rye, and I'll broadcast it across the garden.

And then I just kind of rake it in with my hands or rake it in with rake water. It well. The other thing about it is it's just watching something grow is nice. And, and so all of a sudden, you, instead of having a garden, that's got an old, dead tomato in the middle of it. You've cleaned it up, and you've seeded it.

And then you've got all this incredible green lush growth coming up in the wintertime. So it's nice, it's a nice view too. It's [00:02:00] like watching, you know, new green grass grow in your, in your lawn after the summertime. Instead of a cover crop, the other option you can do is go in. Plant lettuce, mustard, collards, some of the cool season stuff you would typically do in mid-August or February 15th is when you would do things like broccoli and that kind of stuff that needs a cool season to get going, to be able to root in.

But going in and doing lettuce, you do the same thing this time of year prep. You prep the soil, you, you rake it out. You, you plant your lettuce, you plant it heavy and then cover it. And the lettuce comes back up. You've got some greens to harvest through the wintertime, and then when you cut it before, you've still got that green manure that you can kind of dig back into the soil, and it keeps the earth alive.

It gives the microbes something to break down and start rereleasing nitrogen. The other thing this time of year is the soil test is probably one of the things that I would say 90% of the people don't. [00:03:00] It's perhaps one of the more important things to perfect the soil and optimal plant growth.

And that's landscape plants and garden plants. But it's just one of those things. People, you know, data, and another day goes by. And I can't tell you the last time I've done a soil test in my yard, but it does make a difference if you're a new gardener or an older gardener and want to do something exciting.

And, and, and something that you'll see. Great results from going ahead and doing a soil test. Then once you get the soil test, people will bring soil tests to us, and we'll go through them with them there. They're not highly complicated if you've got a science mind, but many times, people look at them and glaze over and they don't understand what they're looking at.

But adding lime limes, probably the biggest thing that you can always add lime to, to North Carolina soil and, and almost most, I'd say 90% of the soil needs. But knowing the quantity of lime that you need is the thing. And so a lot of times you'll need [00:04:00] 20, 20 to 30 bags, an acre. Most people will buy 40 pounds, put half of it out, and think they've done something.

And they haven't. So it's just, it's a good indicator of how much time you need. And kind of a starting point. And so you, if you do a soil test, you put 20 bags of lime out two years later, you may need ten more loads. It's, it's something that's constantly changing. You get a baseline, and then you can go from there.

The other thing besides Lyme is fertilizer to, to the Mix organic fertilizer you can put out throughout the year, putting it out in the wintertime gives it a little bit of time to break down the microbes, start to break it down when we have warm weather. And give you a little bit more punch to the garden in the early spring.

I wouldn't recommend doing a chemical fertilizer this time of year because you don't want to push new growth. You don't want to make them if you have garden plants in them. And then and then we have a real cold snap, and foilage gets burned, or flowers get burned, 90% of the people don't plant [00:05:00] cool-season vegetables at the right time. So prepping right now, you're preparing for a February 15. Plant date for cool-season vegetables, and we'll get vegetables at that time of year. We get a few trays. We don't sell many, and then two or three weeks pass, and we sell a few more, and we get a few more in people are still planting them on up until April, but to be successful, I like to plant right around February 15th through about March 15th.

And then I cut it off. I think it's almost a waste of time after that. But we, you know, people are still coming in. They're looking for something to put into their garden. They're finally out moving around, and you know, they want to plant something. We still have them that time of year, but February 15th is like a great target date for cool-season stuff like broccoli and cauliflower and things that need time to root in and then push flowers at a later date.

The target date for the warm season stuff is like Ms. Moore, like April 15th. That's our last freezer. But there, I think a lot of people push that date. I [00:06:00] usually I'm planting tomatoes like the first you know, in, in middle of March, you know, we get a warm spell, and it looks like it's going to be friendly for two weeks.

I'll go ahead and start putting some stuff in the ground. But I don't see many great results from early planning, the tomatoes. I think they need that heat. To push growth. So they'll sit there, and they make grow roots. Still, they're not going to put a lot of top growth on, so things like tomatoes and peppers I'd usually wait until at least the 15th, and maybe even the end of the month when we have some heat. The other thing with tomatoes is that they like the warm weather when they're.

So if you put a tomato in the middle of April, into April. Stagger, the planning. So you plant, you know, a couple of plants a month later, plant a couple more plants, you'll have tomatoes throughout the season. And then from those plants, I like to, you know, if you buy a four-inch plant, you've got a giant plant going in, you can get more variety.

So you have, you know, if you buy for four-inch plants, you're paying a little bit more for them, but [00:07:00] you, you get a bigger start when you put them in. And then you've got more variety of types of tomatoes. You can grow. You can grow more petite cherry tomatoes. You can produce a giant sandwich of tomatoes.

And then, later in the season, you can take a cutting off of that plan. And just actually literally cut the plant, but a little rooting hormone in it, and then stick it straight into the soil and the toma...

33 Garden Design 
 

[00:00:20] keith:  
 

[00:00:41] We're always talking about garden design and how we're gonna, how we're gonna do things, how we're going to mix plants up and different colors and textures and One of the things that I think comes naturally to me and not necessarily utilizing functional way, but just the natural curves and the things that make it feel easy to walk through a garden not straight lines and no sharp turns. 

[00:01:05] Not having plants come over the edge of a walkway and make you feel like you've got to lean away to, make it down. Nice, open, airy, inviting gardens. There are a few simple guidelines to help you bring more beneficial energy into your yard. No matter the size. 

[00:01:23] Size really doesn't matter. In a small garden, you can work with the garden that you have. You can apply different scales to your garden. Having walkways or paths that just have a slow-flowing curve. And not, I'll find a lot of times when I look at a house that people try to follow the house, they try to square everything up with the house. 

[00:01:44] And so they'll have a walkway that just follows straight down the side of the house or having occur in a nice curve to it. But on the other hand, people start putting curves in a landscape and. They'll put too many curves in the landscape. So it's got to be a kind of a really soft, gentle curve. 

[00:02:02] Something that you're going to enjoy, walking down. And then have a focal point either a bench or a fountain or a fire pit a big specimen plant and those All bring something different. A bench with plants around it, maybe a birdbath gives you, I find a lot of times people don't even sit on the benches, but it gives you that kind of inviting, walk down here and sit on the bench. 

[00:02:25] Kind of feeling which relaxing, takes your mind off of everything else. And it just gives you this serene water a lot of times. It, it muffles sound. So if you've got road noise or if you've got noisy neighbors sometimes the sound of water just has really soon. 

[00:02:41] So adding water to and having that as a focal point. So you see the water, it's a cooling effect. But, it also kinda mellows that space. And then fire, I think always warms the space up or gives you something, a space for entertaining, but again, it can be a focal point. 

[00:02:58] We just put in a big, hard. And before the Arbor was in and we had a fire pit out there, but the fire pits the center of the Arbor. So when you look out into the yard, it's, it looks like a space that you want to go sit in and cool evenings. Cool, cool. 

[00:03:12] Saturday. It's a perfect time to have a fire and have that, inviting you to get people over it. It really pulls people out of the house and out to a fire pit. But all of those things, great focal points, they all do something different. And, I've got a friend that I've worked with for 25 years and. 

[00:03:32] His yard is probably, it's the most intensely landscaped yard I've ever seen. And I left there one day and I was like, he's got something everywhere. Literally something everywhere. And the interesting thing is, you could, you can shift your head and there's a focal point and somebody might say it looks cluttered. 

[00:03:53] But to me, it was like every time I turned a corner, there was a focal point. There was something else. To look at, which was very interesting to me. It was, I left thinking and it's not cluttered to me at all. It's, there's something else to look at. There's something else to walk towards. 

[00:04:09] Something else that, engages your mind, which is interesting when you're out in a garden it's not just a boring space. It really pulls you out there and it has energy. And a flow to it. functional way. Doesn't have to be any great science or anything that's extremely complex. 

[00:04:26] I think sometimes, just the simplicity of a garden and then creating some focal points and having a nice flow to a garden is what functional is all about. The flow or cheek or you have life, it's like an energy force almost. But it's not something that you got to spend a whole lot of time on. 

[00:04:44] I think you when you've done it, you kinda know it, and if it's not right, shift stuff around or move stuff, sometimes having a really large plant to close, close to your space. It's like Evan wide aisles in the store, it doesn't feel comfortable to walk down a tight then I'll, or having big plants or overgrown plants, sometimes it's time just to cut them back and give yourself some more space. 

[00:05:06] Too many plants in a garden I think is always a, a negative because you don't have the space and you don't really have any negative space to, feel like there's room to move around or you just see-through. The other thing I think is that. The yin and yang of a garden. 

[00:05:20] The yang is soft, the plants the flowers and the yang would be the hard, structures and boulders and that kind of thing. Having a good balance, there are the key boulders to me we were in the plant business, but boulders to me are one of the most interesting things in the garden. 

[00:05:37] And they really do play, when you've got a flower sitting up against a Boulder, they really do play well together, and it's the contrast of the two that really make the whole thing work and thinking those things through and making sure that you've got good flow in your garden, nice steady curves, and then focal points I think will give you what you're looking for. 

[00:05:57] In the funky functionary world without making it any more complex than that.

 [00:00:20] Keith: so when it gets cold outside everybody thinks that gardening comes to a halt, but some of the most interesting plants, in my opinion, bloom during the wintertime or really show off during the winter so it's an interesting time too. It's also a, really good time to plant plants. 

[00:00:53] They don't get to go through very little stress through the wintertime. People always think they're going to be too cold. They're sitting out in the nursery in a pot. So if you can get that pot down into the soil, it'll start growing roots. We grow roots throughout the winter, so it's a perfect time to plant, but it's also a good time to go to the nursery and look at plants. 

[00:01:12] There's a lot of plants that bloom all winter long or throughout the winter Camelia is in the south or are one that just consistently bloom. There are two types of chameleons. There's a succinct that starts blooming in the fall. It's a smaller leaf and a little bit smaller flower, but a more profusely. 

[00:01:31] And, within this as sank as there are hundreds of varieties of pink, white, red, and lots of different size plants, but sank was start blooming in October, November. They'll bloom October, November, December, January for about two and a half, three months. Depending on the variety of the. 

[00:01:50] And then japonica is, which is a larger leaf, a chameleon and a larger bloom will pick up. And then they start, they bloom on, into the winter and in spring. So they'll start blooming in December, January, February, March, and finish up at the beginning of April. And chameleons are more like the japonicas are more like. 

[00:02:11] A large rose flower or a peony flower. It's a flower. That's probably four to five inches across six inches across. And full of ' full of color again, whites, pinks and reds yellow stamens woven through the flower. It's a great cut flower to bring in and use a vase or pot, floating. 

[00:02:33] But the chameleon is even without flowers on them have just dark shiny green leaves. It's a perfect plant, 12 months out of the year, to fill a space in your garden. So because  

[00:02:45] Joe: it blooms in the winter, does that mean it doesn't  

[00:02:47] Keith: bloom in the summer? Exactly. But most of the things that bloom in the winter bloom for a long period of time there aren't as many pollinators out so that they need a few warm days. 

[00:02:59] To get pollinated so they can produce seed. So of most, all of the winter-blooming stuff will bloom a lot longer than summer blooming. Summer blooming will come into bloom and azaleas are a good example. They come into bloom and they bloom like crazy when pollinators are out and then they go out of bloom and they're done. 

[00:03:17] So you get two to three, four weeks in blooms and then they wrap it up. Chameleons you really. Two to three months of solid bloom time. And that's from one bloom to peak bloom and then back down to one, but a really good show of flowers for a long period of time. 

[00:03:34] And the other thing that's interesting about winter plants is a lot of them are very fragrant because they need pollinators to pollinate. They're extremely fragrant to get the few pollinators that are out and about in the wintertime to come to them. Daphne is one of those plants. 

[00:03:50] It's the, it's a plant that smells It's just, it's got probably the most fragrance of anything that out there. I always tell people it smells like fruit loops and it really truly does when you smell it, it's a fruit loop cereal. If you can bring back that that smell, that's what it smells like. 

[00:04:05] But Daphne will bloom for a long period of time through the wintertime. And it's a plant that needs are a little tricky in our soil that Clay's heavy and if they get overwatered, They get they'll fail. But once you get one established and it's doing well it'll live, 10 years, 20 years. 

[00:04:23] I always tell people to plant three of them but don't plant them together, plant them and scatter them around the yard. It's a plant we guarantee for a year, but if you plant three of them, you're probably going to replace one. And, it's there, it's a tough plant to establish, but once it's established, it'll be one of your favorite plants through the wintertime. 

[00:04:40] Fatsy is another one fatty as a tropical-looking plant, big leafy foliage. And in the wintertime, it blooms with a round sphere up on top of the plant bees, and pollinators go crazy over it, and the winter in the middle of the wintertime. So when we have those warm days in the middle of the winter and either back out and try to forge for nectar pollen they're all over a fat. 

[00:05:02] And in that same kind of time, the same kind of hellebores is a perennial that blooms for a long period of time. It's an evergreen plant. Super easy to establish and very long-lived. Usually, once you plan a hell of, or you'll have them there for a. It'll seed itself and generate babies. 

[00:05:20] But it's it again is a great pollinator plant. One of the plants that don't really, it doesn't help much with nectar but helps with Poland and the spring is our conifers and conifers in the wintertime and is a good time to take a look at the garden. You've lost everything that's deciduous, or that dies back to the ground. 

[00:05:39] You've lost your perineal. And a lot of times a garden can look sparse. It's a good time to look at the bones of a garden and figure out, where are you really need something that's lacking? You can just, you've got a garden that was all perennials and there's really nothing there, at this point in time. 

[00:05:55] So to go out and put in evergreens in an area like that, like a. Conifers are it's, they're a perfect contrast to a chameleon. You've got the needle, evergreen, you might have chartreuse or golden foliage up against that dark green, big, bold leaves. So it's a great plant to add to the winter landscape red twig and yellow twig dogwoods are another one. 

[00:06:19] It's deciduous. But it's one that shows off in the wintertime. It's really, it's a, it's an, it's a nice leafy plant through the year, but in the wintertime, you've got really brilliant red foliage or red stems or yellow stems. And if you plant contrasting ground cover underneath it the red twigs with creeping Jenny or something like that under. 

[00:06:41] Really shows off the plant and then red twigs and snow obviously just makes it really up. A lot of the garden pictures we don't have very often, but when we do it, it really shows off that plan. And another deciduous plant with winter berries, which is a deciduous Holly Holly's is great for pollinators. 

[00:07:01] They're great for honey bees. And decking the halls exactly objecting the halls and in with Winterberry is actually definitely one of those plants. So it's deciduous. Holly drops all its leaves. And then it's got nothing but red berries all over it. When we can find it, it's always a great plant to decorate with. 

[00:07:20] You've got to stick that just covered in red berries and nothing else to distract your view. So the winter berries are super plants in the wintertime. In the spring, I didn't say it's almost even an ugly plant or just a leafy green plant and then nondescript. But it surprises you in the fall. 

[00:07:37] You'll see the berries in there. They're green and they're starti...