- From the weed-infested Univest Studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another aquatic episode of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, You Bet Your Garden.
Invasive weeds in waterways are some of the toughest plants to control.
I'm your host, Mike McGrath.
And on today's show, I'll reveal several options for combating tough and tenacious aquatic weeds.
Plus, we'll take that heaping helping of your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and garrulously grandiose glorifications.
So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you actually seeing the water in your lake or pond again 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 Univest Studios, at Lehigh Valley Public Media, in Bethlehem, PA.
I am your host, Mike McGrath.
And later on in the show, we are going to discuss a tough topic, getting rid of invasive water weeds.
There are many benefits to doing so, but removal has proven to be difficult.
I'll tell you what I learned in researching the options at the end of the show.
In the meantime, as many as your fabulous phone calls as we can plug in.
Boris, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.
- Thanks, Mike.
How are you doing today?
- I'm just Ducky, Boris!
"Ha-ha-ha!
Ducky's happy."
How about you?
- I'm doing well in Arlington, Virginia.
- What can we do you for, sir?
- So I'm trying to get involved in foraging specifically for mushrooms, but any other edibles that are out there.
And I'm trying to figure out how to find experienced foragers so that I don't make any mistakes.
- Well, I'll acknowledge that I was given a heads-up about this, because it is very specific.
It's not the kind of thing I would have off the top of my head.
So I did a little research, and it seems like you're in Mushroom Central.
The first organization I will mention, I wrote it down on an index card, is the Mycological Association of Washington.
Their website is MawDC.org.
Mycology, of course, is the study of mushrooms and other fungus, and this club has over 600 members.
So I'm sure there are events and specialists that work in your area, or present in your area, and they do it all based on their website, they hold classes, they have lectures.
They go out on forays where they don't pick anything.
They just help newcomers identify mushrooms, and then, they do full-fledged foraging.
One other thing that was mentioned in all the sites I found, was be sure to wear tick-proof clothing when you go out foraging.
Mushroom hunters appear to be prime meals for ticks.
So you may have heard me talk about professionally-made clothing that's impregnated with permethrin, which is a synthetic form of a biological insecticide, actually, arachnicide in this case.
And you can buy at hunting and fishing stores, sprays that you can treat your own clothing.
And I tell you, any time I remember my tick pants and my tick socks, I never come in with a tick.
And that's just important to keep hammering into people at this time of year.
Ticks aren't going to go dormant until January, if we're lucky.
And this is the time of year they want to get a good blood meal to get ready for the winter.
So you have to be careful about that.
- Perfect.
That sounds like great leads.
- Thank you, Mike.
- All right!
And one of the reasons, even though this is very localized, I wanted to get you on the show, is the same will be true in almost all parts of the country that have wild mushrooms.
If you don't find anything under mushroom foraging, go to Mycology.
And I think there is a group like this in many groups like this all over the country.
- Great.
Great.
Thanks again.
- All right.
You take care, Bor.
Joe, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.
- Hey, Mike, it's great to be on with you.
I look forward to you answering this question that I have.
- Oh, okay.
Where are you, Joe?
- I am on the northern edge of the Mark Twain National Forest, in the Ozarks of Missouri.
It's beautiful here.
- Well, okay.
What can we do for you, sir?
- I have a love of garlic, as I know you share the love of garlic, for all its great flavor and its medicinal purposes.
And I've got a raised bed garden, about 250 feet, linear feet, broken down into from 80x11-foot sections.
So I can rotate the crops around, and I'm taking to growing garlic the last couple of years.
And when I harvest, it's all hardneck, different varieties of hardneck.
I wasn't sure if this area was okay for softneck, so I went with hardneck, and I'll ask you about that later.
But when I harvest the garlic, I do as you suggest, I take it out, I lay it out on the table in the shade with a fan, let it dry for a couple of weeks until, you know, everything looks nice and dry.
And the first year was... the harvest was, last year, 21, and I tied the garlic, I left the stalk on, or the center part, and I tied them together and hung them in the garage, and then, just used them, cut them off and used them.
This is in July, the harvest.
So I start noticing, about August to September, these little tiny moths are all around my garlic.
And I started opening the garlic cloves up, and there are little worms inside, little larva that are eating my garlic.
My question is, am I bringing these pests in from the garden, or are they attacking my garlic afterward?
- Oh, you're doing it.
You're doing it.
Now, are you sure these are moths?
Because there is a well-known and nefarious pest of garlic called the allium fly.
And this is a fly, not a moth, that lays its eggs on the outside of alliums, that includes garlic, onions, leeks, and other plants.
And it frustrates garlic-growers to no end.
So I want you, after we're done, to go online and look up the allium fly, and see if these creatures are allium flies.
I mean, there are bees that look like wasps, there's bees that look like flies.
There's flies that look like, you know, there are many imitations in nature.
- Will these allium flies be similar to onion maggot flies?
- Well, they might be the same thing.
They might be the same creature.
I have been lucky to avoid them.
But the word... - I'll take a closer look because... - Go ahead.
The word "maggot" also refers to the larva of a fly.
So, I think you got flies.
Now, one incredibly positive thing you can do is to hang flypaper all around that garage and yellow sticky traps.
- I did that, and I have I have tons of little mothy-looking creatures stuck to them.
- Okay, good.
- Well, you want to knock down this generation, so at least they don't...
The specific ones don't go out and lay eggs on your next run of garlic.
Now, have you taken any...?
- What I did, I just planted some, and I checked each clove to inspect it as much as I could to make sure I didn't transport any out into the garden.
- I don't think they come out on cloves.
They wait until the bulb is fully developed.
And then, the adults, which are just ubiquitous in the atmosphere, come and lay their eggs on that.
One of many, many insects that is dedicated to pesterizing, a very specific plant, or a genera of plants.
- Right.
Okay.
I'm going to look that up.
- Yes, and... Yeah, okay, good.
So, trap as many as you can.
And you said you've already planted.
And yes, it would be good not to plant any damaged cloves.
Of course, if you're planting cloves, you have to break up the bulbs.
Have you broken up a damaged bulb and found, like, good cloves, as well as the damaged ones?
- Yes, not all the bulbs are damaged.
I can break one open, I just got through taking them all apart.
I was under the assumption I was supposed to leave the bulbs together after they've dried.
And do you break them apart after they've dried?
- Yeah, because with our hardneck garlics, we've got to do something with it pretty quickly.
They'll be sprouting by now.
So yeah, you gotta preserve it or use it.
Whereby with softneck garlic, which you should be able to grow, it doesn't taste as good, it doesn't look as good, but it will... You can leave the heads together for a year, and they won't sprout.
But they don't scape either.
You don't get those scapes.
And one other thing that you need to do is get floating row covers, lightweight floating row covers.
Put those... - I already ordered those.
- Okay, good.
So, yeah, you'll put those over your garlic, you'll make sure the sides are sealed, and then, the adult fly can't get near your crop.
- Oh, okay.
Put that out after they... before they scape, at what point?
That's what I'm going to find out from the extension of when these flies attack.
Yes, but the floating row covers stay on all season long, so you can put those out now.
All right?
- Man, that's going to really help me out.
I appreciate that.
- I'll do anything for a fellow garlic-grower, Joe.
You take care.
- Oh, I love garlic!
- Yep.
- Thanks, Mike.
- Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Jim, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.
- Good day, sir.
This is Jim in Nashville, outside of Nashville, White's Creek.
How are you?
- I am just Duckyyy!
How's Jim?
- Doing good.
Not Ducky.
But I will say, before we speak, my evil squirrels have a message for you.
They scrawled it in the dirt.
They said, "Try to catch us."
- Oh, yeah, we have some fun coming up in the next couple of shows with evil squirrels.
I think you'll enjoy it.
What can we do you for?
- Here's my question, Mike.
A few days ago, I watched a short segment on the miracle of the monarch butterfly, from the little egg to birth.
And then, a few days later, I see some monarchs out in the backyard, and I'm sitting down and I'm looking at the garden, and it's colder out here in White's Creek than Nashville, so the tomatoes are done for, they've been pulled out of the ground except for the cherries.
And I'm looking at the stack and I'm thinking, "Oh, no.
"Have monarchs, moths, and butterflies laid eggs on these?
"Am I interrupting that cycle?"
So that's my basic question.
When should someone pull out the tomato plants according to the season, and where they are?
And what would one want to do with them?
And are we indeed hurting the cycle of our flying friends?
That's my question, sir.
- Okay.
Very good question.
The first answer is you should pull out your tomato plants when you're sick and tired of looking at them and waiting for that one green tomato to ripen up.
Pick it off the plant, bring it inside to ripen inside, and compost the tomato plants.
There is only one insect that uses a tomato as a host plant, in other words, they lay their eggs on it, a caterpillar hatches out, then devours as much of the plant as it can.
And that is the dreaded tomato hornworm, one of the biggest caterpillars in North America.
When it strikes, it looks like deer have eaten off the top of your plants, and their mountains of frass, $30 word for bug poop, are really visible underneath the plants.
Now they are pestiferous, but they pupate, they drop into the ground as caterpillars, pupate in these weird kind of armored shell things, and emerge as giant sphinx moths, one of the biggest moths in North America.
And, oh, one other thing.
If you find a hornworm on your plants and it has white spines up and down the back, don't mess with it, because those spines are the cocoons of beneficial wasps, very small wasps that will, you know, take care of other pests in your garden preying on them.
If you want to help the monarchs, you grow milkweed in your garden.
That is the only... You got some?
- Yeah, that's, everybody knows that.
Even us wannabe-Mike McGraths know that.
- Oh, well, thank you, I think.
Yeah, there are different kinds of milkweed.
You should grow the ones that are recommended for your area.
And that will make the monarchs that return very happy, because they will lay their eggs on the milkweed plants when they get back from, in your case, Mexico.
And those eggs, of course, will hatch into caterpillars that will eat the milkweed and, you know, become a former, tremendously beautiful chrysalis.
And then, out of the chrysalis comes the monarchs.
So the other thing you can do, and perhaps you already know this, is to have plants in flower at the end of the season that produce large amounts of pollen and nectar.
The absolute best ones are Tithonia, or Mexican sunflower.
The monarchs that emerge will really chow down on the pollen and nectar in these plants.
They produce a ton of it, and that will fuel them on their way back down to their breeding grounds.
Okay, Jim?
- Thank you for the information, yes.
And I have the highest respect for your knowledge.
On with today, and on with the show.
Thanks for taking the call, sir.
- Thank you very much, Jim.
Take care.
Yes, it is time for the Question of the Week, which we're calling... Yeah, we've lost it, kids.
Roger, located between Coopersburg and Limeport in the beautiful Lehigh Valley, writes... Hmm, sounds fun.
I love this question!
Like many others, it sent me deep diving into the research, which I just love.
But before we get to what I've learned, let's start with my first thoughts.
Number one, fertilizer runoff.
Okay, fish poop and dead fishes are also excellent fertilizers and support the growth of aquatic plants, both wanted and unwanted.
We can't change that.
But if nearby areas are treated with chemical fertilizers, the runoff feeds the bad plants and that can be changed.
Before entering the water, they should be rinsed thoroughly with warm water or saltwater to ensure that they're not introducing any new plant parts to the lake.
And not just motorboats, kayaks, canoes, and such should also be thoroughly cleaned.
Number three, the same is true on the back end.
A washing station situated away from the lake should be used after every boating expedition, especially if the boater pushed through tangles of water plants.
Okay, now what can you do when these plants are already out of control?
Again, these are tough weeds.
When they cover the surface of a pond or a lake, they cut off sunlight and oxygen, which promotes algae growth and kills fish and other lake dwellers that depend on a decent supply of oxygen in the water.
And these plants tend to spread and reproduce by virtually every means possible.
I want to emphasize that I am far from an expert on this topic, but after many hours of research, I'm willing to present a plan.
God help us all.
First, mechanical removal.
Roger's work with pitchforks and rakes is the classic control method, but I would also urge him to check out the specialized rakes on the market that are designed specifically for water weed control.
They could be great time-savers.
And yes, the goats will gleefully eat these weeds after they're piled up and deposited on land, and they'll gift you with a different form of fertilizer, as well.
Over the past decade, motorized machines that cut and remove the existing growth of water weeds have become much more available and affordable.
We'll link up to a great article about them at the Gardens Alive website.
And the best DIY idea I came across was to remove all the cloth from an old box spring mattress and drag it slowly behind the boat, stopping frequently to unload the harvest.
And after these harvests, there are several organic biologicals on the market that can be applied to quickly degrade any severed plant parts left behind, rid the area of algae, and make the water clear and return oxygen levels to normal.
As with the machines we just mentioned, there will be links to these products when we post this article at the Gardens Alive website.
Finally, we get to the goats.
I love goats!
They are incredibly smart, and they love eating invasive plants.
So, enter Bruce Bradford of FlockWorks.us.
That's "flock," as in flock of goats, "works," as in what I don't do, dot-U.S.
Anyway, Bruce was willing to answer my question, "Do goats swim?"
"Most of them don't," answered the professional herder of weeding and goats in and around Cumberland County, P.A.
But there is a group that I call aquatic goats.
These are generally the low-ranking goats in a herd, and they will venture into water if the alpha goats keep them away from tasty plants like poison ivy.
In addition, young goats can be trained to be comfortable in water, but these specialized weed-eaters need to be trained at a very early age.
Okay.
"What about goats on boats," says Bruce?
I love it!
The boats need to be as large as possible, and to move slowly through the infested area.
Many people would be interested in the results.
I very well may be testing this in the future to see if any of our goats will graze on our invasive water lilies.
Interested in investigating goats that will eat your worst invasive weeds?
The website HireGoats.com has a great map that shows the location and contact information for weed-eating goat herds for rent everywhere in the United States.
Well, that sure was some interesting information about invasive water weeds, 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... And remember, there's lots of links to extra information in this week's episode.
Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question of the Week, and you'll 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 the Flash ran too close to him and accidentally slip-streamed him from Oklahoma City to Philadelphia just in time to enjoy his first cheesesteak.
Yikes!
My producer is threatening to water my weeds if I don't get out of this studio.
We must be out of time.
But you can call us any time at... Or send us your email, your tired, your poor, your wretched refuse teeming towards our garden shore at... And if you do email us, please include your location.
I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and I'll be sitting outside reading the paper, drinking strong coffee, and marveling at the fall color on the trees until I see you again next week.
- Hi, this is Lydia.
- I just want you to know that I am a squirrel lover, and I call them my squirrelly friends.
And I put plenty of seed and nuts down for them.
And my dog and cat loves the squirrels, too.
They like to run after them.
So, you know, be nice to the squirrels.
They aren't that bad.
Thank you.